Question:  Dear Greg,

            Do you think the rebirth of the nation of Israel in 1948 is a beginning to the fulfillment of the prophecy mentioned in Ezekiel 36-37?

            Jeremy

Answer:  Dear Jeremy,

            I believe that there are a variety of ways to interpret this passage.  One of the cardinal rules of understanding the Bible is to remember that passages and verses meant something when they were written and/or preached.  That is, there was a meaning to the original audience.  While that meaning may be more deeply understood today simply because we have many years of history to look back upon, that meaning—the original meaning—must form the basis and foundation of our understanding today.

            Put another way, a passage cannot now have a fundamental meaning it never did.  If it does, then we open up God’s inspired word to a Heinz variety of human interpretations, to manipulating, proof-texting and even torturing (Scrip-torture) the meaning God has for us.

            The idea that the Bible speaks of 1948 as the beginning of the fulfillment of prophecy owes its existence to the development of dispensationalism.  Dispensationalism may have its merits as a way to understand certain passages in the Bible, but we should be reminded the Christians were able to get along without it as an interpretive method of Bible study for well over 1700 years.  This fact alone should give us pause for thought.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht