The Intended Meaning of
Apocalyptic Prophecy is Determined by
Valid Rules
Larry
Wilson
December 2007
Wake Up America Seminars
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Introduction
There are a thousand
different interpretations on Bible
prophecy floating around today. Why?
Prophetic expositors arrive at
different conclusions because there
are as many different methods of
interpretation as there are people. Methods
of interpretation is a catch-all
phrase that describes a controlling
set of ideas or views residing in a
person’s head before he
actually begins to interpret
prophecy. Methods of interpretation
include cherished religious
views, spiritual presuppositions,
scholastic assumptions, concepts
about a role and authority of the
Bible, the authority of prophets
external to the Bible and church
tradition. For example, a Catholic
scholar and a Baptist scholar will do
the same thing. Ironically, the
Catholic scholar and the Baptist
scholar can study the same passage of
Scripture and arrive at very
different conclusions. How does this
happen? The answer is simple. No one
approaches the study of Bible
prophecy without some kind of
intellectual and /or religious
baggage. This baggage is called
“methods of
interpretation,” rules of
interpretation,” or
hermeneutics.
How Can the Bible Tell
us Things We Don’t Want to
Believe?
Knowingly or
unknowingly, every student of
prophecy uses some rules of
interpretation. The problem is
that invalid rules will not
produce valid conclusions. For
example, some people believe the
following is a valid rule: “A
day in Bible prophecy always equals
a year.” If we accept this rule,
then the 1,000 years of Revelation 20
would be translated as 365,242
literal years because a year has
365.242 days in it. (365.242 days x
1000 years = 365,242 years)
A valid rule cannot
have an exception for if there is an
exception, who on Earth has the
authority to tell the rest of
mankind, when a rule should be
applied or ignored? For reasons
beyond the scope of this article, I
find the day/year rule mentioned
above to be invalid. Yes, there are
places in Daniel and Revelation where
God translates time according to the
Jubilee Calendar. In such cases, a
day is translated as a year (for
example, the seventy weeks of Daniel
9 translate 490 years), but there are
other places in Daniel and Revelation
where God measures time without
translation (for example, the 1000
years in Revelation 20 and the 1,335
days in Daniel 12 are literal time
periods) How can we tell when God is
translating time according to the
Jubilee Calendar and when He is not?
The answer is quite simple: A valid
rule regarding the translation of
time will tell us.
Eschatology today is
largely “a nose of wax”
which various expositors manipulate
for political, religious or personal
reasons. Millions of people have been
misled into believing things that
have no truth in them. In a nutshell,
here’s the problem: If a
prophetic idea can be made to appear
reasonable, it can become
believable. But, history says that
reasonableness does not necessarily
produce truth (even though truth is
reasonable). For thousands of years
observers of the Sun said the Earth
stood still and the Sun orbited
Earth. “The reasonableness of
this position is plainly
evident,” they said. Then one
day in the 16th century,
Copernicus came along and ruined the
reasonable idea by putting a few
interesting facts on the table and
suddenly, two thousand years of
“reasonable evidence” was
used to prove that Earth traveled
around the Sun.
Faulty Interpretation
Unavoidable until the Time of the End
The book of Daniel
contains 533 sentences. It was
written about twenty-six centuries
ago, but unlike the other 65
books in the Bible, the book of
Daniel was sealed up “until the
time of the end.” The angel,
Gabriel, said to Daniel,” “…Go
your way, Daniel, because the words
are closed up and sealed until the
time of the end.” (Daniel
12:9) What does “closed up and
sealed until the time of the end
mean? This means that God placed some
information in the book of Daniel
that remains “top secret”
until the time of the end arrives.
What is so top-secret information
that “pops out” of Daniel
at the time of the end? Before I
answer this question, consider the
discovery of the Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone was
accidentally unearthed in 1799 near
Rosetta, Egypt, by some French
soldiers. The stone bore a single
message written in two forms of
Egyptian script – demotic and
hieroglyphic. When archeologists
examined this second century B.C.,
stone, they were thrilled because one
rock unlocked a perplexing mystery.
Prior to 1799, a large number of clay
tablets bearing Egyptian
hieroglyphics had been found, but
they could not be read because no one
could decipher the hieroglyphics. The
Rosetta Stone changed this. The
demotic inscriptions enabled Thomas
Young (1773-1829) and J.F.
Champollion (1790-1832) to decipher
the hieroglyphics of ancient
Egyptians and the rest is history.
In a similar way, God
embedded four secrets in the book of
Daniel. An angel told Daniel these
secrets would remain entombed until
“the time of the end.”
(Daniel 12: 4,9) When the time
arrives for these secrets to be
“unearthed,” the prophecies
of Daniel and Revelation will become
understandable – just as they
read because God wants everyone
to understand what He has to say to
the final generation. The discovery
of these four secrets shatters
centuries of prophetic exposition
because all interpretations of Daniel
and Revelation prior to the time of
the end are necessarily faulty and
incomplete because Daniel is not
unsealed until the time of the end.
In other words, the book of Daniel
was written for the generation that
would live “at the time of the
end.”
Three Levels of
Information
As the reader might
expect, God buried His secrets in the
book of Daniel very well. However,
when God wants something known,
ordinary men and women can discover
the things that He has hidden.
Through the ages we find this
discovery mechanism at work: On or
about the time of fulfillment,
elements of prophecy are properly
understood. For example, when it
came time to understand the timing of
Christ’s birth, the wise men
from the East figured it out.
