Fall Into the Gap
by Dee Dee Warren
Plain Text/Printer Friendly Version
Futurist interpreters are fond of placing lengthy gaps in prophetic passages to project the fulfillment of certain events into our future. Is this legitimate? My answer may surprise you. Yes AND No. This article will examine some common examples and give some ground rules in interpretation.
One such example of a posited futurist gap is placed in Isaiah 61 between the "acceptable year of the Lord" and "the day of vengeance of our God". Supposedly, the day of vengeance has been postponed for nearly two thousand years simply because Christ stopped reading at a certain point in the passage. In isolation is this possible? While I once would have answered in the negative, in writing this piece, I have come to the conclusion that yes it is possible in theory when viewed in isolation; however, nothing in the New Testament supports that interpretation and other passages with specific timing boundaries falsify it. In fact, in Luke 21:22, Jesus states that the days of vengeance would be poured out on the first century apostates, in THAT generation. This means that the days of vengeance in their primary referent are past for us as they referred specially to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70. The days of vengeance were future for Jesus' first century audience but not for us.
A word needs to be inserted here about "long range prophecy" in general. I am not suggesting that just because some prophecies are certainly "near" for the original audience, then all prophecies appearing in that Book or even in that passage must then be "near" as well. What I mean is that it is not uncommon in the Old Testament for verses referring to something that is "near" to be close to verses that refer to something that is "far." However, this is not problematic because the verses that are "far" don't claim to be "near," and they are not in the texts with a condition for fulfillment in a given time frame or in a sequential order that allows no intervening events (or no intervening major events.) Oftentimes they are related conceptually, but the "near" text does not force the "far" text to be "near" as well.
Thus to summarize, if a text merely states that something is going to happen and does not give a clear chronological indicator for its fulfillment, then there is no problem with having one event happen very soon after the prophet spoke it with other things being spoken, even in the same context, by the prophet happening far off into the future. Here is an example:
In the closing verses of Isaiah 10 Isaiah speaks of an event that would happen somewhat soon after it was being spoken (within one hundred years), namely the approach of the Assyrians upon Jerusalem. But immediately following those verses in the beginning verses of Isaiah 11 the coming of the Messiah is prophesied. Just because these verses are close to each other in the text does not force both of these verses to happen within the same time frame. The text does not say that, thus it is perfectly fine to have a half of a millennia interval between the events of the closing verses of Isaiah 10 and the opening verses of Isaiah 11. The Bible does that frequently.
However, the Bible NEVER inserts gaps in specified time frames. Scripture gives us many examples of specific time periods decreed by God with no gaps:
Forty years - Acts 7:23; 7:30; Deut. 8:2; Judges 3:11; 5:31; 8:28; 13:1; 1 Samuel 4:18; 2 Chron. 24:1; Ezekiel 29:11
Forty days - Genesis 7:4, 12; 50:3; Exodus 24:18; 34:28; Numbers 13:25; Deut. 9:18, 25; 1 Samuel 17:16; 1 Kings 19:8; Ezekiel 4:5; Matthew 4:2; Acts 1:2
Such is the problem with the futurist (specifically dispensational) interpretation of the seventy weeks of Daniel 9 in which the dispensationalist will insert an indeterminate gap between the 69th and the 70th week, with that last week remaining to be fulfilled in our future. Now is this possible? Unequivocally NO. Why did God give a specific time period at all if it was to be meaningless as a measuring device? After all, the purpose for the specifications of the time period was so that Daniel could "know and understand" the length of time involved, just as he discerned the length of time in Jeremiah's prophecy (9:2). Such discernment is impossible if an indefinite gap exists, especially when that gap has lasted thus far, four times the length of the original prophecy. Plus, did Daniel truly know and understand if there really is such a gap? He couldn't have in light of dispensational teaching that this was a "mystery" revealed in the New Testament. Also the beginning of the 70 weeks prophecy talks about rebuilding the city and the temple. It ends with the destruction of the city and the temple. What city and temple do you think Daniel understood?? Obviously the city and the temple that were rebuilt in the beginning of the prophecy. The gap theory has to postulate that the city and temple that were rebuilt as per the beginning of the prophecy are destroyed and rebuilt in some gap, and then this city and entirely different temple are the ones prophesied as being destroyed at the end of the prophecy. That frankly makes no sense and destroys a fabulous fulfilled prophecy, and destroys one of the remarkable tensions in the Bible between "judgment" and "redemption" that is continually woven in the Messianic prophecies.
As in any other passages, the gap proponent has to make a case of special pleading here that goes against clear Biblical principles. And since I note that many gap proponents are also young earth creationists, such really has no grounds to argue that position from the timing indicators in Genesis 1, since there could simply be long gaps between the "days."
Although not a "gap," here is an example of how we must let the Bible interpret the Bible, especially when a verse is fully intended to allude, either in similarity or by contrast, to another earlier verse:
Daniel 8:26 - Therefore seal up the vision, for it refers to many days in the future.
Daniel is told that his vision was for many days in the future, and in fact we know that the coming of Christ was hundreds of years into his future, thus, many days in the future.
However, very similar phrasing appears in Revelation.
Revelation 22:10 - Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.
To bring this into some very practical application, Daniel is told to SEAL the prophecy because it was not going to happen immediately (which again in hindsight we know was hundreds of years). John is told to NOT SEAL the prophecy because it was going to happen soon - it was "at hand." Only a dogged determination not to see the obvious would allow an exegete not to comprehend the implications here. Revelation is filled with allusion upon allusion to the Old Testament, and this is OBVIOUSLY an allusion to Daniel. That very allusion tells us exactly what AT HAND means. It means soon enough not to seal the prophecy. If hundreds of years was "many days" for Daniel, it is quite unbelievable that "soon" means several millennia and counting.
One futurist debate opponent tried to squirm out of these clear implications by claim that we really don't know, just by reading the text, how long "many days" actually was - it could have been understood by the original audience to be predicting events within literal days or years, but certainly it would not be obvious that the passage referred to hundreds of years, yet, it in fact was. This opponent further claimed that the surrounding context appeared to be something that could happen within Daniel's own lifetime. However, as I shall demonstrate, the context does nothing of the sort.
The angel is referring to many of Daniel's visions already given. When read, they obviously span long periods of time. I invite any honest reader here to read the visions preceding Daniel 8:26 to see if they are things that could possibly be fulfilled within the lifetime of Daniel who was getting to be quite old by this point. The visions speak about whole lifetimes of kingdoms and the rising and falling of multiple empires and multiple kings and finally about the Messiah. Daniel was already told in Daniel 2 that the Messiah would not come until the days of the 4th Empire, Rome, so does anyone really think that Daniel would have reasonably believed, and that anyone reading this book today (or hearing it at that time) could reasonably believe, that the admonition of Daniel 8:26 is not referring to a long period of time, which we now know was hundreds of years? Also, the very verse itself indicates that it would not be during Daniel's lifetime and would be a significant period of time because Daniel is told to "seal" the vision because it was not to occur soon, but in "many" days. A reality check is severely in order.
Gary DeMar correctly notes:
Many Jews today are still waiting for the Messiah. They have taken fulfilled prophecy, clearly scheduled to take place in the first century, and project it into the future, the same way that Christians are doing today. Both groups then manipulate these fulfilled prophecies and apply them to contemporary events. Their speculations are wrong because they are applying fulfilled prophecies to current events and ignore the time texts. The time texts are an important element in Bible prophecy. If they are ignored or manipulated in any way, God's Word can be made to mean anything. A Bible that can mean anything is a Bible without meaning.