“You shall not murder.” -Exodus 20:13
Life is precious. Man is made in the image of God and as a result, all human life is God’s “image-bearer.” There is a reason why most societies have laws about taking a human life, but with any other animal, the laws are about doing it humanely. This commandment is also specific about the pre-meditated taking of life. It is not about lawful execution carried out by the government, not about war, and not about self-defense. Most governments know the difference. There was a recent case of a father who caught a man molesting his daughter. He beat up the man, who ended up dying. He wasn’t even charged of murder because he was protecting his home and his family. However, had he known this man had molested his daughter, and later went to this man’s house and killed him there, then it would have been murder, taking the law into his own hands.
This is one of the most basic commands that is nearly universal across cultures, except when it comes to certain rituals. Idolatry is perhaps the world’s #1 cause of murder in this world. More so than theft, gangs, drugs, rape, greed, jealousy, you name it; idolatry is the #1 reason why people commit murder. And here is the disturbing part: it’s a COMMAND in a number of idolatrous practices. Not all, but a number of them.
To be clear, all idolatry is a result of a Satanic lie to corrupt and violate anything God has established as being “good.” Man is made in the image of God, so our very existence reminds Satan of God every moment of every day. He hates us with pure raging hatred for no other reason than we remind him of God. So what does he do? He takes whatever he can use and every aspect of man to twist it and corrupt it and malign it so he can say, “That is what I think of God.” The taking of life, especially precious innocent life, gives the enemy an adrenaline power rush.
So how does idolatry play a role here? Many people murder for a variety of reasons, and not all idolatrous practices lead to murder. But all murder is a result of rejecting the true God and despising the life of an image-bearer of God. I can easily go the Jesus route and reference him saying: “If you hate your brother, you may as well be murdering him, because if you would be able to get away with it, you would do it” (my paraphrase). So on a generic level like this, we’ve all committed the plotting of murder or the thought of it. But I want to get more specific on this issue.
Islam is a religion of utter violence. It is known as a religion of the sword. It spreads by conquest and war, not by passing on its teachings to another. It is written in the Koran that if a foreigner were not to embrace and confess Islam, such a person is an infidel and is to be killed. The stories of Christians who live in Muslim-dominated countries being slaughtered for refusing to renounce Christ are harrowing and numerous. Why do they kill? Because their false religion tells them to.
Don Richardson wrote of the Sawi Tribe of Ira Jira and Papua New Guinea in his book Peace Child. One of their cultural norms was to see who could best befriend someone and then betray them, kill them, and cannibalize them. It was part of their religious practices, as is the case with many other animistic and jungle warrior tribes. Jim Eliot, Nate Saint, and three other friends were slain by the Acua Tribe of Ecuador and as depicted in the movie The End of the Spear. The murder of another tribe was common practice as well.
The Aztecs in particular were infamous for their practice of taking a “human sacrifice,” cutting out the heart of the person, and then throwing the still living body down the long stairs from the top of their temples. In these religious rites, murder - the intentional taking of a life - was commanded by the gods.
Ancient Israel shed a lot of innocent blood too. This wasn’t just a pagan practice of the jungle tribes. There was one god in particular whom God despised even more than Baal and Asherah, and that was Molech. The worship of Molech was singled out as being a great wickedness. Why? Because in the worship of Molech, the parents would take a newborn baby and place it on the metal plate of the idol. Then the idol’s belly was a furnace and when it heated up, the idol turned red from the heat and the baby was burned alive to the point of its blood and water boiling. I was talking with someone who mocked God by saying that God committed genocide (likely thinking of the Conquest of Canaan). So I asked how he would vote on a jury of a man who burned his baby to death like this and he said he’d give that man the death penalty. I told him this was part of the religious practices of that area. This was a brutal, sadistic murder and it was commanded by the idols.
The U.S. is guilty of a great amount of bloodshed, too. Molech is alive and well here in our country today, only instead of living newborns being sacrificed onto a metal plate, we have done EVEN WORSE. We instead rip apart babies piece by piece before they even get out of the womb. I’m not sorry about the graphic image; that is what happens in abortion. It’s even worse than burning the baby alive, not to mention the emotional and physical harm it does to the mother. But what is the ‘idol’ that commands abortion? I’ll tell you what it is: convenience. I understand that 97% of abortion cases are ultimately a matter of convenience: financial, will, comfort, desire to be a parent, whatever. Less than 3% of cases actually deal with rape, let alone a pregnancy with such complications that only mother or baby would survive. King Manasseh was the only king of Judah to commit this crime of putting his son through the fire of Molech and Judah’s doom and captivity was sealed. How much more so for us here in the U.S. when we’ve committed 63+ million murders on abortion alone? It gets worse.
