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The Big Picture
- Chapter One
from Doug Perry, www.FellowshipOfTheMartyrs.com
Click
here for printable PDF version
In my humble
opinion, one of the big roadblocks to understanding the Bible is the
tendency to see stories in the Bible as only having application to
that particular person or audience or time period.
There were
certainly things that prophets said to a particular person that only
had application that one time, but it makes sense to me that if it
made it into the Bible, it had a wider audience to whom it would
apply. A lot of time has been spent arguing about
"replacement theology," that is, whether the modern church
has inherited the promises of the children of Israel and thus the Old
Testament applies to the modern church. Some for and some
against. It divides up the Body of Christ into camps that won't
even talk to each other any more.
There's also a LOT
of arguing about whether the book of Revelations (and Ezekiel and
Daniel and others) is about something that happened in A.D. 70 with
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans or if it is about some
future event in history - or both. A lot of wasted time being
distracted with this that could have been spent spreading the
Gospel. A lot of best selling books, tapes, videos, etc., that
sucked money away from more pressing needs.
Look, I'm just a
businessman that was given some insight. I was allowed to see a
little bit more of the big picture. All the glory to God, it's
not by MY power, that's for sure. My brain tends to process
things in equations, as math problems. I see much of the Bible
as computer code. That is, it's a lot of "If/Then"
statements. IF you will abide in me, THEN I will abide in
you. IF you lie, steal, envy, murder, commit adultery (etc.),
THEN bad things will happen. IF you have other gods before me,
THEN there will be trouble for your land. IF you will humble
yourselves and seek my face, THEN I will restore your land.
See? The whole thing is full of them. It's all full of
formulas. All interconnected.
The thing with
code like that is that the variables you input affect the output, but
they don't affect the equation. I know this is a little hard to
follow. Let's try it this way.
If you have a
behavior for which God has said there will be a specific consequence
and you do that behavior a lot more, you should expect a lot more consequence.
Behavior A x 1 =
Consequence B x 1
Behavior A x 100 =
Consequence B x 100
Behavior A x
1,000,000 = Consequence B x 1,000,000
So you see, the
more people you put into one group, the accumulation of their
sinfulness creates a certain mass of badness that's hard to
overcome. By myself on a desert island, I might be out of step
with God, but it's easy enough to hear from Him and change my
ways. When I'm attached to a group with a million, I might be
doing great personally, but I'm still subject to the danger that
others are reaping bad consequences for which we'll ALL be punished.
The prophets in
the Old Testament warned the whole nation of the coming judgements
upon them. Even the righteous remnant had to go into captivity
and slavery and death. Have you ever thought about the children
of Israel wandering in the desert because of their lack of
faith? No, I don't mean the "Children of Israel" as a
nation, I mean the children themselves. ALL the grownups died
before their eyes. The kids weren't at fault, but they still
had to suffer the loss of every single old person - parents,
grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles - before they could go into the
promised land. See? They were subject to the consequence
brought up on them by the mass of sinfulness of their group, even if
they themselves were behaving as they should.
Sure, there are
times when God saves the few good ones (Noah, Lot, Rahab, etc.), but
most of the time everybody has to suffer together. That's why
it's so important to be accountable and watch out for each
other. That's why the folks doing right can't just quietly sit
by and think they're going to be free of judgement.
OK, now here's
where it starts to get more complicated. I think it's
reasonable to assume that:
IF the Bible is in
the inspired Word of God, THEN nothing is in there by accident.
IF nothing is in
there by accident, THEN it must have some future application.
IF something
irritated God at one point in history, THEN it probably irritates Him
all the time.
IF God knows
everything, THEN He must be able to plan ahead and see future
applications of the same warning.
IF the nation of
Israel did something that brought judgement on them, THEN other
children of God doing the same thing should also expect judgement.
IF there was
prophecy about Israel related to their misbehavior, THEN we should
assume that that same prophecy relates to other folks doing the same thing.
We know God is
great at conservation of resources and reuse of assets. Look at
the ecosystem, everything has a purpose and is recycled from the
elephant to the maggot to the dirt to a tree to a leaf to an elephant.
So, it seems to me
that when God says something in the Bible it's likely that it could
be recycled and used again and again. The Lord's Prayer is good
for kids in Sunday School, but it's also good for somebody worried
about getting bread on their table. It's good for a Christian
martyr on his way to a firing squad and it's good for someone praying
in the biggest possible terms for the Bride, the universal church
(Our Father, Our Bread, Our Sins, etc.).
History doesn't
really repeat itself in equal measure since we're always growing. So
rather than it being circular, it's spiral. And something that
had application at a particular point will probably have application
again when the spiral pulls back around. So when an Old
Testament prophet spoke judgement on the 10,000 people in a town or
tribe that had taken on idolatry and then we see God's consequences
on them for it - we should be able to predict that if 100,000 do the
same exact thing it will be 10 times as bad. And if 100,000,000
do it, it will be 10,000 times as bad. Eventually, if enough of the
earth is bad, the only choice is a flood (Noah) or a massive reboot
(Revelation, fire, black sun, red moon, earthquake, 2/3 of population
dead, other badness, etc.)
Helpful Visual Aid
Idolatry x 1 =
Judgement x 1
Idolatry x 10,000
= Judgement x 10,000
Idolatry x
100,000,000 = Judgement x 100,000,000
You see, Hosea CAN
be about us. Revelation can be about AD 70 and it can STILL be
about the Last Days. Much of it was fulfilled, but some of the
big, bad scary stuff can't happen until the final rotation. At
some point the spiral hits a dead end because the consequences are
too great for the Earth to contain them.
We're doing every
bad thing in Hosea only MANY, MANY times worse. Go read
it. See that the judgement could apply to us today. Then
cry like a baby and repent of your part in it. Commit to trying
to do something to push back the darkness.
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