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God’s covenant with Abraham consists of four unconditional promises. First, God promised to bless Abraham. That promise has been lavishly kept; Abraham has been blessed in many ways. For thousands of years, Abraham has been revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims alike. Mekilta on Exodus 16:32 [Tractate Vayassa’ 6 lines 60-64] J 6 What Do the Signs Show? Jesus and Nicodemus (John 3:1-21)
Many incidents in addition to the detailed miracle stories at minimum possess the same stages of faith as signs and perhaps therefore qualify as signs, for example, Jesus’ encounter with Nathanael, his remarks to Nicodemus regarding being born from above (John 3:1-13), Jesus’ statements to the woman at the well (John 4:10-19), 16 and most importantly the death and resurrection of Jesus (John 20:10-29) which immediately preceded the signs statement. 17 We will argue this conclusion again in discussing Nathanael and the woman at the well. The signs were legion, suggesting accumulative proof, but John was not interested in numbers for numbers’ sake. Faith building, for him, involved recounting certain powerful signs from among the myriads which occurred. We conclude that neither the structure nor the theology of John is dependent on the elsewhere significant number “seven.” 18 As Daniel explained, just as God had sent the dream to Nebuchadnezzar, God had also revealed the dream and its interpretation to Daniel (v. 19). Then the Jewish prophet stood before the king and unfolded the future of his nation. Kysar, John, p. 46, “teaming with meaning.” The scholars who declare a sign source and redaction find the overlay of the change of the dispensations in the contribution of the final author. Since however, this author includes all these details they all somehow contribute to his theology of signs.
An explanation for a sign is more often than not endemic to the context, rather than an overt verbal explication. In this case the water turned to wine not only demands powers from beyond, but also prefigures a radical change in the grounds of purification for all humankind. 35 The sign therefore points beyond itself with twofold or even multifold meanings. 36 In His covenant with Abraham, God promised extravagant blessings not only to Abraham’s descendants but also to Abraham himself: I will bless you and make your name great (Gen. 12:2). With people for whom signs create belief one discovers a curiosity, an openness to the prospect that there is more to the specific word or action than meets the eye. Behind and beyond this physical event are powers reaching in from God himself. The steward had cause for wonderment, but he knew little about the chain of events. The servants knew from where the liquid in the jars came, but they knew little about Jesus. The disciples, however, were primed with expectancy. They were open. “His disciples believed in him,” (2:11). Their faith had now reached a higher plateau. This was not yet the apex, but they were launched. 37 Even after the resurrection, signs from earlier moments etched indelibly on the memory, additionally deepened faith (2:18-21). Because this was Yahweh’s sovereign covenant with Abram, not an agreement between equals, symbols of God (a smoking oven and a burning torch) passed between those pieces; Abram did not. The LORD made the covenant with no conditions—independent of Abram—and He would fulfill it in His time. ⁷
Six thousand miles away, President Truman sat in the Oval Office reading a statement. He signed his approval and noted the time: 6:10 p.m. One minute later, the White House press secretary read the release to the world. The United States had officially recognized the birth of the modern nation of Israel. I was seven years old when the nation of Israel was established in 1948. I now believe the restoration of the Jewish people to their land is the most important prophetic sign to have occurred in my lifetime. More than any other sign described in this book, the prophetic future of the nation of Israel answers the question, Is this the end? But an even greater prophetic fulfillment awaits an unknown future day: the return of the Jewish Messiah to the Jewish people! CHAPTER 2 EUROPE Through Abraham, God gave His written Word to the world. With the possible exceptions of Luke and Acts, every book of the Bible was authored by a Jewish writer. ¹³ And through Abraham, God gave His Son to the world, blessing all humanity with the means of escaping the grip of sin and death, that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Gal. 3:14). All the other promises in God’s covenant with Abraham are in support of this one universal promise that affects every person who has ever lived. AN ETERNAL COVENANTFrom one of the world’s most beloved Bible teachers comes a timely, compelling, and