Amazing Grace makes me cringe
“The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who call’d me here below,
Will be forever mine.”
This verse in John Newton’s otherwise wonderful Amazing Grace makes me cringe. Bible symbolism is incredibly diverse, but also incredibly consistent, as a word search for flood or snow will show.
A flood is the rising of the Abyss in judgment, and after the historical flood, it was used by the prophets to picture Gentile nations flooding in from the ‘outer courts’ boundary over the four-cornered ‘Altar’ of Israel to wipe out the unfaithful ‘sons of God.’ It is used to picture Egypt, Babylon, and even the false teachings of the Judaisers in Revelation 12, but never mercy.
Snow only gets one negative rap, and that is the whiteness of ‘leprosy’ (actually, plague). In this case, it is the evil twin of true glory. It is death masquerading as life, an un-covering instead of a glorious robe.
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within are full of dead [men's] bones, and of all uncleanness.”
The symbols are important, and we are mostly illiterate concerning them. They are not poetic fluff in any way. God communicates truth by His word to interpret His creation. But we think like Greeks instead of Hebrews.
