[This is one in a series of mid-week Reflections published by Horley Baptist Church during July 2020]
In most of my formative years my church attendance was predominantly under the auspices of a denomination that majored on Bible study and teaching. The mature men in the congregation were expected to be able to expound the Scriptures and the young men were encouraged to study to show themselves to be worthy successors. Of course, all this was based on the King James version (as used by the apostle Paul himself); it seemed that other resources and the preceding 18 centuries of church history were largely irrelevant.
I soon found out that this picture of the Christian life wasn’t quite complete. There were other translations of the Bible, using up to date language, there were outside sources that gave some context to the Bible stories and there were even Christians in other denominations! Nevertheless, I am grateful for the firm foundation that this early experience provided.
This expansion of knowledge and experience has continued as I have been preparing this series of Reflections. Starting with the Bible itself, and using online tools that our forefathers could only dream of, various themes and threads have opened up a vista of knowledge and opinion.
An example is the book of Revelation. I had assumed that, apart from the first three chapters, John’s vision concerned a still-future sequence of events that could be triggered at any time. But not everyone thinks the same. On the one hand, there are some scholars who see the seven bowls and seven trumpets as having a close correlation with events during the early years of church history. On the other hand, there are those who argue that the prophecies cannot be fulfilled until a temple is re-established in Jerusalem. In the middle are those who use COVID-19 as evidence of the imminent start of the end-times.
So who to believe?
Acts 17 tells us that the Jews in Berea “received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true”.
Later, Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians:
“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.”
Both passages represent good advice for us too.
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © the Author
