Probably some of the greatest errors in Biblical understanding occur because folks take literally what should be understood spiritually. Jesus told those to whom he preached that they erred because they didn’t take into consideration that the words he spoke were spiritual (John 6:61-63), and they kept trying to make sense of them literally (John 6:60). We can avoid this type of misunderstanding, if we use the word of God to interpret itself for us, by comparing one part of Scripture with another part (1Corinthians 2:13).
Both Jesus and Peter agree as to what constitutes the Day of the Lord, that is that it comes as a thief in the night and there will be signs in the heavens (Revelation 1:10; 3:3; 16:15: Matthew 24:29, 43; 2Peter 3:10). Joel claimed the heavenly signs pointed the coming of the Day of the Lord (Joel 2:10, 30-31). Jesus foretold of the same types of signs (Matthew 24:29), and Peter claimed the Day of the Lord brought new heavens and a new earth (2Peter 3:10). It all points to the same thing.
The language of Isaiah (Isaiah 13:9-11; 34:4-5) and Ezekiel (Ezekiel 32:7-8) use the darkening of the sun, moon and stars to express the judgment of God. Similarly, Jesus points to heavenly signs (Matthew 24:29), whereby the heavenly bodies stop giving their light. Isaiah used the heavenly bodies to show the judgment of Babylon (Isaiah 13:2) and Idumea (Isaiah 34:5), while Ezekiel used the same kind of signs to show God’s judgment upon Egypt (Ezekiel 34:5). What Jesus does in his use of these same signs is to foretell his own judgment upon the nation of the Jews in Matthew 24:29.
This type of language is what we call apocalyptic. It is highly figurative and shouldn’t be taken literally. After all, who in his right mind could believe in a literal beast with seven heads (Revelation 13)? The figures mentioned have a meaning, which, if taken as it should be understood, tell a reasonable story about how God addresses the sins of men. For example, the sun in the apocalyptic language represents the king or leader of the nation. We know this to be true because immediately after judging Babylon in Isaiah 13, the prophet discusses his judgment again in the next chapter (Isaiah 14:4). There he refers to the king of Babylon as the morning star or the sun (Isaiah 14:12). This is substantiated more clearly by considering Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:9-11. There the sun and moon represent Joseph’s mother and dad—Jacob and Rachel. The stars represent Joseph’s brothers. They are the patriarchs or leaders of the Jewish nation, which gave birth to Jesus (Romans 9:5; Hebrews 7:14; cf. Revelation 12:1).
In light of this understanding Jesus no doubt referred to the leaders of the Jewish nation (Matthew 24:29). They were cast down, and the Jews had no secure homeland. They no longer could represent God as expressed in their original covenant (Exodus 19:6). The Temple was destroyed. The nation didn’t exist any longer. The covenant was annulled, but what would this mean in terms of Peter’s heavens passing away and elements of the earth melting? Since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD proved to the world that Jesus was the Christ, and he reigns in heaven (Matthew 24:30; Daniel 7:13-14; cf. Matthew 26:64), Peter means that the Jews no longer represent God to the world. The disciples of Christ have become a kingdom of priests to the world (Revelation 1:6; 5:10), bringing his word to the nations.
Before the Flood the patriarchs ruled the world without the intervention of God, until God decided to judge the whole world with the flood waters. He destroyed the patriarchs and all their works. On the other side of the Flood God used men as leaders of the nations to judge the more wicked nations. Israel, ideally was supposed to be God’s effective instrument of judgment, but they failed to carry out his will in that they wished to be like the nations they were supposed to judge and educate in the ways of the Lord. The flood waters changed how God intended to deal with mankind, and the judgment of Jerusalem by fire (war) accomplished the same thing in 70 AD as the Genesis Flood did in the days of Noah. The powers of the heavens and earth were shaken and changed as a result of both judgments.
