In the midst of all the busyness of last week it was good to chat with Janet Parshall again…I find it fascinating that I am doing a live show a day ahead from downtown Sydney! I get to tease her about the Americans being behind the times! She is a superb interviewer…
Click this link to get to the show…
https://www.moodyradio.org/radioplayer.aspx?episode=280098&hour=2
Janet Parshall – Autism, Sampson, Butterfly and the Gender of God
Hi Pastor
I have been reading your site for a while and find it really helpful. I grew up in a Christian home and attended Sunday School regularly as a child. As a young adult, though, I was lured away from real faith by liberal Christianity false preachers like Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong. After finally seeing through these false prophets and their sycophants, I want to gain orthodox faith. Your site, and several others, has helped me a lot.
I am now at the point where I have a few questions: when I read the Bible, how am I to interpret the Old Testament? These are my specific questions. (I won’t ask about Genesis because so much ink has been spilled on that between creationists and darwinists.)
A.) Is Exodus an historical account or is it an allegory of a spiritual journey (like Pilgrim’s Progress? What is the current consensus among (non-liberal) Bible researchers?
B.) Likewise, are books like Joshua and Numbers to be read as historical accounts or as allegories about spiritual warfare? If they are history, how can we worship a God who orders violent warfare and even genocide?
C.) How did the Jews of Jesus’ day interpret these books?
Thanks in advance for your help. I really appreciate it.
A Sinner
Hi Sinner….
Thanks for your comments. Forgive the briefness of my answers.
1) We read the OT the way Jesus did. As the Word of God which cannot be broken. Although we read it understanding the genres…1 Kings is history, Job poetry, Isaiah prophecy…etc
2) Exodus is an historical account. It would not make sense otherwise and is not an allegory. Non liberal Bible researchers accept that.
3) Joshua and Numbers are historical accounts. But we need to grasp the difference between descriptive and prescriptive. Descriptive tells us what happened (whether good or bad) – prescriptive is what God commands. There are however still some passages that to us seem problematic….I’m sorry but I don’t have time to go into these just now other than to say that I believe that God is just and would never command something unjust or evil.
4) Depends which Jews…
Thank you!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to reply, Pastor.
As you probably deduced, I have started reading through the complete Bible for the first time after waking up to just how wrong and empty and without hope the false teachings of people like John Shelby Spong, Marcus Borg and their like are. However, I was at an impasse as I could not even tell what genre the early OT books were – whether they were purely spiritual, allegorical writings or whether they were also historical accounts of God’s actual, literal intervention in World history. I think the right answer does impact greatly on how we interpret these texts, so I am extremely grateful for your answer.
The fact that God did apparently order war remains a big stumbling block for me but I will get there with prayer and research. Thank you for your pointers on this question, too.
“4) Depends which Jews…”
I was just thinking of the humble rural peasants who were following Jesus around during His earthly ministry, not the culturally elite Sadducees and Pharisees.
Thank you once again. I will shortly begin rereading the early books of the OT with more confidence.
I am ashamed I was blinded for so long by the Wolves and false prophets of liberalism. In a way, I sinned by dishonouring my parents too for they are mainstream evangelicals and warned me against the liberals. It took a lot to finally wake me up to the emptiness of Borg’s and Spong’s theology. They were really just projecting his own doubts and lack of faith onto others, it now seems to me.
Have a wonderful day.
AS regards genocide I would suggest you read Paul Copan’s “DId God Command Genocide?”
In terms of the humble rural peasants – I don’t know. But I suspect that they took the BIble as the Word of God and that is why they heard Jesus gladly because he spoke to them as one who had authority….not like the teachers of the Scribes and Pharisees – who relied more on themselves than on the Word.
But there are always questions.
Thank you, Pastor. I will check that book out. You have helped me enormously with your answers. God bless you.