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Can you reinstall it? I think Mary installed it the first time.

This time however, I have not sat by idly, watching my good friends and good Christians hurt so much. This time I have spoken up and will continue to do so.    The unhealthy pattern started happening again, so I decided to “stand in the gap”.

I pray that it may not happen again.  I pray earnestly that the people reading this blog may hear about Toledo UBF before it becomes like India, instead of hearing about it after the fact, like we heard from Abraham Nial’s comments.

This is not the place to discuss such things in detail, but I ask for much prayer support right now.

For example, the Joseph story gives much insight into how some people have been treated.   Joseph’s brothers threw him into a well.   They couldn’t kill him directly as they wanted.

Genesis 37:2 reads: “This is the account of Jacob’s family line.  Joseph, a young man of seventeen, was tending the flocks with his brothers, the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought their father a bad report about them.”

Joseph courageously brought something negative to his father, Jacob.   The rest of chapter 37 reads all too familiar to people like me, and dare I say it, like the 13 families who have been forced out of UBF from Toledo since 1990.

 ¹⁹ “Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. ²⁰ “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

 ²¹ When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said. ²² “Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.

 ²³ So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe—the ornate robe he was wearing— ²⁴ and they took him and threw him into the cistern. The cistern was empty; there was no water in it.

 ²⁵ As they sat down to eat their meal, they looked up and saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead. Their camels were loaded with spices, balm and myrrh, and they were on their way to take them down to Egypt.

Read the rest of chapter 37.   Am I just delusional?   Has anyone else felt like Joseph being thrown into an empty cistern and then sold off, disappearing in another country?

I hope someone will someday write an article for UBFriends on “The point of  godly marriage.”

4 other similar words: Innocence, Sin, Grace, Glory.

I do not want anyone to mis-interpret your remarks. So let me offer an alternative explanation which, I believe, is consistent with what you are saying. If this is not what you meant, please correct me.

The book of Revelation is not a key or secret code  that unlocks  the hidden secrets  in the rest of the Bible. Revelation  is a faithful summary of the  whole Bible. The theme that you describe, the new heaven and the new earth, is indeed the great hope of the church and of all humankind. Jesus didn’t die on the cross merely to take  our  punishment upon himself so that we wouldn’t be punished. He did it because he wants to spend eternity with us, reigning over the earth with us in the manner that God originally intended. The bodily resurrection of Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit  upon the church are  the great signs, the downpayment,  of this coming glorious age.

The apostle Paul taught this very explicitly. “With all wisdom and understanding, he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment—to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ” (Eph 1:8-10).

One does not need to lean heavily on Revelation to come the same conclusion that you did.  Other parts of the Bible that point us in this direction are Isaiah  40-55, Romans 8, Ephesians 1 and Hebrews 2. And, of course,  the teachings of Jesus himself which can be summarized in the phrase “the kingdom of God.” I see this vision  all throughout  the Psalms, the Penteteuch and the major and minor Prophets.

Nor does one need to hold to any particular school of eschatology to believe as you do. Personally, I am now leaning away from the premillennial interpretations and toward the views of those scholars (e.g., Gordon Fee, Eugene Peterson) who see  Revelation as an epistle written by John to the churches in  the style  of apocalyptic poetry, speaking of the spiritual realities of the church at the turn of the first century. Yet the last two chapters are indeed a vision of the future that we all hold as the great culmination of God’s redemptive plan.

Our  future vision is a Christ-centered one. Jesus (the God-man) is at the center of the new creation, as the one simultaneously worshiping and being worshiped. Revelation, like the rest of the Bible, points us to worship the crucified and risen Lord. And it points us to serve him in this present world not to bring about his reign but to show the world that he is already reigning and that reign will be fully revealed in the future. (The word apocalyse doesn’t mean destruction; it means unveiling what is presently hidden.)

