Another instalment in the re-presentation of our 2013-2014 series about studying the Bible using methods deduced from the Bible itself. The series introduction can be found here and parts 1 through 5 can be found here, here, here, here and here.
The first Bible study tool we are discussing is comparison, specifically comparison of words and phrases in the original language.
Proximity to God comes at a price. God is holy, and those who speak his name and identify themselves with him invariably put themselves in the gravest danger. C.S. Lewis had it right: Aslan is not a tame lion. Judgment begins with the house of God.
That said, where God is concerned, there is no better place to be than as near as possible. “A day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.” Just bear in mind that when you take God’s name on your lips and broadcast your association with him to the world, you make yourself accountable for everything you do and say afterward. God is holy, and cannot allow his name to be associated with sin unrepented.
Israel forgot that. The prophet Amos was sent to remind them that the name of God is holy, and the consequences of defaming it are both inescapable and dire.
The most recent version of this post is available here.
“Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence.”
“If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”
Ah, the doing. Talking about what we believe about distant issues like our origins and even our future destiny is comparatively easy. Since neither is pressing in the present, we can speculate idly if we wish, for hours.
Another instalment in the re-presentation of our 2013-2014 series about studying the Bible using methods deduced from the Bible itself. The series introduction can be found here.
The first Bible study tool we are discussing is comparison, specifically comparison of words and phrases in the original language.
Another instalment in the re-presentation of our 2013-2014 series about studying the Bible using methods deduced from the Bible itself. The series introduction can be found here.
The first Bible study tool we are discussing is comparison, specifically comparison of words and phrases in the original language.
“Is everything in the Bible true?”
In what is often referred to as the high priestly prayer of John 17, Jesus speaks to his Father on behalf of his followers. “Sanctify them in the truth,” he requests. Then he adds these words: “Your word is truth.”
Now, the Bible is the word of God. That’s not simply a nickname Christians have given to our favorite book so we can impress unsaved people with its authority; that’s something the scripture calls itself. The phrase “word of God” is used 48 times in the Bible, and the phrase “word of the Lord” another 255. These expressions are used about the Law of Moses, the Psalms and the Prophets, taking in the entire Old Testament. They are used to describe both the teaching of Jesus and his apostles, which became the basis for our New Testament. They are used as a synonym for “scripture”, which includes both, and about which Jesus himself declared, “Scripture cannot be broken.” So then, the Bible itself claims to be truth from cover to cover.
But it should be obvious that not everything in the Bible is true in exactly the same sense.
Another instalment in the
The first Bible study tool we are discussing is comparison, specifically the comparison of words and phrases in the original language. The last post on this subject dealt with the limitations of word study.
In Genesis 3, when God cursed the ground on account of Adam, he assured Adam — and all those to be born of Adam — that under this new order of affairs which man had brought upon the world, his efforts to feed himself and his family would for the foreseeable future be accompanied by pain and sweat.
Naturally, being what he is, fallen man has spent the better part of the next six millennia trying to find ways to do an end-around God’s edict.
The most recent version of this post is available here.
“… so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”
“… we will all stand before the judgment seat of God.”
“… These [godless people] will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord.”
Okay, we’re now on step two of my posts on Worldview Analysis. This is actually the third post on the subject, since the first was a general introduction. Before reading any further, may I suggest you return to the first such post and pick up the thread of thought, if you have not been with us all along. If you don’t, I’m afraid you could find what I say a bit out of context.
Another instalment in the re-presentation of our 2013-2014 series about studying the Bible using methods deduced from the Bible itself. The series introduction can be found here and the previous post here.
Last post I concluded with the idea that the best interpreter of scripture is more scripture, as opposed to culture, history, political correctness and other external sources of meaning that we are often tempted to impose on the word of God. Our first Bible study tool is comparison.
This is the first instalment in the
A group of Sadducees once tried to convince Jesus by the use of an absurd hypothetical that resurrection of the dead is impossible. The Lord didn’t simply give them a lecture on his personal opinion or fall into the trap of answering their silly question. Instead, he referred them right back to the Old Testament that they professed to believe in order to correct their misunderstanding:
“Jesus answered them, ‘You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God.’ ”
“Have you not read what was said to you by God?” he asked, and proceeded to astonish them with a conclusion drawn from the use of the tense of the Hebrew equivalent of the verb “to be” in the book of Exodus.
“What is the difference between an archangel and a cherub?”
Whether we are talking about Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Protestant Christianity, Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy or even the cults, religious tradition has plenty to say about the more powerful angelic entities, their roles, descriptions, names and history. Most of what is written is conjectural. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s all wrong, but even accurate speculation is still just speculation. It has no authority for Christians.
So then, I will try to stick pretty close to the scripture on this one …
Studying the Bible is good for you.
Forgive me for stating the obvious. The late Christopher Hitchens would probably have disagreed, famously insisting “Religion poisons everything.” I could bob and weave and insist that Christianity isn’t really a religion properly speaking, but Christianity was certainly one of the targets, if not the main focus, of Mr. Hitchens’ ire.
But Christianity, properly understood and practised, doesn’t poison anything at all.
One attitude that seems to characterize nations on the brink of being judged, conquered and dispersed in scripture is an all-but-universal denial of the inevitable.
Jesus himself prophesied judgment on Israel. And yet the destruction of Jerusalem in AD70 was the direct result of the First Jewish Revolt against Roman rule, which had begun four years earlier. Large numbers of Jews simply couldn’t imagine losing to Rome despite the long odds. They were in absolute denial of reality. So the rebels gambled with the lives of their friends and families and lost, setting the stage for centuries of Jewish diaspora.
The most recent version of this post is available here.
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth … God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”
In my last post, I promised to say something further about worldviews. I noted that a thing called “Worldview Analysis” is gaining currency in Christian circles and well beyond. I said that I’ve found it a very helpful way of looking at life: one that provides some key answers to profound questions that all people have.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
Remember pet rocks? Five million of those useless things were sold in 1975-76. They were marketed to people with a droll sense of humor and no time or energy to devote to a real pet. Like any fad they quickly disappeared, but for a brief period of time the pet rock craze made the people who came up with the idea some serious money.
Professional magicians refer to the art of misdirection as “attention management”. I like that. The basic idea is to direct the eyes of one’s audience to one thing so they do not notice another.
That pretty much sums up how the word antisemitism is being used today. It has become the favorite attention management device of con artists and people with unsavory agendas.