Begin at 10:43 of Lecture 2 And so here we have God’s problem now, and there has been a barrier erected here--the barrier of communication. But we’re so thankful for that beautiful verse, for example, in Titus 3:4: “The kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind.” Isn’t that a sweet expression.
And here we have the word fondness. God is fond of man and wants to reveal Himself to man. And so we have a little arrow coming through the barrier when God is trying to, in all kinds of ways. trying to show us that this is wrong, that this idea of living for self is totally wrong.
And so, of course, we’re gonna say in our studies, there can’t be any salvation except as a reevaluation of what is true. It’s just impossible to have any salvation in any other condition, and you can take a large concordance, can’t you.
Take the word truth, for example, and go down the different passages talking about truth. This is what we do at the bottom of your page 1 of your section ME, do we not? We mention what happened to truth--how it was thrust out and how there has to be a return to truth if God is going to reconcile.....be reconciled to us and we to Him.
Over on your page 2 we mentioned, to be saved is not only to submit to truth but to receive the love of the truth. It’s not to do this, or else; it is to agree with God that God is right and that we’ve been wrong and it is to be doing truth.
We have so many lovely, simple expressions here, do we not, and so we say a little bit down the line in that second paragraph, certainly there is no salvation except by a reentry into the realm of truth, by sincere repentance or rethinking opposition from the fables in which we have lived.
Paul wrote: 2Co 6:14 “. . . what is there in common between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what partnership has light with darkness?
And so we have so many simple explanations here, do we not, there must be a return to the concept of truth. I must open my eyes and say, “Well now I can’t produce what I see exists. I can’t even understand what exists let alone produce it.”
And so as soon as I’m going to be intelligent I have to recognize a great Being here Who can do this. And I can’t regulate things like they’re being regulated on every hand, so there must be a Being greater than I. Certainly there must be the Creator God Who can regulate these things!
And I’m so far from being able to do this that I belong way down here somewhere. And this is the concept of truth, isn’t it.
Now God can’t save anyone except we have a rethinking of our position and see what is true and that it is totally wrong for us to be living for ourself and this is what the Gospel endeavors to do. Now how is God gonna bring this about? Oh, we just want to appreciate the love of God as we’ve been singing this morning here.
The sweetness and the love of God ...... What is the Bible all about then? It is God’s faithfulness to reach out to meet mankind who are living in their state of unintelligence. People are living in a condition of self concentration. So God appeals to us to get us to slow down and rethink our position.
He pursues us with Biblical revelation to lead us so that He may reconcile us to Himself, because He wants us to be happy children, doesn’t He. (Stop at 14:00) (Stop; read OT & NT books view)
Look at hand-out (Pass it out at this point Divine-human Word of God C Picture C concept C revelation C inspiration from God to the human author
The reader C illumination C meditation C picture C concept C God is workiong to lead us to be able to express the same truth in our own words.
Lcture 2:Begin again at 18:30
It is a law of life, isn’t it, that as soon as we have blessings from God we begin to think we’re important. How then is God going to prepare certain people to whom He can impart with serene revelations?
So this is what we involve ourself in in the first section--God wanted to establish a nation, didn’t he? You can’t reach the world by individuals so God plans a nation. He finds a very dependable person--Abraham, doesn’t He. Gives him many marvelous experiences and promises, and Abraham submits to God.
So here is a progressive submission, isn’t it. And God is revealing Himself, in His greatness, to Abraham, preparing him for being the ‘father of the faithful’, as the New Testament calls him.
Then God wanted to do a great thing through a person in revelation of His precious truth, more particularly. So here’s a long preparation of Moses, isn’t it.
And we know the lovely story of dear Moses and how God arranged his mother to be caretaker of him, and so on, and he had the high education of Egypt. Now archeology has recovered many of the great concepts of the Egyptian civilization, has it not.
And you remember what Stephen said about the greatness of Moses--how his great intelligence and his great ability to express himself.
