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Matthew 24:28: Difference between revisions
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(Created page with "William Branham’s followers insist that he was Elijah of Malachi 4, and therefore had a divine right and supernatural ability to interpret the scripture. His interpretation ...") |
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:''What is that carcass? The carcass is what the eagles feed on. Now, an eagle is considered in the Bible, a prophet. A prophet is the eagle. God--God calls himself a eagle, and we're eaglets then, the--the believers. You see? And what is the carcass that they feed on? Is the Word. Wherever the Word is, the true nature of the bird will show itself. See? A eagle, which wants fresh meat, he must have his fresh meat. <ref>Questions & Answers, Conduct, Order and Doctrine #2, 1964 (tape#64-0823M)</ref> | :''What is that carcass? The carcass is what the eagles feed on. Now, an eagle is considered in the Bible, a prophet. A prophet is the eagle. God--God calls himself a eagle, and we're eaglets then, the--the believers. You see? And what is the carcass that they feed on? Is the Word. Wherever the Word is, the true nature of the bird will show itself. See? A eagle, which wants fresh meat, he must have his fresh meat. <ref>Questions & Answers, Conduct, Order and Doctrine #2, 1964 (tape#64-0823M)</ref> | ||
The way William Branham unpacks this verse, we are to understand Jesus to mean: Wherever the living Word of the hour is being preached, the elect bride will be congregated around it. | |||
=What the Bible is actually saying= | =What the Bible is actually saying= | ||
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Vultures? But I thought the bible said ‘eagles’? No. In fact, nearly every English translation in print translates the Greek word aetos as “vultures”. | Vultures? But I thought the bible said ‘eagles’? No. In fact, nearly every English translation in print translates the Greek word aetos as “vultures”. | ||
:'' | :''Wherever the corpse is, there the vultures will gather. <ref>The Holy Bible: English Standard Version, Mt 24:28 (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2001).</ref> | ||
:''Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.<ref>The New International Version, Mt 24:28 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011).</ref> | |||
:''Wherever there is a dead body, the vultures will gather.<ref>American Bible Society, The Holy Bible: The Good News Translation, 2nd ed., Mt 24:28 (New York: American Bible Society, 1992).</ref> | |||
:''The Arrival of the Son of Man isn’t something you go to see. He comes like swift lightning to you! Whenever you see crowds gathering, think of carrion vultures circling, moving in, hovering over a rotting carcass. You can be quite sure that it’s not the living Son of Man pulling in those crowds.<ref>Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, Mt 24:27–28 (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005).</ref> | |||
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Though the context of the passage and the ambiguity of the Greek word aetos should be sufficient to refute William Branham’s repeated misinterpretation of this verse, the death knoll comes when we look a little closer at Branham’s treatment of the word carcass. He not only interprets carcass as meaning the “Word” as in, the Word for our day, but as Christ himself. | Though the context of the passage and the ambiguity of the Greek word aetos should be sufficient to refute William Branham’s repeated misinterpretation of this verse, the death knoll comes when we look a little closer at Branham’s treatment of the word carcass. He not only interprets carcass as meaning the “Word” as in, the Word for our day, but as Christ himself. | ||
What is the carcass? The Word. He is the Word, the Carcass, Christ, Christ in you, the same yesterday, today, and forever. -The Seed is not | |||
Heir with the Shuck, vol. 6, no 4R, 1965 (tape#65-0218) | Heir with the Shuck, vol. 6, no 4R, 1965 (tape#65-0218) | ||
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One can see how moot the discussion of eagles vs. vultures is in light of the clear --and grim-- reality of what Jesus meant when he said carcass. Whichever bird it is, you don’t want to be one of them. This isn’t splitting hairs. This isn’t twisting a dead man’s words for the purposes of discrediting him, as some will accuse. This is a poignant example of reckless and irresponsible eisigesis of scripture, as Peter himself warned: | One can see how moot the discussion of eagles vs. vultures is in light of the clear --and grim-- reality of what Jesus meant when he said carcass. Whichever bird it is, you don’t want to be one of them. This isn’t splitting hairs. This isn’t twisting a dead man’s words for the purposes of discrediting him, as some will accuse. This is a poignant example of reckless and irresponsible eisigesis of scripture, as Peter himself warned: | ||
there are some things in them [Paul’s epistles] that are difficult to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures. - 2 Peter 3:16 | |||
The story here isn’t the obvious error, as no one understands the bible perfectly, all of the time. The point is this: the man making the error claimed to be the prophet to this age, to have a divinely gifted ability to unpack the scriptures, and yet time and again, we see him reading his own bias into the Bible even when honesty to the text will not support that view, and worse, even changing the scripture in order to make it work. This is not a prophet of God opening the Word to the people. It is a tragically deceived man, intent of bending God’s Word to make it support his delusions of grandeur, and in the process, causing thousands of ministers to stand in front of congregations --perhaps hundreds of thousands-- and relay this type of biblical exposition as the revealed Word for the hour. Paul urges us to present ourselves to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2Tim.2:15) He goes on in v.16 to admonish us to “avoid irreverent babble”. Though many assume he was referring to gossip here, the context reveals that he was dealing with false doctrine. (2Tim.2:16-18) Will we reverently treat the Word of God as the very words of God, filtering all men’s teaching through the totality of scripture, or will we drawn away by the doctrines of a man who is clearly identified many times in scripture, not as Elijah, but as a false prophet who made a career out of irreverent babble. | The story here isn’t the obvious error, as no one understands the bible perfectly, all of the time. The point is this: the man making the error claimed to be the prophet to this age, to have a divinely gifted ability to unpack the scriptures, and yet time and again, we see him reading his own bias into the Bible even when honesty to the text will not support that view, and worse, even changing the scripture in order to make it work. This is not a prophet of God opening the Word to the people. It is a tragically deceived man, intent of bending God’s Word to make it support his delusions of grandeur, and in the process, causing thousands of ministers to stand in front of congregations --perhaps hundreds of thousands-- and relay this type of biblical exposition as the revealed Word for the hour. Paul urges us to present ourselves to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2Tim.2:15) He goes on in v.16 to admonish us to “avoid irreverent babble”. Though many assume he was referring to gossip here, the context reveals that he was dealing with false doctrine. (2Tim.2:16-18) Will we reverently treat the Word of God as the very words of God, filtering all men’s teaching through the totality of scripture, or will we drawn away by the doctrines of a man who is clearly identified many times in scripture, not as Elijah, but as a false prophet who made a career out of irreverent babble. | ||
Eisigisis: The act of reading an understanding, or opinion into a text, usually biblical text, which may or may not be supported or evident by the text itself - in accordance with the person’s own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases. This is the opposite of exegesis, which means to derive the meaning ‘out of’ the text. | Eisigisis: The act of reading an understanding, or opinion into a text, usually biblical text, which may or may not be supported or evident by the text itself - in accordance with the person’s own presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases. This is the opposite of exegesis, which means to derive the meaning ‘out of’ the text. | ||
=References= | |||
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