IN READING THE BIBLE:
WE MUST BE LIKE DETECTIVES,
LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE!
IN READING THE BIBLE:
WE MUST BE LIKE ‘DETECTIVES’
LOOKING FOR EVIDENCE!
JAN LILLEBY
For a starter: I haven’t seen a Bible student yet, who has not made errors; regardless of whether they are laymen or ministers.
In short, we ALL make mistakes when trying to find the right clues and advice in Scripture.
One can be very excellent in one particular topic, but making severe mistakes in another topic.
I shall be using a few number of examples on how we may get along in a better way, trying to avoid embarrassing mistakes when we study the Bible.
Studying the Bible actually requires quite a bit of detective work from us. We can’t afford to bump along…taking things at random, or worse: reading the Bible without paying attention to the context. In Greek language, particularly, it is of essence to know that context is crucial to the reader to be able to understand properly what is written. This is because Greek uses words that can mean at least two different things. An example: The word for salvation – zozo – means to be rescued from an accident, or to recover from an illness, but it also means to be eternally saved. To find the proper meaning, we must find the context.
The English reformer and Bible translator Miles Coverdale, wrote a much correct advice in this regard,
"It shall greatly help to understand scripture if thou mark, not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, to whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, and with what circumstances, considering what goes before and what follows."
I highly recommend this advice!
STARTING WITH THE OBVIOUS
In using detection-methods when reading the Bible, we must learn to begin with the obvious. I will use a few examples of such method.
I recall in an email discussion with a fellow believer abroad, we had the Flood of Noah ‘on the desk’: Was it a local or a global flood?
I have written an article on this subject, for those interested…but I did not use our discussion as any argument in that article.
My personal standing is: The flood was local – like – it only came upon the Middle East and then some. But it was NOT a global flood.
Why so?
For one: The Ark of Noah was around 150 meters long, and there it not a chance that such a vessel ever could hold two animals of each kind, from around the whole globe!
Secondly: Serious science can confirm to us all that if the whole globe was covered by water, it would have taken much longer than just 150 days (5 months!) to have all the flood water disappear. It would at least have taken decades, maybe centuries to evaporate.
Gen. 8:3, NASB, “and the water receded steadily from the earth, and at the end of one hundred and fifty days the water decreased”.
Thirdly: The enormous distances certain species would have to walk, in order to be able to entering the Ark, makes it entirely impossible for them to get there in time. In fact, they would not get there at all, time or no time: They would have perished along their journey, from lack of food, lack of HELP, lack of strength. To make it easier for you to understand, a Jaguar or an Anaconda in the Amazon River, Brazil, would have to have swam across the Atlantic Ocean….they wouldn’t stand a chance. The Penguins in the Antartic/South Pole, and the Polar Bear in Arctic – the same thing with those; no chance at all. Can you imagine two Penguins walking and swimming all the way from Antartica up to the Middle East landscapes…a journey of some 14 000 kilometers? They would have died not long after they had left their habitats!
I am just pointing to a few OBVIOUS and very basic facts of life on earth in regard to animal life. And additionally we have to put in the fact of TIME: Noah was given just 7 days to gather these animals mentioned. It would have been impossible for any species in Antarctica and Arctic to make the Middle East in just seven days! Comprende??? Even Giraffes and Rhinos down in Africa would not have been able to make it to the Middle East. These facts are OBVIOUS to anyone who has some brains in their head.
It clearly says of the ones called/guided into the Ark, that they came by themselves two and two. Even birds came flying as well. Miraculous moves of God, thus making them obey His will and plan of rescuing. But He did NOT send angels to lift them up and carry them there. They came all by themselves, and it was not in God’s plan to have animals from far, far away. He only rescued those who would eventually have been threatened by this local flood.
Conclusion: There was NO GLOBAL WATER FLOOD – the one described in Genesis 7-8. It was limited. We come to this shortly.
But we have to read the Bible in a mindset of investigation and detection. Don’t be a lazy slob when you read your Bible.
THEN COMES THAT WHICH IS NOT OBVIOUS,
NAMELY THE BIBLICAL FACTS
When diving into Genesis 7 we MUST understand each and every sentence, word and contexts all together. There are no short-cuts to be taken.
When a ‘sleepy Bible student’ read Gen. 7, a major mistake is to take short-cuts. They only think of the flood as something which had to do with a heavy extreme rain fall.
Gen. 7:10-12, NASB,
“10 It came about after the seven days, that the water of the flood came upon the earth.
11 In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.
12 The rain fell upon the earth for forty days and forty nights.”
But as we now can see from text, not only did it fall a mighty rain, but ALL the fountains of the great deep burst open. This ‘great deep’ is nothing less than the Mediterranean Ocean. The sea floor cracked open…and billions and billions of cubic meters of water came from underneath. It rained from above and it came up water from below! And BOTH of these factors were working to make this flood. Not just the rain fall. Be a detective, do some reasoning and also using logic.