And so, here we have 40 years in Moses’ life of development. It is a state of inflation, we might say. And at the end of 40 years Moses is sure God can use him--and God is sure He cannot! Because Moses has been so inflated in his own importance now, with all this education without all this learning.
So God has to take this great mind--probably one of the greatest mind in Egypt--he had the privilege of the greatest education in Egypt, didn’t he--and God has to send this great mind out for a 40-year detour.
And the only way to use this great intelligence is out here keeping sheep, which requires very little intelligence. And so, God has to deflate this great mind of his pride, to bring him down where God can use him. so you might say the second 40 years deflation.
And now God’s ready to do something, and God brings Moses into an experience of the burning bush, doesn’t he? Moses is amazed! He thinks, “I have seen a lot of bushes burn in the heat of the desert. Why doesn’t this bush burn up? Now let’s get over and see what’s going on here.
And as he goes over and looks at this bush he hears the voice of God, “Now put off your shoes.” Here was a little test, wasn’t it – Is Moses going to respect God or not? The pride of Moses has been completely deflated. And God tells Moses, “Now I’m ready to send you.” Skip
Here’s Isaiah; he’s to be the great prophet of the Savior, isn’t he? He’s to have some concept concerning the suffering of Jesus, that no one else quite had. Yes, Jesus said that Moses spoke concerning Him. But here was Isaiah, and you have the 6th chapter of Isaiah, don’t you, how he said, “I saw the Lord high and lifted up.”
And when he saw the Lord, what did he feel concerning his opportunity? He said, “Lord, can you use me? I don’t need any dedication. I don’t need any consecration. Lord can you use ..... isn’t this wonderful. And so God is showing Isaiah something of His greatness and realizing the dimension ....
Do you see what God has to do – He wants to come to our low level and lift us up to the level of truth, doesn’t He? And this is why He works so hard. Oh, we just want to love God for his efforts in the Scripture.
God leads all the different Old Testament prophets through certain experiences in life, to prepare them for different things that He wanted to reveal through them.
Then you have dear Jesus coming upon the scene. And He’s so relaxed in His love, isn’t He? He just wants to get people to slow down and, “Why don’t you sit down and think with Me?”
He said. The Kingdom of God is like this. The Kingdom of Heaven is like this. And He takes all the different earthly experiences of our life, doesn’t He, and He says, “Well, it’s something like this.” There’s a man sows seed. That’s what the Word of God’s like – seed.
Different kind of soils have different reactions toward the seed, and so on, and so Jesus becomes so simple and so lovely. and He puts God on exhibition, doesn’t He? He can even turn to his enemies--”Which of you convinces me of sin?”
And if there’s anything they could find wrong with Him, they surely would have done it. And the only thing they could find wrong with Him, with His claims, Thou being a man makest thyself God. they rejected, of course, His claim.
So here the dear Master is sitting down and teaching and holding His wonderful truth.... and giving of them His concepts.
Then Jesus calls out His apostles, doesn’t He, and gives them beautiful concepts of truth and reality.
Here’s Paul, the great revelator to the Gentile world, and God has to give him some remarkable experiences , does He not? Here he’s riding along with his thundering tempers to stamp our the whole remembrance of Jesus with his authoritative papers to cast into prison and put to death, as many as he can of the dear disciples of Jesus.
And suddenly there comes this great shaft of light from Heaven, and the proud Paul, (Saul, as he was called), falls to the ground and hears the Voice of God. He was never the same, of course, after that tremendous experience, was he? And here
God has to develop these great pictures in the minds of his future servants here.
We might talk of the great transfiguration now. We refer to that in Matthew 17 how Peter, James and John were brought into a mountain and Jesus was transfigured before him, and as it were, His humanity began to take on some of the glow that was hidden from its natural humiliation, and they began to see the austerity of the Glory of God. And they were so relaxed in God.
They proclaim, “Lord, this is just wonderful you could be here. Let’s stay here. Let’s ....... and here with Moses and Elijah restored to human manifestation. Let’s stay here. Let’s build ourselves some temples here and Lord, and...and...let’s just stay here. It’s so good to be here.”