If Israel would turn so far in the worship of these foreign gods to enjoy sexual promiscuity and to murder their own babies, seeking comfort, productivity, prosperity, and or power, how much more so do our own “elite” of this world do the same? I know enough about satanic rituals to know how in these rites, a “human sacrifice” (age is no limit) would be tortured physically and sexually to maximize the adrenaline and strength of the will to survive in the blood. Then the sacrifice would be cut or killed, and the blood dripped into chalices. The practitioners would then drink that blood in honor of the spirits and for the power of their victim. It’s happening today and not just by the “weird people.” Reports are coming out about this being regularly practiced by the elite in politics, music, Hollywood, etc. If you look at what is being produced by these industries, it should not surprise you if some of this is going on.
The only solution to all this is the Gospel. God has given us hope in all this, and He came to rescue us from all this mess. But in order for the Gospel message to do its work in our lives, we must get rid of our idols and put God back where he belongs. This is a difficult topic, but if we want to understand why God takes idolatry so seriously, this is part of it. Next week will be another difficult one because adultery is no laughing matter either.
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by Steve Risner
Last time, we began to discuss how we interpret Scripture, and if we need to use an external source to help shape our understanding of something, we cannot allow that external source to alter what the Bible says. That external source can fill in gaps or details but can never be used to change what the text clearly states. We discussed, in relation to this, that if the Bible provides a framework on a topic that external sources may be used, if necessary, to fill in the details but nothing more. Today we will look at the topic of interpreting Scripture and what a proper process for determining the original intent would look like. You can find much of this at this video by Bobby Madox.
The bottom line in this discussion is this: do you feel God is a competent communicator and was He successful in preserving His Word through the ages?
I would hope, as a believer, that one would agree that God is competent and perfectly capable of communicating what He wants us to know. If someone says they believe the Bible but do not believe in a 6-day creation about 6000 years ago, ask them, what God would have included in the Bible if He did create it in 6 days about 6000 years ago? Just because a claim is made that a portion of Scripture is ambiguous does not mean it is. The Genesis narratives on origins, the Flood, and the Tower of Babel up to Abraham are not ambiguous at all. They are written in such a way that they can be considered as or even more historical in its passages than other books like Kings, Samuel, or Chronicles, which are clearly historical narratives. It could hardly be clearer on the topic if origins.
On preservation, it has been well established for a very long time that the Bible has remained essentially unchanged throughout the centuries. The oldest sources maintain a nearly identical message to newer sources, showing us that there have been no real changes to the message of God’s Word. Most changes that can be noted are either copying errors or the changing of a name. No changes that have been documented appear to have any impact on doctrinal issues at all.
We discussed last time the difference between exegetical and eisegetical interpretations and how one of these is objective (exegesis) while the other is subjective (eisegesis). This brings us to which of these is a superior way to read the Bible. I hope it seems obvious that a more objective way is preferred since it would convey the real meaning the author wanted to bring out rather than what we want it to say. If we want to know what God intended to say to us, we must look at the writing objectively. Looking at it subjectively means we are not looking for what God intended but we are looking for the Biblical text to say what we want it to say. Looking at the text in a subjective fashion would mean we can make a passage of Scripture say anything we want it to. Sadly, this is too common these days.
One of the most subjective ways to view a passage of the Bible is to claim it is allegorical. Allegorical interpretations cannot be objective. In fact, it can be said that reading a passage as allegory, unless it specifically tells us that it is allegory with some sort of clue, is the most subjective way to interpret it. There is no way to confirm an allegory is the right way to interpret the text unless we make more assumptions. The more assumptions you read into the text, the less likely you are reading the text correctly.
When you read a passage of Scripture, I recommend using the plain reading of the text to tell you what it means. This is, of course, a general rule and not always applicable but it holds true most of the time. Language should be considered to mean what it commonly means. Understanding words by their common definitions would only make sense. If clarity is needed, use a dictionary that would give you the meanings of a word from the time of the writing. Sometimes, words have meanings that change over time. This is true of culture as well. It is important not to inject our cultural biases into the text. In the end, the meaning of a word, sentence, or paragraph should always be derived from the context within which it was written and not from some outside source unless this is the only way to make sense of the passage.