Moses, quoted by Paul, predicted the failure of the Jewish people and that God would rebuke them through a foolish people (i.e. a people who were idolaters) who were not a people. They would provoke the Jews to jealousy (Deuteronomy 32:21; cf. Romans 10:19). The church or the disciples of Jesus have no human king, queen or princes. We are all servants, led by servants and ultimately led by God. He alone is our light, and no man can take his place (cf. 1Samuel 8:5).
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25 responses to “Apocalyptic Language”
Greetings Boluwade and welcome back!
The more I study God’s word, the more I am brought to understand the great and unexpected power of false doctrine. False doctrine isn’t simply a mistake that one is able to correct, because it has power in and of itself. It is not a math problem in which one can easily see one’s error. False doctrine renders a person blind, and he must be healed of his blindness, before he is able to see the truth (cf. John 12:35-36). If Jesus hides himself (v.36), we cannot see him (John 12:21).
I don’t believe Jesus’ disciples just chose to understand Jesus’ eminent crucifixion as symbolic. In my opinion they were forced to do so, because a crucified Messiah had no place in their worldview. They had accepted the Pharisaical doctrine of the conquering Messiah (viz. John 12:34). Jesus had warned them of the leaven / doctrine of the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herod (cf. Matthew 16:6, 11-12; Mark 8:15), but what does one pick out to reject, because the Pharisees also taught the resurrection, which Jesus taught?
The disciples simply couldn’t understand a conquering Messiah who was also crucified. The power of false doctrine hid the truth of Jesus’ words from them. So, how do we understand when something is literal and when something is spiritual? We do so by comparing Scripture with Scripture and allowing the Holy Spirit to guide us. If one compared Jesus’ words with Isaiah 53, that one would have understood that the Messiah must die. The disciples chose to spiritualize Jesus’ words, because they first embraced error as though it were true. Jesus, himself, claimed that embracing the doctrines of men ends up in rejecting the word of God.
May the Lord, our God, richly bless you, Boluwade.
Thanks for your swift response Eddie.
Your response however just opens my question even further.
If we blame the Pharisees for being the originators of the false doctrine which blinded the disciples, who or what do we blame for their own original error of arriving at a false position? Definitely it cannot be because they did not study the scriptures. The Lord himself never accused them of that. On the contrary, he complimented them for it.
While it would be easy to accuse them of being dishonest in their study of the Scriptures and conclude that by this they predisposed themselves to erroneous understanding of it, we know that sincerity of heart offers no guarantees of immunity against entering into errors. The picture of the suffering Messiah was painted explicitly in the Scriptures just as that of the conquering Messiah. The real question is why did they see the latter as plain and the former as some figurative language that needed to be dismissed by the other? Why could they not hold the too pictures concurrently as literal without the need to subjugate one to the other?
I do not believe that they did not see the passages that foretold that the Messiah would suffer just out of sheer dishonesty. I believe they, for reasons similar to those we encounter in our days, probably found it difficult to conceive of the Messiah literally suffering and thus sought alternative meaning for those passages that would suit the glory of the Messiah as they had been made to anticipate him, by this they opened themselves up to error.
But who are we to blame them for doing so given that the dominant image of the Messiah the Scriptures gave and which their fathers made them hope for, was that of a liberator and deliverer with power and authority, very little on his weakness and sufferings. So it is very reasonable for them to want to understand the parts that talk of his sufferings in a metaphorical sense. With the benefit of hindsight we call their doctrine false now, but if we were in their shoes would we have done better?
We see it amongst us Christians even today. We all search the Scriptures, comparing and contrasting passages. We all seek the Holy Spirit for illumination but still somehow come out with conflicting positions on the same issues. At the end of the day, sometimes, the conflicting positions are both correct, while at other times, only one is. What is it that is in us that makes us susceptible to this error and conflict of understanding?
I cannot honestly charge everyone who holds a false doctrine with impure motives or lack of dependence on the Holy Spirit for their error. Even the gospel as we have it today was the subject of similar conflict of understanding between Paul and the original apostles. Eventually, Paul’s was vindicated over theirs. How did they not understand for so many years that the law was no longer required in Christ for salvation until Paul came along, and only after a very heated debate and with great reluctance and reservations for Jewish sensibilities? The doctrine of the Pharisees cannot be blamed here.
