I apologize for a long period of silence on this blog. I have been involved in so many fresh writing and speaking project I just haven’t been able to dedicate time to one more thing that doesn’t have a deadline attached to it. With this blog today, I will share a summary of the revolutionary things I learned in Seminary from my favorite teacher, Hans LaRondelle (1973-1975, 1981-1987). His concept of Christ-Centered typological interpretation was like taking the blinders off in my reading of the Bible. Obscure prophetic texts suddenly made sense. There was a coherent unity to the Bible I had never seen before.

LaRondelle’s major contribution to my understanding had to do with the relationship between Israel and the church in New Testament interpretation. Many Christian scholars understanding that the unfulfilled prophecies of the Old Testament must be fulfilled in detail in the Middle East, exactly the way they are written up. This leads to conclusions related to what some call the Rapture theory. Larondelle pointed out that the writers of the New Testament did not read the Old Testament prophets in that way. Readers of Revelation should read the Old Testament the way the rest of the New Testament writers did. In this series of blogs, I will try to summary that perspective and its implications for my understanding of Revelation.

One of the great honors of my life was to have Dr. LaRondelle trust me enough to request from his death bed that I work with his final book manuscript and bring it to a conclusion. This was published electronically through the Logos software as The Bible Jesus Interpreted. It has since been updated and published in book form as Through Jesus’ Eyes (Safeliz, 2020). I will try to summarize the main insights of that book here.