finding truth matters

The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign. It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.
Jeremiah 1:1-3

Jeremiah is the second of the ‘major’ Prophets after Isaiah. Like Isaiah, he prophesied events which were fulfilled within his lifetime and beyond. Most significantly, Isaiah and Jeremiah prophesied about the coming Messiah and the new covenant this Messiah would usher in. From the opening three verses, which may have been written by Jeremiah, or may have been the result of Ezra’s later editing. These verses help us to date when Jeremiah began his prophetic ministry. His ministry would have begun when he was aged between 15 to 20. He would have begun around the time of the discovery of the Law during the thirteenth year of King Josiah’s reign which was around 629BC. This helps us to reckon his birth year as sometime around 649BC or so. We know that the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem as Jeremiah had prophesied they would, in 586 BC. This means that Jeremiah ministered around 45 to 50 years. He is particular significant for several reasons-

  1. Jeremiah is a ‘type’ of Christ (Matthew 16:13-14)
  2. Jeremiah ‘book-ends’ the prophecies of Moses (Deut. 4:25-28)
  3. Jeremiah is the last pre-exilic prophet
  4. Jeremiah’s prophecies help to form the language of the New Testament, particularly New Testament prophecies

The Book of Jeremiah buy klonopin oral online contains insights into nearly every major Biblical doctrine. There are eight major themes which are particularly dealt with in the Book of Jeremiah.

  1. The Sovereignty of God
  2. The Word of God
  3. Hearing The Voice Of God
  4. The Call Of God
  5. The Heart Condition Of Man
  6. The 3 Arms Of God’s Government: The Family, The Church, and The State
  7. The Purpose of The Law & Covenant
  8. The Divorce Of Israel

“Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?”
Jeremiah 32:27

The Bible’s Authority, Infallibility, and Divine Inspiration

Nearly everything we do is built on trust. When we eat we trust that we will not be poisoned by the cook. When we go for a walk we trust that other walkers will not bump us out of their way. When someone tells us something we trust that they are telling us the truth. In fact, there is hardly anything we do in our everyday lives that does not involve trust. While we generally trust those we have come to know, we readily trust some people whom we do not know if they are people possessing appropriate authority such as a policeman, or a medical doctor or an airline pilot. The right authority invites and engenders trust. Christians trust the Bible because it derives from the highest authority – God. In fact, Christians have good reasons (a rationale) for believing that the Bible is divinely inspired and the only infallible and authoritative written Word of God.

The Significance of the 5 Stages of the Imago Dei to the Problem of Evil

The Bible is remarkably silent about the origin of the Evil One (the term used by Christ in Matt. 13:19, 38; and, John 17:15 to describe the devil). Oddly, it is not until the last book of the bible that we are told about the identity of the “serpent” in Genesis 3. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Rev. 12:9). Heiser (2020) notes that this account in Revelation 12, about the serpent’s identity, cannot explain his origin because the episode it describes occurs after the ascension of Christ (244). The allusions to the prelapsarian state of the Evil One are possibly seen in Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:2-10. At the very least, both of these references seem to indicate that the original state of the Evil One reveals he was a heavenly being who was created as a good and powerful being made to serve Yahweh and who was originally present in Eden. While we are not explicitly told in Scripture what his act of pride was that led to his rebellion, we can surmise it from the Genesis 2 and 3 passages and support this from Rabbinic traditions that is was connected to the creation of the woman (Morris and Scharl 2021). This is also supported if we simply take the progressive revelation contained in the opening chapters of Genesis, where the introduction of the Evil One (“the serpent”, Gen. 3:1) occurs with the creation of the Ish’ah – the woman.

CHRISTOLOGY AND GLOBAL WARMING

 While theology is my passion and discipline, I’m also extremely interested in various fields of science and serve as a visiting scholar at the Science-Faith think-tank, Reasons To Believe. I do not regard science as an enemy of theology, and therefore take what scientists claim with appropriate acceptance. The scientific case for recent global-warming is barely contestable. If the modelling is correct about the rate of global-warming continuing to increase there can be no wonder that so many people are alarmed at what the future may hold. The Australian government’s ‘Future Climate-Change’ website states a range of temperature increases over the next 30 or so years ranging from rising sea-levels engulfing many Pacific Ocean island nations, and temperature increases in the range of 1°C to 4.8°C…

BIBLICAL INERRANCY

How seriously should we regard the Bible today? After all, in an age of such scientific certainty there appears to be many Biblical inaccuracies identified by scientists and historians to cast insoluble doubt on the preposterous claim that the Bible is the “word of God”. This has led some Seminaries (such as Fuller Theological Seminary) to abandon the belief that the Bible is “inerrant” (without error) in favour of a new belief that the Bible is “infallible” (correct in matters of religion only). It’s time now to examine this debate in closer detail…