In the Book of Enoch as well as Book of Jubilees, mention Noah and the flood. It says the ‘Seven fountains of the great deep’ let up water. And it even says that the ‘Flood came upon all the LAND OF EDEN’ – meaning that it flooded everything between the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Persia. The entire Middle East in olden times was called the Land of Eden. But the Eden in Gen.1 was in north-eastern Iraq, says historians.
What it means in technical/geological terms is simply that the land masses sunk down, as the rain poured down on top of that.
The best illustration I can give you, is to think of a football which gets a dent as it leaks air. The earth was given a substantial ‘dent’ in the surface in the Middle East regions, so much that it made the Ark strand on top of Mt. Ararat in Turkey. Five thousand meters above normal sea level.
In other words: God made a limited pool, a basin, so that the flood could not harm the rest of the planet. No need to fetch the animals of other continents, like Antarctic, South America and the likes. Noah had only to get the species already found in the vicinity of where he built the Ark. Simple and correct.
This thing, with the extreme flood, is but one of many incidents and topics found in the Bible. And I hope that this will help you to become much like a detective when reading it. Go scrutinizing and investigating the text to find what it tells us.
The waters not only evaporated after the flood, God sending strong winds, - but it was sucked down again back through these seven openings in the sea floor of the Mediterranean Ocean.
EVEN CERTAIN PASSAGES IN PAUL’S EPISTLE
TO THE COLOSSIANS CAN BE MISUNDERSTOOD
If we fail in using investigation methods reading Scripture, we risk promoting outright lies.
One second example I want to use, is what Paul declared in Col. 1:21-23, NASB,
“21 And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds,
22 yet He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach -
23 if indeed you continue in the faith firmly established and steadfast, and not moved away from the hope of the gospel that you have heard, which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, was made a minister.”
Now, dear fellow believers in Christ, I am living in Norway – so I can only investigate on my behalf as such. And I really did. I checked out all references regarding the time of the Grace Gospel of Paul when it came to us here up north.
It shows clearly that Jesus Christ was not presented here before around 850 CE – and it came by Catholic ministers.
So Paul really did NOT preach any Gospel here (nor did any other apostle) in the first century. Colossians was written around 63 CE as Paul sat in jail in Rome. And still: We find Paul saying of it “…which was proclaimed in all creation under heaven..” – during the ministry time of the apostle. So this saying or declaration must have been meaning all creation under heaven – WHERE PAUL WAS AT THAT TIME – had been told this Gospel of salvation. Not all of creation on earth, globally. We cannot possibly just flat out read this passage, and not also deduce the full meaning of it. We need very much to include the context!
This we can ‘transfer’ into the narrative told of the flood, which actually says …Gen. 7:10 “…and the water of the flood came upon the earth” - but as with Paul and all creation on earth, this water was never reaching the entire globe. Only the place and land where Noah had the Ark waiting to bring salvation. Namely, the Middle East – or as told in the Apocrypha, “…the whole land of Eden.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LEARNING FROM BELIEVERS
THAT KNOWS THE BIBLE MORE THAN YOU DO
This is a simple fact – a law of learning – that we must pay attention to believers who already have been trained in Biblical knowledge for decades. With time comes wisdom and knowledge.
A new convert cannot be expected to know so much regarding the Bible and the Faith Doctrine of the Gospel. It all takes time.
Acts 8:30-35, NASB, - and the eunuch of the Ethiopian court of Candace, is a very good example of this truth,
30 Philip ran up and heard him reading Isaiah the prophet, and said, "Do you understand what you are reading?"
31 And he said, "Well, how could I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
32 Now the passage of Scripture which he was reading was this: "HE WAS LED AS A SHEEP TO SLAUGHTER; AND AS A LAMB BEFORE ITS SHEARER IS SILENT, SO HE DOES NOT OPEN HIS MOUTH.
33 "IN HUMILIATION HIS JUDGMENT WAS TAKEN AWAY; WHO WILL RELATE HIS GENERATION? FOR HIS LIFE IS REMOVED FROM THE EARTH."
34 The eunuch answered Philip and said, "Please tell me, of whom does the prophet say this? Of himself or of someone else?"
35 Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning from this Scripture he preached Jesus to him.”
And it ends with the salvation of this officer of the Royal House of Ethiopia. He believed on Jesus it says. (v. 37).
He had read in the Book of Isaiah 53 and the prophecy of Jesus dying for our sins as a sacrificial lamb.
It is not entirely certain that the Ethiopian would have understood about Jesus if Philip had not been sent to the road where the chariot was rolling on its way back to Caesarea to board the ship for Africa.
One simply have to learn understanding from such believers that already knows Christ and the faith doctrine of the Christian Church…which to us is the doctrine we have gotten from Paul, namely the Ephesians and Colossians. The two prison epistles explaining to us the wonder of our Grace salvation by faith alone, and no works.
Eph. 2:8, 9, NASB,
“8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;
9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
I wish you the very best of luck in approaching Scripture with a mindset of a detective and investigator! Go for it!
Gracepano.com
