Taking Things Literally is Not as Confusing as It Sounds

8/14/2019 Taking Things Literally is Not as Confusing as It Sounds

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Prophecy, the Rapture and Tribulation...Oh My!

NOT AS TOUGH AS IT SOUNDS

There is WAY too much incorrect information out

there! Yeah, that sounds egotistical ("I'm right and if

you don't agree with me, then you're wrong" jargon),

but the truth of the matter is that it really does NOT

take a rocket scientist to interpret Scripture. All it

takes it the correct HERMENEUTIC (method used).

IT'S LITERAL MEANING WE'RE AFTER

I believe that a literal‐historical hermeneutic is the

only one that provides consistency throughout and I

plan on showing that over and over and over and

over again.

Apart from the literal‐historical‐grammatical hermeneutic, there is NOTHING that provides the

same manner of consistency for understanding the Bible.

DISPENSATIONALISM IS NOT THE PROBLEM

People constantly malign Dispensationalists with the accusation that we do not follow the laws

of literal interpretation. They will point to a word that says "all" and if we do not understand

that word to mean literally everything or everybody, then we are not true literalists.

Let me try to explain how easy it is to see through this subterfuge. If I am among other people

and I hear someone yell "Fire!" the first thing that would come to my mind is that the room Iam in with those other people is on fire and I'd better make a quick exit! In this particular case

though, maybe the individual was eating some extremely hot wings. He was commenting to his

friends that these wings made his tongue feel like it was on FIRE. He wound up emphasizing

that word "fire" to the point that he used much more volume saying that one word that the

rest of the sentence, so the only thing I heard from across the room, was the word "fire!" In the

context of the situation then, the literally meaning of what he said was not that the room was

on fire, but that his mouth FELT like it was on fire.

LEFT IS LEFT, UNLESS IT MEANS AMOUNT

Here is another example. If I am in a car and I say to the driver, "Turn left at the next light," he

will understand me to be giving him direction. If I say to him (as I look in my wallet) "I have fivedollars left in my wallet," he will NOT understand that to mean that he should turn left at the

next light. The word LEFT takes on a completely different meaning from one sentence to the

other based solely on what? That's right; the context.

So my point is very simple to comprehend. No Dispensationalist that I know of (myself included)

reads the Bible and takes every word literally. What we DO is determine the literal MEANING of




words, phrases and sentences found in Scripture. This is not so unusual because we do this

every day, in normal speech and even in what we read.

LANGUAGE IS NOT STRAIGHTFORWARD

English, as in all languages, is filled with idioms, hyperbole, exaggerated speech, symbolism and

the rest. As normal, intelligent people, we generally understand when idioms, hyperbole andthe like are being used in conversation or in the written word. We roll with it and simply

continue moving through the conversation or the book we're reading without so much as a

hiccup because we understand that the word or phrase itself is not taken literally, but the

MEANING of the word or phrase IS taken literally. Anyone who is honest will admit that this is a

normal part of language.

HYPERBOLE

In the examples I've provided above, the meaning was determined by context. When hyperbole

or something else is used, meaning is derived not necessarily from context, but from simply

knowing the MEANING of the hyperbolic phrase.

But if we take a look at one or two examples of exaggerated speech, you will see exactly what I

am referring to here. For instance, if I am meeting a friend for lunch and I say to that friend,

"Man, I am SO hungry I could eat a COW!" that friend would not look at me like I was a freak,

and assume that I was actually going to eat a cow for lunch. He would be understanding me to

say that I am extremely hungry. The only type of person that might understand me to say that I

was literally going to eat a cow might be someone who is on the Autism spectrum. I do not say

that disrespectfully either because my wife and I have both worked with young people who

have autism. My point is simply that an individual with a certain type of autism would think that

I was planning to eat an entire cow and that might either be confusing for them, or freak them

out. So, when working with people with autism, I am extremely careful with my verbiage. Evensaying something like "Please go and change your socks" to a young person with autism could

result in him taking one sock from one foot and placing it on the other foot and doing the same

with the other sock. They would not understand me to be saying that they should go and get a

fresh pair of socks from the draw and put those on their feet, and then place the worn pair in

the hamper. They do not understand language any other way except hyper‐literally.

However, most of do not suffer from any form of autism and because of that, we are free to

enjoy the various aspects of language without being hampered by any degree of hyper‐

literalism.

In another example, I might say to my wife at the end of the day, "Hon, I'm beat. I need to hit

the hay." My wife would not look at me as if I was from outer space, or as if she was looking for

signs of me having been beaten. Beyond that, she would not run to our bedroom expecting to

see bales of hay where our bed once stood. This would be patently absurd of her. No, she

would take my words and understand them with a literal meaning. She would hear me to

actually and literally be saying: "Hon, I am really tired. I need to go to sleep in our bed." Who

reading this would take my comments any other way?




Words themselves can and do change over time. Years ago, the word "gay" simply meant

happy. Today, the word has taken on a completely new meaning.

The word "bad" today can mean any number of things, and its meaning is determined only by

its context. The same applies to the word "good."

I am sure if you took the time to consider it, you would be able to list any number of words that

have had their meanings change over time. In fact, many words have become completely

outmoded today and are no longer in use.

Beyond that, with the onset of sending text messages through our cell phones, a brand new

language is being created! It is an abbreviated, shortened language which allows people to

communicate much faster than if they were trying to spell out each word.

SO IT IS WITH THE BIBLE

It is extremely important to understand that the Bible was not written in a vacuum. It was

written in the living culture of Judaism, complete with all of its idioms intact.

