Do you ever come across something in your bible study that goes against your belief that you have now?
This is happening to me in a lot of studying that I have been doing in the last seven years. I am not on purpose looking for things that are obviously different, but I am looking at the foundation of the christian faith and how it started. It is different from what we see now in our ‘christian’ life.
I know that statement comes out of left field, for some, but you must stop and think and relook at the scriptures, and also the back story of christianity, to get the actual meaning of the scriptures. Back story is very,very important, do not take it lightly
, no matter what somebody tells you. You see, only now when someone tells you a story today, and they tell you about something happened to them and what it made them do,say, or react can you totally understand how they would tell the story, you know the background of it all.
But if I was to tell you, a story, from the early 1800’s, you would need to know some background of the story to fully understand on why,where,how, when,and what was going on in my story, or else you would come to some different perspective of the story than I wanted you to get. So it is with the same argument that we must use to understand the story of the scriptures. I believe this with all of my heart that this is why we have come with some different messages throughout our reading of the word.
Reading of a back story in a time period and of a society, does not infringe on anything of the bible’s authoritative premise, but it enhances the story to let us be fully aware of what was going on and why. “……and you were there!” is an appropriate phrase to use if we were to put ourselves in the ‘biblical narrative’ in real-time. It would just blow our socks off, if we were to be tele-ported into the scenes of biblical times. I am also convinced that we would come away from the biblical story with a lot of different belief’s and understandings.
It is sometimes frowned upon in some christian circles to not look at or use any ‘outside material’ to further ourselves in biblical knowledge. But what is not understood with biblical studies is that we have taken everything for face value, or the black and white of it. This will just not do!! We need to just go back 200 yrs to see that things changed on the way we perceived things and the reformation parted ways with Catholicism. It is with Martin Luther and John Calvin, that led the way with a different belief system in the scriptures.
This is even more reason to further ‘your’ study, not anyone’s, or anyone’s group but your’s to make it concrete in your belief. This method of searching the scriptures about the people,land,leaders,societies,gods,kingdoms,kings,rulers, and beliefs will ultimately make God’s story come alive!!
The Eternal Purpose 