We should always interpret Scripture with Scripture. From within the confines of the Bible, we are usually able to determine a given passage’s meaning without external sources. As stated last week, those external sources can never be used to alter the clear meaning of the text but can only be used for clarification or for filling in details. If our interpretation creates a contradiction with another well-established passage of Scripture, this cannot be. An effort must be made to understand the contradiction and determine if it is real and, if it is, how to correct it reasonably with the least amount of assumption. This point cannot be overly stressed. We should generally interpret same or similar words, phrases, etc. in the same way from one passage to another. Of course, context may determine this does not work, but, again, this is a general rule. In instances where the text is very clear, external sources are inappropriate for determining meaning. Keep in mind that not all external sources are created equal. Some have much more credibility than others. Finally, the Law of Parsimony or “Occam’s Razor” is of utmost importance. This means the interpretation that involves the least number of assumptions or interpretive gymnastics is usually the right one.
Applying these rules (especially concerning context) to the origins discussion, we would have to agree that no one in the Bible and no passage of Scripture leads us to believe the Genesis account is anything but a historical narrative. No person from the Bible who speaks on a topic related to creation or the Flood indicates even slightly that they believed it was not a real series of events. None of the ten references of Jesus to creation contain any hint that the events were not to be considered actual events. There are well over 100 references to creation outside of the many references in Genesis that all seem to hang on the events described in Genesis 1 and 2 as real events. Every author of the New Testament references something from the first eleven chapters of Genesis. None of them discredit its historicity. In fact, the references only make sense if Genesis is real history. The New Testament references Genesis 1-11 over 100 times. All references in the Bible to the Flood, including four in the New Testament, appear to believe the Flood was a real event that destroyed the face of the earth. There are even some references to reshaping the earth’s surface. All references seem to think these events were real. Using this as a guideline for how we interpret Genesis 1 and 2 (or Genesis 1-11 since it is all under attack) would force us to believe that, if nothing else, the author of Genesis and everyone referenced in the Bible who speaks on Genesis believed it was giving us a credible historical account of the creation of the world and later a global catastrophe.
Let us not confuse the plain reading of Scripture with what some call literalism. Literalism means we read everything literally or exactly as it is stated. In some cases this is appropriate, but in a large number of instances, this is not the right way to read the text. Figures of speech, prophetic or poetic language, allegory/parables are all not to be read in this light, generally speaking. I know of no one who reads the entire Bible literally. I’ve seen many claims that Biblical creationists do this, but that’s absurd—usually a strawman argument. Some will refer to literalism as the historical-grammatical approach. This definition of literalism is much more agreeable to a point but is rarely what gets brought up in discussions with skeptics. This simply means we allow the text to be read considering its grammatical/word usage through the lens of the time and culture in which it was written. This does not mean we would radically change the text to say something it has never been considered to say. Too many want to inject their own beliefs into the Bible, making it say something that it clearly doesn’t.
In terms of the origins debate, we can easily point to the polemic hypothesis, which holds no water at all. Yet people still want to force the narrative to be an argument against other deities from the region and nothing more. Even at the surface this idea has no merit, but as you look more deeply into it, you find its arguments are exceptionally weak. There are other ways the Genesis narrative has been under attack for the last century or two. Sure, we have had some over the last two thousand years who have questioned certain aspects of the narrative, but never to the degree we see it today. And it is all in the name of “science” (which is not true really; it’s in the name of humanism or secularism or both).
We must be diligent to not allow our desires, beliefs, or preconceived ideas to dictate what the Bible says. We must also be diligent to not allow external sources to determine the primary message the Bible has in any particular passage. The Bible is a love story from start to finish. God is telling us He loves us over and over while humanity pushes Him away. He even goes so far as to sacrifice His own Son to pay our debt, one which we could never pay, so we can be with Him and have a relationship with Him. In my opinion, this is the absolute most important message from the Bible. However, this message is built on the fact that God made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them in six days as He said He did in Genesis and Exodus. If He didn’t create everything, why does He have authority to tell us anything? If He didn’t make man special, in His image, why does He require something from man He does not require from dogs or mushrooms or elephants or green star polyps? Nearly every major Christian doctrine has its origins in Genesis. These only make sense in light of the account being considered a narrative—a series of real events that took place about 6000 years ago. I say the time is important because God has revealed in His Word when He created Adam. This isn’t some new idea just recently brought out by those stupid “young-earth creationists.” We are Biblical creationists because we stand on the Bible as our source for truth regarding origins. I do not care at all about the age of creation beyond the fact that the Bible tells us when this happened. Aside from that, it is nothing more than a detail. The age of the universe is critical for the secular humanist origins myth; it matters very little to a Bible believer. For centuries, scientists viewed creation through the lens of the Biblical narrative on origins. It was not until recently that secular humanism gained access to the Church as a whole and scientism hijacked real science and Christianity/the Bible.