Is it not possible that within each of us is cause for stumbling that is sufficient to lead us into error by itself even with the purest of motives and the best of efforts in studies, prayers and seeking after the help of the Holy Spirit?
Is it not possible that sometimes, we get ensnared, not by darkness, but by light and revelation from God, so much that we become unyielding to new complementing or superceding light from him that helps balance us. Consider how Peter thrice strongly refused God’s new light of all things being clean and refused to kill and eat from the sheet set down from heaven despite his “hunger” and unambiguous understanding that it was his Lord that he was conversing with in the vision, holding firmly rather to God’s own previous command on the matter as justification.
In my few weeks of exchanges with you here and on FB, while seeking to help you see the “error” of some of your positions, according to my understanding, I have been instead helped by God to see two significant lights that have become stumbling blocks to me and which taint my understanding of God’s word and are potential sources of error for me, independent of external influences. These are not false doctrines but truths which are supposed to be constricted by some higher level truths or complemented by equal level truths but which I have instead left unbounded and elevated to positions not intended by God.
May the Lord search us and help us know our hearts and remove from us everything that causes us to stumble.
Remain blessed beloved.
Greetings Boluwade, and thank you for your interesting comment. I’m not certain that I am able to answer it adequately, even from my point of view, but we’ll see how the Spirit guides me in the Scriptures, and if I yield to his prompting.
We need to be clear that the Pharisees were not a righteous group. They were corrupt authorities. They studied the Bible, but with ulterior motives. Jesus claimed that everything they did, they did so to be seen by others, from whom they desired praise (Matthew 23:5). They built themselves up by quoting one another in their studies and schools. Rabbi Simeon would quote Rabbi Joseph and vice versa. The more they quoted one another the more each seemed to be an authority in his studies and interpretations (Jesus didn’t do that; cf. Matthew 7:29). This went on for centuries, until the whole nation was led away by their slant on Scripture, and the nation rejected Jesus, because their teachers / leaders did.
Why did the Pharisees reject Jesus? Were they honest seekers of truth? No, the Scriptures reveal they weren’t. They sought to trap Jesus (something the Law says they shouldn’t do to a brother) into breaking the Sabbath by healing a man with a withered hand (Luke 6:6-7). Now, whether or not the Law does forbid healing on the Sabbath is immaterial. They claimed it did, because it transgressed their interpretations (the Oral Law). Without doing anything but speaking Jesus healed the man. They were absolutely livid over the matter. Why? They certainly weren’t seekers of truth. They were interested only in the fact that Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Yet, they were lawyers and a lawyer isn’t a lawyer, unless he is able to find a beneficial loophole in the law. These Pharisees were able to do that, when it benefited them. This is what is behind Jesus’ question: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good, or to do harm? to save a life, or to destroy it?” (Luke 6:9). Over a century previous to this, they decided that, if the nation was threatened on the Sabbath, the people could defend themselves and make war on the Sabbath. The scribes refused to reply to Jesus, so he healed the man out of anger (Luke 6:10; Mark 3:5). Through their interpretations, they laid heavy burdens upon men and women, and they simply refused to be merciful (cf. Matthew 23:4), except where it benefited them.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Simply because they studied the Scriptures does not mean they knew the Scriptures or that their hearts were affected by what they read. They simply loved being in authority and the glory that entailed. They used the word of God for their own benefit.
Concerning why they couldn’t see Isaiah 53 as a suffering Messiah, they did. They interpreted the Scriptures to mean there would be two Messiahs. There would be a warlike Messiah (the Messiah of Joseph), and a religious Messiah (the Messiah of David). I’m not really familiar with all the details, but I believe the Messiah of Joseph was to come first and be killed in battle. The Messiah of David was so righteous that he would pray, and God would resurrect the Messiah of Joseph. What occurred thereafter, I’m not familiar. The interpretation interested me, only because I recognized how they handled the Suffering Messiah of Isaiah 53. But, to my knowledge, they did not spiritualize Isaiah 53 away. They took it literally, but they developed a teaching of two different messiahs. How widespread this doctrine was among the group and their schools, I don’t know, but John 12:34 seems to indicate that the majority believed the Messiah would come and live forever. It may be that the idea of two messiahs wasn’t fully developed. Don’t know.
