Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion > Status Update
Andrew Meredith
is on page 101 of 318
Chapter 11: Coming on the Clouds
For most, what I've said so far sounds strange but fairly plausible on the surface (at least not heretical, I hope). Unfortunately, Matthew 24:29-31 just clearly doesn't work within the interpretation being offered here. It's really quite the insurmountable hurdle because isn't it obvious to anyone with eyes to see that none of what Jesus predicts in this passage has happened yet?
— Feb 02, 2026 10:25AM
For most, what I've said so far sounds strange but fairly plausible on the surface (at least not heretical, I hope). Unfortunately, Matthew 24:29-31 just clearly doesn't work within the interpretation being offered here. It's really quite the insurmountable hurdle because isn't it obvious to anyone with eyes to see that none of what Jesus predicts in this passage has happened yet?
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Andrew’s Previous Updates
Andrew Meredith
is on page 163 of 318
Chapter 19: A Brief Summary of the Revelation
Revelation is not impossible to understand, but it is extraordinarily deep. One could easily fill multiple volumes exploring the book fully. Thus, this survey will be just that, a thousand foot flyover. The next few chapters will zoom in to cover important symbols within the book, but first, getting the lay of the whole land is necessary.
— Feb 10, 2026 10:52AM
Revelation is not impossible to understand, but it is extraordinarily deep. One could easily fill multiple volumes exploring the book fully. Thus, this survey will be just that, a thousand foot flyover. The next few chapters will zoom in to cover important symbols within the book, but first, getting the lay of the whole land is necessary.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 157 of 318
Chapter 17: Interpreting Revelation and Chapter 18: The Time Is at Hand
There are two problems that confront us when we seek to interpret the Book of Revelation: (1) What checks and controls should we use to ensure that we do not force God's Holy Word into a mold of our own inventions and (too often) our runaway imaginations? (2) What do we do then with what we have learned? These chapters seek to tackle the first.
— Feb 08, 2026 04:02AM
There are two problems that confront us when we seek to interpret the Book of Revelation: (1) What checks and controls should we use to ensure that we do not force God's Holy Word into a mold of our own inventions and (too often) our runaway imaginations? (2) What do we do then with what we have learned? These chapters seek to tackle the first.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 140 of 318
Chapter 16: The Consummation of the Kingdom
The Last Day and the Last Judgment are synonyms. Biblically, they happen at the same time. This should be obvious, but there are only two resurrections: (1) Jesus as the firstfruits, and (2) the (simultaneous) Resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked on the Last Day (Dan 12:2; Jn 5:26-29; Acts 24:15; Rev 20:11-15).
— Feb 07, 2026 03:11AM
The Last Day and the Last Judgment are synonyms. Biblically, they happen at the same time. This should be obvious, but there are only two resurrections: (1) Jesus as the firstfruits, and (2) the (simultaneous) Resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked on the Last Day (Dan 12:2; Jn 5:26-29; Acts 24:15; Rev 20:11-15).
Andrew Meredith
is on page 133 of 318
Chapter 15: The Day of the Lord
Okay, so "the Last Days" are behind us, "The Great Tribulation" is behind us, "the Antichrist" is behind us, "Christ's coming on the clouds" is behind us... All were fulfilled in AD 70. Is there anything actually left to be fulfilled? And if so, how can we meaningfully distinguish it from all the stuff that has already happened?
— Feb 06, 2026 02:40AM
Okay, so "the Last Days" are behind us, "The Great Tribulation" is behind us, "the Antichrist" is behind us, "Christ's coming on the clouds" is behind us... All were fulfilled in AD 70. Is there anything actually left to be fulfilled? And if so, how can we meaningfully distinguish it from all the stuff that has already happened?
Andrew Meredith
is on page 125 of 318
Chapter 14: The Restoration of Israel
The last few chapters have been pretty bleak for the nation of Israel. They have by-and-large been excommunicated, cut off from the vine, and placed under cataclysmic judgment. But this presents us with a serious problem. What about God's promise to Abraham that the patriarch's seed would be established "throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant" (Gen 17:7)?
