I am continuing my response to Pastor Bob DeWaay. He asserts:
“Prophecy is not given in chronological order in the Bible. You need to know that.”
I would like to ask DeWaay if the thinks the seals, trumpets, and bowls can unfold in any order. And if so, how do we know that? For example, could it be the case that the bowls occur before the seals? Or can the 7th seal, for example, occur before the first seal? I don’t know of a single interpreter that would argue for that. Everyone that I am familiar with argues that the second seal occurs chronologically after the first seal (i.e., first, second, third, and so on). And for good reason: they are ordinal numbers. And since they occur in the context of Revelation as enumerating historical (in time) events they are chronological.
Further, there are good reasons to believe that the three septets of seal, trumpets, and bowls unfold consecutively, not concurrently (My appendix in my forthcoming book is devoted to this question).
Will the Battle of Armageddon occur before the seals, trumpets, and bowls. Of course not, since Revelation places it as a climax of God’s wrath on earth. So there is a basic chronological order to the book of Revelation.
In addition to the larger chronological framework, you have the particular prewrath interpretation of the special chronological elements, which have been expounded on this blog for many years. I see no evidence that DeWaay is remotely familiar with the Prewrath argumentation for the chronology in Revelation. Rather than repeating it all here, I direct the reader to the following exegetical articles here, and here. Also, this site is helpful.
Finally, the interpreter of Revelation who fails to take into consideration the Olivet Discourse as a framework will fail to be informed by Jesus’ general chronology: Beginning of Birth Pangs, Antichrist’s Great Tribulation, Parousia/Day of the Lord. This also helps to discern parenthetical sections in the book of Revelation. One would expect this consistency between Matthew 24 and the book of Revelation, since they are both teachings from our Lord and found in an eschatological context.
