|
Home
You are in Online Reading - Burning Questions Burning Questions (index)
Burning Questions
answered by Rev. Colin Le Noury
A preacher once spoke about the
church
being a parenthesis, what did he mean?
THE word parenthesis is not
specifically a theological term; strictly speaking
it refers to a bracketed phrase or word in a
sentence. It is more loosely used in chronological
terms to describe a period between two points of
time. It is used in this connection by those holding
to a pre-millennial futurist interpretation of
prophecy.
The preacher who used the word to
describe the church was undoubtedly endeavouring to
show the church's position in the chronological
prophetic timescale, particularly in relation to
God's plan and purpose for the Jewish nation.
The parenthetical idea of the
church is best understood and most closely
associated with the prophecy of seventy weeks in
Daniel. To understand its meaning we must look at
the prophecy in closer detail.
It is contained in just four
verses - Daniel 9 v.24-27. The prophecy is
specifically Jewish and provides us with a calendar
of events that relate historically and prophetically
to the Jewish people. This is made unambiguously
clear by the opening words of the prophecy,
"Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people
and thy Holy city..." v.24.
The whole of the prophecy spans
seventy prophetic weeks and the starting point for
the countdown of the seventy weeks is clearly given
in from the going forth of the commandment to
restore and to build Jerusalem..." History and
the Bible combine together to record that King
Artaxerxes issued a decree to that effect in the
twentieth year of his reign and in the month Nisan,
Neh. 2v.1.
The prophecy itself is divided
into three parts; namely seven weeks, sixty-two
weeks and one week. The first two parts amounting to
sixty nine weeks was to end with the cutting off of
Messiah the Prince" (v.25). Working on the
basis that one week represents a year of 360 days,
it has been calculated that the sixty-nine weeks ran
exactly from Artaxerxes' decree to the day that
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on an ass just prior to
His death.
This being so, the question
remains as to where the seventieth week comes in.
All the evidence suggests that it is unfulfilled as
yet. This is because the fivefold purpose as stated
in v.24, and particularly, the ushering in of a
period of everlasting righteousness, has not
happened yet.
We assert therefore, that a seven
year period of Jewish history has yet to take place.
God's timeclock stopped at the end of the
sixty-ninth week and will re-start when the
seventieth week begins. Since the whole prophecy, as
already pointed out is specifically Jewish and
contains no reference to the church it is sound
judgement to believe that the seventieth week will
immediately follow the rapture of the church.
Having come to such a conclusion
we are then left with the fact that the present
church era occupies the chronological parenthesis
between Daniel's sixty-ninth and seventieth weeks.
For those wishing to study the matter further, I
recommend a little book entitled Daniel's Prophecy
of the Seventy Weeks by Alva I. McClain, published
by Zondervan, which is a clear and full exposition
of the passage in question.
YT 07/95
Home
You are in Online Reading - Burning Questions Burning Questions (index)
|