When we read the Bible, the biggest mistake we can make is to NOT undergo some period of

cultural awareness that provides us with the insight necessary to know when we are reading

idioms and other forms of figures of speech, and when we are reading language that can be

taken as it is written.

The key then is that ultimately, we need to understand the Bible literally, but that literalness

occurs with the MEANING. The words simply provide us with meaning and when you gain

meaning from the text of Scripture, you have GOT to know HOW you arrived at that meaning. Itcannot be arbitrary, as many want to do today. If it is arbitrary, then it is subjective and if it is

subjective, it is not objective.

BEING OBJECTIVE, NOT SUBJECTIVE

Most people do not have any difficulty with the Bible until they get to one particular area of

Scripture; prophecy. When they get to prophecy, all of a sudden, something tells them that just

about everything they read from that point must be allegorized. In point of fact, there is little

reason to allegorize anything in Scripture.

When the Bible uses symbolism, interestingly enough, it normally explains what the symbolismis as applied to the symbol. Yet, many people will apply their own interpretive magic to it and

they wind up coming up with all sorts of meanings that have no basis in fact.

AN EXAMPLE PLEASE

If we look at the Olivet Discourse, which is found in three of the gospels, we can glean a number

of things from the entire passage. Jesus is speaking to His disciples about the end of all things.

They have asked Him some questions based upon what He has just told them about the Temple




and the fact that not one stone will be left on top of another stone. Their curiosity was aroused,

as ours would be, so they began asking Him "When will these things happen?" and "What will

be the sign of your coming?" etc.

Christ responds to their questions, but He does not respond to them in the order in which they

asked Him. Beyond this, He runs together a great period of time in just a few short paragraphs.

When He does get around to answering the question about WHEN these things will happen,

one of the things He says is "When nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against

kingdom..."

That phrase doesn't seem like much really. Many might be tempted to think "Yeah, so? That

just means war, but it doesn't help us zero in on timing." What most of fail to realize is that the

phrase itself is a Jewish idiom which means total war in the area in question. Christ is talking

about a global condition that exists at the end of the world. Because of that, it becomes

obvious that the phrase refers to a total global conflict. World War I was the very first global

conflict. I have read Richard Abanes' "End‐Time Vision" and I am sorry to tell him that he has it

completely wrong. The War of Spanish Succession was NOT the first actual world war, in spite

of the fact that he found TWO historians who believed it was just that.

Aside from those two historians, all historians agree that World War I was the first actual true

global conflict. In fact, that particular war took place on every continent, unlike the War of

Spanish Succession. Frankly, I would be embarrassed to argue that World War I was not the first

real world war, but if Mr. Abanes prefers to take that route, that is certainly up to him. I am

sure he does not really care how it makes him look, because his entire book was a determined

effort to overrule a Premillennial, Pretribulational position, so if it looks like he was grasping at

straws, it is because he was in fact, grasping at straws.

My point is simply this: for anyone who truly wants to approach Scripture and gain meaning

FROM it that is truthful to the text, then it is imperative to set aside any misgivings, or

preconceived notions of what Scripture says. Scripture must be allowed to speak for itself.

TO SUM UP

Three things are needed when studying the Bible in order to ascertain the actual meaning that

God intended us to gain from it:

1) LITERAL: a student of the Bible must be willing to look at the text in order to gain a literalMEANING. This might mean recognizing hyperbole, or exaggerated speech when it is there, and

understanding the meaning of that text as it is MEANT, not necessarily what the words literally

say.

2) HISTORICAL: a student of the Bible must be willing to spend some time learning about the

culture of Judaism, because it is only in understanding the phrases and verbiage of Orthodox

Jews who grew up with Scripture that it begins to open itself up to us. History is very, very




important. Words, phrases, and verbiage change over time. Names of cities and areas also

change over time. We need to know that.

3) GRAMMAR: this ties in with the above. Changes in words or phrases certainly affects the

meaning. I have provided a number of clear examples in the text above. We all know that word

meanings change and in fact, something that means one thing in one language or culture canmean something else completely in another language or culture. It is imperative to study the

words in the text and do our best to determine meaning, not just from that section of Scripture

necessarily, but we may have to spend time searching other portions of Scripture to help us

gain meaning for another portion.

IN CONCLUSION

Studying the Bible is probably the most worthwhile endeavor anyone could seek to do.

However, if it is not done correctly, the result will be disastrous. So many aberrant and heretical

theologies have been created simply because people do not know how to rightly divide His

Word.

It is imperative that we desire to gain the literal MEANING in every portion of Scripture,

including prophecy. It is not good enough to say "Well, I think this means so and so." We must

be able to PROVE why we believe the text says what we think it says and we cannot do that

unless we employ a hermeneutic, or method of study which will constantly provide us with the

most consistent results.

The Literal‐Historical‐Grammatical hermeneutic does just that. There is NOTHING better;

nothing that provides more consistency. It is the one method that allows the student of the

Bible to read the Word and gain a consistent meaning throughout; whether the student is

reading wisdom books, or prophetic books.

We have an obligation to God to understand His Word in the way in which HE meant it to be

understood. Get rid of the subjectivity. Get rid of the "I think it says" syndrome. Come to His

Word prepared to find out what He means, by using an approach that addresses the language,

the culture and the history of the Bible and Judaism. It is the only way to determine what God

has meant by what He has had written.

Taking Things Literally is Not as Confusing as It Sounds

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