— Feb 05, 2026 02:30AM
The last few chapters have been pretty bleak for the nation of Israel. They have by-and-large been excommunicated, cut off from the vine, and placed under cataclysmic judgment. But this presents us with a serious problem. What about God's promise to Abraham that the patriarch's seed would be established "throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant" (Gen 17:7)?
Andrew Meredith
is on page 117 of 318
Chapter 13: The Last Days
"The Last Days," "The Latter Times," and "The Last Hour," is the period between Jesus's Life and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The Early Church was living at the end of the old age (the aready "obsolete" Old Covenant) and the beginning of the New (Heb 8:13).
— Feb 04, 2026 02:31AM
"The Last Days," "The Latter Times," and "The Last Hour," is the period between Jesus's Life and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The Early Church was living at the end of the old age (the aready "obsolete" Old Covenant) and the beginning of the New (Heb 8:13).
Andrew Meredith
is on page 109 of 318
Chapter 12: The Rise of the Antichrist
We tend to think of the Apostolic era as a golden age of healthy, explosive Church growth, and while this is substantially correct, we must also seek to do justice to the rampant outbreak of heresy and apostasy that accompanied it. One of Jesus's given indications for the Last Days was a dramatic rise in falling away and false teachers culminating in the great Apostasy.
— Feb 03, 2026 02:41AM
We tend to think of the Apostolic era as a golden age of healthy, explosive Church growth, and while this is substantially correct, we must also seek to do justice to the rampant outbreak of heresy and apostasy that accompanied it. One of Jesus's given indications for the Last Days was a dramatic rise in falling away and false teachers culminating in the great Apostasy.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 91 of 318
Chapter 10: The Great Tribulation
Scripture interprets Scripture. We must not seek for authoritative interpretations of Scripture's meaning anywhere outside the Bible itself. This to say, the Bible was not dropped from the sky in the twenty-first century. Now, with this in mind, let's tackle "The Great Tribulation." It's actually not that difficult to understand.
— Feb 01, 2026 08:38AM
Scripture interprets Scripture. We must not seek for authoritative interpretations of Scripture's meaning anywhere outside the Bible itself. This to say, the Bible was not dropped from the sky in the twenty-first century. Now, with this in mind, let's tackle "The Great Tribulation." It's actually not that difficult to understand.
Andrew Meredith
is on page 81 of 318
Chapter 9: The Rejection of Israel
The constantly used imagery of the people of God as a "vineyard" in both the OT and the NT has an obvious direct connection with the idea of the Garden. Israel was a garden planted, watered, and tended to by Yahweh (Ps 80; Is 5). This is an important concept when reading one of Jesus's most striking parables: the story of the Wicked Vinegrowers (Matt 21:33-39).
— Jan 31, 2026 05:37AM
The constantly used imagery of the people of God as a "vineyard" in both the OT and the NT has an obvious direct connection with the idea of the Garden. Israel was a garden planted, watered, and tended to by Yahweh (Ps 80; Is 5). This is an important concept when reading one of Jesus's most striking parables: the story of the Wicked Vinegrowers (Matt 21:33-39).
Andrew Meredith
is on page 73 of 318
Chapter 8: The Coming of the Kingdom
The coming Kingdom of the Messiah was a major theme of the Psalms and the prophets. With the coming of Christ, that kingdom has arrived and is expanding across the world, just as Daniel prophesied when he foretold the Rock that would strike the feet of Rome and then grow into a world-consuming Mountain (Dan 2:35, 44).
— Jan 30, 2026 08:34AM
The coming Kingdom of the Messiah was a major theme of the Psalms and the prophets. With the coming of Christ, that kingdom has arrived and is expanding across the world, just as Daniel prophesied when he foretold the Rock that would strike the feet of Rome and then grow into a world-consuming Mountain (Dan 2:35, 44).
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Once we accept that Jesus, The Prophet, was using the language of the prophets just as the prophets used it, and once we allow Scripture to interpret itself, this seemingly formidable passage actually fits in rather nicely with what I have been saying.
