Christian “rapture” speculations (e.g. pre-tribulational) demonstrate a foundational flaw in evangelical hermeneutics. An originalist hermeneutic would detect the allusions to the Hebrew Bible in passages like Matthew 24:31 (“And he will send forth his angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other”) and rightly equate them to the OT prophecies concerning the eschatological regathering of the scattered tribes of Israel (e.g. Isa 11:11-12; Jer 31:10-14; Ezek 34:11-16; 37:15-28; Hos 1:10-11; Amos 9:11-15; Zech 10:6-12).

한국교회의 배교와 세속과 거짓 가르침 때문에 참으로 마음이 아픕니다.

John A. T. Robinson’s commentary on “the children of God who are scattered abroad” in John 11:52:

As in the case of ‘the Greeks’, the reference is almost universally taken to be to the Gentiles. But this is quite arbitrary. There is nothing in the Gospel to suggest it, and every reason, from the wealth of Old Testament parallels to identify them with those of God’s people, the Jews, at present in dispersion. In the prophetic words of her own high priest, the purpose of Jesus’ death, as Israel’s Messiah, is to bring about the final ingathering of which the prophets so constantly spoke. And it is when Diaspora Judaism, in the persons of the Greeks at Passover, comes seeking him, that Jesus knows ‘the hour has come for the Son of man to be glorified’ (12.23). Hitherto he has been confined to ‘his own’ to whom he came; but once the seed falls into the ground and dies it will bear much fruit (12.24).

The supreme purpose of the laying down of Jesus’ life is that all Israel should be one flock under its one shepherd (10.15f.). And once more this pastoral imagery in chapter 10 is clearly modelled upon passages in Ezekiel (especially 34 and 37.21–8) and Jeremiah (23.1–8; 31.1–10) whose whole theme is the ingathering of the scattered people of Israel. The ‘other sheep, that are not of this fold’, whom also Jesus must bring in (10.16) are not the Gentiles—again there is nothing to suggest this—but the Jews of the Dispersion. And the purpose, that ‘there shall be one flock, one shepherd’, is reflected again in the repeated prayer of chapter 17 ‘that they may all be one’, the chapter above all which interprets the purpose of Jesus’ going to the Father. Here once more we have the same distinction as that between ‘this fold’ and the ‘other sheep’, the ‘nation’ and ‘the children of God who are scattered abroad’. The prayer is not ‘for these only’, that is, for those already faithful to Jesus in Palestine, but ‘for those also who shall believe in me through their word’, that is (in terms of the same distinction again from chapter 20), for those who believe without having seen (20.29), for whom clearly the Gospel is being written. The prayer ‘that they may all be one’ is, on Jesus’ lips, not a prayer for broken Christendom but for scattered and disrupted Judaism, viewed as the true Israel of God.

Cited from John A. T. Robinson, “The Destination and Purpose of St John’s Gospel,” in Twelve New Testament Studies (London: SCM Press, 1962), 120-21.

Here is a very helpful presentation on the New Covenant that approaches an originalist hermeneutic.

Concerning the names of the 12 apostles on the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:14, Dr. Robert Thomas (my favorite Bible professor) writes,

“It is significant that John brings together the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles here, and makes a distinction between them. . . . The mention of the twelve apostles here shows the distinctive role of the church in the new Jerusalem, just as the mention of the twelve sons of Israel (v.12) distinguishes the role of national Israel. . . . Continuity from the twelve sons of Israel to the twelve apostles is not the teaching of this passage . . . but the dual election of Israel and the church. The words clearly show that God has an eschatological role for both peoples. Beyond dispute, this description of the bride-city separates believers among Israel from believers of the church, and in a symbolic way assigns the two groups separate roles in the new creation. If the two were one merged group of believers, there would have been twenty-four gates instead of twelve or twenty-four foundations instead of twelve . . .” (Revelation 8–22, Moody, 465).

In contrast to this eternal division of two peoples of God in dispensationalism, an originalist hermeneutic would understand the names of the twelve apostles on the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21:14 as a fulfillment of the Messiah’s word in Matthew 19:28 (twelve disciples judging the twelve tribes in the Messianic kingdom). Gentile followers of the Messiah are grafted into the remnant of faithful Israel (Rom 11:17) and become fellow citizens of the true commonwealth of Israel (Eph 2:11–22). Originalist hermeneutics rejects the supersessionism, replacement theology, and fulfilment theology of Constantinian Christianity, Roman Catholicism, and most Western Christianity. The Christian “church” does not replace true Israel; Gentile disciples have been grafted into the ekklesia of the Messiah (Matt 16:18).

A central tenet of originalist hermeneutics is understanding the theme of the kingdom of God in the New Testament through the lens of the Old Testament theme of the eschatological restoration of national Israel. Therefore, the kingdom of God, as prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures, was never established nor fulfilled during the first advent of the Messiah or what many people call “the church age.”

Much confusion has resulted from theologians who have argued for an “inaugurated eschatology” where the kingdom of God that is taught in the NT is “already but not yet” (developed by Princeton Seminary professor Gerhardus Vos in the early 20^th century, formalized by Fuller Seminary professor George Eldon Ladd in the 1950s). This kind of allegorist/spiritualist hermeneutic can ultimately be traced back to the Greco-Roman philosophical influence of the Alexandrian Didascalium of the 2^nd century.

Revelation 11:15–17, in the context of the 7^th trumpet judgment, clearly records the future establishment of the kingdom of God: “Then the seventh angel sounded; and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; and he will reign forever and ever.’ . . . ‘We give you thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who are and who were, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.”

Mastery of the biblical languages is foundational for interpreting Scripture accurately. But mastery of the biblical languages does not guarantee accurate interpretation, and can even engender a hermeneutical imperiousness. Often, the biblical languages are abused to defend preferred systems of theology and thus can even hinder originalist hermeneutics.

Dr. Rod Decker, a former seminary professor, wisely advocated “grammatical minimalism,” in contrast to “a maximal, ‘golden nuggets’ approach”: “the most appropriate way to handle the interpretation of an ancient text . . . is to place the least weight on the individual grammatical pieces and the greatest weight on statements in their context” (Reading Koine Greek [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2014], xv–xvi).

In the eschatological setting of Isaiah 24:21-23, the LORD will judge the host of heaven and the kings of the earth “after many days” (וּמֵרֹב יָמִים) (Isa 24:22). The phrase rov yamim (“multitude of days”) in Isaiah 24:22 corresponds to the “thousand years” (χίλια ἔτη) in Revelation 20:2–7.

Ezekiel also describes this “multitude of days” as “many days” of peace and blessing in Ezekiel 38:8–16. “After many days” (Ezek 38:8), judgment will come upon Gog (Ezek 38:21–23) in terms similar to Isaiah 24:22 and Revelation 20:7–10 (cf. Jer 32:36–44).

The underlying theme of the entire Bible is the glory of God (Gen 1:3; Rev 22:16) in the kingdom of God (Gen 1:26; Rev 22:16).

The original kingdom of God culminated in the fullness of the first Sabbath rest (Gen 2:1-3) but was usurped in the rebellion of Genesis 3:1-7. Ever since, God has established the biblical covenants (Noahic, Gen 9; Abrahamic, Gen 12, 15, 17; Sinai, Exod 20-24; Priestly, Num 25; Davidic, 2 Sam 7) to ensure the restoration and renewal of the original Edenic kingdom of God (Rev 21-22). The New or Renewed Covenant of Deuteronomy 30:1-9; Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 36:22-38 is a renewal of God’s eternal covenant with the nation of Israel in the Messianic kingdom.