Course Outline - Eschatology 1
Course Description
This is a beginning course in Bible Prophesy. It is designed to acquaint the student with the foundational principles of prophesy. The courses that follow this, Eschatology II and III build upon the truths established in this beginning course.
The course will cover methods of interpretation of scripture (specially relating to Bible prophesy), the Eschatological Covenants, and the course of this present age.
THIS COURSE IS A PREREQUISITE TO OTHER ESCHATOLOGY CLASSES
Required Textbooks
Things to come by J. Dwight Pentecost, Zondervan Publishing House, Grapnd Rapids, MI, 1958.
Length of sessions
six 3 hr sessions (including tests)
Method of Assessment
3 MCQ Tests (70%)
Class Presentation and Participation (30%)
Summary
Most of you would have noticed the recent events in the Middle East. Every time you think of the occurances in Israel you wonder whether these point to the soon return of Jesus Christ. The often taken for granted notion that Israel is very important to the end time plan however is not universally accepted. Many groups in Christianity, Catholics and Protestants alike, do not see any special place for Israel in future events. This is where you, a student of Eschatology 1 will be able to offer your insight.
How do you show your Christian friend that events in Israel are really important?
This is why we started the class the way we did, discussing how we should interpret the Bible. This is indeed foundational since eschatology to a large part is based on your system of interpretation.
We started off by proving why the literal method of interpretation is the right way to study the Bible. We showed why the allegorical method is flawed and why the literal method is in many ways superior. Several reasons were given for that which you should be familiar with.
We touched on a brief history of interpretation. It was in the time of Ezra that interpretation first became important to the Jewish people. Why was that the case? We learnt that during the time of Jesus, the Jews were persistent to use a literal approach to understand Scripture. This practise was followed by Jesus and the apostles. In the early post apostolic era, things changed. Philo, the Jew gained prominence in the Greek circles as he tried to integrate Greek philosophy to the Jewish Scripture. He basically attempted an allegory of Biblical stories so as to convey the “deep and hidden meanings” of Bible stories. This of course appealed to the Greek philosopher.
Later Origen an early church father used Philo’s method and applied it to the study of Christian theology. Augustine sometime later made sure that nobody would interpret the Scriptures except in the way that suited the official church.
But during the reformation period things changed.In fact the reformation really began as men rejected allegorical understanding of the Scriptures and turned to look at the Bible literally. Luther, was a strong believer of this and affirmed that “the literal sense of scripture alone is the whole essence of faith and Christian theology”
Although the reformation saw to it that Bible passages were interpreted literally, one area of the Bible remained to be taken allegorically - Scriptures dealing with the end times particularly Revelation. We will get to it in a later lesson as to why this system prevails.
Understanding the Bible literally does not mean that we ignore figures of speech. There are many types of these, parables, types, allegories,symbols…… In fact the end time plan of God is written in Scripture in various ways including through the use of parables and types. That is why it is not always obvious whether the biblical language used is literal or figurative but you should be familiar to some degree of how to distinguish both. We need to know how we can study these symbols. The best way, of course, is to rely on the Bible to provide its own interpretation of a symbol. If you look at all the occurances of a particular symbol, it will be possible to make a good interpretation of the symbol!
Do not get mixed up with allegories and the allegorical interpretation. These are different. An allegorical method of interpretation places emphasis entirely on a secondary sense. That is not the right way to understand Scripture. Even when there is an allegory, we must use the literal method as what Paul did in Galatians. he accepted that all of the people were real, Hagar was there and so was Sarah. The allegorical method says otherwise. People who hold to such views do not believe that the events were really important. It is only important to them as it shows us some deeper, secondary meaning.
That was what we covered in Lesson 1-4 which forms the basis of your first test.
To prepare for this test
Be familiar with
1. The opening pages of your study guide
2. The answers to questions in the first four lessons of the guide
3. The few photocopied pages I gave you from the book Understanding the Bible. This has to do with allegories and literal messages and is an easy reading.
4. My above summary
Of course whatever else you do will surely help you way beyond the confines of this test!
Bobby Mathews