My contention would be that it can tortured out of Scripture, wrung out and the molecules reassembled to provide support. I would question as to why such as thing did not exist in anyone's belief until Scofield magically happened on this blessed idea.
I would question as to why such as thing did not exist in anyone's belief until Scofield magically happened on this blessed idea.
Exactly. You don't find it in the text, unless you come to the text expecting to find it.
Back in 2005, Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids had a conference on preaching apocalyptic texts. I'm not sure the audio is still there (see here, scroll down to June 2005), but it's worth looking up, Gordon Fee's and G. K. Beale's especially. (The audio links are to a Realaudio stream, not sure how that's going to work now.)