I hope this helps you see the Bible, and specifically what it says concerning origins, from the perspective of a Biblical creationist. In reality, the idea of how we should interpret Scripture is very useful for all believers. It is critical for us to know what God intended to convey to us through His timeless Word. Thank you for reading.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
What is salvation? As followers of Jesus Christ, we tend to put a lot of emphasis on salvation, but what exactly is it? That’s what we’ll look into today as we dig into soteriology, the study of salvation.
Specifically, soteriology deals with the divine work of God to bring His Creation, especially humanity, to enjoy His divine purpose in our existence. Why can’t we do that without Him? We as people were created in perfection and in God’s image, but the first people sinned, and that sin has continued to separate all of humanity from God’s perfect presence ever since (see Anthropology and Hamartiology for more on that). Because we as humans were disobedient to God, we need Him to save us from that disobedience and restore a right relationship with Him.
All Christians agree that salvation has to do with Jesus Christ and the “cross event,” but many can differ on the details of how and why salvation happens. The “cross event” refers to Jesus, who was both fully human and fully God, died an actual death and was raised to life again on the 3rd day. What actually happened during that remains a mystery; what exactly occurred in those days when Jesus was dead? What was that experience like for Jesus as a person to be raised again by God the Father? We really don’t know, and that’s ok.
The essential part of the cross event is to know that it happened. It was part of God’s plan for humanity to provide salvation for all of us sinful humans through the cross event, and we simply need to trust that it occurred in such a way that God has fulfilled that promise to save all of humanity. God had promised that as early as Genesis 3:15, right after the first humans sinned: “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” God will crush Satan’s head and forever defeat death through the work of Jesus Christ.
I love how this quote from 16th-century theologian Martin Luther summarizes why Jesus Christ died: “Christ does not die for the attainment of a personal benefit, for He does not die for us in order thereby to gain a great profit and benefit from us for Himself. Nor does He die in order to satisfy the claims of justices, for He is not obliged or bound to die either for us or for Himself. But He does die for the sake of our sins that He may help us. The great, unending love He bears us moves Him to die for us.”
This is also explained in John 3:16-17: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” This makes it clear that God loved “the world” (every person who has ever lived or will ever live), and Jesus was sent to earth to save the whole world. God desires for all to be saved; we see this in 1 Timothy 2:3-4: “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
Everyone has the potential to be saved, but we need to call on the name of the Lord in order to be saved. We even see this in the Old Testament, in Joel 2:32: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said, even among the survivors whom the Lord calls.” This passage is quoted by the apostle Paul in Romans 10:13. Just before that, Paul tells us exactly what we need to do to be saved: “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved” (Romans 10:9-10).
There are lots of theories that are supported by various theologians that attempt to explain what occurs in the cross event and how we obtain salvation. However, none of them can be proven to us this side of heaven since no one knows the mind of God. You can check out this article to get a brief summary of 7 of the primary theories of atonement.
The other aspect of soteriology is known as the ordus salutis, literally “order of salvation.” This refers to the way in which events happen in the process of a person experiencing salvation. For example, Lutheranism teaches that salvation is by grace alone, and that grace is received at baptism. The person is dead in his or her sins and can do absolutely nothing in order to be saved; the work is all done by the Holy Spirit. The Arminian view, however, is one that allows the person to make a decision to follow Christ and be saved, though the work of salvation is still performed by God. The primary difference here is whether God is the sole agent in salvation, or if there is a cooperation between people and God in this act.
The Scriptures are not clear on the details of how salvation occurs in an individual and they can be interpreted in many ways, so personally, I find it difficult to take a solid stance on this issue aside from the fact that salvation has to do with faith in Christ and the free gift of grace that God gives us. We can be assured that when we have faith in Jesus Christ and His saving death and resurrection, we will be saved. This is not something we earn by our good works, but a gift that God has given us.
“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:4-9).
Do you have that faith in Christ that you have received His salvation? We don’t need to have all the details figured out, but simply have faith that Jesus’ death and resurrection are what is needed to restore our right relationship with God. If you have not yet received this gift of salvation through faith, please contact us at Worldview Warriors and we would love to talk with you!
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”
“Honor your father and your mother…” -Exodus 20:8, 12
As I continue my series on idolatry and how it violates all ten of the Ten Commandments, these two are the only two they really didn’t play much of a role in the worship of idols or the rituals involved in the practices. There are issues involved, but they don’t stand out as much as the other commandments.