Andrew's additional thoughts: This prophetic cosmological language isn't just used negatively. The Messiah is described as the Morning Star (the Sun) rising over the earth (Rev 22:16; Isa 9:1-3). Indeed, He is "the true Light which gives light to everyone" (John 1:9).This gives us a very useful metaphor for understanding the transition between the Old and the New Covenants. In the Old World, night reigned. "Light" was rare, and everything was still in shadow and darkness. When Jesus came, morning began to dawn (2 Peter 1:19). Christians "woke up" as people of the Day, of the Light, and are exhorted to "stay awake" in the morning twilight because the Day is dawning, the Morning Star will rise soon (1 Thess 5:1-8; Rom 13:11-12; Eph 5:14). The destruction of Jerusalem is the full Dawn, when the Sun of Righteousness arose with with healing in His wings (Mal 4:2) and the world itself began being flooded with Light.
If you can picture a room filled with beautiful furniture at night with just enough light to see, this was the Old Covenant. When the Sun dawned (the New Covenant), Light flooded through the room and everything that was there before in shadow and mystery became illuminated.
Sun? Not darkened. Moon? Still shining last time I checked. Stars? Quite firmly in place. Everyone across the world mourning as they see Jesus? Must have missed that in the news. A loud trumpet call with the angels gathering Christians from every corner of the globe? C'mon, man! How can you seriously claim that everything before verse 34 has already happened, when these things have demonstrably NOT happened?
I'm not going to play hide-the-ball with you here. This is where we must read literately, not literally. Jesus, the Prophet, is here utilizing prophetic cosmic-deconstruction language common in the books of the prophets that would have been very familiar to His original audience, but is virtually unknown today because we modern folk don't know how to read the genres of the Old (and New) Testament. In other words, truly understanding this section in particular is largely the payoff of the typological hermeneutics study that took up so much of the earlier chapters.
Let's start with the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars. Biblically, we first encounter these three elements in the creation narrative where God creates and then appoints them as "signs" to "rule" over the realms of the day and the night. This sets up the continuing typology: the heavenly bodies, "the powers of the heavens" are presented as rulers, and rulers are presented as heavenly bodies.
To flesh this out, let's just look at the OT quotations Jesus used in the text above.
The first ("The sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light") is from Isaiah 13:10 and Ezekiel 32:7-8. What is Isaiah describing here? The fall of Babylon to the Medes which happened in 539 BC. Ezekiel is predicting the destruction of Egypt. Both here are obviously using cosmological deconstruction language to describe the fall of various nations.
"And the stars will fall from heaven," seems to be a paraphrase of Isaiah 14:12 which is primarily referring to the king of Babylon.
Other examples of OT prophetic cosmological deconstruction language include: The fall of Edom (Isa 34:4), the doom of Samaria in 722 BC (Amos 8:9), and even the same fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD (Joel 2; referenced in Acts 2).
None of these astronomical events literally took place. Poetically, though, their lights went out. So when Jesus speaks like a prophet using the same words, we should interpret Him as we do them.
"Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man." A word-for-word rendering of this verse actually reads, "then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven." The "sign" in question here is the cataclysmic judgment on Jerusalem. The destruction of the city and especially the Temple signaled that King Jesus had definitively taken the Kingdom from Israel and had given it to His Church. The Spirit of God was now dwelling elsewhere (Joel 2:28-31).
"Then all the tribes of the Land will mourn." The "tribes" here are the 12 Tribes of Israel, and the "Land" is the land of Israel.
"They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." According to Daniel 7, the "coming" is not to earth, but to the Father's right hand. What the tribes "see" is the destruction of the nation directly resulting from Jesus having ascended to the throne and receiving His Kingdom.
"With a loud trumpet call." Trumpets were integral in Israel to send them out and to draw them back together. We will cover their significance more in depth in the Revelation chapters.
"He will send out His angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." I have written on this before, but the word ἄγγελος in Greek does not have celestial beings as it's primary common referent, but is simply the word "messenger" (Matt 11:10; Luke 7:24; 9:52; Acts 12:15). So, this is saying that after the fall of Jerusalem, Jesus is going to send out preachers to "gather" His people to Himself from the whole world (Heb 10:25; 2 Thess 2:1-2). This is directly opposed to Israel, who refused to be "gathered" for their Messiah (Matt 23:37-38).