Concerning Christians today who search the Scriptures, I am of the opinion that all are guided by God’s Spirit. However, the Spirit is effective in so far as the believer brings nothing to the table with him. If he brings his favorite doctrines, the Spirit will allow it, and his learning will be little. If he brings with him the teaching of men (according to this or that denomination of Christianity) then the Spirit will allow that, too, and learning likewise will be little. It has been my experience (and I really wish my memory is in error) that more people that I know will defend the doctrines of men more zealously than they will the word of God. Men love to have power / authority over people, and as a result the people aren’t adept to yielding to the Spirit of God in their studies of his word. This has been a problem between God and his people for millennia.
Concerning Paul and the original Apostles, I am unaware of any conflict between them. The conflict that existed came from false brethren, spies sent in by the Jewish authorities. This is what Galatians is about, and this is what prompted the Jerusalem Council. Some believe, because the original Apostles practiced the Law, there was conflict between them and Paul, not so. The Mosaic Law was the law of the Land (lands of the Jews). The gentiles had their own laws, and Paul told believers to obey the authorities of their lands. The problem arose when false brethren thought the gentiles should obey the Mosaic Law (and with it, no doubt, the Oral Law). The gentiles already had laws against murder, stealing, bearing false witness etc., so there was no need to impose the Mosaic Law upon them. The Mosaic Law was the national law for the Jews, and Peter and the other Apostles rightly obeyed it. Even Paul so did when he was among the Jews.
“Is it not possible that sometimes, we get ensnared, not by darkness, but by light and revelation from God, so much that we become unyielding to new complementing or superseding light from him that helps balance us.” <— I’m not certain I understand your meaning here. Perhaps you could clarify.
Concerning Peter’s vision. It is better to argue with God in a vision to be certain about the meaning. It would be wrong to obey immediately when you’re not certain what God wants you to do. Peter understood the meaning of the vision after the men came from the centurion. Paul had a similar experience when Jesus, in a vision, told him to leave Jerusalem. Paul thought he could convince his former friends that the Gospel was true, but Jesus said no—they would not accept his message.
Concerning our exchanges in recent weeks and how God helped you with unexpected matters, I’m glad our discussions have had a beneficial effect upon you, even if that doesn’t mean resolving our disagreements. I have had similar experiences with others, especially years ago on the debate forums (non-existent now). I was unable to help unbelievers, but God helped me see things I had never considered before that time. It was always unexpected, and it was all wonderful.
Lord bless you, my friend.
Greetings again Eddie.
While I do not agree with your profiling of the Pharisees as an all bad and nothing good group, particularly as it pertains to the issue of the Scriptures and doctrines, as well as your take on Peter’s resistance, I would not want my real points to be lost in this disagreement.
My original point is that we cannot exclusively attribute the development of false doctrine or erroneous understanding of the Scriptures to wrong disposition. I mentioned earlier that even sincere persons could also miss the truth. Sincerity offers no immunity against misunderstanding. Sometimes we get to the truth through wobbling and fumbling, despite our best attempts at being careful and open. Given this situation, I therefore ask who among us can confidently and authoritatively declare his doctrine free of error and pronounce conflicting positions to be false?
You talked about coming to the Scriptures with the traditions of men as a cause for adopting erroneous doctrines but I ask, how is a person to judge that he or she is starting out with a tradition and not God’s pure doctrine? It is virtually impossible to “come with nothing to the table” as you suggest. It is only natural that we all start out with something we received from others. While we have a duty to verify what we received, verification itself requires the right skills.
