The Embarrassment of Riches (Part 1)

An embarrassment of riches? (of his glory) – Part 1
or
The embarrassment of wretches! (Into the lake of fire) – Part 2

Note please the question mark at the end of the first phrase above and the exclamation point at the end of the second. It’s important to the story, the purpose of the ages and the end of all things, as we know it. Think I’ve overstated my approach to this wee Biblical blog?

Not really, since we as Christians have a Commission greater than the one Jesus gave to his Jewish disciples in Matthew 28. Yes, we are certainly to go preach and teach the Word (Jesus’ word was “gospel”) to all the people on the planet (Jesus’ “nations” which literally meant “Gentiles” (only)) and yes we are indeed (in a way) the “disciples of Jesus” (term used only once in Scripture of Joseph of Arimathaea being such a one (John 19:38)). But what about the commission in Ephesians 3:9-11; what do we do with that?

Even to make plain to everyone the dispensation of this secret, which for ages
past was kept hidden in God, who created all things. His intent was that
now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should
be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms, according to his eternal purpose which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Now, the subject has changed, the object has changed and the message might be a bit extraordinary. The subject is not the “disciples of Jesus” except in some stretched circumstance that says all Christians are his disciples (I call this the cosmic meaning of “disciple” which word in simplicity only means “one who is taught”…by anyone). The subject is “the church” and in this day and time it’s not the one Jesus was talking about in Matthew 16:18 upon which rock Jesus was doing the building, except in some stretched (again, cosmic) circumstance that says all Christians are in the “church which is his body” and we are growing (building?) up into him in all things. Are you all following this?

Let’s talk dispensational turkey can we? Christians are not specifically the disciples of Christ. Yes we can “learn” from Jesus, in the sense that he’s giving revelation even at this time, but we are actually “members in particular” of his body, the church. It’s a symbolic body (some like the term “mystical”, but that has connotations that stretch the figure in a wrong direction, IMHO) where the church on earth has “eyes” and “ears” and “feet” (just read 1 Corinthians 12: 12-27) and Jesus is (presently) it’s “head” (Colossians 2:19). The church of Moses (see Acts 7:38) and the church of Jesus on earth and the church in the Apocalypse have their own symbology delineating them. We as the “body” church are a bit different. We actually have an “upward” and greater calling. The language of the Church is more elevated, more extravagant.

Back to our story…the object of our gospel proclamations are no longer “the nations” of the world, but rather “everyone” (highlighted in the first phrase) and “the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (highlighted in the last phrase). Quite a change you must admit. And why, you might ask, are we to “make plain the dispensation of the secret”?

You might further ask why we are dealing on such intimate terms with the occupants of the heavenly realm? Good question, I’m glad you asked…I don’t exactly know (perfectly) yet (in my adolescent Christian existence), but I’m thinking it has a lot to do with the second part of my essay. So just hold on there till I can write it.

Finally, the substance of our pronouncements is “the manifold wisdom of God”. How does one start to explain this? It has to do with the purpose of all the ages; both this one and “the age to come” (as well as former ages in which mankind was not). It has to do with a war in heaven between Michael and the dragon that will occur in the future.

The “riches of his (God’s) glory” (Ephesians 3:16) are an astounding birthright that has been made available to us (only) in this day and time.
In Part 2 of this short assignment I’ll open the book on the wretches.

What Did Jesus Know?

What did Jesus know?

The question of what Jesus knew about the future at the time of the Olivet Discourse has been on my mind lately. Not only am I writing a chapter of a book on it, but people have been asking me about this section of Scripture ever since I became a believer way back in the early 70’s. Indeed, I was intrigued by the speech the first time I read it and throughout Seminary.

What we find in the parallel Gospel records of the discourse (Matthew 24, 25; Mark 13 and Luke 21) can be off-putting to the logical reader. It appears that Jesus has predicted something that did not come to pass (“Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.”). Maybe it’s the eschatological language that’s used there, maybe it’s that predictions themselves can be enigmatic, but studious Christians want to know what’s going on. If this verse was not enough, how do reasonable Christians read the following and not get confused? “And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power.” (Mark 9:1) As I've said to many friends of mine over the years; either there are a lot of very old people in Palestine today or Jesus was mistaken.