(Matthew 2:2)
The apostle Paul also
noticed this phenomenon. Consider his
words: “surely you have heard
about the administration of
God’s grace that was given to me
for you, that is, the mystery made
known to me by revelation, as I have
already written briefly. In reading
this, then, you will be able to
understand my insight into the
mystery of Christ, which
was not made known to men in other
generations as it has now been
revealed by the Spirit of God’s
holy apostles and prophets
This mystery is that through the
gospel the Gentiles are heirs
together with Israel, members
together of one body, and sharers
together in the promise in Christ
Jesus.” (Ephesians 3:2-6)
What did God hide in
the book of Daniel? The answer to
this question requires a little
explanation. The book of Daniel
offers three levels of information.
They are:
- Dramatic
stories of faith
- Visions
revealing God’s plans
- Apocalyptic
architecture
The highest (or most
evident) level of information in the
book of Daniel consists of dramatic
stories of faith in God. These
stories were recorded for the benefit
of all generations. However,
Earth’s final generation will
benefit most from these stories
because the fiery trials in the first
chapters of Daniel are mini-parallels
of coming events For example, in
Daniel 3 Shadrach, Meshach and
Abednego faced mandatory worship of a
golden image that the king of
Babylon constructed. In
Revelation 13:5, the inhabitants of
the world will face the mandatory
worship of an image that the king
of modern Babylon will set up. These
stories and their outcomes were put
in the book of Daniel for the
encouragement of all people,
especially those who will live at the
end of time.
A second (and more
difficult) level of information in
the book of Daniel concerns the
meaning of the visions. God gave
Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel visions of
the future and we can be sure that
everything God said has either come
to pass or will come to pass. The
good news that comes from these
visions is the knowledge that God has
a definite plan and timetable for
this planet. Because God’s
people have understood (more or less)
these visions for hundreds of years,
we cannot say that the visions
themselves were sealed until
“the time of the end.”
Something else was sealed up in the
book of Daniel was sealed up,
something that uniquely applies to
those people who will live at the
end of the world. What is it?
Book Unsealed
The third (and
deepest) level of information
embedded within Daniel is the
architecture of apocalyptic prophecy.
There are five prophecies in
Daniel and here’s the secret.
Each prophecy confirms to a
consistent structure. In other words,
all five prophecies behave in
precisely the same way. After making
this discovery, the intended meaning
of Daniel becomes crystal clear! But
wait! There’s a huge bonus that
goes with this discovery. God used
the same architecture in the book of
Revelation that He used in Daniel! In
other words, once we understand how
the prophecies in Daniel consistently
behave, we know how the prophecies in
Revelation will behave. Daniel and
Revelation share the same unusual
architecture!
Once a consistent
behavior is observed, that behavior
can be defined or quantified into a
rule that is never broken. These
rules function much like the
combination code of a safe. When
valid rules of interpretation are
applied to the prophecies in Daniel
and Revelation, a marvelous result
occurs. The prophecies will create a
huge matrix and every prophetic event
will fit this matrix without
conflict. Even more, the prophecies
will make perfect sense just as
they read! Layers of
interpretation and prophetic
expositors are not needed nor
warranted. The Bible will interpret
itself!
When the four rules in
Daniel are applied to each prophecy
in Daniel and Revelation, a
comprehensive story will unfold that
is completely harmonious with
everything the Bible has to say about
the ways of God. Furthermore, all of
the details in Daniel and Revelation
are in perfect harmony and synchrony
with each other. To visualize the
matrix that the four rules produce,
think of a tall wedding cake with
seventeen layers! The larger pieces
of the cake are at the bottom of the
stack and the smaller pieces are on
top. The “toothpicks” that
hold the seventeen layers together
are prophetic events that unite and
align the seventeen layers in Daniel
and Revelation into one grand story.
The toothpicks are important because
two or more prophecies can describe
the same prophetic event! Because the
same event is described in two
different ways – within two
different cake layers – a
precise alignment of all prophetic
events is possible. (The wedding cake
in this illustration has seventeen
layers because there are seventeen
prophecies (five in Daniel and twelve
in Revelation).
Private Interpretation
Any interpretation
of prophecy that does not conform to
a published set of valid rules is
called a “private
interpretation.” The word
“private” in this context
does not mean obscure. Millions of
people believe and endorse various
interpretations that are
“private” in nature.
Consider this: A private
interpretation is an interpretation
that does not have external means of
validation. In other words, a
private interpretation cannot be
tested and validated by an impartial
jury who have to test the conclusions
set forth by a given set of rules.
In other words, a private
interpretation requires a private
interpreter. A private interpreter is
a person or persons who use something
other than valid rules to make their
interpretation appear
reasonable and valid. For most
people, their interpreter is within
their church. Therefore, Baptist and
Catholic laymen cannot agree on the
meaning of prophecy because their
authorities cannot agree. This
diversity emphasizes man’s need
to understand the architecture in
Daniel. There is one architecture
in Daniel and Revelation; there are
four valid rules that produce one
prophetic truth. Looking
for truth is a joyful experience for
those who love truth. Caution: Even
when we have valid rules of
interpretation, reaching an intended
meaning is not “a cake
walk,” but eventually, the
intended meaning will appear! (It is
one thing to know the laws of
algebra, but it is another thing to
correctly apply them in every case.)
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