Do you think they ever forgot that serenity of revelation? And then their God wants to talk to John the Apostle in a special way. He is put out here in the Isle of Patmos to die, isn’t he? And here God gives John this beautiful vision of truth, and He sees Jesus in this great image of resurrected/resurrection power.
John falls at His feet as one dead and Jesus speaks to him, “I am the first and the last and don’t have that attitude of despair, but I want to reveal to you the things that I want mankind to know.”
So here was the development of individuals – we see it all along, don’t we--God patiently working with human beings to develop their realization of the austerity of the greatness of God. Stop at 25:33. Skip to: 25:46
Mark 3:14 records: “And Jesus appointed twelve, so that they would be with Him and that He {could} send them out to preach
That they might be with Him.
Dear friends we must take a lot of time to be with Jesus, mustn’t we? – dwelling with Him in the record of the Scripture, if we’re going to represent the dear Savior as we have the opportunity of doing. And so number one, they were to be with him and absorb His life and His spirit.
So Jesus works with the Twelve to bring them through the long process of revelation,
Jesus sat down and opened His heart and His mind to explain the wonderful truth. Then Jesus knows He can’t stay very long and so He calls out to the twelve – they are going to be with him particularly.
Then he wanted to send them out to preach and to proclaim the things of God. And if they’re gonna do this they have to understand what they’re speaking about.
Then he wanted to endue them with power-miraculous power and energy of various kinds.
And so He realized as He can’t be here very long, and is so distressed they say, “Oh, Lord. You’re saying so many wonderful things and we just can’t remember them. And now you’re talking about going away.” And, in addition to all this you’re saying it’s for our good that you go away.
Now Lord, we did understand you pretty in the past, but now we have no idea as to why you say it’s for our good that you go away, when we’re just beginning to learn a few of these things and now we’re not going to hear you anymore.”
And Jesus said, “Now never mind this. I’m gonna give you the Holy Spirit and He’s going to bring to you remembrance of the things that I’ve told you. So just relax yourself and the Holy Spirit’s gonna come in you--He’s gonna bring your mind the things that I’ve told you;
and He’s gonna say many more things to you, so you may understand what God wants you to write about, and to teach.�
And isn’t this a lovely promise And we have that, do we not, in the gospel of John there, as Jesus comforts them in the 16th of John 12-15, and so on. Here we have dear Paul in Galatians 1--he’s saying, “The gospel I preach is not according to man; I didn’t learn it from man,” he said.
“I learned it by revelation from God.” We think this is when Paul was out in the Arabian desert for something like three years. When.....after his conversion he’s out there alone with God for a period of time,
probably not the full three years, but some period of time he was there with God, and here he is being instructed by revelation of the serenities of God.
Oh, my. Here’s a treasure, then, carrying these precious things.
Then as we ..... and later on He had another great period of revelation, which we’ll talk about, in connection with the gift of the Holy Spirit, as in Ephisians 3:3 to 5.
We talked about dear John, how God was revealing to him and giving him the secrets, we think the revelation is mostly future; most scholars in our evangelical circles believe that chapter 4 to the end is still future, and that God is going to bring these things to pass at a particular time, which God is gonna decide upon.
So here is a long process of revelation. Now God wants to get it written down. So revelation has to do with the concepts. But here are these human treasures walking around with these concepts that have come from God, and the Holy spirit is working in them to keep these concepts alive, is He not?
Now God wants a record--He’s not gonna begin over again in every generation to do the same thing. Just think of the effort God has put forth. How can He begin over again?
And so here’s the process of writing--and that has to do with inspiration, or recording of truth. So here we have something very mysterious. God didn’t want stenographers, did He. Now I want you to write the Bible, so forth and so on. And the idea of a stenographer--God didn’t want that in the record of truth.
He wanted witnesses. He wanted to convey them concepts and have them digest it, and give their witness to what’s being reviewed.
