EarlyActs
Senior Member
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2023
- Messages
- 3,607
- Reaction score
- 457
- Points
- 83
Not everyone is going to have the persistence of a F Schaeffer as an agnostic to commit to read an entire Bible on their own plan.
Here are two things--difficulties--at first that, once seen, may help a person get past initial difficulties.
1, there will always be strange expressions. For ex., 'John wore a belt of camel's hair.' This is material that is indeed 2000 years old, humanly speaking, no matter the enduring eternal truth it contains. My suggestion is 'ignore them' until later.
By comparison, a person will have the same problem with an E George novel or a Dickens. Shall we, or do we, then just stop? No, we go on and return to a strange expression later.
2, the usual range for seeing the big picture of the Bible is about 3 months. We can find this from NT lines ('the deacon should not be a new believer') or Perpetua's record, about 200 AD, that inquirers about Christian faith came to study for 3 months before they were included in a fellowship. This was partly due to security in a time of frequent persecution, where trust was difficult to establish.
The Bible will have its many '2 and 2' that come together, but even these are not the ones we are expecting. So again, like absorbing a novel, we must let the thing form its own. For some reason people are perfectly willing to do this for the latest science fiction, but get kind of tight about a book that they have been told is direct from God.
Here are two things--difficulties--at first that, once seen, may help a person get past initial difficulties.
1, there will always be strange expressions. For ex., 'John wore a belt of camel's hair.' This is material that is indeed 2000 years old, humanly speaking, no matter the enduring eternal truth it contains. My suggestion is 'ignore them' until later.
By comparison, a person will have the same problem with an E George novel or a Dickens. Shall we, or do we, then just stop? No, we go on and return to a strange expression later.
2, the usual range for seeing the big picture of the Bible is about 3 months. We can find this from NT lines ('the deacon should not be a new believer') or Perpetua's record, about 200 AD, that inquirers about Christian faith came to study for 3 months before they were included in a fellowship. This was partly due to security in a time of frequent persecution, where trust was difficult to establish.
The Bible will have its many '2 and 2' that come together, but even these are not the ones we are expecting. So again, like absorbing a novel, we must let the thing form its own. For some reason people are perfectly willing to do this for the latest science fiction, but get kind of tight about a book that they have been told is direct from God.