Each of us has a peculiar and conscientious way of building logic and within it a priority system moderated by our conscience. So I could receive something that is accurate and my logic and conscience will evaluate it and judge it to be faulty just as much as I could receive what is false and my logic and conscience will successfully verify it as accurate. This could happen even when I am sincere. So while a sincere heart is important to developing sound doctrine, a sound and balanced logic coupled with enlightened conscience is equally essential. These however must still be put at the disposal of the Holy Spirit with prayerfulness, diligence, humility and openness to correction. The exact reason for which we are advised to “trust in the Lord with ALL our hearts,” leaning “not on our own understanding.”
Regarding my example of the Jewish interpretation of the suffering Messiah, your view of them believing in two Messiahs is actually one of the subsisting Jewish views on the Messiah. Some Jews actually consider the passage as figuratively referring to the nation of Israel and not an individual. So for them, the suffering described is that of Israel and not of a Messiah. This position, interestingly, is not without strong contextual backing. Below is a quote from Marshall Roth from aish.com.
“The key to deciphering any biblical text is to view it in context. Isaiah 53 is the fourth of the four “Servant Songs.” (The others are found in Isaiah chapters 42, 49 and 50.) Though the “servant” in Isaiah 53 is not openly identified – these verses merely refer to “My servant” (52:13, 53:11) – the “servant” in each of the previous Servant Songs is plainly and repeatedly identified as the Jewish nation. Beginning with chapter 41, the equating of God’s Servant with the nation of Israel is made nine times by the prophet Isaiah, and no one other than Israel is identified as the “servant”:
“You are My servant, O Israel” (41:8)
“You are My servant, Israel” (49:3)
see also Isaiah 44:1, 44:2, 44:21, 45:4, 48:20
The Bible is filled with other references to the Jewish people as God’s “servant”; see Jeremiah 30:10, 46:27-28; Psalms 136:22. There is no reason that the “servant” in Isaiah 53 would suddenly switch and refer to someone other than the Jewish people.”
The full article may be found here:
http://www.aish.com/sp/ph/Isaiah_53_The_Suffering_Servant.html
If you have time to read the article further, you will see how the finer details of the suffering of the servant which I, and perhaps yourself, would consider strong evidence enough for taking the passage as literal to an individual servant still gets to be understood figuratively by them. Their arrival at this position proves to be founded on a logic that gives priority and weight to context, antecedence and corroboration, with little or no tolerance for exceptions. This logic, from my point of view, is very much consistent with the way you too have come to arrive at some of the positions you espouse on this your blog and which I, together with a couple of others, have expressed disagreement with.
I honestly cannot dismiss the logic, either as employed by them or by you, as something inspired by an insincere heart or a pre-received false doctrine. It is clearly a sound logical framework for interpreting Scriptures. The sound rules of context, usage, witness/corroboration, etc have all been observed to arrive at the position. We who are believers in Jesus as the Christ and who see his sufferings and death as the literal fulfillment of the passage can however see that in this case, the logic system fails to help them arrive at the truth as we know it, even though we also use the same logic system to affirm and defend many of our own doctrines. This further underscores how logic plays a great part in understanding doctrine and could, outside the influence of pre-received false doctrines, lead, by itself, to erroneous positions.
There probably is no better passage in the Scriptures that buttresses my point like the one below.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, Lest you also be like him.”
“Answer a fool according to his folly, Lest he be wise in his own eyes.”
Proverbs 26:4-5 NKJV
Two contiguous verses preaching two diametrically opposed logic. Both are clearly sound but cannot be reasonably observed at the same time by one person. It is evident then that a person will need something else by which to determine when to observe one and not the other. The truth is neither you nor me has the authoritative answer to the “when.” So if I choose at a point in time to act by the counsel of the first while you choose at the same time to act by the counsel of the second, we would both be acting based on sound counsels and logic but acting in opposite. Neither one of us could by his own authority charge the other with error in understanding.
