Rare Biblical Wisdom
Say you do find a Bible teacher who fulfills the above two requirements. Why would they still not understand Bible prophecy properly? God told Daniel that only the wise would understand the Bible's prophecies. Revelation also highlights the need for wisdom to understand its mysteries. Now, there is a difference between being merely righteous (an individual who serves God) and also being a wise servant or someone who loves the truth and pursues it diligently while serving God.
What type of wisdom would they acquire that enables them to understand the Bible when everyone else fails? Or put another way, what would be preventing all but the wise from understanding Bible prophecy as the Bible so plainly says?
The Bible – Made Difficult On Purpose If you have not already noticed, the Bible is a very difficult book to understand. God's written revelation to mankind is not exactly a plain, easy-to-follow owner's manual or tutorial on God's complete plan and will for mankind. Did you ever wonder why this is if he is really in a “race with the devil to save everyone possible” in this age?
As we'll see later in the book, the Bible itself declares that it was written in a way to make it hard on purpose because he's not trying to save everyone in their first go round. When Jesus' disciples asked why he spoke in parables to the masses, he explained it was not given to everyone now to know the revelation of God's kingdom (Mk 4:11; Mt 13:11; Lk 8:10; 10:21-24). Although many were following Jesus, the disciples were truly committed (to the point of martyrdom) and given to know the mysteries and be shown plainly what the Scripture said. The rest, as a rule, were not (and may have only been around out of curiosity, to see miracles and healings or receive free loaves and fishes).
Blinding from Jewish Traditions the disciples also demonstrated the need for this extra wisdom. They had an incorrect expectation that the Messiah would become king and restore the kingdom to Israel (Mt 16:21-23; Mk 9:31-32; Acts 1:6), not realizing those events were for a future, Second Coming. They were naturally quite shocked to hear that this time he would instead be crucified.
Peter's denial of this gives evidence of the difficulty the Apostles had in grasping and accepting what the Lord was teaching them (Mt 16:22). Where did these errors come from? The religion of Judaism taught these traditional interpretations and the disciples did not yet have the discernment to see where they deviated from Scripture without Jesus' help.
Long held traditional ideas and expectations or paradigms make it harder to recognize any truth that is contrary to them. The convoluted way in which the Bible was written is responsible for making so many erroneous views seem viable and supported by Scripture when, in fact, they are not.
Blinding from Christian Traditions When Christians read the above verses, they quite naturally associate themselves with the clued-in disciples and not the confused masses or confused state of the disciples without Jesus correcting them on certain points. However, is that a safe association, especially considering the confusion we see in Christianity today?
Christians are divided not just over Bible prophecy but most of the doctrines of the Bible. Since Christians struggle to understand even most of the New Testament including the many “difficult words of Jesus” (which is even the name of an excellent book by Roy Blizzard, Jr.), it would seem like a very unsafe assumption.
Naturally, nobody wants to believe that they may have their own psychological barriers or blind spots due to belief in traditional doctrines which are not quite biblical. Nevertheless many Christian teachings are at odds with what Scripture teaches and have negatively influenced believers just like Judaism has (Mt 23).
These errant traditions give us a wrong set of rules and assumptions for interpreting the Bible. If we do not recognize them for what they are and audit them out, then we will not be able to arrive at the correct conclusions. It so happens that now, like the n, the wisdom to discern these errors comes from the plain but overlooked or misunderstood words of Jesus.
There are at least two major keys found in Jesus' words for making sense of the many prophecies scattered throughout the Bible. Moreover, even if you are as expertly familiar with all the prophecies as a scholar, you will still not understand them without knowing and applying these keys.
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