At  a recent Bible-reading retreat, one of the members of my church pointed out the many amazing similarities between Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22. I could list them here, but I won’t; I will  just challenge all  you energetic  Bible scholars out there to read the passages again and find them for yourself.

To get what the point of Genesis is, I wrestled with what God was thinking before Genesis 1:1. I found the answer only after I begin to see a big picture through the Book of Revelation. I believe that we don’t really get the point of Genesis or for that matter any other books in the Bible until we begin to see the book of Revelation. So, I no longer see the point of Genesis as redemption but restoration of all things under the leadership of Jesus. And the good/positive things in Genesis seem to be prophetic pictures in smaller scale of the things to come at the end of Revelation in unimaginably much larger scale.

So, what was God thinking before Genesis 1:1? Why did He do all that He did in Genesis or has been doing throughout the history of the planet earth? Did He not plan well before Genesis 1:1? Did He make a mistake only to struggle later on to somehow restore what He had planned? I think that poor planning and mistakes are simply not possible with the smart, most intelligent and all powerful God who knows the end from the beginning. So, unless we see what God saw about the end before the beginning, we fail to see the beauty, majesty, power, love and wisdom of God. God the Father wanted to raise up a family (sons and daughters) for Himself, while raising up an equally yoked Bride   for His Son, Jesus to govern the planet with Jesus. This is a big subject and means a lot of things. But precisely this is what God achieves at the end of Revelation and there has been no bigger event and celebration for this achievement.

So, when God created Adam, he gave them (corporate Adam or the human race)  dignity (His image) and dominion (authority to rule) as a prophetic picture of the Church who will reflect God’s image and share in Jesus’ governmental responsibility for the planet earth in the age to come (Rev 3:21; Rev 20:4). When God created Eve for intimacy without shame, He was looking forward to the spotless and blameless Church’s in perfect unity with Jesus (Rev 19:8). We see the Garden of Eden as a small part of the earth in Genesis. We see the Garden of Eden condition extending to whole earth under the leaders of Jesus and the saints in the Millennium (Rev 22:1-5). We see God dwelling together with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We see the throne of God coming down to the earth at the end of the Millennium in Revelation (Rev 21:3). God let’s the serpent in the Garden of Eden to ensure voluntary love (First and the Great Commandment Mt 22:37,38), God let’s Satan once more in at the end of the Millennium to prove that the whole earth is in voluntary bridal love (fulfilling the First and the Great Commandment) with His Son by the end of the Millennium, and the Serpent is thrown into the fire lake of burning sulfur for ever (Rev 20:7-10).

Everything that God does to men and with men after the Fall is the picture of preparing the Bride. Enoch, Noah etc serve as a prophetic picture God involved in men’s affairs and men’s response to God’s loving kindness in a fitting way. Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis 22 not only shows God’s sacrificing His Son, but also shows how an ordinary man was prepared to love God more than anything else,   and plants hope for how each of us God will prepare to love Him in a way that fulfills God’s deepest desire revealed to us through the First and the Great commandment. The story of Isaac and Rebekah is surely a historical account of two person’s lives, but in Rebekah’s extravagant response is hidden the prophetic picture of how the nameless servant (Holy Spirit? Whose only mission is to advertise Jesus and glorify the Father) on a mission to search and to prepare the Bride and lead her through a journey of wilderness back to the promised land where the wedding will take place (Rev 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22; 22:17). In UBF we have the tendency of hero worship, so we try to fit our lives into the lives of those in whom God was working, rather than learning to see how God is working in our still evolving unique stories. We need to learn to distinguish between laws and principles. Laws are universal whereas principles are circumstantial, can vary and have exceptions. If we draw principles from Genesis and make them the only possibilities for our Christian living, it sounds not in line with the whole counsel of the Scriptures.

So to me, the point of Genesis, especially when I see through the prophetic lense, is not just redemption but reversal of all things that went wrong (sin, curse, death, dominion lost etc) and full restoration of God’s ruling by extending the garden of Eden condition to the whole planet earth and earth becoming God’s governmental center under the leadership of Jesus in partnership with His equally yoked Bride, the believers in the age to come.