I got interested in these eschatological chapters when Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, wrote about them all those years ago. That late 60’s book was like the Left Behind series today in it’s media driven exposure and in its focus on the “end of the age” time period. In fact, both books are theologically derived from the dispensational viewpoint of Scripture, in which school I count myself a student. It’s exegesis was as confusing back then as it is to most Christians today.

Hal set forth a bizarre set of circumstances regarding the “end times” and asked his readers to look around themselves (at that time, circa 1970) and see if they see the conditions of what Jesus was describing. As naïve as I was, theologically, I bought into some of the hype and circumstance and began to peddle the wares of the end-time dispensationalist: “The end is near, repent and save yourselves; we’re gonna be in a maelstrom soon”!

The problem was, I couldn’t “put it all together” exegesis-wise. There were too many disparate interpretations out there about the “wars and rumors of war”, false messiahs and the love of people growing cold. And this is where many Christians have blown it in the “lack of logic” area.

1. They don’t take Jesus at his word. Not only did he say what I mentioned above about his return, but he also said, “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:28).

2. They aren’t curious about Daniel the prophet and what he said about the time Jesus spoke of (Do you realize that Daniel was given information that pinpointed Jesus’ first coming and his second?).

3. Finally (and this is surely the silliest…), they apply to Christians things spoken to Jews (as if there wasn’t any difference…I hear my seminary professor even today, “Oh, we’re all the people of God…”. He couldn’t interpret his Bible either).

Do you know what C. S. Lewis said about Matthew 24:34? "It is certainly the most embarrassing verse in the Bible." I agree! You have to be just plain stupid not to take the Son of God at his word, but embarrassingly enough, most Christians can’t conceive that Jesus didn’t know something. And that’s all we have before us in the texts. Jesus proclaimed a coming “great tribulation”, which Daniel says would last seven (7) years and he didn’t know what his Father had up his proverbial sleeve. If Biblical chronology had continued unchecked by an inserted time period then Jesus’ words would have come to pass as spoken.

But there was a secret “dispensation” that God introduced into His purposes; a wisdom that had been hidden “from ages and generations”, “not made known unto the sons of men”, that was “hid in God” and subsequently “by revelation made known” unto Paul and the other “holy apostles and prophets”.

Daniel’s “time of trouble” (Daniel 12:1), that “great tribulation” Jesus spoke of during the final days of his first visit to earth, will come to pass. It will be the “time of Jacob’s trouble” as the prophet Jeremiah said (30:7). It won’t be the time of the Church’s trouble.

Terminally Bland (and blind)

The Terminally Bland Church

Something on the periphery of my understanding has almost come into full view in the last couple of decades. Modern, western, Christianity can become the vanilla of all flavors of our (true) religion if left to its own devices. Churches, churches, churches; ministries, ministries, ministries…which one can be bigger than the last? Which one can be more “cutting edge” than it’s neighbor? Which ministry can be “just so”…good while making it’s followers oh so rigid (or is that spiritually constipated…take your pick)? And which can make the biggest media splash?

There are the ministries that cannot abide the eclectic; who must have order or else. The sermons must be reviewed before the speaker ascends the platform for “fear of the juice”. Hard and fast rules will be laid out so the outsiders looking in won’t judge the hoi polloi of the marching ranks. We must be milquetoast don’t ya know! We must not encourage creativity (except from the direction we think it should come). This is how they did it in the first century isn’t it? This is how Moses did it and if it’s good enough for him it should be good enough for us. Wait a minute…Moses was a little different…hey a lot of the prophets were a little different…hey…

I’ve always admired the Christian who was the “different drummer” (not just marching to it); who actually had thrown off the shackles of his/ her mummified upbringing and ventured off into their own wild blue YONDER (led by the spirit don’t ya know). And it is this individual who is continually mocked by his/her peers for not being “part of the community” or not “under the leadership of a local pastor”. But this is not necessarily the case. The individual usually just wants to be him or her…self. To be the different drummer, one must know the tune to keep in the rhythm. The song might be just a bit slower or faster, higher or lower in key, syncopated a bit differently…but the song nonetheless (read: doctrine here).

And God is into individuals. He shook Elijah out from under his (juniper) tree and Jeremiah, Ezekiel…hmmmm…most of the prophets butted heads with those who wanted them to conform. Then there’s Paul. Imagine if you will, the apostle Paul, as a Pharisee, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; getting the revelation of the Secret (read: tell the world that the Gentiles are now the equals in all ways to the Jews). He was kinda’ on his own on this one mates. Jesus trusted him!

