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Foreign Invaders crisis cost $150B in 2023, forcing some areas to cut police and fire services: report Israel kills head of Hezbollah Intelligence. Status: Not Logged In; Sign In Bible Study See other Bible Study Articles Title: Bottom up Bible Study Source: [None] URL Source: [None] Published: Mar 11, 2015 Author: cranko Post Date: 2015-03-11 20:40:10 by cranko Keywords: None Views: 1285 Comments: 6 Once of my nieces posted this on Facebook today: 3 years ago we decided to do something crazy, something my peers said wouldn't work or be beneficial. Through Bible Club at Hartland High, we started a girls small group after school at Biggby on Wednesday's. It wasn't affiliated with a specific church, just an open conversation about God. Sometimes there were three of us, but over the course of that year, I watched as more and more girls came. The discussions were crazy cool! 3 years later, it's still happening and God is being glorified through it all. Lives are being changed and girls are coming to experience Christ. Thanks Sydney Wheat for listening and surrendering to God! The ways he's using you are incredible. Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest #1. To: cranko (#0) I think it's a good idea. Should we start with Genesis, at the beginning, and work forward, or should we start with Revelation, the end, and work backwards? Vicomte13  posted on  2015-03-11   20:46:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #2. To: Vicomte13 (#1) I think it's a good idea. Should we start with Genesis, at the beginning, and work forward, or should we start with Revelation, the end, and work backwards? The latter is more interesting. cranko  posted on  2015-03-11   20:50:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #3. To: cranko (#2) (Edited) Should we start with Genesis, at the beginning, and work forward, or should we start with Revelation, the end, and work backwards? The latter is more interesting. It's more relevant too, because the words in Revelation are God's LAST WORDS to us. All that came before was leading up to that, but with that, God spoke, and he spoke as Jesus. So, not only had the Jews and their prophets said and done whatever they were going to say and do, but also the Christian Apostles had all run their course, preached their messages, written their letters, and then, most of them, died as martyrs. The Revelation to John is Jesus stepping back in to have the FINAL word. So, whatever tension exists in the Scriptures BEFORE Revelation, in Revelation, God answers the question. Moreover, Revelation is the only place in the New Testament, and one of a bare handful in the whole Bible, where God explicitly said: "Take dictation", and then explicitly warned the writer, and the reader, to leave the words exactly as written and to not add or subtract anything. Revelation gives us the final synopsis. It's an exceptionally good place to start, really the most useful of all. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-03-12   15:02:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #4. To: cranko (#2) Alright then, let's begin. We begin at "the end", the last book in the Bible, called "Revelation" in English (Apocalypsos in Koine Greek), authored (it says) by a man named "John" (in English, "Ioannos" in the actual Greek). Tradition ascribes the identity of this John with the Apostle John, who is also said to have written the "Fourth Gospel" as well as three of the so-called "Catholic Epistles", 1, 2 and 3 John. There are many different ways one can approach this text, or any Biblical text, or the Bible itself. One can take a traditional approach, fixing each work within the traditions about it (example: John the Apostle wrote Revelation, in its old age). A part of the "traditional approach" would be to accord Revelation the status of the "final" book of "Scripture", closing the canon because it is the "last" book of "the Bible", and considering the fact that it is last as proof that it came last in time, "because the ancient Christians knew this, so that's why they put it there…". One can also take an historical approach, noting the historical controversies about the book, how it was accepted by some Christians and rejected by others. One can uncritically charge forward on the thought: "Well, this is the Bible, so therefore it's sacred, and it's the last book, so therefore it's last in time", and simply put faith in the traditions (the book itself does not say that it is the last in time). My approach, the approach I will take throughout any Bible study, is to ignore all of the traditional and external elements. I focus on what the text itself says, its own internal logic, first. I will later relate it to what other books of the Bible say, but I leave aside arguments about the "canonicity" of the book, or its location in historical time, or "who wrote it". All of those things are interesting, but they are not resolvable. On the other hand, what the text actually SAYS - that IS determinable, that CAN be resolved. It is well that people base their lives on the Bible, but if they base their lives upon traditions ABOUT the Bible, while ignoring (in the literal sense of that word) what the text actually SAYS, they have placed themselves in the hazard by their own standards! It doesn't matter what I believe ABOUT the Bible, or specifically the text within it called "Revelation" (in English). I can believe it to be inspired; I can believe it to be a fairy tale - either way I can read and analyze it carefully to determine what it actually SAYS. And I think that's worthwhile. In fact, I think that's the only thing that really IS worthwhile to do with the Biblical text: mine it to see what it ACTUALLY SAYS. Only then is one in any position to form an opinion at all. Also, it is very empowering to know what the Scriptures ACTUALLY SAY. The world is full of men who lust for power, and one means of power is to use the authority of religion over the heads of other men. For men of goodwill who believe in God and who believe that the Bible reveals words (or The Word) of God, to be told by an "expert" that the Bible says thus and so, and therefore God demands such and such from you is challenging. One does not want to displease God. But men are liars, and religious men in particular have a long history of being frauds, charlatans, thieves, rapists and sadists. It would seem that the closer men hew, or pretend to hew, to God the more Satanic they can be. This is either so from the beginning - they entered religion as wolves to feed on the sheep, or it can be because as men become holier, Satan focuses more on pulling them down. Either way, religious men are not to be trusted much: you need to read the text FOR YOURSELF and understand it, so that you are not led astray by men. Of course, there are men who will tell you that the fact that you don't trust designated religious authorities but want to read for yourself is proof that YOU are the one being led astray by Satan. After all, they mistranslate and misquote, "Scripture is not of private interpretation". In other words: trust THEIR private interpretation and suspend your own. To that, I say: No. No, religious men have not proven to be sufficiently moral, trustworthy and honest over time to be trusted with something so important without supervision. Trust, but verify. The verification part is reading the text for yourself, carefully, so that you know what it says. That way you can throw the bullshit flag whenever somebody starts to make up things and say "The Bible says it". One can say: "No, it does not". One can say that even if one doesn't really believe that the Bible is sacred at all. It may not be sacred, but that doesn't mean that some liar should be able to get away with lying about what it SAYS. Learned distrust of religious leaders is the reason to read the Bible for yourself, carefully, and understand it. Once you do, you're in a better position to judge who is telling the truth, and who is spinning fables. So, that's the thought process. And that's how I will approach the text: the text tells us everything that we're going to know about itself. We're not going to say "John the Apostle" wrote it just because tradition says so. We will merely say that someone names "Ioannes" wrote it. Maybe the Apostle, maybe not, doesn't make any difference. It says what it says, and THAT is what I will focus on: what it SAYS. To do that, we have to go to Greek, and we have to get the Greek from the best manuscripts. Vicomte13  posted on  2015-03-12   19:45:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #5. To: VxH (#2) A thought about you occurred to me today: when you read the Apocalypse of John, you see organized religious hierarchies of whatever stripe (the "Tzars", you would call them) as the Harlot, and the countries in their thrall as the Beast, don't you? Vicomte13  posted on  2015-03-13   10:02:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   #6. To: cranko (#2) Do you want to do this bottom-up starting with Revelation? Vicomte13  posted on  2015-03-13   17:17:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply   Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest

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