A Golden Text - James 1 v.5

When I was doing my National Service in Donnington in Shropshire I used to attend the SASRA meetings for Christians in the forces. They were run by an elderly Welshman who used to travel over to us from his home in Shrewsbury. His name to us was Mr Powell. His memory remains fresh in my mind though the events I describe are over fifty years old. He used to tell us about the revivals he had witnessed in his native Wales. I can still remember his radiant smiling face.

Every week we chose a special text, which we called the silver text, and every month we chose a golden text. I still remember those simple Bible studies with pleasure.

One of the verses that I would today call a golden verse is James 1:5. In the AV it says that if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives to all men (and women) liberally and "upbraideth not".

To upbraid is not a word in fashion; it is a bit too archaic and a little pompous. It means to scold and find fault. But this simple word hides a glorious depth of meaning. It refers that normal human condition when we pray of rather morbid introspection, that inner voice that says, "Come, come; you can't be serious about this request. You have hardly been a good Christian recently. Your Bible has three days dust on its cover and that evening that was ear-marked for prayer and intercession was spent watching Arsenal thrash Tottenham. And, last week, when your wife dropped that greasy sausage on your new white shirt you were hardly gracious about it." Thus our confidence begins to vanish in a hazy cloud of guilt. But our God is not like this. The good news is this: God delights to answer our prayers and doesn't deflate us with a list of our sins and failures. He gives to us liberally and generously and doesn't go into fault finding. So approach God confidently and experience a little of His extravagant goodness.

Revelation

I have been watching Chuck Missler on God TV commenting on the book of Revelation. He obviously takes the futurist line of interpretation when dealing with this difficult book, a book that has puzzled even the most learned of men. Even such a good classical and biblical scholar as John Wesley admitted that he had little understanding of Revelation before he came across the works of Bengel(1742), the renowned Lutheran exegete.

What is futurism? It assumes that the book of revelation deals almost exclusively with the End Times and is a manual of instruction for the saints as they see the Rapture and the Tribulation approaching. Surprisingly enough, this mode of interpretation, though extremely popular in charismatic and evangelical circles today, has not got an ancient lineage. It came to prominence in the 1830s and 1840s. Before that time it had only been seriously considered in Catholic circles. This came about in an interesting way. During the Reformation the reformers used passages in Revelation very effectively when combating the Papacy. The monstrous persecuting city that was drunk with the blood of the martyrs is described as the city that sits on seven hills (Rev. 17:9) It did not need great scholarship to realise that this was Rome. Thus Luther strongly stated that the Antichrist was the Pope. This was extremely embarrassing for the Catholic Church and a number of scholars strove to move the nexus of the book either into the remote apostolic past (the preterist position) or to the extreme future (the futurist position). A Jesuit scholar, Francisco Ribera, wrote a very learned 500-page-commentary, in 1590, on Revelation advocating the futurist mode of interpretation. According to Ribera, the 1260 days and 42 months and 3 1/2 times of prophecy were not 1260 years, but a literal 3 1/2 years, and therefore none of the book of Revelation had any application to the Middle Ages or the papacy, but to the future, to a period immediately prior to the second coming, hence the name Futurism. His book was not well received for some reason.

But the major influence on the futurist cause was the publication in 1811 by another Jesuit, Francesco Lacunza, of a fresh and important commentary on the Apocalypse. Like Ribera's book this was not popular with the church authorities and was banned in 1819. This was probably because he ignored the writings of the apostolic fathers when interpreting the text. This book gained a major influence among those interested in the End Times when Edward Irving, one of the most charismatic and eloquent of the preachers of his day, taught himself Spanish and translated and published Lacunza's work in 1827.

That year was a seminal year; the Powerscourt conferences on eschatological matters started in Ireland and among those who attended was the most influential advocate of pre-millenarianism in the nineteenth century, John Nelson Darby. Most of the ideas of Chuck Missler and Hal Lindsay originate in the powerful and fertile brain of this enormously influential man. His ideas gained enormous influence when the Schofield Reference Bible was published exactly one hundred years ago. What sort of man was Darby? And what are the other schools of interpretation when dealing with the book of Revelation? Those questions require another post.

Bible revision

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way.
O ye sons of men,

how long will ye turn my glory into shame?
How long will ye love vanity,
and seek after leasing?

Both these verses are from the Authorised Version of the Bible, which was the Bible that virtually all Christians used till about the seventies of the last century. When I became a Christian in 1953 everyone used and quoted from it. The only other version freely available was the Moffatt translation, but it was frowned upon because it was considered too modernistic. There were two main reasons why we have so many modern translations. At the period I am alluding to, many young converts found the quaint Jacobean English of the AV too difficult. There was a desire for something more simple and readable. Also great advances had been made in our knowledge of Hebrew and Greek. Masses of papyri had been uncovered in Egypt and these discoveries had thrown much light on the koine Greek used in the New Testament. Then there were men like Tischendorf who had discovered ancient manuscripts which were much older than those used by scholars working in the first decade of the seventeenth century.
Another major problem in reading the AV was the enormous change brought about in our language by three centuries of history. The quotations from above illustrate this problem vividly.
In the first from 2 Thess 2 we read that the Mystery of Iniquity letteth and will let. This phrase has a semi legal connotation and means simply that this evil entity will stop and hinder. Unfortunately modern usage has achieved a complete about turn. To let in modern parlance means simply to allow.
The second quotation is from Psalms 4. Leasing obviously in the above verse is not approved by God. I actually came across a story concerning a missionary giving up the lease on his property after reading this verse. But anyone who has studied Middle English knows that leasing is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning lying. It has nothing to do with the modern practice of leasing properties.
In a future post I will chat a bit more about Tischendorf and my thoughts about the amazing number of modern translations