Transitional Parallelism

Eagles Over America

June 1, 2021 Edition

Transitional Parallelism

Using Historical and Biblical Contexts

Matthew 17 and Revelation 11

By Pamela Gudgeon

The path to God, through our journey to heaven, has many twists and turns. Don’t be surprised if He calls you to understand the future path of the Church through the past of the ancients.  Today, our children, our covenants, our finances and our free speech are being attacked.  It is an absolute necessity now to dive back in time, head first, in order to find the future that allows us to hear that distant wind blowing, filling our hearts with the drummer’s beat from Heaven.  In other words, we need to hear the marching and the cadence to the Glory of our God. This movement is not just about a revival of the Spirit of God in us, but it is also about an increase in Biblical truth coming, which can bring a moral recovery of lost, spiritual knowledge. 

There is a New Reformation on the rise, so we need to be living in the favor of God, both individually and collectively.  My hope is that our Eagles Over America Newsletter will help us all move backward in order to move forward, stepping through time with God as our guide; ultimately, giving us a picture of how the Bride of Christ has transitioned from Judaism to Christianity in Jesus’ Day, on forward to the present day. In moving forward, I trust we all will have a “valley of decision” moment while gleaning revelation from God and His Word, as we look at the parallels that allow us to see a glimpse of our future as it relates to our current Church Age.

 

How to Study the Bible for a Future Revelation

(It’s all about balance)

I have always believed the ancient Jewish nation is Christianity’s mother church because, simply, Christianity was birthed from Judaism.  The Jewish nation morphed through the years by experiencing many different circumstances: one being the Babylonian capture, which also changed the Hebrew letter pictures into a combination of ancient Hebrew shapes and ancient Babylonian shapes. They experienced many other successes and failures before and after that 70 year captivity. What I am saying is that they were groomed through their circumstances for increased wisdom, understanding, and knowledge during those many years.  We, the Christian Church, can glean from their knowledge and the Jewish nation can glean from ours, too, as we have the key to the promise: the Messiah.   

So, the point is, it is imperative to study the Bible according to what the authors intended during the specific times and related contexts. We can do that by several methods and patterns:  etymology (word origin studies) and reading about the Jewish history of the time of the writing (context), including ancient literary tools used by the authors: irony, parallelism, metaphors (just to name only three).  We can also study the Bible based on the dual nature of the Promise of Christ: the Sacrifice and the Resurrection (we can’t have one without the other). 

Irony is defined as something that seems incongruent.  An example is found in the beginning of the Book of Ruth when Naomi and her family were leaving Bethlehem because of a famine.  It is ironic because Bethlehem is defined as “the house of bread”.  This means there was no bread in Bethlehem.

Parallelism is defined as a connection of meaning through an echo of form or just corresponding in some way.  There is an echo of form in two separate ideas, contexts, or actions. 

Metaphor is defined as a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.  This is important in any literature, but especially the Bible, as we always will have the tangible and the intangible; the literal and the figurative; the concrete and the abstract; the denotation and the connotation.  If we analyze these correctly in the Word of God with spiritual discernment from on high, then we can say we have God’s wisdom.

Greek and Hebrew Thought Patterns

By the time of Christ’s birth, a combination of Hebrew and Greek thought had already come into play. We can see both cultures at work in Jesus’ life, word, and deed.  Greek thought tends to be linear and static, while Hebrew thought tends to be cyclical and dynamic in nature. (Bowman, pp. 27-73).

 A Hebraic thought pattern emerged in John 5 when Jesus said He judged no one, but only what the Father said to Him, He judged.  At the same time, the Father said He had given all judgment to the Son.  We are to understand in this chapter that the perfect light of truth is what judges, but it is within a circular pattern coming from the Father to the Son; back up to the Father and back down to the Son: Classic Hebrew Circular Movement with the topic being judgment.

In addition, the Greeks tend to think of the future as being placed in front of them, while the past is behind them. It is a line. In contrast, Hebrew thought tends to see the future as being placed behind them (from the Torah teachings) while making their present actions dependent on the past Torah, which will bring them the greatest future. It is a circle. To the Hebrews, history is a movement toward a goal which is set by God; with His promise or His blessing, He gets the movement underway, supervises it, and actively intervenes when He finds it necessary. The peoples’ past, present and future is a continuous whole where everything lives. (Bowman, pp. 124, 130, 171).   

Transfiguration and Revelation 11

Both the Transfiguration and Revelation 11 are parallel prophecies, albeit, at different historical ages.  One took place during Jesus’ ministry (ca. 31 A.D.); the other one was written by John in the Revelation (ca. 95 A.D.) and fulfilled later.  If you know history and the prophecy of Matthew 24 (fulfilled through 70 A.D.), then you will understand the extremely different church culture at the time of these two prophecies.  We will shortly be able to define the pattern of “Death and Resurrection” within these two passages of scripture and also the pattern set forth in the Law and the Prophets,  revealing a double parallel in both.  