It is important to recognize that in every idolatrous practice, there is some corruption of what God has instituted, and the 7-day week is no exception. Israel routinely gave it lip service, but they truly didn’t honor it. Along with the 7-day week, God extended the lesson regarding the land that every seven years the people were to let the land grow fallow so it could rest and be restored. The captivity lasted for 70 years because for 490 years, Israel had not honored the Sabbath in regards to the land. That included through the reign of good kings like David, Jehoshaphat, and Hezekiah. But was it idolatrous to do this? Actually, and I state clearly that this is just my opinion on this matter, I suspect idolatry led to this.
The purpose of the Sabbath was primarily two-fold. The first purpose is to rest the body and mind and let it recover. Science has revealed that the 6-day work week and 1-day rest is the best way for someone to be productive over any other structure. When groups like Russia and France tried to implement a 10-day week or a five-day week, they ended in utter failure. The second purpose was to remember God. While we are supposed to think about God continually, it is this Sabbath day in which we are specially meant to focus on God. Every 7th day, Israel was meant to remember God, what He had done for them, who He was, and think and dwell upon Him. Yet, we can see from how readily and how frequently Israel had turned to idols that very little remembrance of God took place. In the worship of idols, we forget God and any religious practices we do become nothing but meaningless rituals of vain repetition, completely devoid of their intended purpose.
The Sabbath is violated today ,too. And I’m not talking about Saturday vs Sunday. That’s for a whole separate debate. I’m talking about how today, there is a direct assault on the Creation week. Some may say I’m being petty here, but I do not take the clarity of Scripture as being a petty issue. Was the Creation week 6 normal days, or long periods of time, or what? How you take this may reveal if your understanding of God is accurate or a figment of your imagination, and thus an idol. Is God able to clearly communicate what He said and how He did things or not? Those who question the 6-day creation week argue from a position that Genesis 1 cannot be understood, which is a post-modern approach, not a Biblical one.
The “Progressive Christian” leaders make a big emphasis that the Bible gives more questions than answers and they purpose to teach that answers can’t be known. I ask this: “If Genesis 1 cannot be known, how can God be known? Or Jesus? Or the cross? Or salvation?” I have come to believe that those who fully believe “Old Earth” creation models do not worship the same God as described in the Bible and have made a god (idol) of their own liking which changes and conforms to the winds and waves of modern scientific models, and I’ll take anyone up to task on that. Clarification: there are true born-again believers who do hold to “old earth creation” models, but in their thinking and their studying, the old earth models truly have little to do with it and are hardly ever to be seen. So those people actually don’t believe the “old earth models.”
The other commandment I’ll address here is the 5th Commandment: Honor your mother and father. This one I really couldn’t find a direct connection to, which is why I will make this part quick and undeserving of a full post. While we are to honor our parents, those who gave us birth, and whom by instinct to want the best for us (there are numerous exceptions to this), how much more so should we honor our Father in Heaven, our Creator? If we turn to other idols, are we honoring God?
But this command is specifically about our earthly mother and father. There are many children who did “honor” their mother and father by participating in the idolatrous practices with them. See Jeremiah 7:17-19 for a direct example of this. They were being obedient and doing what their parents asked. How is that not ‘honoring thy mother and father’? When your parents have gone so far as to ask you to do something that is wrong, at what point do you honor them or do you speak up and say, “How can I do such a wicked thing?” Not having pagan parents myself, it’s hard for me to give an appropriate answer to that.
What I will say is this: if you are going to commit sin, even if your parents are asking you to do it, you are not honoring them. You are not honoring the position God gave them. You are caving to wickedness, and in the end, it will be your conscience that will be cut, not for disobeying your parents, but for disobeying God. And unfortunately, wicked parents will pull this command on their kids to get them to participate in evil deeds. Idolatry is no exception.
Now what about those who were raised in a Christian home and taught the ways of God and the child goes wayward? Chances are high that said child has another ‘god’ he/she is listening to and in that case, idolatry has come into play and leads to a dishonoring of the mother and father. Hezekiah had cleaned out all the idols in Judah, but his son Manasseh became the most idolatrous king of Judah. Though Manasseh was only 12 years old when he became king, he dishonored his father by turning to the very idols that his father destroyed well before he was even born. In this case, we see idolatry leading to the breaking of the 5th Commandment.
