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Bible Prophecy Under the Microscope-Episode 94
Gary discusses the hermeneutical concept of “audience relevance.”
In Matthew 24, Jesus continually uses the second-person plural (“you”) to identify His present audience: “when you see these things” (24:33). Follow the use of “you” throughout the chapter and notice that it refers to Jesus’ present audience (24:2, 4, 6, 9, 15, 33, etc.). If this audience reference is reliable, then Jesus could not have had a future generation in mind or He would have used the third-person plural (“they”): “when they see these things.”
Some prophecy writers object to this argument by claiming that “the pronoun does not always require that the listening audience is in view.”[1] For example, Randall Price uses Deuteronomy 30 in an attempt to make the case that Jesus’ use of “you” “may refer to the future ‘this generation.’”[2] It’s obvious that the use of “you” by Moses refers to the nation since the entire nation was being addressed.[3] While it’s appropriate to refer to the Old Testament when a passage is quoted in the New Testament, why go back to Deuteronomy 30 for how “you” is used when there are hundreds of examples of the use of “you” in Matthew’s gospel? An interpreter would be hard pressed to find “you” being used by Jesus in Matthew in any way other than as a reference to the audience that He was addressing:
“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people, producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them” (Matt. 21:43-45).
The Pharisees understood “you” to refer to them, and Jesus did not correct them, because He meant them.
Wars and Rumors of Wars
A first-century interpretation of the Olivet Discourse was once common in commentaries and narrative-style books that describe the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There is also a history of skeptics who turn to Bible prophecy and claim Jesus was wrong about the timing of His coming at “the end of the age” and the signs associated with it. A mountain of scholarship shows that the prophecy given by Jesus was fulfilled in exacting detail when He said it would: before the generation of those to whom He was speaking passed away.
Buy NowGary discusses the hermeneutical concept of “audience relevance.” Hermeneutics is the art and science of interpretation and we do it every day by reading other people’s body language and tone of voice, among many other visual cues. Written words in the Bible don’t have these cues, but we still need to read them as if we were the original recipients of the NT messages and letters in the first century.
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[1] Paul N. Benware, Understanding End Times Prophecy: A Comprehensive Approach, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody Publishes, 2007), 163.
[2] Randall Price, “Historical Problems with a First Century Fulfillment,” The End Times Controversy: The Second Coming Under Attack, eds. Tim LaHaye and Thomas Ice (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2003), 380.
[3] Price claims that Moses’ “words speak about a future generation that will live thousands of years later and into the eschatological period.” There is nothing in the context that leads necessarily to this unproven assumption.