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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Don't understand Revelation and 1 Cor 15 | 1 Cor 15:28 | Morant61 | 228301 | ||
Greetings Biblicalman! I haven't read all of this thread yet, but I did want to respond to your point about 'literalism'. 'Literalism' does not mean that there cannot be figures of speech, or hyperbole's, or poetic language. This is a common misunderstanding about being literal. Taking a literal approach to Scripture simply means that Scripture means what it says. If a passage is poetry, it should be read as poetry. If a passage is a metaphor, it should be read as a metaphor, ect.... Thus, in the instance that you have cited (Is. 2), one could argue that Isaiah is simply using poetic language to describe the exaltation of God's temple and His worship over all of the arrogance of fallen man. This would fit well with Is. 2:17 - " The arrogance of man will be brought low and the pride of men humbled; the LORD alone will be exalted in that day," Of course, it is certainly possible that God could raise the mountain upon which the temple is place above all other mountains. He is certainly able to do that! ;-) Your Brother in Christ, Tim Moran |
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2 | Don't understand Revelation and 1 Cor 15 | 1 Cor 15:28 | biblicalman | 228303 | ||
thank you Tim I am quite well aware of how sensible people view Bible passages, but I was being challenged in a way that suggested I had to take everything in Revelation literally, and was responding to that attitude. Isaiah chapter 2 is full of hyperbole. There is no way in which all the nations could flow up to the Temple. There would be a continual queue for years. Indeed it would never end. Thus what Isaiah is saying is something that cannot be taken literally even when you remove the imagery. Who then is to decide what should be and what should not be taken literally? I doubt whether spears will be turned into pruning hooks. We thus have to update what is written to the times of our own day. The truth is that the prophets had to speak of the future in terms that they and their hearers could understand. They just did not have the background to be able to speak in spiritual and heavenly terms, and certainly their hearers did not. Indeed in view of the pagan views around them it would have been dangerous. But you only have to trace 'Zion' through Isaiah to discover that much of what he says about Zion could not be literally true. It goes far beyond the physically possible. Thus when he speaks of the Temple here in Isaiah 2 he is really thinking of true worship which to him had to be expressed in terms of the Tample, but he had made clear in 1.11-18 that it had to be a very different thing than the Temple then present. (Indeed his words come very close to what Jesus said in John 4.20-24). That Temple was not worthy of exalting. The point is rather that the people would come to Jerusalem as the dwellingplace of God on earth to worship and seek God in a way exalted above the ordinary, at as time when truth was mainly limited to one nation. But Jerusalem is no longer the dwellingplace of God. The Temple was replaced by the Temple of the living God (2 Corinthians 6.18) and the altar by Jesus Himself (Hebrews 13.10) it was to those whom the nations would look and to whom they would respond. Isaiah's imagery goes beyond what you express. There is a deliberate intent to take the Temple nearer to God not just to exalt it in men's eyes. His point was that the Temple would become what it was not, a place of true spiritual worship. But Jesus expanded on that for He said, 'neither here or in Jerusalem shall you worship the Father' (John 4.21). Rather we are to 'worship in Spirit and in truth'. That is what Isaiah was seeking to convey in terms of his own day. And Jesus takes it a step further because by then the ideas could be understood. The New Testament makes clear that this occurred through the Temple becoming a heavenly Temple (as in Revelation), and Jerusalem a heavenly Jerusalem (Galatians 4; Hebrews 12). I really do not think it can be doubted that the Law going out from Jerusalem means God's truh going out to the nations, and that this occurred through Jesus Christ and the Apostles 'from Jerusalem -- to the uttermost parts of the earth. To try and reproduce it pedantically would be to countermand Jesus' clear teaching and New Testament teaching about the Law. It is amazing how evangelicals who can be so adamant about the place of the Law in relation to the Gospel are quite happy for people of the future to take us back to pre-Gospel days. But that cannot be done. Jesus Christ has come and died and risen again. It is impossible to go back to the Law on the old basis. There is only one way of salvation for ever and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. In the same way it is imposible to offer sacrifices on the old basis. And sacrifices on any other basis are not what the prophets taught in spite of the somersaults some people make in their minds. The prophets NEVER spoke of memorial sacrifices. They would not have understood such things. And the New Testament certainly never does. So they are unscriptural. There is no need for a new Temple because its purpose is redundant. Worship can never be carried on in that way again unless we degrade what Christ has done for us, and for all men of all ages. God wanted us to know that, so He destroyed the Temple and ensured the building of a mosque in its place. The bible knows nothing of a future Gospel other than the one in which we believe. God does not change His requirements, only the way in which they were expressed. In Old Testament days God showed His people a way of worship which was similar to that of other nations but had a deeper meaning and lesson. To take that into the future when no one is offering sacrifices is an anachronism of the worst kind. What we must do is accept the New Testament way of looking at the Old Testament, the way taught by the Holy Spirit. And that does involve recognising that, as with the parables, we must move from the literal to the spiritual, just as Hebrews demonstrates. Best wishes |
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3 | Don't understand Revelation and 1 Cor 15 | 1 Cor 15:28 | DocTrinsograce | 228307 | ||
Your analysis would be in concord with what Paul writes: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit." (Ephesians 2:19-22 NASB) |
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