Idolatry doesn’t just mess with our relationship with God. It messes with our relationships with others as well. If our sins violate our vertical relationship with God, how much more will it violate our horizontal relationships with our own kind? Here we see how both are violated. As I continue my series, we’ll see how idolatry produces even greater evil in our dealings with men as I go through the rest of the “horizontal” commandments. Next week, I’ll examine murder.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
by Steve Risner
In a discussion about doctrine, the question of how we interpret a passage of Scripture is generally brought up. There are many different groups who feel that a certain interpretation of a particular passage is correct while others are incorrect. How do we know which interpretation is correct? How can we tell if one is probably wrong? I’d like to begin to explore that a bit today.
I am a Biblical creationist. This means my beliefs on our origins and the origins of the universe are founded in reading what the Bible says about it. I do not allow external sources to influence what I think the Bible says about this where the Bible specifically speaks on it. But there are certainly details or even entire topics regarding origins that the Bible doesn’t specifically speak on. In these instances, we would not allow an external source to alter what the Bible states, but we can use external sources to supply us with details, keeping in mind these details are subject to change as they are not written in the Word of God and may not be accurate.
For instance, if we are talking about whether or not there was a global Flood that destroyed all land-dwelling and air-breathing animals on earth except a small number of animals and humans that were saved on the Ark, we would have to agree the Bible is fairly clear that this happened. It is even fairly clear on when it happened. However, the Biblical text does not talk about massive graves of organisms that were buried all at once or huge sedimentary layers laid down during this deluge. We can assume, probably quite accurately, that this would happen, but the Bible does not speak specifically of it. We also do not have details on exactly what went on with continental drifting, mountain range formation, uplifting, or ocean creation. However, if we are to use external sources to help guide our thoughts on these ideas, we must be sure we do not allow those external sources to change what the Bible does say about the event. In other words, the Bible may provide a framework for something and where there are holes or left out details, we can use external sources to fill in the gaps, being diligent to not allow those sources to alter the framework the Bible has provided.
So how do we interpret the Bible in general and, in particular, the book of Genesis and other places where origins are discussed? What I believe is the best way to do this is called the “plain reading” or “natural reading” of the text. This is not reading it “literally,” and I’ll explain why later. In short, we allow the passages to tell us what they tell us. We allow them to speak for themselves without injecting our own desires or biases into it. Reading the text “naturally” would mean that if the passage presents itself as a historical narrative, we assume it’s a historical narrative. If the passage presents itself as poetry, we read it as such, but we also understand that poetry can talk about real people and events and be accurate as it does so. If it tells us it is allegorical or a parable, we read it as such. Books of wisdom should be taken as that and so on.
If how we interpret a passage of Scripture seems to contradict another passage of Scripture, we need to remedy this. It is usually not terribly difficult to do, but this can be a challenge on occasion. It could mean we need to reevaluate the passage we are looking into. It could mean we need to take another look at the passage we may seem to be contradicting. However, it is also very important to be sure the apparent contradiction is actually a contradiction. Sometimes we may think something looks like a problem at first glance, but upon further evaluation and after looking at the details a bit more deeply, we can see that the contradiction was just apparent and not real. This is actually pretty common, I think.
Here is just one example of this, but hopefully the reader can figure out others if they run across them in the future. The Bible tells us that Jesus would be, like Jonah in the belly of a fish (Matthew 12:40), in the grave for 3 days and nights. But Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is not 3 days and nights by our reckoning, is it? Luke 24:7 tells us this was the case—that Jesus rose on the 3rd day. There are several different explanations for this some have put forth over the centuries. I think the simplest way to remedy this apparent contradiction is to understand how the Jews counted days. A clue is found in Esther 4:16. Here we see Esther will fast for three days and three nights, but she actually approaches the king before the third night. Following our rules for counting the days, she would have had to wait until the fourth day to fulfill this command. Is this a contradiction? Not if we understand that Jews counted days differently than we do. A day actually ends (so the next begins) at sundown. So, Friday starts on Thursday night. However, even part of a day, if it’s before sundown, is counted as the whole day. So, while a passage may appear to be contradictory on the surface, sometimes it’s because we need to understand something about the culture or times or have more details about it. This does not give us license to completely alter a passage. This is often done in the name of following what was known at the time of the writing or something like that. This is not good and makes God out to be some sort of incompetent communicator. He is not.
