Re-studying some things...

In recent months I have been re-examining a number of Scriptural doctrines I have held with deep and strong conviction now for thirty or more years. This is not an easy thing to do.

It is not easy, for one thing, because it is hard work. It is hard spiritual (and physical, at least mental) work, which must be done in the face of a myriad of crushing earthly demands on ones time and energy.

It is not easy, for another thing, because it is hard to come to the Bible without an agenda and without bias, both borne out of advocating and contending for these doctrines all these decades. It is easy in this regard, to fall into a pattern of going to the Bible to just confirm my presuppositions.

But I believe that we live in a day in which the "little book" (greek, biblion) of Revelation 10 is being opened. That is, I believe God is opening grand and dreadful truths to our understanding from the Bible; truths which he had sealed away from the understanding of previous generations. This is new revelation; not new revelation in the sense that additional written or spoken words are being added to the Bible, but new revelation in the sense that God is opening our understanding to truths that have been in the Bible all along. These truths, if corroborated, harmonized, and thus validated with all the Bible teaches have the potential to cause a paradigm-shift in some of our previous understandings. Such a paradigm-shift might, on the surface, might seem radical, but in the final analysis, if found true, to be tantamount to "seeing every man clearly"; our previous understandings the equivalent of "seeing men as trees, walking" (Matthew 8:24-25).

So let each one of us go to the Bible with the prayer that God would open the biblion, in all Christ's truth and fidelity, to each one of us.