And so here we have a marvelous, mysterious combination of the divine and the human. What a wonderful thing we have here. So when you study New Testament Greek you don’t start with Dr. Luke’s writings, do you, and you don’t start with the highly educated philosopher, theologian Paul. You start with the simple words of the fisherman, John.
Continue with Lecture 3 after the introductory review. Review first, by reading together the summary below. ---------------------------
And so God wanted to give us these remarkable records. And just think how they tried to stamp out the Bible throughout the ages and yet there has been a marvelous, miraculous preservation, has there not?
And so we come on the scene and here we have a remarkable company before us and what does it have to tell us about our situation? Now, you notice we give you an extra sheet here in your manual, summarizing this matter of the Bible a little further.
And we call this study of the Bible The Divine Human Word of God. And this is a lovely thought that came to me one time--the Bible is a remarkable thing; it’s not simply a divine dictation--it is a divine human mystery and marvel.
Every time truth is rejected there’s a loss of substance. So now how can God reveal Himself to us?
The Bible continues the things that we observe to be about God from our natural observation.
And so here God has His great problem. And you notice we have put these headings before you. We have the word picture,
concept, first of all; we have the word
revelation second; then we have the word
inspiration third. And this is the provision of the Bible. God watches over the process of men writing down what God revealed to them, and He watches over them to guarantee the accuracy of the record.
Bible Study Then God comes to us and wants to put the process in reverse. So He’s not gonna begin over again with us and have revelation again--He gives us illumination, we say--or enlightenment on the truth.
Then as we meditate upon it we come to concept.
God links the concepts together until we end up with the picture of truth – the same picture that God saw when He began the process, working with men, who put into words, the concepts describing that picture that God had revealed to them.
In other words, you have a sequence: God first has the perfect picture of truth, but man does not.
And so the Bible is God’s loving activity to enlighten the minds of all of us who have chosen to live selfishly and to show us that selfishness is wrong, and to try to develop an idea of the greatness of the Being of God and all His loving measures toward us.
And so God had some problems, did He not, as He labored to develop worthy individuals. It is a law of life, isn’t it, that as soon as we have blessings from God we begin to think we’re important.
How then is God going to prepare certain people who He can trust with serene revelations?
God finds a very dependable person--Abraham, doesn’t He. He gives him many marvelous experiences and promises, and Abraham submits to God. So here is a progressive submission, isn’t it.
And God is revealing Himself, in His greatness, to Abraham, preparing him for being the ‘father of the faithful’, as the New Testament calls him.
Then God wanted to do a great thing through a person in revelation of His precious truth, more particularly. So here’s a long preparation of Moses, isn’t it.
Then you have dear Jesus coming upon the scene. And He’s so relaxed in His love, isn’t He? He just wants to get people to slow down. His approach is – “Why don’t you sit down and think with Me?” He said. The Kingdom of God is like this.
So here the dear Master is sitting down and teaching and holding His wonderful truth.... Then He calls out His apostles, doesn’t He, and gives them beautiful concepts of truth and reality.
Here’s Paul, the great revelator to the Gentile world, and God has to give him some remarkable experiences , does He not.
Jesus had revealed to the disciples that He can’t be here very long, and is so distressed they say, “Oh, Lord. You’re saying so many wonderful things and we just can’t remember them. And now you’re talking about going away.”
And Jesus said, “Now never mind this. I’m gonna give you the Holy Spirit and He’s going to bring to you remembrance of the things that I’ve told you.
So just relax yourselves and the Holy Spirit’s gonna come in you--He’s going to bring to your mind the things that I’ve told you; and He’s going to say many more things to you, so you may understand what God wants you to write about, and to teach.”
So here is a long process of revelation.
Now God wants to get it written down. So revelation has to do with the concepts. But here are these human treasures walking around with these concepts that have come from God, and the Holy spirit is working in them to keep these concepts alive, is He not?
