Although you know I agree with your commitment to “audience relevance”, it appears that people who don’t employ common sense regarding the usage of “we” and “you”, do so for 4 reasons:

1. Reverence of the Scriptures – Unlike any other book, or in this case a missionary support letter, the Bible is transcendent, living and active.

2. Personally applicable – The Bible is personalized (and to a degree rightly so) and given a place of preeminence, whereby we make direct applications to our lives. In other words, God’s speaks through the Scripture and in so doing lights our path. There is a danger though in taking this to the extreme.

3. Multiple fulfillments – Since we see the repeating pattern of type vs. anti-type, many think it’s logical to assume this process repeats ad infinitum. God is eternally “near” and always ready to the judge the living and the dead.

4. Timelessness and other-worldly – The Bible takes on a kind of ethereal “God’s ways are not our ways” feel. Logic and sound communication are casualties of this view.

Alan, since there’s a modicum of truth in each of these premises, it appears that they must be attacked more specifically. The missionary’s letter of support, although germane to the concept you are attempting to espouse, can be easily dismissed by any of the above, since its application is to specific people and is confined to the time in which it was written…therefore cannot logically be used for foreshadow events to come or lend us insights for daily living. It has no supernatural element.

This is why I think it’s so difficult to penetrate the logical fallacy that something imminent and future to Paul must still be near and future to us. The Bible, unlike Jim Eliot’s support letter, is truly living and active and capable of cutting to the marrow of our bones. Therefore the Word of God, many people believe, transcends reason and normally accepted rules of logic.

No doubt the Bible’s contents should be exalted and it must be viewed as the miraculous compilation of timeless God-breathed words, you and I realize that we must resist the temptation to manipulate the text to meet our “private interpretations”. This does not come easy for most people. They often do everything in their power to make every page of Scripture speak personally and directly to them. As you aptly point out, there is an ever-present danger in ignoring context.

Without bludgeoning a dead horse to the point of vaporization , I believe it is imperative to attack the four points above. Since a great deal of the Bible is prophetic, and because we are exhorted to make personal application of it (and rightly so), it seems imperative to alter the way people read the Scriptures.

I try to impress upon people the idea that there are two types of texts, those that are transcendent (pure application e.g. “Sermon on the Mount”) and those that were prophetically imminent and as such cannot be personally applicable and therefore carry no expectations of future fulfillment. As you would undoubtedly agree, if we mix these two, we do so at our own perilous misunderstanding and confusion. And even in the “application passages” you know as well as I, that context cannot be excised there either.

Alan, I think it always comes down to hermeneutics. Errors occur when specific common sense rules are overridden by personal paradigms. Often within futurist circles, I see “analogy of faith”, “context” and “audience relevance” taught in a generic sense, but since they’re rarely fleshed out principles, people really don’t know how to effectively apply them. That’s why when being confronted with the “time statements” it becomes second nature to pull out the Second Peter three eight card. Or when we don’t understand something or see what we believe to be a paradox (because we are blatantly ignoring context) we retort, “God’s ways are not our ways”, and then continue to live in ignorant blissful denial.

I think we must torpedo the aircraft carrier’s illogically-based command center. As a Church we have come to the place where because we know that God is eternal and transcendent that we think He has the capacity to violate His own character. Have we gone totally out of our minds? I did! In other words, can God tell a lie or even slightly mislead? Certainly He withholds information but we know that God simply cannot deceive.

Most deem it appropriate to believe that God inspired Peter to write, “the end of all things is near” while knowing that the heaven’s and earth’s passing were not in the least impending. We just throw up our hands in the air and assume that God’s ways are far above all human logic. This is poppycock, because making that assertion we are unwittingly stating that God is a liar and a deceiver. Would we say the same for any human being that habitually makes promises that are never kept? We call those people unfaithful liars, yet we presume that God can do it without violating His character. Is God not confined by His own nature (I know that sound oxymoronic) to embody “thou shalt not bear false witness”?

I can’t tell you how many rebuttals I’ve seen of preterism, where the dissenter is doing everything in his/her power to call God’s faithfulness into question. They try to come up with a red herring or two to prove that God was unfaithful to do that which he promised within the time parameter He set. This is sheer insanity to be so set in the concrete of our presuppositions, as to do anything (not even short of calling God unfaithful) to maintain those beliefs.

At any rate, I wasn’t attempting to diminish the impact of this article since I think it was abundantly sound, but I do believe that the things I mentioned must be addressed in order to set the stage for a sincere look at “audience relevance”. The double-fulfillment view, or actually the exponentially fulfilled view , must be rebuffed. Many move from the physical type to the spiritual anti-type back to the physical type. Since the death in Adam was only partially (they argue) conquered in the work of the Cross, and the only true ultimate victory is the abolishment of physical death, you can quote Scripture until you turn a lighter shade of pale, and in most cases you will simply get a glazed look. Obviously every article cannot be accomplish all things for all people, but I do think we must more directly address some of the issues I mentioned. Because God is transcendent and eternal, does not mean that He is illogical and unable to communicate clearly and effectively.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Blessings,
Chuck