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NASB | Ecclesiastes 3:21 Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth? |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Ecclesiastes 3:21 Who knows if the spirit of man ascends upward and the spirit of the animal descends downward to the earth? |
Subject: where do animals go when they expire? |
Bible Note: I think that the problem lies in what we mean by decide. We are each using a different definition. You are using the term 'to decide' as meaning 'to determine (although even that has two meanings), to fix in stone'. I am using it to mean 'to discern, work out what it means, and come to a decision about.' If it does not matter how we explain God's word, why do we do it? I think it matters very much how we explain God's word. Of course we do not decide what is there, or what words God (and the translators if we use a translation) caused to be written, but we certainly decide what in our view it means. You are very good at citing a text and saying 'its meaning is clear', but I notice that you do not give its meaning. You simply say, 'it's obvious'. In other words you are saying, 'I have interpreted it this way and I am completely right'. If that isn't 'deciding' what is? But if we want to help people we do have to explain the meaning of texts. Robertson in his Word Pictures (and many others) says of 1 Peter 1.20-21, 'It is the prophet’s grasp of the prophecy, not that of the readers that is here presented, as the next verse shows.' In other words it is not talking about how WE interpret Scripture at all, but on how the prophets themselves understood it in ordsr to pass it on. Is that what you understand by the verse? If we study, and research and do our best to get it right, we then have to come to a final decision on what it means. So we are deciding what it means. The truth I suspect is that we are simply discussing at cross purposes because we are using words with different meanings. I wish I could be sure that I always decided what God has decided about the meaning of Scripture, but sadly I cannot. While my central doctrine has not changed over fifty years, my understanding of it certainly has. Thus decisions I now make about the meaning of Scripture are very different from those I made fifty years ago. I used to be a premillennialist until I recognised how often I had to twist the meaning of words and passages in order to make them fit in. I became uneasy and then began to see things from a different view. That is why I am an amillennialist. So actually in my youth I was deciding what the Scriptures said in the wrong way, because I was unconsciously manipulating it to fit in with the theories of Dr Scofield. Now I think I am deciding them in the right way, because my decisions are based on taking them to mean what they say. If we are responsible before God for what we teach and what we tell people then we have to come to a decision first as to what we do tell them. You see our argument arises because we are using the idea of making a decision in a different way, It is all an argument over nothing. And I never waste my time arguing over nothing. So I will close the discussion here. We will agree to disagree, although the funny thing is that I do not think that we disagree at all (except about the meaning of 1 Peter 1.20). Best wishes. |