Now God wants a record--He’s not going to begin over again in every generation to do the same thing. Just think of the effort God has put forth. How can He begin over again? And so here’s the process of writing--and that has to do with inspiration, or recording of truth.
So here we have something very mysterious. God didn’t want stenographers, did He. He wanted to form the picture of truth in their minds that God, Himself has. So God did not want a stenographer; He did not them writing down a list of words, but for them to express what God had made so real to them in their minds and experience.
God wanted witnesses.
And so here we have a marvelous, mysterious combination of the divine and the human.
And so God has in mind a record of truth that shall be preserved from generation to generation, so you and I can come on the scene and we can go right back to New Testament times.
Every one of us can have a fresh approach to what God has revealed because we have the record of the scripture and we have the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit was the one who oversaw the writing of scripture, did He not?
And so the same one who moved the authorship is now wanting to live with us in interpretation and recreate in our minds the concept that God had in the beginning.
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Gordon C. Olson Sharing Your Faith Lecture 3 (begin at 1:00)
Now we are in the middle of this extra page, and are saying that inspiration is a mysterious, divine human recording of the facts that God wants us to have as posterity at our consideration.
Notice in the middle of that page, the paragraph under Inspiration, in your notes, we say that inspiration has to do with the accuracy of the record, and we must decide by study, meditation and prayer, where God has spoken, and where man has spoken.
In other words, the Bible describes and gives the history of God’s dealings with mankind and records everything that has been involved in this great procedure. It records the words of Satan, for example, which, of course, are not perspective in truth at all. It records what evil men have said.
So the Bible is to be a sensible book — not to be visionary and to pick certain passages out of their context. We are to read it as simply as possible and not try to get mysterious. So here we have a remarkable development, do we not; and how the writers of the Bible claim that God was speaking to them.
We have the claim of Moses, as God gave him — he was so humble, as we said, that he felt he needed a special, divine guidance, and God said, “I’ll be with your mouth, and I will have you speak the words that I want conveyed to humanity.” And so, here we have the dynamic power of God coming down.
We have the trip of Moses up to the mount for 40 days, receiving all the serene revelations there. And then he came down from the mount and declares, in Exodus 24:3, for example; the people recognize that God was speaking to them and was giving Moses some words to convey to them.
So Moses came and recounted to the people all the words of the Lord, and all the ordinances — and all the people answered with one voice and said, “All the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do.” Here were the words that were given to Moses, referred to in Leviticus 1:1 — and in this book of 27 chapters we have it stated 54 times: God spoke to Moses.
So the Bible is a remarkable book, is it not — recording the thoughts of God as David declares how the Holy Spirit worked through him. In 2Samuel 23:23 he indicates this great operation: “The spirit of the Lord spoke by me and his word was on my tongue. And he declares an unusual operation of the Spirit upon his writings.
Going on, we have Isaiah, for example, declaring how God came upon him.
Then in Matthew 5:17-18 Jesus is declaring how God spoke in the Old Testament, and He said: There shall lack anything that’s been declared, but all things shall be fulfilled.
Then as we mentioned in the 16th Chapter of John, how they were so distressed that they couldn’t remember these things. And, here is the great promise of the New Testament writers — that the Holy Spirit is going to come upon them and they are going to write what God wants recorded for our information and blessing and enlargement.
Jesus said, “I have many things to say to you but you cannot hear them now — just relax yourselves because something wonderful is going to happen — there is going to be the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.
He will guide you into all truth; he will not speak of his own initiative — but what he hears he will speak and will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me, for He shall take of Mine and shall disclose it to you.
So, here is a promise that the New Testament writers are going to have unusual visitation of the power of the Holy Spirit, and what they are to write.
We have Paul talking about words. Well some folks think you can have inspiration without words. How can you think you can have some thought inspiration of some kind? How can you do this if you do not have a record of accuracy. How can you ever create accurate thought?
And so Paul talks about words in I Corinthians 2:1213: Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is from God; that we might know the things freely given to us by God.
Which things also we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. And Paul declares that there was a power of words coming down over his mind, as he wrote.