For anyone interested, not directly on this topic, but a helpful one is Mike Bickle’s (IHOP, Kansas City) latest sermon on The Authority of the Believers : http://mikebickle.org/resources/resource/3061

Unless we consistently answer #4, we end up portraying heaven as not only populated by lovers of Christ, but also by legalists, ritualists, and mere theists who never knew Christ until they got there.

This is the link: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2011/05/11/tgc-asks-about-cautions-for-christ-centered-ot-teaching/

As a college student in a secular school, I  can say that staying on the right path is one of the most difficult struggles students face.   I tend to blame my weakness and think about God’s forgiveness and faithfulness when I sin.   As a Christian, I find it depressing to think about God being “butchered and sliced” when I sin. I hope that I can grow to be a prayerful and walker in the light.

Before Luther, Thomas Aquinas taught a little ditty: “The lettter shows us what God and our Fathers did; the allegory shows us where our faith is hid; the moral meaning gives us rules of daily life; the anagogy shows us where we end our strife!”

During the times of Origen and Augustine, the  middle ages and shortly after, the use of allegory and other hermenutical structures was common place, but from most of the magisterial reformers to the puritans, a more literal hermenutic for understanding the Bible was adopted. Hope that helps some!

My point was this. If we want to use the Genesis narrative to draw out moral teachings, principles, and examples to be emulated — whether we are talking about how to marry or any other question of  how  Christians ought to be living in modern times  —  then we need to understand how to do this properly in light of the author’s intention and in light of the Bible as a whole.

I’m glad that God blessed your marriage by faith. He blessed mine too. But that is not the issue. The issue is: Do you really think that we are supposed to  interpret Genesis 22 as a pattern for modern Christian courtship?  Is that a correct way to use the Bible text? Are there problems and dangers with taking that approach to the Bible, especially the Old Testament?

As Bible teachers, we ought to understand how to properly handle the word of truth.

Hebrews chap 11 presents Abraham’s offering of Isaac as an expression of gospel faith. There are many examples of faith in that chapter which, in  one sense, are to be emulated. In light of the overall message of Hebrews, they are examples of placing one’s life and trust in the promise of God and in the person of Jesus Christ.

The specifics of how to  emulate Abraham  are determined by God and what he calls us to do; that will vary from one person to another. But the example to be emulated is the example of faith in Christ alone. To study Gen 22 and then, solely on the basis of that, decide to search for one’s Isaac and place it on the altar is not wise, in my opinion, because that might not be the expression of faith that God is asking from us at that time.  

Not long ago, I heard a senior leader in our church essentially claiming that because there are examples of “good” marriages in the OT that were arranged by others (e.g., Isaac and Rebekah, Ruth and Boaz) that our church should, as a matter of policy, arrange the marriages of all our young people. Arrangement of marriage has been found in many cultures throughout history and is never prohibited in the Bible. But nor is it commanded. If it were intended to be a universal principle, wouldn’t some statement to that effect be found in the OT and in the NT? Similar lines of thinking have been used to support polygamy (the great servant of God, King David, had multiple wives), human slavery, enforcement of a Sabbath rest on Saturday, prohibitiing women from speaking in church, etc.

If we want to draw out from the Bible rules and principles for modern Christian  life, we had better be sure that we know how to do this properly, otherwise we may be just projecting our own opinions, cultural values and prejudices on the biblical text.  

Memo to  all you energetic Bible scholars and aspiring UBFriends authors out there: How about writing an article about this?

I agree that we can over-allegorize the Bible to “see” Jesus out of context with what the OT authors wrote. For instance, a Bible teacher asks, “What climbs trees and eats bananas?” The Bible student says, “It sounds like a monkey, but I’ll say that it is Jesus!”