We can follow God’s ordered path through perfect history to understand the changing times and seasons.  These two, separate, and yet fulfilled prophecies display a dual pattern of the Bible in their specific eras. The famous Transfiguration was a prophecy in Matt. 17:9 “….tell this vision (Gr. 3705 horama, something gazed at, i.e. a spectacle, especially supernatural) to no man until the Son of Man is risen again from the dead.”  This supernatural miracle brought together the Law (Moses) and the Prophets (Elijah) with Christ Jesus, who fulfilled it.  The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings were the Bible of the day: they were fulfilled in Christ Jesus at the point of His Resurrection. You can understand in this verse, Matt. 17:9, that a supernatural miracle had just occurred. It also was preceded by His death, and this miracle was a resurrection that was to be hidden at that time. Therefore, we have the fullness of the Promise: Sacrifice, Resurrection, and the spectacle or supernatural miracle that brings light for the believer.

This manifestation of the Spirit of God during the Transfiguration revealed the future Resurrection of Christ (that was to be fulfilled after the Crucifixion) in the era of the Promise of God being fulfilled for all people. At the time of the Transfiguration, it hadn’t happened yet. Now, it is in our past and continuing into our future, that is the movement of the Resurrection of Christ. This is a cyclical pattern of thought as the end and the beginning connect, hence God is all in all.

There is a similar, but opposing pattern in Revelation 11.  The context in Revelation 11 was specifically referring to the destruction of the Word of God (the two witnesses = Moses and Elijah, symbolic of the Law and the Prophets) being likened to the mangled corpse in the streets of the great City of Paris during the “Festival of Reason’,  November 10 -13,1793. This is literally what happened, however, the Resurrection occurred soon after that and the Bible was reinstated as being divine by the French government in February 1795.  So, we can see the opening here of increased knowledge through these two comparative chapters.  In both Matthew 17 and Revelation 11 there was a death and a resurrection, a pattern that is found throughout the scriptures. 

All of Revelation 11 was literally fulfilled in the time of the French Revolution 1793-94, and during the literal 3 1/2 day Festival of Reason in 1793, which also was a prophecy when John recorded it in Revelation, but now it is our past as it has already occurred. During the Festival of Reason, the masses took the Bible out of the Cathedral at Notre Dame (the two olive trees, the two lamp stands, the two witnesses, see Zechariah Chap 4) and mangled it, put it on a pole and paraded a half naked prostitute in the street proclaiming, “we have no God but the goddess of reason.” This was the beginning of a cruel massacre of royalty and priests that ended with the guillotining of Maximilian Robespierre in July 1794, who was one of the primary Jacobins in charge of this insanity. 

The Jacobins and Jesuits were tied into the Illuminati that was formed in 1776, using the Masonic Lodge (which had already been infiltrated) as a secret society. The suppression of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) began in the Summer of 1773 when Pope Clement XIV - bowing to pressure from the royal courts of Portugal, France, and Spain - issued a Papal “brief” ordering Jesuits throughout the world to renounce their vows and go into exile, and so they, too, exacted their revenge upon France, as France had the most influence over the Papacy at that time. This was the beginning of the 8th head of the Beast from the Sea (Revelation 17) that is with us even today.

 There are a couple of hints in chapter 11 that you need in order to study and understand this chapter:  1) The forty two months in Chapter 11 are equal to the 1260 days found in Chapter 12 of Revelation and the time, times and half a time (3.5 years) found in Chapter 7 of Daniel. This was fulfilled by Justinian’s ecclesiastical decree, which lasted from 533 A.D. to 1793 A.D.(the Festival of Reason) which is exactly 1260 years, which fulfilled the time of the 7th head of the Sea Beast (the power of Papal Rome), the 6th head being Rome which fell in 476 A.D., the head that had the deadly wound but came back to life under Justinian;  2)  The great city is literally Paris, not Jerusalem in verse 8, notice the word “spiritually” which is not literally, giving you a clue that it is a symbolic Sodom and Gomorrah and also a symbolic Jerusalem, where also our Lord was crucified. Using a parallel literary device of these two passages, the Crucifixion of our Lord was likened to the mangled Bible on the streets of Paris. If you like riddles, you will enjoy this beautiful study.  If you are so inclined to read and study chapter 11, sadly, you may find a parallel to our age today.  

I believe we are in the season of seeking ancient wisdom that has been hidden from the foundation of time.  We, the Church, are at a point of decision and the separation of the sheep and the goats will be evident soon.  The decision is ours.

Citation

Bowman, Thorleif. Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek. New York, London. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1960.