[Responding to someone on a newsgroup who commented about another’s credentials. The ‘other’ hadn’t got any academic qualifications].

I haven’t the time these guys have to deal with this’nthat… but thought I would add something to _ _ _ _‘s comment about _ _ _ _‘s ‘credentials’…

When writing/teaching on subjects theological/eschatological autodidacts are at a disadvantage. The ancient genre of apocalyptic literature (sorry for the multisyllabic words – there are no simpler ones) needs careful research. The symbols in the Book of Revelation – ‘code-words’ if you like – were pretty-well understood by the early ‘underground’ Christians, and modern ‘scholars’ who don’t understand the original ‘sitz im leben’ or find out what-means-what back then are likely to get it all wrong.

An example: the dispensational school of Darby/Scofield…

Now before you jump in and call me a heretic, read my article/s on Understanding the Book of Revelation, then return here, O.K.?

http://jmm.org.au/articles/2265.htm

Let me say I haven’t read _ _ _ _‘s book, so can’t comment on his particular approach to matters eschatological…

And let me say also that I’ve wandered in contexts academic/theological for 45 years but have found that knowledge does not necessarily equal wisdom. A person like _ _ _ _ who sleeps in the woods is as likely to hear the authentic voice of God about some things better than scholars who simply happen to have been born with high IQs and have the time to wander around in sophistries or esoterics… I’d swap 100 scholars for an authentic ‘untutored’ biblical prophet any day…

Scholars, I’m saying, can get it all wrong. But, yes, autodidacts can get it all wrong…

I recently came across this from Kierkegaard:

“Although the scribes could explain where the Messiah should be born, they remained quite unperturbed in Jerusalem. They did not accompany the Wise Men to seek him. Similarly we may know the whole of Christianity, yet make no movement. The power that moved heaven and earth leaves us completely unmoved. What a difference! The three kings had only a rumour to go by. But it moved them to make that long journey. The scribes were much better informed, much better versed. They sat and studied the Scriptures like so many dons, but it did not make them move. Who had the more truth? The three kings who followed a rumour, or the scribes who remained sitting with all their knowledge?

What a vexation it must have been for the kings, that the scribes who gave them the news they wanted remained quiet in Jerusalem! We are being mocked, the kings might have thought. For indeed what an atrocious self-contradiction that the scribes should have the knowledge and yet remain still. This is as bad as if a person knows all about Christ and his teachings, and his own life expresses the opposite. We are tempted to suppose that such a person wishes to fool us, unless we admit that he is only fooling himself.” by Soren Kierkegaard

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God bless

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Shalom!

Rowland Croucher

http://jmm.org.au/

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