In 2Timothy 3:16 we have probably the most common passage as one of our key passages: All scripture is inspired by God, and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for instructions, for correction, training in righteousness.
You remember this word, inspired of God; it is a compound word, which means God breathes. It is the word to breathe out, giving the idea of an expression, and then it is God breathes.
So scripture is God breathing out to us the words and the thoughts that He wants us to have.
Then we find in 2 Peter 1:21 which is a very forceful statement as to how the spirit came upon the writers: ‌for no prophecy was every made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.
That is, the writers of the Bible did not just say, “Well I guess I’ll write something.” They just sat down and decided to do this.. It is rather the power of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, and moving upon them in a great way.
And then you have this word moved by the Holy Spirit spake from God. This is a very dynamic word; it is used of the storms; it is used of the waves of the sea; it is a word of power, is it not. And here Peter says, The Holy Spirit came upon the writers with power� — they were borne along in a very dynamic way in writing that which God wanted to be written.
So we have a remarkable combination, as I see it.
Now history could be known, and it was handed down from parent to child, and leader to the next leader, and so on. They did this more than we do; we lean more to writing in our day, but they leaned more to verbal concentration, and went over these things again and again, until the next generation would surely know and understand what had gone before.
As I see it, the Holy Spirit came upon the writers and they sat down to study history, and learn what was available.
This is what we saw about Luke‌dear Dr. Luke was so gloriously related to God , in salvation, and with his nice culture, and his research, he declares in the 1st verses of both Luke and the book of Acts how the Holy Spirit moved him to make a thorough study and gather all the information that could possibly be brought — that could be put into this book that he was writing.
As I see it, they sat down to write under the movement of the Holy Spirit — the oversight, we should say, of the Holy Spirit — and as they are writing history, if this history is right, and if God can approve it as accurate, then He lets it stand. But if they would need correction, if they are not expressing the matter correctly, then as I see it,
the Holy Spirit would move upon their minds and correct what they are writing so we would have in the scripture a God-approved verbal inspiration in the original autographs, for example.
Now here we have what we can truly call “The Word of God.” And this is the great basis of God’s instruction to us —
Some think that God is going to start all over again with them. And they are looking for fundamental revelation. And it is so sad to study church history, and to see that some of the divisions among the Body of Christ have come about, because leaders thought that God was giving them special revelations.
Rather than going back to the New Testament and examining exactly what had been revealed, they created their special revelations.
Thus you have some divisions in the Body of Christ. As I said, we have earnest Christians on both sides of these divisions, and many of them do not even know what the problem is, but if there had been this fundamental realization of revelation they would have come back to the New Testament.
Now this is so fundamental. My! You could dwell on this for a long time.
We need to be extremely cautious on our impressions. We need to be extremely cautious when we say: God led me this way‌ and this way. I am old enough to have seen a lot of tragedies. We need to take what we think God is leading us into, and page through the solemn scriptures to see where this is in agreement, and in accord with what God has revealed.
And if it is not in accord, then we should conclude that we were mistaken, and I am sure that many, many earnest Christians are absolutely mistaken in what they think God has told them. We have to learn the hard way many times, in our Christian efforts.
We will be discussing some of this in connection with the idea of personality, and the idea of the partial operation of the personality, which many think you can have. There is a long theological background in this idea of voices and the internal.
But we need to exert a caution, and I believe thoroughly in a personal divine guidance for our lives, but we need to work at it and be prayerful over it, and not make any jumping conclusions over any impressions which we think we’ve had.
Now, if the leaders, the earnest leaders of Christianity in the different spheres had hearkened to this idea, some divisions of the Body of Christ would not have happened.
Obviously, as you study the New Testament certain claims have been made by certain leaders and there is no conceivable way, it seems, that you can justify the claims that they think God gave them a special revelation.
And so God has so relaxed me in my mind, I have not been seeking for any new revelations for 44 years, since I began my restudy of the Bible. I have taken my stand that the Bible is the Word of God.
