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The Eternity of God

March 15, 2012 in Torrey with 2 Comments

I decided to read through What the Bible Teaches, by R.A. Torrey again. It’s a great book – you can download a free PDF here - so we’re doing a little Bible study every Thursday. Subscribe over there to make sure you don’t miss anything, but come back and add your voice in the Comments! >>>

This may sound funny to say, but I think the eternal nature of God is one of my favorite things about Him. It is at once inexpressibly comforting, and quietly terrifying.

(I just deleted the word “terrifying” a dozen times and replaced it with more accurate, literally understood terms like “humbling” and “awe-inspiring,” but none of them quite capture the expanse of the sensation, so I’m letting terrifying stand regardless of how you may judge my theology by it.)

Torrey’s only states three propositions in this short chapter:

  1. God is eternal.
  2. God is unchangeable.
  3. God is self-existent.

The fact that God is unchanging should be a believer’s greatest comfort in any situation or any season.

People like to say that there’s nothing that God cannot do, but I don’t think it’s true. God cannot be unjust. He cannot be unmerciful. He cannot refuse the worst person who turns to Jesus for salvation and forgiveness. He cannot refuse to forgive me when I turn back to him again and again. He is.

I don’t think any human mind can really grasp eternity, or the concept of self-existence, and that’s what terrifies me.

When I was little, before I knew Him, I used to sometimes imagine myself rocketing through space. Beyond Pluto, out of the Milky Way, past the known universes … what would be there? More darkness? More stars? More of the same? Or something new? Every adventure ended in a white-out because even a child’s untempered imagination can’t hold eternity.

Now, I like to sit and think of God the same way. I usually start in fascination, and end up in humility and the fear of the Lord. Who is this God I worship? Who is this God that sees me? Speaks to me? Requests my intercession? Who is this God that I so flippantly complain to when my tiny little finances become too tiny for my minuscule little life? And who is this God that He hears, and cares, and acts?

Sit for just five minutes and consider the eternity of God. Then, let us know what you learned.

Allow Me To Explain (55 of 439) – Joseph’s Hood

March 14, 2012 in TheyReasoned with 2 Comments

The back story is here. The collection is here. You can subscribe over there. >>>

55. Where did Joseph and Mary live before the birth of Jesus? Luke 2:1-7 vs. Matthew 2:1-2, 11, 22-23

I’m not sure if I’m dumb, or if this is another example that the makers of this poster didn’t actually think you’d read it.

Luke 2:1-7
And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city. 4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. 6 So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. 
Matthew 2:1-2
Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”
:11
And when they had come into the house, they saw the young Child with Mary His mother, and fell down and worshiped Him. And when they had opened their treasures, they presented gifts to Him: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
:22-23
But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea instead of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. And being warned by God in a dream, he turned aside into the region of Galilee. 23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Am I missing something? If someone can explain what the contradiction is supposed to be, please leave a comment and let me know.

The selection from Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary were in Nazareth, of Galilee, before Jesus was born, which answers the question.

The selection from Matthew doesn’t even address where they were before Jesus was born – just where they were when He was born (Bethlehem), and where they went afterwards (back to Nazareth).

I don’t understand the issue. If it helps, we pulled together all the gospel accounts of the nomadic life of Jesus’ first few years as a child in our Christmas Special, here.

If the Bible is Errant, You Must Be God

March 13, 2012 in Philosophy with 10 Comments

We’ve been working through a list of “contradictions” in the Bible, here, and along the way we’ve learned a lot about the concept of “inerrancy.” I read a post by Professor Kevin D. Kennedy yesterday, on one reason why he believes in the inerrancy of scripture, and thought to myself … “Daaaaang.”

A snippet:

… if I am going to claim that there are errors in the text of Scripture, then I must first claim that there are no errors in my interpretation of that text.
There are really only two alternatives when asking whether the Scriptures have errors.
  1. The first alternative is to conclude that my interpretation is valid and without any error and that I am right to conclude that this particular text contains an error. …
  2. The other alternative is to conclude that I might be mistaken in my interpretation of the text and it is therefore impossible for me to conclude that this text has an error until I have inerrant knowledge of the biblical languages, the historical background, other events not recorded by this particular narrator, any unique idioms that might have been employed by this biblical writer, as well as inerrant knowledge of the political, social, legal, cultural, familial, geographical, topological, and ethnic setting of the text — just to name a few.

The modern, English translation that most of us are reading of a rich, ancient text may – on the surface – appear to have some textual contradictions.

Some of those, like this one, are probably the result of copyist error or the mistranslation of a digit. Some, like this one, are shrouded in cultural implications. Others, like this one, are deliberately done to teach a point.

Only the first of the three can be said to be an actual “contradiction,” and such minutiae are not the subject of a believer’s conviction that the testimony and teaching of scripture is “inerrant.”

To claim that the Bible is errant, as Professor Kennedy points out, is speaking pretty highly of oneself, even for someone who does not believe that the Bible is the word of God. To claim it as errant – after countless translations, in spite of thousands of years of serious study, regardless of hundreds of non-biblical supporting texts, and countless scientific and archeological proofs – makes a person pretty omniscient.

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