Fulfilled Magazine Volume 5 issue 3

Objection Overruled!

All Nations

by Don Preston

“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of drunkenness to all the surrounding peoples, when they lay siege against Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall happen in that day that I will make Jerusalem a very heavy stone for all peoples; all who would heave it away will surely be cut in pieces, though all nations of the earth are gathered against it.” (Zech 12:3) Objection: Zechariah says “all nations” would (will) be gathered against Jerusalem in the last days. However, only Rome came against Jerusalem in AD 70, therefore, AD 70 cannot be the fulfillment of Zechariah 12. esponse: We truly appreciate the question, in the religious sense within the Jewish community” (Tom and will give some scriptural evidence in Holland, Contours of Pauline Theology [Geanies House, response. First of all, underlying the objection Fearn, Ross-Shire IV20 1TW, Scotland, UK: Christian is the woodenly literalistic hermeneutic of Focus Publications 2004], 252). Holland notes that when a Dispensationalism. I mean no disrespect in New Testament writer wrote in Greek it was, “Hebrew in its this description; however, the Dispensational hermeneutic is mind-set and essential meaning” (ibid., 52). What all of this fatally flawed. The cliché, “The Bible says what it means and means is that the modern reader of Scripture must strive to means what it says” is, in my opinion, overly simplistic. It understand what a text meant to its original audience in its assumes that the reader is “plugged into” the thought world of original context—a critical issue to consider. the original writer. Yet, in America for instance, the modern Added to all of this is the indisputable fact that the reader is thoroughly Grecian in their way of thinking and, New Testament writers affirmed that the Old Testament lamentably, is almost totally unaware of Hebraic thought. prophecies were being fulfilled in their day (Acts 3:23-24) and This has a negative impact on Bible interpretation. that they, through the Spirit, were the final and authoritative Richard Hayes has noted that, “The Christian tradition interpreters of the Old Testament prophecies (1 Peter 1:10-12). early on lost its vital connection with the Jewish interpretative matrix in which Paul had lived and moved; consequently, HOW THE BIBLE USES THE TERM later, Christian interpreters missed some of Paul’s basic “ALL THE NATIONS” concerns” (Richard Hays, Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, When we read the Scriptures, we must allow the original 2005], 43). Tom Holland writes, “While the vocabulary of the authors latitude to use language as the Spirit guided them, [New Testament] could be found throughout the Hellenistic not as we wish to interpret it. This often demands that we world, it did not have the same meaning when it was used change our way of thinking! Notice the following: In Daniel 2, Nebuchadnezzar was given his famous vision, and Daniel gave the interpretation. Notice how Daniel described that Chaldean empire and the Grecian empire (kingdom of bronze) which would follow later: “The God of heaven has given you a kingdom, power, strength, and glory; and wherever the children of men dwell, or the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven, He has given them into your hand, and has made you ruler over them all—you are this head of gold. But after you shall arise another kingdom inferior to yours; then another, a third kingdom of bronze, which shall rule over all the earth” (Daniel 2:37-39; emphasis added).

Now, if we take a literalistic approach, we must conclude that Nebuchadnezzar ruled the globe, for after all, God gave him dominion over the land wherever animals and birds lived! Birds and animals live in North and South America, don’t they? Well, since God gave Nebuchadnezzar dominion over the entire earth where animals and birds live, we must

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FULFILLED MAGAZINE • FALL 2010