Many of my friends got into the liberal seminaries and doubted the word of God; gave me their papers and tried to convince me of the evolutionary concept of the Bible. But God reinforced my mind — so thanks be to His Name.
It has been my business to thank God for the efforts of the Bible and to seek by humble prayer and study; to understand the simple things that God has revealed. And this is what people need to know — not any brand-new revelations.
We need to understand what God is like and what happened in sin, and so on, and what God has done in reconciliation, and what we need to do, and what God promises to do — these are the simple things we need to know and put them forth to our fellow beings.
So as I see, God is not going to go over again with me or with you in these fundamental revelations, and therefore, we go on to what God wants to do with you and me.
Then we have illumination as the great thing God wants to do for us. In other words, we need to do two things in studying the scripture — first of all we need to study. There are many, many dear Christians who think that God will tell them the secrets without study; and you do not have to go very far to see that many, many of their so-called revelations just do not happen.
And, of course, if they do not happen, then God didn’t give them to them, and they were mistaken.
So the safe way of truth, as I see it, is to apply the utmost intensity of our mind in pursuit and study of the scripture; and, of course, the most accurate study — the deeper the investigation — the closer you get to the very words that God had given by revelation.
But in doing this we need to have an exceedingly humble attitude of prayer because it is only the Holy Spirit who can recreate in our minds.
Now, the Bible is not a self-contained book you can ever master by scholarship alone. And yet, God is not going to start over again with us. The Bible is a means in the hands of the Holy Spirit, to recreate in our minds the basic truths that God had given so much energy to reveal.
Therefore, we are promised illumination. How sweet are the words of Jesus in Luke 10:21-22: God had hid these things from the wise and the prudent, He said, …and revealed them unto babes.
Won’t you become like little babes then, in God’s sight, that God may show you these precious, lovely things that He wants to give.
Then we have the promise of the Holy Spirit, and how He is going to come and give us the word of enlightenment, in probably no greater passage than I John 2:27. Of course, you are not to believe what we say in these lectures; we hope that you will give consideration to them. With some people, you can tell the last lecture they were listening to; then when another lecture comes along they are willing to change again. Now do not do this.
Think the important things of life are so important that you need to work at this matter. You do not owe any teacher to accept what he says. If there is been evidence of pursuit here, it might be for your benefit to understand what he is teaching.
But you need to put off these basic ideas into the crucible of your own application and study and prayer, to see whether the Holy Spirit says “Amen� in your mind and heart.
This is what counts as we study and think if the dear Holy Spirit gives us this relaxation in our minds, of the serenity of His presence.
So here we have a beautiful passage in 1Jn.2:27: …as for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it had taught you, you abide in Him.
So God wants to recreate in our minds, does He not, the wonderful things He has revealed. And after we see the basic things of God, we need to spend time in meditation and prayer, that the Holy Spirit will give us pictures.
God had the pictures of truth to begin with, did He not? You must have pictures before you have words; and you can never put into words a picture of mind. There is always a deficiency in words, is there not?
So God had the pictures of truth first. Jesus came with the pictures before His mind.
Then God tried to put it into words;
and illumination tries to lead us to understand the words.
Then we need to spend time in meditation and prayer so the Holy Spirit can bring pictures to our mind. We do not want to be speaking merely out of our memories; we want to be speaking out of our understanding, do we not?
This is what dear Jesus did — he spoke out of His understanding — and this is what comes about as we develop, and pray and meditate, and spend a great deal of time alone with God.
And given here, in Acts 17:11, these are the brilliant Christians which they were said to be ‌more nobleminded than those in Thessalonica. And what did they do here: ‌they received the word with great eagerness of readiness in mind, and examined the scriptures daily, to see whether these things were so.
So we have some basic ideas in this manual, and they are really very simple. The main proposition is that it is so important in our lives that we make up our mind by studying prayer to see what is true and to come to a restful concept of truth.