Both inerrancy and infallibility acknowledge that these concepts apply to the original manuscripts of the Bible (“the Autographs”) – not to any one particular copied manuscript or translation of the Bible. The issue of Biblical translation is linked to this debate and we’ll deal with it shortly. Inerrancy means without error. Infallible means cannot be wrong. At first glance it may appear that these words are saying the same thing. But this is how they are being distinguished…

BAPTISM IN CONFUSION

In Matthew 28:18-19 it is Trinitarian (“in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit”), but in the Acts of the Apostles, it is in the name of Jesus. I remember in my youth about hearing of a group of Pentecostals who made this the touch-stone of whether someone was baptised correctly or not. Today there are “Jesus-Only” groups who insist that what appears to be a Trinitarian formula is actually code for “Lord (The Father) Jesus (The Son) Christ (The Holy Spirit)”, which is why, they appeal, the Trinitarian version is no where used in the Book of Acts. In a culture steeped in legalism and superstition, my answer failed to connect with my audience. I left frustrated feeling that I had failed to adequately explain what the Bible teaches about water baptism. I am therefore writing with a sense that I wish I could have conveyed these thoughts in the language of my Indian friends to their satisfaction so that they could see that the Bible does not present a mixed message about Baptism.

WHO TOLD YOU YOU WERE NAKED?

It might seem like God is against sex. After all, the Christian response to sex is better known for what it prohibits, than what it encourages. The Bible is peppered with prohibitive statements about sex in both the Old and New Testaments. The exclusive union of a man and a woman in a marriage covenant was always intended by God to be the primary relationship that would produce human sexual flourishing. But this reveals God’s benevolent heart for mankind that He would create man and woman with a capacity unknown to any other creature – the ability to enjoy sexual satisfaction which is not merely driven by a base desire to reproduce — but to experience and experience physical love. It is not just that God wants what is good for people; it is that He wants mankind to enjoy what He has designed as best.

Understanding Biblical Language

Language is more than just words. Each time I travel to another country where English is not the national language, I like to learn a few phrases in that language to help me get by. The hardest language I have attempted is Vietnamese. I was quite proud that I had learned the phrase- “How much is this?” and found that amazingly I was understood by the first Vietnamese shopkeeper I tried it on. But then my limited grasp of Vietnamese was exposed when the shopkeeper responded in Vietnamese (with words that meant nothing to me)! Like many Asian dialects, it not only uses sounds, it also uses tones. Depending on how you say a word, like “ma” will determine whether you are referring in Vietnamese to your mother or a family ghost! When we try to understand a foreign language from the perspective of our familiar language we make certain assumptions that will actually hinder us from both appreciating the foreign language and translating it correctly.

HOW OLD DOES THE BIBLE TEACH THAT THE EARTH IS?

One of the most contentious issues among Christians today is the age of the universe. Is it 6000 years old like 17th century Bishop Ussher calculated, or is it around 13,000,000,000 years old like scientists say? How we determine the answer determines how we interpret the Bible and understand the world around us.
The opening verse of Genesis is perhaps the most famous, and probably the most read, verse in the Bible. It is so plain, so clear, so unambiguous, that nearly every English translation of the Scriptures for the past 400 years has rendered it identically. Of all the statements that God could have chosen to utter first in His revelation to mankind, He gave us this one. Little wonder. If this statement is proven to be false then the entire credibility of the Bible is undermined. But if this statement is found to be true its ramifications are infinite!

THE BIG WORDS OF CHRISTIANITY

I have a son who thinks he is the world’s best speller. It’s actually become a family joke just how bad his spelling is though. In his 5th year of elementary school, he couldn’t see the irony of how he had labelled his Spelling Workbook – ‘Speeling.’ Even now, at pre-tertiary level, Tiger (my son) still struggles with spelling. I have to read and re-read what he has written in order to figure out which word he is actually trying to use.

So if you saw the mis-spelt word  b a i r  in your child’s schoolwork how would you determine what he or she meant? Did he/she mean bare or bear? If your child meant bear, which bear did they mean? After all, if they meant bare they could have meant: empty (the cupboard was bare), or: naked (bare shoulders sometimes need covering), or, they could mean: show (bare one’s teeth). But then, if they meant bear they could mean: an animal, or to turn (bear left), or to carry (bear a burden). The only way you could determine what your child means would be to read the context of what they had written. This is because words are generally equivocal- the context determines it’s meaning.

Exploring the Creeds of Christianity

The Doctrine of Perspicuity says that God has given mankind His message in the Scriptures which can be clearly understood. That is, if a person was just to read the Bible they would understand its message. But there is a counter-doctrine known as the Doctrine of Perspicacity which says that mankind’s sinful heart will always tend to distort what God is clearly saying. This is why the formation of Creeds was both necessary and possible.

At the establishment of the Church in the first century, copies of the Scriptures were not readily available. The truth of Scripture was encapsulated into short memorable sayings. There are traces of these credal statements to be found in the New Testament. Examples are found in First Corinthians 15:3-4, First Timothy 1:15, Second Timothy 2:11, and Titus 3:4-7.

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Dr. Andrew Corbett

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