Gooding, David: 13 - Questions

I thank those who have sent in questions, and I'm going to ask their forgiveness if I do not answer now the questions they've sent in, that is all of them. Uh, I'd be very happy to answer any personally afterwards. I will just take one or two questions because they raise matters relevant to what we shall be doing in our final session of study. Now, last week, somewhere about this hour, I made the point that in reading prophecies in the book of Daniel and in the book of the Revelation, we can, if we will, treat them as though they were code. And I mentioned, for instance, the imagery in the book of the Revelation, where we read of the lion of the tribe of Judah. If you treat that simply as code, you will say, well, who is this then? And someone will tell you it's the Lord Jesus, and you may reply, well, goodness me, well, why didn't you tell me that the first time? That would have been simpler. And if you do that, you're treating it as code, that the lion is simply a code name for the Lord Jesus or something. And really, you neglect that when you're seriously studying it and you come to the meaning. And then a little later you read of the lamb as it had been slain, and you say, who is that? And someone else says, oh, that's the Lord Jesus. Oh, you say, well, why didn't you tell me that before? Then I shouldn't have found revelation anywhere near so difficult. You'll see, because it would be plain statement, and you're treating it as code. And I suggested that in these books, uh, some at least, a great deal o- of these books, when they use images and visions and so on, are not really to be treated as code, but the other way around. Everybody knows it's the Lord Jesus who has the right to reign and rule and handle the book and undo the seal. The prophet is being given to see the Lord Jesus in vision, and first of all sees him as a lion. He knows it's the Lord, but now the image of a lion helps him to take in with his imagination and heart, as well as his with his intellect, what the Lord Jesus is like. And similarly, the figure of a lamb as it had been slain, having horns. Multiple image that helps us to see something about the Lord Jesus. That is that he died for us in apparent weakness, and in spite of that, being crucified in weakness, here is the very power of God under salvation, represented by the seven horns, and here is the very wisdom of God. It has seven eyes. So it's not code, it's the other way around. It's imagery helping to enrich the imaginative side of our understanding. Now, somebody rightly put in a question, you see, that ran like this. If the writing upon the plaster in Belshazzar's banqueting hall, Daniel chapter five that we studied last week, verse 25, was that a coded message? Well, all right, yes, in a sense, if you like, it was. And my first reply is that in talking about code, I'm not denying that there are parts, uh, there are, uh, co- codes are used in scripture, if you will. Though, uh, when you look at that, uh, writing on the wall, it was in the forms o- of ancient weights of money, uh, menar, menar, uh, you'll see a shekel and two half shekels, money weights. But then, if you like, it's a code, but you'll then have to admit that it's a code that talks about value. Because then God, uh, used it to talk to Belshazzar about ultimate values. But you can treat it if a code as you like. It's more near a code, isn't it, when now the prophet comes and interprets it and takes the letters, the consonantal letters in the Aramaic for min- minar, minar and shekel and so forth, and gives them different vowels and uses it as a kind of a coded message to say, God has numbered your kingdom, you're weighed in the balances and found wanting, and your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. Yes, so let's agree then, there is code in scripture. All I would be pleading for is that, uh, we must, uh, uh, distinguish between where there's code used and where now it is not code but deliberate imagery. We have to be aware, of course, that the Bible not only uses that kind of imagery, it uses metaphor. And then, if you'll forgive me for suggesting it, some parts of these books, I almost daren't say it in this assembly, but my elders are kindly men, and they won't put me out, I think. But they are almost like the art of a cartoonist. Suppose you open your paper, Star or Times or whatever it is, or Observer, and there is, all sitting on a chair, Margaret Thatcher. And here standing open with an open mouth, and obviously shouting a lot of things, is Master Kinnock. And Master Kinnock has got a big chain, and he's got Margaret Thatcher chained hand and foot to this chair. Now, what will you make out of that? Will you say it's code? Well, no, it's not code exactly. See who it is? It's Mark Maggie Thatcher, and Kinnock. You will say, well, what about this chain thing? Is that literal? Well, I never heard of it anyway. Wouldn't think it was literal, would you? Well, you say, what is the picture saying? Well, the picture is saying that Kinnock has got Margaret Thatcher chained hand and foot with all these awkward questions. Well, Kinnock is literal. Thatcher is literal. She sits sometimes on literal benches in the House of Commons. Kinnock has chained her up, you say, that's very real, but not with a literal chain. Ah. What the cartoonist has done is to take a metaphor and put it into his picture as though it were a literal thing, and helps us to understand it. We don't then say, look at that now, the chain isn't literal. Oh, obviously it isn't literal. Well, then Margaret Thatcher isn't literal either. She represents the British people. Oh, I hope not. And, and uh, uh, Kinnock isn't literal either. This is a spiritual message. Well, no. You can, in a cartoon, have a mixture of the very literal and the metaphorical. And if you read in the book of the Revelation, I saw an angel coming down with a big chain, and he chained up the devil. Then we should need to be at least careful, shouldn't we? Because if we were to argue the chain can't be a literal chain made at Harland and Wolff's, therefore the devil isn't