A common problem today is that people bring their outside sources to the Bible and force the Bible to fit those sources. I believe the Biblical creationist does this to the least degree although, like anyone, it is possible we do interpret things based on our biases. However, if our foundation is to accept what the Word tells us and utilize that as a framework for the rest of our beliefs, it is much more difficult to allow external sources to change what the Bible is telling us. This is called exegesis vs eisegesis (more on that here). One is drawing out from the Word what it is telling us (exegesis) while the other is inserting in what we want or feel the text should say based on something from outside the Bible (eisegesis). Again, we must understand that the Bible does not give details about every last miniscule happening. However, this should not give us license to radically change what a passage says because we have found some external source that, while fallible and likely to change, is at odds with what the Bible tells us. External sources are fine to use, but they cannot ever cause us to rewrite what a well-established interpretation of a passage is saying. The truth is, for thousands of years both Jews and Christians alike have understood the creation account in Genesis to be a real series of events that occurred over 6 days and that the timeline is well spelled out for us to understand when Adam was created.
We are not talking about something like geocentrism here or something like that. While people may have had strong opinions on them, those types of things are not specifically stated in Scripture. The Bible does not tell us that the earth is at the center of our solar system or galaxy or universe. In fact, it does not mention the topic at all or earth’s location in physical space. Some may point to a belief in geocentrism and the conflict that arose when Galileo (I realize that Copernicus had a lot to do with this but Galileo had a pretty serious go of things with the Catholic Church over geocentrism) announced he believed the earth was not at the center of the solar system. They may say that this is a great example of allowing modern science to change how we interpret the text. But, this is nothing like this at all because the Biblical text makes no claims as to the specific design of the universe. Someone may have determined that the sun, stars, and planets revolved around us, but this isn’t brought out of Scripture. This means no newer, more accurate interpretation was needed.
I hope you as a reader understand this. We are not talking about something not specifically stated in the Bible. We are talking about something outlined in detail in the Word of God when we discuss origins and even when creation occurred. No external source should be allowed to completely disfigure the portions of Scripture that focus on origins or the Flood. If we are talking about something not specifically stated in Scripture, we might have more room to not be so rigid in our beliefs.
Next time, we will look at this in more detail as I feel it is an important topic. The “that’s your interpretation” argument needs to be put in its place. On occasion, it might be a reasonable defense, but often it is not at all. Thanks for reading.
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by Chad Koons
“Come as you are” is such a welcoming invitation. Thank God that I could come to Jesus just as I was. But the best news came after this invitation, sort of a necessary next step, and it’s something that seems to have been removed from modern-day Christianity. Many have forbidden it, calling it insensitive. It’s been banned from most of our churches, especially from progressive Christianity, and it’s becoming increasingly unpopular amidst conservative congregations. I would wager that 9 out of 10 self-proclaimed Christians cannot even define it.
What is this forbidden next step?
“REPENT!”
Did that word in capital letters make you feel unsettled? I hit that nerve on purpose; I know that it sounds jarring, cold, and commanding. Perhaps it summons unpleasant memories, recalling someone from our past who seemingly wielded repentance as a hammer against us. For some, it is reminiscent of “old time religion,” a relic from a harsh, ignorant past that we’ve progressed from.
Yet properly understood, repentance is the best news that you can ever hope to receive. It means that you don’t need to be stuck in cycles of sin, but that you can finally be free!
Before I had repented, my life was filled with ungodliness. I had been a liar and a cheater. I had surrounded myself with friends who were even worse off than I was. I had begun involvement with drugs and alcohol. I had gotten pretty deep into witchcraft, satanism, and the occult. All the while, I was going to church and still considered myself a Christian in spite of my ungodly life. Yet in my heart I knew that I was not truly a follower of Jesus and I wanted to change, I just didn’t know how. The Father was leading me to repentance, but no one around me had the knowledge or courage to help me get there. Even worse, many Christians around me were comforting me by affirming my sin!
I was part of a massive problem that is still plaguing the church. God help us, we have created generations of self-proclaimed Christians who have never truly repented of their sin. Maybe we felt sorry for our sin, maybe we modified bits of our behavior for a short while, maybe our remorseful emotions caused a tiny change or two, but it could not last. Christianity without repentance is worse than fantasy; it’s delusion. It’s a delusion that has gripped the hearts of millions through our failing churches who have pandered to our emotional states rather than the saving of our souls.
Like little kids trying to play with a new toy yet lacking the required batteries, “Christians” have been playing with the idea of faith in Jesus without ever including the repentance necessary to get it going. We should have known; I mean it’s literally spelled out for us, had we bothered to read it: “(Repentance not included. Full repentance required).”
What is repentance? Quite simply, repentance means to change the way you think, to change your will and mindset. It’s a decision to serve the Lord with everything in your life. Repentance is also “to turn around,” stop moving in your current direction, turn backwards, and begin walking down a new and different path, to turn from sin and towards the Lord. Repent and believe. I believe that faith is impossible without repentance. Repentance is the very doorway to faith. You can never be a disciple of Jesus without repentance. To repent and believe is the Biblical order.
