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Originally Posted by Matt Anderson
...Every prophetic speaking is addressed to an audience. As I read my Bible over the years, I began to realize that I could connect most of these audiences (directly or indirectly) back to Genesis 10 (aka "table of nations"). This table includes both God's OT people, the enemies of God's OT people and other more distant lands who didn't interact with God's OT people.
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To make sure I understand what you're saying, before you can properly understand what someone says in any speaking, you need to know who the speaker was addressing. Especially when interpreting the scripture itself in relation to prophecy. For example, a father speaking a message to his daughters vs. a father speaking the identical message to his daughters' boyfriends.
Additionally, that father might use words differently while maintaining the same intended message.
We have all experienced, often with great frustration, the way Witness Lee and the Local Church leadership have used words differently, without paying attention to the integrity of the message of the message/s in the scriptures..
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Even now, there remain unfulfilled prophecies to various "Audiences of God" that were composed under one "dispensation". The transition to a new "dispensation" has not invalidated God's word or the audience it is addressed to. We have to map forward these audiences captured in the Old Testament to the equivalent audience in the time the prophecy is fulfilled. For this forum topic, we are interested in how these audiences map to the End Times.
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Would an example of this "disconnect" be the verses that say things "surely I come quickly" when thousands of years have passed and He has not returned. Or, with the phrase "I come" his coming may have more than one manifestation or "definition". That is, this type of similar admonitions were spoken in different contexts, or to different groups.
Another example would be whether the OT prophets were speaking to Gentiles or to Jews. "Jews" would include "Children of Israel", "Israel", "the House of God", and other designations which I have always believed to be the same group of people. Now I'm rethinking this assumption.
Nell