In my own view, the interpretation of the suffering servant as Israel rather than a Messiah was the prevalent Jewish position on the passage in the days of the apostles. I so judge because Paul wrote that preaching a crucified Christ (Messiah) was offensive to the Jews of his days. It could not be offensive if it was one of two options they believed about the Messiah, but it would be if it was not an option. This may be further buttressed by the fact that when Caiaphas the high priest made a statement alluding to this during a Sanhedrin meeting, John remarked that he spoke it by inspiration and not by his own processed logic (John 11:49-51).
So when you look at certain passages and believe they should be interpreted figuratively, and suggest that others are in error, you are actually drawing on a logic system which could be by itself sound but not necessarily applicable for the truth of the passage. I could look at the same passages and believe it should be interpreted literally, drawing on a logic system that is sound as well but which may also not be applicable to the passage. Whatever the logic each adopts, it somehow still gets influenced by our individual perception of the Holy Spirit’s leading and influence, as well as by our conscience which is not guaranteed to be perfect in discerning at all times between right and wrong. The challenge at the end of the day is how to determine which of the two sound logic systems is true to the Spirit that breathed the writings. Neither one of us can authoritatively conclude that because God speaks frequently literally on a subject that he could not exceptionally, even if just once, speak figuratively on the exact same subject in a unique and uncorroborated manner. This is conversely true as well. So the person whose interpretation relies on antecedents and corroboration cannot conclusively judge the one whose interpretation is allowing for an exception as having a false position. The same is true in the reverse.
Regarding being ensnared by light, I mean that divine revelation, if not properly managed, can lead us to develop wrong attitudes, which could affect how we handle and process truths subsequently. My reference to Peter’s vision is for that reason. While you seem to see it as him arguing with God to be sure what to do, I see it as him resisting God based on previous light. He never asked for clarification or some time to process the instruction. He outrightly said “No.” He refused not once or twice, but thrice. That, to me, is not arguing to know what to do, but refusal to do as instructed because it involves breaking with a tradition he had built based on a previous divinely instructed way of life. What to do was communicated to him as simply as possible – “rise up, kill and eat.” His refusal at first could be excused and seen as a veiled request for clarification because God had not communicated the new status of the animals to him and could possibly be testing him by asking him to eat them. But the moment he expressed his reservations and God assured him that the animals were now clean for him to eat because God had cleansed them, his refusal two more times was no longer excusable. I would compare his refusal to Moses’ resistance when God called him to go an liberate Israel.
Apostle Paul too wrote of his thorn in the flesh that was permitted to buffet him to help him maintain reasonable humility in the light of the great revelations given to him. In other words, but for the thorn, he had the dangerous potential of gravitating to an overrated view of himself because of his exclusive and powerful revelations. So knowledge (light) can puff one up. A puffed up person clearly is a fall in waiting. It is not difficult to see how such can fall into erroneous doctrines. This also, to me, appears as a plausible explanation for the attitude of the Pharisees and how they ended up with some false doctrines. They clearly did not get everything wrong. They were right in many things but were also wrong in some others. Their attitude was however their greatest undoing with Lord. Their special privilege with God’s statutes as teachers and interpreters of it could have deceived them and made them puffed up. So they could have started well but veered off because of pride and self-importance.
My point in all this is that interpreting a passage literally or figuratively is not as simple and straightforward as it might seem. We all have knowledge but love informs us to consider others and their position. There are areas where we have consensus and no room for variations because their interpretations are established to us by confirmed practise by the first generation Christians. But there are also lots of areas where no one can authoritatively conclude the other as holding unto false or erroneous beliefs. I judge this to be one of those. Where you see apocalyptic language, I see plain speech but certainly not without elements of grammar that employ non-literal language.
Sometimes strangely, both sides of the argument are supported in substantial measures in the final fulfillment. Only God can tell. For he sometimes combines both literal and figurative messages in one and the same communication such that either side can remain authentic without excluding the other. The point of divide between the two would then be by degrees and scope and not an outright matter of falsity.
Remain blessed sir.