comprehensive biblical interpretation of Bible prophecy, the end times, and the apocalypse viewed through the lens of current world events and social crisis. The turmoil over Israel’s right to its land will not cease till the end, for the land provision of the Abrahamic covenant is at the core of the hatred of Middle Eastern nations for Israel today. India has also produced several notable male interpreters of the Qur'an. One was the 19th-century rationalist Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Sir Sayyid welcomed the pragmatic values of the British, especially in governance and education. To the extent that modern science embodied the metaphysical values of modern Europe, however, he challenged its superiority and countered with an alternative modernity based on the rigorous retrieval of Qur'anic values. In this sense, he was the precursor to Muhammad Iqbal, the most famous Indian, then Pakistani, interpreter of Islam in the 20th century. A poet-philosopher, Muhammad Iqbal was not a Qur'an interpreter, either by intention or by reputation. He engaged European philosophy and modern science as twins, each reinforcing the authority of the other, yet he saw both as inseparable from the larger message of Islam over time that was presented in the Qur'an. Iqbal was a citizen of the modern world, intent on reconciling reason with revelation. Resolutely Muslim, he projected in verse a perception of Qur'anic truth that was pervasive and superior to all other truths, including modern philosophy. In a powerful speech to the United Nations General Assembly on October 1, 2015, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu summarized the miraculous preservation of the Jewish people: Obviously, prophecy is important to God, and He desires for us to understand His plans. He has given us His signs for a reason.
In modern times, Russia confined Jews to ghettos and harassed them with pogroms under the czars, who were overthrown in the communist rebellion of 1917. Under communism, the Jews were forbidden to practice their religious rites, and many were arrested, deported, or executed. Hitler’s Germany, which destroyed some six million Jews, was crushed in World War II. Throughout the history of the church, the prophetic portions of Scripture have received an enormous amount of literary attention. Countless books claim to offer insight on the hundreds of topics related to biblical prophecy, all of them written from a wide variety of theological perspectives and positions on how to interpret Scripture. These studies can create a variety of questions, concerns, and even confusion in our minds. Sometimes it is difficult to see how obscure passages, distant places, and unfamiliar symbols can have any significance for our lives. After all, if we can’t understand what the Bible is teaching, how in the world can it have any relevance to what we are experiencing today? Varying views exist as to which events qualify in the seven. Smalley, “The Sign in John XXI,” New Testament Studies 20 (1974), 275-288, argues that the catch of 153 fish is the seventh sign, and thus chapter 21 is not an appendix; Marc Girad, “La Composition structurelle des sept ‘signes’ dans le quartieme evangil,” Studies in Religion 9 (1980), 315-324, followed by Joseph A. Grassi, “Eating Jesus’ Flesh and Drinking his Blood: The Centrality and Meaning of John 6:51-58.” Biblical Theology Bulletin 17 (1987), 24-30, argue for the blood and water upon Jesus’ death as a sign.Sirach 24:21 J 15 Reaction to the Discourse: The Offense and the Confession (John 6:60-71; Aland #157-58)
John Marsh, Saint John (Pelican New Testament Commentary, 1968) p. 65, Stephen Smalley in The Oxford Companion to the Bible, (OUP, 1993) p. 373 Some disagree with this list of seven signs. John Marsh and Stephen Smalley, amongst others, have suggested six initial signs (seeing the walking on the water as part of feeding the 5000, rather than a separate sign in itself), and that the seventh sign is the crucifixion of Jesus and the resurrection appearance to Thomas (20:26–29). [5] Here we reach the overarching reason for all the promises we have studied in God’s covenant with Abraham: In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Gen. 12:3). When he was a teenager, Albert Einstein had a dream that likely changed the course of scientific history.Contexts are crucial. Although the Qur'an as a whole is authoritative, its content must be applied to particular contexts. Which aspect of the Qur'an applies and where? When does it apply and for whom? These are questions that probe coherence and selectivity at two levels. First, why are some but not all passages of the Qur'an of special value at different times and places? And second, how do changes in context impart special value to particular verses or chapters?
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