When studying prophecy and eschatology, there are methods of approach to understand the meanings of scripture. There are criteria to consider such as: whether the text is literal, historical context, grammatical context, the objective of a passage, the intent of what is being expressed, things that are symbols or symbolic, and whether a passage is allegorical or parabolic. If these methods are followed, there may still be shades of difference in interpretations, but our understanding of scripture will be very close to the meaning God intended. VF-2436.