A Poignant Letter has been received from Bro. Al Hussey f Ontario, Canada which we publish under Letters to the Editor. Three issues raised by Bro. Al deserve more extensive comment than is suitable under that section of the magazine.
An authoritarian structure
Those of us raised as Christadelphians need to be particularly sensitive to bothers/sisters who have been called from wholly different religious backgrounds. In Bro. Al’s case, he was Roman Catholic before coming face to face with the truth of the Bible’s message. The change must be extraordinary from accepting the authority of the church with its magnificent buildings, its elaborate forms of worship and its educated priesthood to meeting with a small group of lay believers in humble halls or rented rooms. Even greater is the change to search the scriptures for one’s self, believing one can understand the Bible better than the educated clergy.
Our Christadelphian appeal, of course, is that the issue at stake is our own eternal life and our eternal relationship with God. We simply cannot leave so important a matter in the hands of others, especially when there are some glaring contradictions between Bible teaching and that of mainstream Christianity.
Our attitude throughout our preaching and teaching is framed for us by the great apostle to the Gentiles: “And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, in humility correcting those who are in opposition…” (II Tim. 2:24-25). Gentle, patient, humble, those are the great attitudes which are to characterize the gospel teacher.
And what if the one being taught should respond? What if he should begin examining the scripture for himself, challenging his own pre-conceptions and the religion in which he was raised? What do we expect him to do? Stop thinking for himself once he is baptized and exchange one set of traditions for another, one authoritarian structure for another? Nobody expects or wants that, yet by continuing to think for himself, our new brother/sister may well put forth some challenging ideas. What’s our attitude to be? Gentle, patient, humble, always remembering right attitudes must surround all our discussions and debates.
Certainly reading the pioneer writings is helpful and those who can should be encouraged to do so. But great confusion is caused when we revere the pioneers as if their writings were inspired. The person who has finally come to trust scripture, not the church, must wonder what has happened to our appeal to rely wholly on the Bible.
Understanding prophecy Everybody is fascinated with God’s revelation of future events, particularly when we’re living in the midst of prophecies being fulfilled before our eyes. The inevitable nature of Bible prophecy, however, is that it’s always fulfilled, but hardly ever the way believers expected.
There were no keener Bible believers than the apostles of our Lord. They knew, even before the religious leaders of their day, that Messiah would be the Son of God. Yet they completely missed the fact the gospel must be preached to the Gentiles before Messiah would deliver Israel.
Before it happened who would have read 2,000 years into the middle of Isaiah 61:2? (“To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD” alludes to the ministry of Christ; “and the day of vengeance of our God” hasn’t happened yet, 2,000 years later, cf. Lk. 4:18-19.). Before it happened who would have read Amos 9:11-12 to require preaching to the Gentiles after the resurrection of Christ and before the kingdom of God? (Only after the fact, did the early brethren see the point, cf. Acts 15:13-18).
Are we better Bible students than they? Can we understand with certainty Ezekiel 38, Joel 3 and Zechariah 14? The problem is many of us feel we have all the pieces put together, ourself included, and expound with great enthusiasm details of “The March of the Rainbowed Angel.” When somebody questions our exposition, we are susceptible to the flesh taking over and we may argue our ideas with aggressive vigor, even seeking to reduce to absurdity the views of another. We may even bring the pioneer writings and Christadelphian tradition to our support seeking to overwhelm our opponent.
Brethren, this is not right and here we reproach ourselves as well. If we are to preach with gentleness, patience and humility to the unbeliever, how much more we should evidence these characteristics to those of Christ’s household. Have we forgotten that “knowledge puffeth up but love buildeth up?”
Let us discuss the last-day prophecies with great interest seeking to keep ourselves keenly watchful for the coming of our Lord. But let us do so in the spirit of Christian love which is to dominate all relationships between brethren, with an added dose of humility knowing that, at least in some points, we are not correct.
The Revelation
There’s something about the book of Revelation which fascinates everybody, even beginning Bible readers. When we ask seminar students what they’d like to study next, Revelation gets more votes than any other book. Yet if the prophet Daniel was puzzled by much less complex symbols (Dan. 7:15-16) and if John didn’t immediately understand the vision of sealing 144,000 (Rev. 7:13-14), it’s most unlikely we’ll rightly understand every vision in the Apocalypse.
To ourselves personally, there is little doubt that Revelation reveals major events since the end of the first century A.D. to the end of the kingdom age (i.e. continuous historical). The precedent, we feel, is set in Daniel 11 where a rather detailed revelation is made of the 400 years between the testaments (400 B.C. to the angel’s appearance to Zacharias Lk. 1:11). As the Jewish people watched the prophecies being fulfilled, they would be reassured that God was still working out His plan.
We feel this same reassurance is provided for spiritual Israel during their even longer wait for their Messiah. No doubt, the historical events symbolically portrayed in Revelation were understood by those living through them. Revelation 12, for example, would readily be applied to Constantine by those living at the time and hearing verses 10-11 applied virtually verbatim to the emperor.
Furthermore, it is Revelation which portrays God’s extraordinary repugnance of those who distort Gospel truth. If not for this book, we might be lured into a benign attitude to the system of error which started in the first century.
Yet who is to say the symbols of Revelation are limited to one historical application? If Psalm 2 can apply to the trial of Christ (cf. Acts 4:25-27) and his coming in power, and Joel 2:28-32 can apply to Pentecost (cf. Acts 2:16-31) and the beginning of the kingdom, and the Olivet prophecy has sections which apply to both A.D. 70 and the return of Christ (cf. Matt. 24:6,7,14, 22) who can be certain the sea beast applies only to 450-800 A.D. and not also to the end of this era? If an increasing number of brethren advocate a latter-day application, surely the issue can be discussed with patience, gentleness and humility to the edification of all. If the discussions become unprofitable, agree to disagree and get on with the 1,480 other pages of the Bible.
We are not saved by knowledge, we are saved by God’s grace which we have access to through a faith that works in love. How tragic it would be if we should lose the great prize because we have become specialists in biting and devouring our brethren. Let each of us remember the premier identification of brethren in Christ: “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One