Greetings Boluwade! I apologize that my previous reply was off the point. I will endeavor to do better this time. But concerning our disagreement on the Pharisees, that’s okay. I’m not bothered by such things.
You claimed: “My original point is that we cannot exclusively attribute the development of false doctrine or erroneous understanding of the Scriptures to wrong disposition. I mentioned earlier that even sincere persons could also miss the truth.”
Sincerity doesn’t guarantee one believes the truth. I don’t doubt there are ‘sincere’ atheists. The problem is in believing something that is false to begin with and then seeking the ‘truth’. Both believers and atheists bring their own “stuff” to the table of God and expect to find the truth but the truth eludes them. Why? Because in believing something false to begin with, they cannot receive the truth they seek to grasp. We cannot simply divorce from our minds concepts or doctrines we received from our teachers that may be wrong. We must be open to the possibility that we believe error before our error can be recognized. The Pharisees weren’t open to that idea and neither are some Christians. Many of those I’m acquainted with would rather defend what men taught them rather than what they read in the Bible—and these people are very sincere.
“…who among us can confidently and authoritatively declare his doctrine free of error and pronounce conflicting positions to be false?”
I would have to say no one among us could do such a thing and be correct. But does this mean none of us should ever try to express his doubts about what his brother believes? Obviously, you don’t or you wouldn’t be here. Neither do I, since I have no problem disagreeing with you.
“…It is virtually impossible to “come with nothing to the table” as you suggest. It is only natural that we all start out with something we received from others. While we have a duty to verify what we received, verification itself requires the right skills.”
I agree that it is virtually impossible to bring nothing to the table. What I had in mind in my previous reply was a tension between 2Timothy 2:2 and 1Corinthians 13:9. Denominational Christianity by its very name separates brethren and is carnal, according to 1Corinthians 3:3. As long as we seek to defend what separates us, we limit our understanding of the truth, as offered to us by the Spirit of God. The Apostles were unable to see what Jesus was telling them about his eminent death and subsequent resurrection, because they believed and tried to defend error—taught them by the Pharisees. If we believe and defend error—no matter how sincere we are—we will be unable to see the truth that error hides.
“So while a sincere heart is important to developing sound doctrine, a sound and balanced logic coupled with enlightened conscience is equally essential.”
I don’t believe that I could disagree with you more on this point. I know of very simple folk, not very well educated at all, but they are able to discern the fallacies of a very profound and logical (according to his system of understanding) teacher. Some of these folks decided not to go to a Sunday school class that was based upon his teaching on prophecy. This man happens to be a very famous Christian teacher in my country, and, as long as he stays away from prophecy, he has my respect. I said nothing to these people to sway their decision (they were members of my Sunday school class). In fact, those of them who did leave, I wished them well. They promised to return, but I don’t think they will. Nevertheless, they claimed they loved the way I taught the Scriptures.
Concerning the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53, I believe it was Rashi (11th century AD rabbi) who first made this interpretation—or at least he is the first rabbi who is recorded to have had this understanding (if my studies are correct). I believe Jews received it by studying Christian doctrine. Consider Paul’s understanding of the body of Christ in 1Corinthians 12:12. Christ is a person, and Christ is also the whole church, according to Paul. The problem according to Isaiah 53 is that, if it points to Israel, who is “he” and who is “our” in Isaiah 53:4 – “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows? Who is the “we” and the “him” in “yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted”? Just as we cannot say **we** have been crucified for ourselves, neither could the Jews say **we** esteemed **ourselves** stricken of God. And, there are several other such incongruities throughout Isaiah 53.
Concerning the things over which you and I disagree, I must speak or write what I believe to be true, otherwise, I would be guilty of following the traditions of men. Even if the men are correct, if I don’t see that, I must speak or write (do) how I believe the Spirit is leading me. I trust the Spirit will lead me to recognize my error, if that is what it is.
I will end this here and finish in another reply, since this is already a long response. It is easier for folks who read these long comments and replies to be able to take a break somewhere and return (if they so desire).