And then spend enough time with God so these things can become real to our minds. Then we want to propagate, or bring out to everyone who listens to us. And dear Paul writes to Timothy:
The things I’ve taught you, you keep on teaching to others who will listen to you.
And so we are so grateful for the Bible, are we not? And we need to be just so simple. Oh, dear friends, let us not look for profound mysteries in the Bible. Some people seem to be studying, and wrestling with historical passages and just imagine all kinds of things.
This is what Origen started around 250 A.D. He gave birth to the allegorical method of interpretation, or to the very mysterious — The allegorical method = you are not to take the things as written, but you are to take these as a springboard to greater heights of mystery, he thought.
And so, it is said that Origen wrote about 6,000 long and short treatises of different mysteries that he believed were hidden behind the words in the Bible.
But God is gave the Bible, not to hide things, but so that we can see.
C God had the picture first. C He worked with precious servants until they saw a particular picture of truth. C Then God had them sit down and describe the picture with words. C God watched over them to make sure they were writing an accurate description of the picture.
C Then the Holy Spirit brings illumination to our minds as we study so that we see the picture that the words are describing. C Then He leads us to concepts so that we can describe the picture with our own words. C Don’t be just speaking out of words we have memorized. We want to speak out of our understanding.
C So read, study, pray, continue to meditate. C Spend a lot of time with God.
This is what Origin started around 250 A.D. He gave birth to the allegorical method of interpretation, or to the very mysterious — The allegorical method = you are not to take the things as written, but you are to take these as a springboard to greater heights of mystery, he thought.
And so, he is said to have written about 6,000 long and short treatises of different mysteries that he believed were hidden behind the words.
And you can see how, down through the history of the church there have been interpreters who tried to get so mysterious, and sometimes you hear people say, “My text this morning is such and such, but I am taking it out of its context.� Well, now, friends, you can take any subject you want to in your discussion, but let us never be guilty of taking a passage out of its context.
God is trying to teach us sensibly, you see. He is not trying to get us to be visionary and imaginative. He wants to teach us just exactly the things that He has in mind to teach, and so let us spend our time trying to get simple on the Bible, not trying to get mysterious.
And, of course, we need to find out who said what you could preach on atheism from the Bible. You can say, “Ladies and gentlemen, that my text this morning and my lecture on atheism is taken from the Bible, mind you, because in Psalm 14:1 you read: There is no God�
And so, I am on good ground, taking the Bible for my lecture here.” But it is so important to go back and see who said this. So you go back and you find out the fool has said in his heart, “There is no God.”
And this is an illustration of many, many things we need to understand. You would not establish your theology on Job’s accusers writing. The Bible is a record of what they said against Job. And you know how God came along at the end and justified Job.
You would not want to build your final theology on Ecclesiastes, for example, for the key word there is under the sun. This is a book about what people can figure out under the sun or by their own thinking processes, and so on.
God wants us to be sensible in our Biblical interpretation. And you would not want to build your great schemes of personality understanding by some statements in the Psalms, for example, which are often very emotional and very expressive, and were not intended oftentimes to be analytical in a critical atmosphere — it is a record of what is said.
I do not think God stands back of many of the prayers of David, for example. And the critics come along and say, “Why did David pray so dynamically and call God to judge his opponents?” I do not think God stands back of those prayers; I think we should see what Jesus said about it and we are to interpret God’s attitude by the full revelation.
This would be a record of the way David prayed — this would not mean that God would approve everything he prayed.
You see the sensible concept we are trying to say here; and this will avoid a lot of complications that God wants us to protect us from.
And so, we can be so glad, should we not. In this day when so many are criticizing and finding fault with the Bible we can be so grateful for God’s great exercise. And is it not marvelous that we can read the dear Bible for many, many years, and it is always new, and always fresh.
And the Spirit brings things to our mind in such a lovely way, to help us to develop what He wants us to see. Oh, bless the Lord, for we just want to be as simple as we can, do we not, as we seek to see what God wants us to see, and to do what God wants us to do. Ends the discussion of Nature of the Bible at 23:00