14
OTHER AREAS FOR
POTENTIAL EXPLORATION
Having touched on the points that seem to me to be of most decisive importance in creating fruitful dialog with dispensationalists,I want to set forth several other points, some of which I have already mentioned, that invite further exploration. In some cases, at least, they might provide complementary ways of approach.
46. Subjects yet to be explored
- The book of Hebrews provides the most extensive discussion anywhere in the Bible of the interpretation of the OT (see section 21). Study of the whole book of Hebrews can be undertaken in an effort to develop interpretive principles affecting the understanding of the OT.
- Matthew's citations from the OT provide indisputable cases of fulfillment, since he often uses as a citation formula, "that it might be fulfilled" (see the observations in section 16). These also, therefore, might provide a starting point for examination of interpretive principles for OT prophecy.
- Rev 21:1-22:5, though it does not quote directly from the OT, is filled with OT language and with allusions to OT passages. Discussion might focus on the way in which OT prophecies are fulfilled in the picture presented in Rev 21:1-22:5. This, it seems to me, might influence a dispensationalist in two ways. (1) It might challenge the tendency at least among some dispensationalists to concentrate so much on fulfillments in the millennium that no attention is given to the consummation as an even fuller fulfillment. (2) Rev 21:1-22:5 integrates heaven and earth. It integrates images applying to the church (Gal 4:26) and OT prophecy directed to Israel (e.g., Ezekiel 47, Isa 60:19-22). Questions about the unity of one people of God and the nature of "literal" fulfillment can therefore fruitfully be raised in this context.