"Language and Imagery of the Bible", G.B. Caird, pp. 256-260
1. The biblical writers believed literally that the world had had a beginning in the past and would have an end in the future
2. They regularly used end-of-the-world language metaphorically to refer to that which they well knew was not the end of the world.
3. As with all other uses of metaphor, we have to allow for the likelihood of some literalist misinterpretation on the part of the hearer, and for the possibility of some blurring of the edges between vehicle and tenor on the part of the speaker.
Proposition 1 is easily established for the OT. It is implied in such phrases as 'until the moon is no more' (Ps. 72:7) and in the ancient promise to Noah (Gen 8:22). In some passages it is explicitly stated (Ps 102:25-26; Isa 51:6, 54:10)...
Our first problem arises when we try to decide whether the expressions 'the latter end of the days' (Gen 49:1; Num 24:14; Deut 4:30, 31:29; Hos 3:5; Isa 2:2; Jer 23:20, 30:24, 48:47, 49:39; Ez 38:16; Dan 2:28, 10:14) and 'the day of the Lord' (Amos 5:18, 20; Isa 2:12, 13:6, 9; Zeph 1:7, 14; Jer 46:10; Ez 13:5, 30:3; Obad 15; Zech 14:1; Mal 4:5; Joel 1:15, 2:1, 11, 31, 3:14) are eschatological in this plenary sense. For the first of these phrases the Hebrew dictionary of Brown, Driver and Briggs gives the following definition: 'a prophetic phrase denoting the final period of the history so far as the speaker's perspective reaches.' It is thus the equivalent of the English expressions 'in the end' or 'ultimately' when we use them to mean 'sooner or later' or 'in the future'; and it has precisely that vagueness which makes for the blurring of the edges mentinoed in Preposition 3. The origins of the phrase 'the day of the Lord' are as yet obscure and conjectural. When it is first used in the eighth century B.C. by Amos, it clearly has a long history behind it. His contemporaries who long for it regard it as a day of Yahweh's victory in which they will share, and Amos warns them that it will be Yahweh's victory over them. What is not in doubt is that the day came to be described in terms of cosmic disaster, as the return of primaeval chaos, and so by imaginative elision to be seen as the end of the world.
In thirteen of the eighteen instances of its occurrence, the day of the Lord is said to be either imminent or present. It is here that Preposition 2 comes to our aid. For when we examine the contexts, we find that in one case the referent is the overthrow of Babylon, in another the annihilation of Edom, in another the ravaging of Judah by a plague of locuts...The day was his victory, when he would come decisively for salvation and judgment, and they were inviting their hearers to see that day in the current crisis. In other words they were using the term as a metaphor...
The book of Joel provides an interesting study in what we might call prophetic camera technique. The book opens with some close-up shots of a locust swarm overrunning the countryside. Then the scene changes to the temple, where priests and elders are instructed to proclaim a national fast in recognition that the calamity is God's judgment (Joel 1:15). The prophet says that he day is 'near', because that is the traditional word to use about the day of the Lord, but what he means by it is that it has arrived. Any possible doubt about this is rapidly dispelled (Joel 2:1-2).
But this local manifestation of God's judgment has the power to call the nation to repentance because it is seen as an anticipation and embodiment of the universal judgment to come. So the foreground scene fades into a telephoto panorama of all nations gathered in the Valley of the Lord's Judgment (Joel 3:14).
Few would hesitate to call this an eschatological vision, yet it is not the end: the effect of this judgment is not to determine the destiny of individuals in some after-life, but to 'reverse the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem' (3:1), so that afterwards 'there shall be people living in Judah forever, in Jerusalem generation after generation.' (3:21)
Thus the nearness of the day is given both a short range and a long range application, and it is of some significance for the interpretation of Mark 1:15 that in the short range 'is near' is synonymous with 'has arrived'.(Lam 4:18) On the other hand the long range vision is introduced by two quite vague indications of time, 'a day will come' (2:28) and 'when that time comes' (3:1), so that the proclamation that the day has now arrived for the multitudes of all nations tells us nothing whatever about its date.
Hyper Preterism Renounced
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