Don’t take my word for it, take His Word:
Repentance is necessary for acceptance by the Lord. Come out from among the sinners and be accepted by Him. (2 Corinthians 6:17)
Repentance is so important that it was the first message that Jesus ever preached! Jesus commanded them to repent. (Matthew 4:17)
Repentance is so important that it was also the first message of the early church! Peter told them to repent. (Acts 2:37-39)
Repentance from sin is a required action, as maintaining a sinful lifestyle will exclude you from God’s Kingdom. (Galatians 5:19-21)
Repentance from sin is foundational, it is the first mentioned of the “basic principles” of God. (Hebrews 5:12-6:1)
Repentance is a proof that we know the Lord. (1 John 2:3-6)
Repentance is commanded by the Lord. (Acts 17:30-31)
Now that we understand what repentance is, we can do something about it.
“Come as you are,” yes, amen, and thank God that He allows us to approach Him while still in our sin! He is not afraid of our mess. But thank God that He loves us too much to keep us there! He changes our lives, if we let Him. What does true repentance look like? We take a look at Biblical repentance in the follow up post, “(Repentance Not Included) Part 2” next time.
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Just over 7 years ago, I wrote a blog post titled “Who Is Jesus?” which focused on the humanity and divinity of Jesus. The nature of who Jesus is has not changed, of course, but for today’s post, my focus will be more on the study of Christology. Christology is the study of who Jesus Christ is - His person and work, the relationship between Jesus and the Trinity as a whole, the two natures of Christ, and the roles of Christ.
We know Jesus to be the person who walked on the earth a few thousand years ago, but Jesus actually existed before the creation of the world (John 1:1-3). Jesus did not exist in a human body until He was born on earth, but because Jesus is God and God does not change, Jesus always existed as a human in some way and had awareness of His human nature. This is one of those areas that we can’t comprehend well with our human minds, how Jesus was human yet not yet human at the same time. We don’t know how the Word was made flesh; we just need to believe that He was.
Some believe that Mary had to be sinless in order for Jesus to be born from her and also be sinless. However, Mary was a regular human person born of sinful parents, so how could she be sinless? (Last week, I wrote about hamartiology, the study of sin; refer back to that post for more on the sinfulness of humanity.) To reconcile this, Reformation theologian Martin Luther believed that the Holy Spirit purified Mary in the moment of conception so that Jesus would not inherit the poison of sin, even though Jesus would inherit the human nature that gave Him the potential to sin. Again, the details of how this actually worked remain a mystery to our finite human minds.
The person of Jesus is both fully human and fully God. How does that work? The theological name for this teaching is the hypostatic union, which was developed at the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451. This doctrine states that Jesus has a “rational soul and a body, being of one substance with us in relation to his humanity, and is like us in all things apart from sin.” Jesus’ divine and human natures are without confusion, change, division, or separation. This, again, is a paradox to our human minds. We are unable to fully understand how any person can fully be two things that are in tension with one another; perfectly God yet fully human with the potential for sin, all at the same time.
Jesus is a full person of the Trinity, as I discussed previously. Even though we commonly refer to Jesus as the “second” person of the Trinity, there’s no hierarchy among the Godhead. What is true of God the Father is also true of Jesus the Son and also true of the Holy Spirit. They are all distinct persons with distinct functions, yet still one united God. Even though Jesus ascended to heaven and is no longer on this earth in bodily form, He did not cease to exist. His presence still resides with us. Jesus still has his human body, yet He is still a full part of God in the Trinity. As seems to be the theme of Christology, this, too, is a paradox that our minds can’t fully understand.
The main work of Jesus Christ is salvation for humanity through His death and resurrection. These events fulfilled the prophecies made about Him in the Old Testament as well as the prophecies He made of Himself as recorded in the Gospels during His earthly ministry. After His resurrection, Jesus began His reign on the throne of heaven over all nations, and He is the one high priest who reigns over all the world.
The primary roles of Jesus coming to earth were to serve as the mediator between God and mankind and to bring us salvation. Our sin separated us from God, and we need Jesus to bridge that gap in our relationship. Jesus is shown to be our mediator in 1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” Jesus shows His dual role of mediator and bearer of our salvation in Hebrews 9:15: “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”
Who is Jesus? Jesus is the Christ. He is the one who is both fully God and fully human at the same time, who lived a life without sin, who willingly died for us to bridge the gap that we created between ourselves and God with our sin. Put your faith in Jesus today so that you can experience the reward of what Jesus has done for us - eternal life with Him forever!
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