I don’t think this applies to the way we have studied the Bible in UBF over the last 50 years, for we have inclined quite strongly in the opposite direction, I think. As you said, we have primarily used the Bible as moral and ethical imperatives and as principles to be followed and emulated “absolutely”: You must live a life of mission (Gen 1:28). You must be a blessing (Gen 12:2-3).  You must feed sheep (John 21:15-17), and make disciples (Matt 28:19). You must marry by faith. Etc. Surely, these imperatives are not unbiblical. But in and of themselves they are quite divorced from the redemptive work of Christ. By themselves, if repeatedly over-emphasized again and again, they even obscure Christ.

I might add this about God’s covenant with Abraham in Gen 15:1-21: The point I had always made is that “you must believe as Abraham believed God’s promise, and his faith was credited to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:5-6). Then it is  our faith or our believing in God  that becomes our work, our righteousness, and the determining factor of us being blessed. But the key to seeing Christ is that it was not Abraham’s faith in God that sealed the covenant, but God keeping the covenant at great cost to himself that kept the covenant, for Abraham and us still repeatedly sin and fail to be faithful to God, even after becoming Christians.

Until recently, I might have argued against the central thesis of this article.  I would have said that we shouldn’t allegorize the Bible or read too much of Jesus into the OT. I would have said that we needed to study each passage of the Bible primarily from the author’s viewpoint and stick to that original meaning as much as possible. I would have said that reading the OT narratives to draw out commands to be obeyed, examples to be emulated, and principles to be followed was in some sense being more faithful to what the authors intended. (That last argument was largely an assumption. I had no hard evidence or data that Hebrew authors intended the OT narratives to be used as books of rules, principles and examples. That approach to reading a text may actually come from Greek and Roman thinking, not from the Hebrew mind. But I digress.)

I have not yet read any of the four references that you mentioned.   However, I recently came to the same conclusion as you did by reading the Bible itself. As I read the book of Acts and carefully studied Acts chapters 1-2, I saw that Peter saw Jesus  throughout the OT, and he had learned to do so from Jesus himself. As I  studied the book of Hebrews, I saw that the author of that book used OT Scripture in very creative ways to speak about Jesus. (In fact, one could say that Hebrews was written primarily for that purpose: to help Jewish Christians see the OT in a radically new Christ-centered way in light of the historical realities of  Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension. If you read the prologue, Hebrews 1:1-3, you will see what I mean.)  And, of course, the Apostle Paul read the OT this way as well.  

I can see that there are  potential dangers in this.  As Andy pointed out in his excellent series on parables, it  is possible to let our imaginations run wild and over-allegorize the Bible to make it say whatever we want. But the writers of the NT, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, did see Jesus in unlikely places throughout the OT, and I believe that we ought to do so as well.

I think it is possible to take an imaginative Christ-centered approach to the whole Bible without going overboard. We can do  while being faithful to the original literary forms and without insisting that our imaginative reading of Christ into any passage is the one and only correct interpretation of that passage’s meaning. Perhaps I will write more about this when I have time.

By and large, I think that we (our UBF messengers and Bible teachers, myself included) need to learn how to approach the Scripture with greater freedom and  pastoral imagination. In the early days of UBF, Dr Lee exercised great imagination in drawing insights out of the Bible that were fresh and relevant to the young people of his generation.  The specific sayings that he drew out were repeated by others over and over and eventually morphed into UBF principles which many began to think of as eternal and universal. I think we would do well to de-emphasize those principles for a while and go back to the actual practice  of drawing out imaginative Christ-centered teachings that are Spirit-filled and relevant to the current generation.

Various books by Eugene Peterson (author of The Message) are excellent resource for developing pastoral imagination. A while ago, Sharon recommended Reversed Thunder which applies pastoral imagination to the book of Revelation. I haven’t finished that book yet, but what I have read so far is really, really good. BTW: I recently asked Mother Barry if she knew Eugene Peterson because they studied at New York Biblical Seminary at about the same time. She said yes, she remembers him being there in the class one year ahead of hers.