How NOT to Read Prophetic Literature

We live in a culture that loves special effects in movies...this is especially true of guys! Am I right? A guy could see a movie with the worst plot line in the world and still come out of the theater saying, "Did you see those explosions? They were awesome! I've got to see that movie again in 3D!" Guys seem to love action flicks even without a plot. This is the reason that Steven Seagal and Arnold Schwarzenegger still have jobs!

Guys are drawn to prophetic literature probably for the same reason. They love the action and the mystery of the apocalyptic imagery...stars falling, fires burning, locusts attacking, thunder quaking, earthquakes shaking! Prophetic literature speaks the male language. It gets a guys blood pumping! Reading it is like drinking a can of Red Bull!

But has all of the excitement clouded our judgment when it comes to reading the prophetic literature and, in particular, the apocalyptic imagery? Should we be reading prophetic literature with a newspaper in hand trying to fit the latest headlines from the Middle East into the Bible? Or have we gotten so caught up in the end times, Left Behind hysteria that we have failed to understand how the ancient Israelites would have understood this imagery?

Maybe the locusts in the prophetic literature (Joel 1:4; 2:25; Rev. 9:3) are depicting a military assault by Apache or Cobra helicopters as Hal Lindsey, a popular End Times personality, thinks...and maybe, as he has also suggested, the sun will be darkened because of a 'Nuclear Winter' caused by multiple nuclear explosions (Joel 2:31; Rev. 6:12). But is this really the best way to read apocalyptic imagery? Did the ancient Israelites understand this imagery so literally? Or was the imagery meant to serve a different purpose? Let's find out...

APOCALYPTIC IMAGERY & THE PAST FALL OF NATIONS
Isaiah 13 depicts the fall of Babylon, one of the empires responsible for Israel's exile. But the details surrounding the fall of Babylon might surprise you:

"See the day of the Lord is coming--a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger--to make the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it. The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light. The rising sun will not give its light...I will make the heavens tremble; and the earth will shake from its place at the wrath of the Lord Almighty, in the day of his burning anger...See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who care for silver and have no delight in gold." Isaiah 13:10, 13, 17

Wow! That sounds like something out of sci-fi movie! Certainly this has never happened before. BUT IT HAS...In about 539 B.C.! This is the way apocalyptic imagery predicted and depicted the fall of Babylon at the hands of the Medes. But how can this be? Certainly you'd think that such a cataclysmic event is recorded in the secular annals of history! BUT IT'S NOT (at least in these exaggerated, hyperbolic terms)! So this begs the question: Is this description to be understood literally? Many believe the answer to be a big fat 'NO'. So how do they think this imagery is to be understood?

APOCALYPTIC IMAGERY FROM THE ISRAELITE PERSPECTIVE
Many believe that apocalyptic imagery in the prophetic literature flows out of TWO monumental events in the history of Israel: The plagues (signs) from Israel's exodus out of Egypt (Exodus 7-12) and the arrival of God's presence at Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:16-19). Let me explain.

The plagues (or signs) were the ultimate expression of God's judgment on the nation of Egypt and the ultimate proclamation of His supreme reign over the entire universe. And because of this, most (if not all) future, DIVINE judgments (often referred to using the phrase 'the day of the Lord') were described using similar terms: blood, hail, locusts, darkness, death, etc. And because these terms were used to typologically RECALL God's judgment of the plagues in the Great Exodus, this apocalyptic language was meant to be understood symbolically (but NOT literally). And this is why we see images of hail (Isa. 28:2, 17; Ezek. 13:11, 13; Hagg. 2:17; Rev. 8:7, 11:19), plagues/pestilence (Hab. 3:5; Zech. 14:12, 15, 18), locusts (Jer. 51:14, 27; Joel 1:4, 2:25; Amos 4:9; Nah. 3:15-17), and darkness (Isa. 13:10, 34:4; Ezek. 32:7-8; Joel 2:31; 3:15) attached to God's pronouncements of judgment throughout the prophetic literature. God is judging other nations just like He first judged Egypt!

But what about the descriptions of God's judgments that include thunder and earthquakes (Ezek. 3:12; 38:19; Isa. 13:13, 29:6)? How are we to understand them? You might recall in Exodus 19:16-19 that when God arrived on Mount Sinai, He arrived with a bang (literally). "On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast...because the Lord descended on it in fire...and the whole mountain trembled violently." And so the LANGUAGE of thunder and earthquakes has been used ever since Mount Sinai by the Biblical authors to signal the arrival of God's presence (and God's arrival is usually not a friendly visit!). And when used in prophetic literature, thunder and earthquakes symbolically indicate God's hand in the pronouncement and enactment of judgment.

THE BOTTOM LINE
And so as we continue with the Eat This Book Challenge, we need to be careful how we read the prophetic literature. It is full of metaphorical imagery that is NOT always meant to be taken literally. Likewise, it uses phrases like "the day of the Lord" that are NOT always referring to the End Times (sometimes 'the day of the Lord' just refers to a period of God's judgment upon a nation). In a similar vein, prophetic literature is not primarily about foretelling the future; it is primarily about forth-telling (calling people to repent and turn away from their rebellion and return to God). In fact, you might be surprised by the following statistics from How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth:

2/3 of the prophetic literature is an appeal to repentance
1/3 of the prophetic literature is predictions about the future
90% of the predictions relate to events in the immediate future
Less than 2% of the predictions were about the coming of Christ
Less than 1% of the predictions were about the End Times

So enjoy the prophetic books of the Bible! But always begin by trying to understand things from the perspective of the original audience (and not through your 21st century eyes)!