People will make mistakes. New blood in an aging (or stodgy) church or ministry will spill out of the scratched or skinned knee; no doubt about it! But do you plan to keep them infants forever? Who will take up the torch if you won’t trust them with matches? Stop being terminally bland and let go of the keys to the car once in a while. It won’t stop the world from spinning on it’s axis.

Was Syriac the original language of Jesus?

My son sent me the following article this past Sunday: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090206/lf_nm_life/us_cyprus_bible. It involves a Bible found in Cyprus. I had read this on the news myself and my guess is that the MSS (manuscript) will be found to be old (maybe 800-1000 years), but not the 2000 years that “they” are looking for. The they in this case is the subject of today’s blog.

Near the end of the hyperlinked article someone said that they noticed some modern Syriac words in the text. It is always interesting what the pro-Syriacists do to promote their language! Note how the media portrays the dueling “experts”. “Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake.”

It was the same when I was at school in Chicago studying this very language with the foremost authority in the field, Arthur Voobus at the Lutheran School of Theology in the late 1970's (you can google him and see that I’m not just name-dropping….go ahead….I’ll wait). There was a faction (friends of mine, even!) that always insisted that Syriac (more properly the Peshitta text of the Syriac Bible) was the "language of Jesus". Their enthusiasm was boundless and the newspapers always picked up the story of this “language of Jesus” thing. Let me try to import some sanity here.

Syriac was not the language of Jesus (as the article rightly points out), but a dialect of Aramaic (“Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia.”). But this does not tell the whole story. Syriac was a dialect, but it was not spoken in Palestine. Rather, it was an unwritten language until it was given form in Turkey (specifically Edessa, the area of its origins) in the later years just before Christ. It was a dialect specifically of Imperial Aramaic; that form of Aramaic which existed in the upper Fertile Crescent from the 5th Century BC onward.

Jesus spoke Palestinian (more specifically Galilean) Aramaic, which form may be found in ancient texts such as the Genesis Apocryphon (of Dead Sea Scrolls notoriety). The Christian Scriptures, if they had an original autograph in Aramaic (the jury remains out on this matter, but I am firmly in the pro-Aramaic-original school, having done essential research on this hypothesis while in graduate school at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute), would have been written in this language and not Syriac.

I’m not using Syriac as a piñata, but frankly, those who try to tie Jesus to this language are always being a bit disingenuous. Because Syriac was used to bring the message of Christianity to the East (even as far as India) it is revered by the Eastern Churches over against Western Christianity (whose embodiment was principally the Roman Church in the early years after the Councils started meeting). A prejudice developed against the Western church (and it's Greek Bible) in those earlier years and has given rise to the differing “experts” (the Eastern versus the Western) even today. But the scientific study of the languages of the Northwest Semitic varieties tells the true story (see the former paragraph).

Syriac, along with Coptic, Ethiopic, Old Latin, Gothic and other languages into which the Christian Scriptures were translated in the earlier centuries after the death of the apostles are great resources for textual variants (those places where the more familiar Greek MSS readings are dubious or outright forgeries). And Syriac, among all the others, is sometimes better in that it retranslates (is that a word?) the Greek, from which it is taken, back into the idiomatic language of the Original. But Syriac is still not the original language of Jesus.

I’d like to talk a bit about the Old Syriac texts of the Syriac language tradition (over against the Peshitta text of the Syriac Bible), but space and time does not permit.

Until next time...

Greetings Earthlings

My only begotten Son made me do this.

I'm amenable, but a little shy when it comes to pushing myself on the Public.

I'm an independent theologian and sometimes electrical engineer who wishes to create a legacy of words related to life and God. The Bible should fit with life, logic and it's internal scope so diligence is required on the part of the student. A casual interest is OK, but it's not what is ultimately desired.

Jesus once said, "Search the Scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life", but that was to the religious buttheads of the first century Palestine. Imagine what he expects of the person that truly wants to know (believer or unbeliever).

Hebrews 11:6 says, "Now it is impossible to please God without believing, since anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and rewards those who diligently investigate him."

So search and investigate with me and I hope we'll have a blast.

Robert Erasmus