Dont let your thinking get in the way of your ability to perceive.
The Bible is full of apparent
contradictions. They appear
contradictory on the surface but they are really not. The passages were intended to be written this
way. We are explicitly told in Scripture
that some material is intended to be sealed and will remain an enigma until the
time of the end. Having a faith in God that transcends understanding allows us not
to be bothered by this. The greatness of
a child-like faith is that little children are quick to recognize when they
don’t know something; they know when they don’t know. This awareness makes them
more open to obtaining guidance for personal growth. Adults are more inclined to over think
something and stop listening to things they just fail to grasp. Teaching
an old dog new tricks can be difficult.
Their own human reasoning often gets in the way of their ability to hear
and perceive things. This is how God can
hide things from the wise and learned and at the same time reveal them to the
babes. History clearly bears out how men’s beliefs
can get in the way of their ability to see. We do well to learn from these past mistakes. Let me
give a couple of classic examples.
Don’t confine God to
the Box of your small thinking.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ should be a
well-established historical event to every believer. Yet the prophecies given regarding the event
stifled people in the past for many years before it actually occurred. The Old Testament clearly prophesied that the
Messiah would live forever. It also
happens to clearly prophesy that the Messiah would die. Without knowing the resurrection from the
dead as a frame of reference, any natural man would find these prophecies to be
in direct contradiction with each other. How can someone live forever if they
are going to die? How can someone die if
they are going to live forever? Many
Jews of Jesus day were perplexed by these difficulties (John 12:34). They could not think outside the natural
box. They could not realize that living
forever is not really synonymous with never dying; people just assumed it was
by their own human reasoning. This is
often how people get stumped by Biblical prophecy. They let their small minded thinking get in
the way of their ability to see.
Piecing things
together requires believing it fits into a bigger picture and waiting for the
pattern to emerge.
Another historical prophecy that baffled people before it
occurred was the means by which Zedekiah would go into exile into Babylon. The prophet Jeremiah clearly prophesied that
Zedekiah would see the King of Babylon with his own eyes and be taken captive
into Babylon (Jer 32:4-5). This prophecy
seemed to contradict Ezekiel’s clear prophecy that He would never see Babylon
(Ezek 12:13). At the time, the listeners
saw an apparent contradiction in these sayings.
Once the time came for them to be fulfilled, there was no apparent contradiction
to be found at all. When captured,
Zedekiah had his eyes immediately put out by King Nebuchadnezzer after slaying
his sons for defying his orders. He was then promptly marched right into
Babylon (II Kings 25:7). Both prophecies
came true and there was no contradiction to be found after the fact. Looking in hindsight always seems to make
everything clear. Such is the nature of
Biblical prophecy.
Objectivity does not
pick and choose the data that seems reasonable to them but follows data where
it leads.
As I mentioned in previous posts, objective listeners do not
pick and choose which aspects of the text to accept. Don’t let your own thinking get in your way of
perceiving what’s there. Piecing it all together requires seeing each piece for
what it is and then believing that it somehow all fits together into some
bigger picture. If you do not know how a
particular piece fits, set it aside and wait for the clear pattern to emerge. A little persistence always pays off. It is
the glory of God to conceal a matter, it is the glory of kings to search them
out.
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