The doctrine of the clouds

1. Clouds are used literally.

2. Clouds are used figuratively.

a. Clouds are used to portray great armies or masses of people in the Bible, Jeremiah 4:13, for example. Hebrews 12:1 is another. In Revelation 1:7 the clouds refer to great armies, the multitudes of people who accompany our Lord at the second advent.

b. Clouds symbolise a time of catastrophe, a time of divine judgment, Lamentations 2:1; Ezekiel 30:3. Revelation 1:7, “Behold he cometh with clouds.” Those clouds with which our Lord comes indicate the doom of many nations. Nations should be removed when they are totally involved in the cosmic system. And when the cosmic system is destroyed at the second advent so will its adherents, national and individual. The second advent passages which mention these clouds are found in many places. These are tracts where we begin but we always end up in Revelation, Joel 2:1-2; Isaiah 44:22.

c. Clouds are used in the Bible for transitory things, things that are here today and gone tomorrow, like negative believers, like prosperity. Illustration: Job 30:15; Hosea 6:4.

d. Cloud formations also represent the power and the wisdom of God, Psalm 135:6,7; 147:8; Proverbs 8:28.

e. Clouds are used to illustrate the ignorance of man and his need for divine revelation, Job 38:37; 36:39; 37:15,16.

f. Clouds are used to portray false teachers, “clouds without water,” 2 Peter 2:17.

g. Clouds without rain or water symbolise human promises without fulfilment, or the malfunction of human integrity, Isaiah 25:5, or Jude 12, “these men [reversionists involved in the cosmic system] are those who are stains in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, carrying for themselves [subjectivity, arrogance, preoccupation with self - involvement in cosmic one] clouds without water,” people without integrity, doctrine, “carried along by the winds,” instability.