literal. Or the millennium either. Hm. We might be doing with the revelation what I just now, in my stupidity, did with that chain in Margaret Thatcher's picture. I said because the chain wasn't literal, Margaret Thatcher wasn't literal either. Well, that would be nonsense. These books are profounder than sometimes we realize, and they're using all sorts of techniques to get their message across. I would be the last to deny that there is some code in them. All I'm saying is they're not all code. In that sense, therefore, let me, uh, answer one other question. Well, first of all here, what were the vessels of gold and silver used for in the temple of Jerusalem, such as we read of in chapter one and chapter five? They were used in the service of the Lord. Vessels of silver and gold in the showbread table and other such things, and also in some of the side rooms in the temple preparing sacred things. They're used for the service of God. Then another question, does the man of sin sit as an apostate in the church as the temple of God, or is this a literal temple in Jerusalem? The scripture being two Thessalonians two four. Where do we read of this literal temple being built, and where will it be built? Well, all I would like to say now in these brief moments to that question is that you might like to consider that, uh, some part of the answer, uh, could, uh, lie in this same direction of how do we interpret this kind of statement. He shall sit in the temple of the Lord. Well, I don't suppose myself that that means in Apsley Street, the building, uh, in which we meet, or in a cathedral somewhere, or something like that, as to a Christian building. It could more likely refer to a literal temple built by Jews, though, as we know, the Jews do not possess their Temple Mount, and the Orthodox normally would not consent to having a temple built, save on the Temple Mount, but who knows what people might do later on. We have are not absolutely obliged to interpret the term temple, are we, as completely literal, any more than my chain in Maggie Thatcher's picture. And if I say that, I'm not denying a literal fulfillment of many of the prophecies that re- concern the end time. I'm only suggesting that in some circumstances, while the angel is literal and Satan is literal, the chain with which he's bound is not a literal chain of iron, but stands for certain things. So sitting in the temple of God, showing himself to be God, may mean simply, may it not, that the great ruler, uh, usurps the place of God, banishes the true worship of the Lord, whether whatever it is, and all religion for that matter, Mohammedanism and everything else under the sun, according to scripture, he will ban if he can. And, uh, he sets himself up, so to speak, as the temple of the Lord. But that I leave with you, and by your leave now, I don't answer any more of these questions, except, uh, some that I can, um, answer very quickly here. The phrase that Jerusalem shall be dod- trodden down of the Gentiles. Someone comments the Jewish nation now possesses Jerusalem. Does this mean that the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled? I rather think not. After the time of Daniel, even after the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews recovered the use of Jerusalem. That wasn't the final. And if now, happily, in some sense, Israel has recovered the use of Jerusalem, I do not myself suppose that that means that the times of the Gentiles are yet fulfilled. We've yet to see what may happen in that un- at that sadly troubled part of the world. Eh, then one other question, uh, in chapter eleven verses thirty two to thirty six, we shall be coming to such things in a minute. My questioner says, uh, does this refer to the Maccabees? And then adds another question. Were the Maccabees right to revolt against Antiochus Epiphanes? And I suspect my question means, was he right to use literal weapons and fight the old Maccabees with? Well, as to the use of literal weapons, of course, we remain- must remember that in Old Testament days, it was felt right, indeed commanded by God, that Israel dealt with Canaanites and other such enemies with physical weapons. So that it is possible, I suspect, to say that, that, uh, uh, scripture may not have utterly condemned what the Maccabees did in using violence. We should, in saying that, remember they were not, in our sense of the word, Christians. That's another story completely. However, my f- feeling is, as I read the long chapter eleven of the book of Daniel, that the prophecy there does not approve too warmly of all that the Maccabees did. Certainly it's interesting to see how little is said about the Maccabees, and compared with books like Second Maccabees in the Apocrypha that are so fulsome and lengthy in their praise of their great heroes, the Maccabee and his successors, Daniel's prophecy has at the best a minute amount to say about the Maccabees, and what he says is not very flattering. I think that the prophet Daniel was given to see in his day, though he would not have known who Maccabees were, of course, they were centuries in the future to him. But he was given to see that there would be only, as a final solution, not the arms of Israel and their armies or their guerrilla fighters, the only final solution for the restoration of Jerusalem would be the eventual coming of the Messiah. That is the view, of course, that people like the Essenes took eventually. They had helped the Maccabees, but when they found that the Maccabees, being successful, began themselves to disobey God's word, then the Maccabees withdrew from support of the temple at Jerusalem, and they went down to Qumran. They didn't agree with some of the things that the Maccabees did. They, of course, were prepared to fight with physical arms when the great day came, as you read in their literature, but they did not necessarily approve of everything that the later Maccabees did anyway. But there, if I may now, I leave your questions. Thank you for the others that you brought, and I have no time now to, um, deal with them, or I shall rob you worse than I've ever done hitherto.