Subsequent record

Jordan promises, “If you’ll just give the Bible the benefit of the doubt, you’ll discover that the problem you thought was a problem really wasn’t a problem, the problem was you just didn’t have enough information to know how to figure it out.”

One of the things a student of the Bible realizes is that when you take the risk of giving the Book the benefit of the doubt it will prove itself, so the best thing to do regarding the Bible is to doubt your doubts and trust what the Book says.

“There are things that aren’t written down initially that show up later,” says Jordan in a study he gave recently on the Bible’s “rule of subsequent narrative.”

In II Timothy 3:8, for one easy example, Paul writes, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.”

You say, ‘Who in the world are Jannes and Jambres?’ If you look their names up in a concordance you won’t find them anywhere else in the Bible.

“But do you remember two guys back in the Book of Exodus who withstood Moses?” asks Jordan.

“Moses took his rod, threw it down, and two of the Egyptian magicians came up and threw their rods down, and they didn’t simply duplicate what Moses did, they outdid him two to one in the resisting of God’s Word to Moses. It’s in II Timothy you learn their names and the implication was people would have known who they were. So that’s the idea that the identity is there but it’s not put in Scripture until Timothy.”

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Psalm 105: 17-18 says, “He sent a man before them, even Joseph, who was sold for a servant:
[18] Whose feet they hurt with fetters: he was laid in iron.”

Jordan says, “See that stuff in verse 18 about what happened to Joseph and his brothers? They took him and put him in a pit and all that stuff. There’s nothing in Genesis about ‘whose feet they hurt with fetters’ or about him being put in iron.”

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Matthew 2:23 says, “And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.”

Jordan says, “Now that again is one of these verses people go bonkers over because there’s no verse in the prophets you can read that says he shall be called a Nazarene. Scofield’s got a note that says ‘it’s probably a reference to Isaiah 11:1’ but his argument is just fallacious—it doesn’t work. It doesn’t match the word here at all. That’s why he says ‘probably.’

“What is it? Well, it didn’t say ‘it was written in the prophets,’ it said this is something the prophets were saying. They know about it. It only gets written down here. Matthew 27:9 is another one. The verse says. ‘Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet’ saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value.’ But that verse was written in Zachariah 11. So why does it say it was spoken by Jeremiah? Because it was.

“It doesn’t say it was written by Jeremiah. How do you know it was spoken by Jeremiah? Because Matthew tells you subsequent to the fact that that’s what happened--subsequent to Jeremiah saying that Zachariah, who prophesies AFTER the Babylonian captivity (Jeremiah is BEFORE), writes it down. You don’t know Jerry said it until Zachariah 11. That’s the subsequent record of the information.”

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Acts 20:35 says, “I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Jordan explains, “That’s a quote. If you’ve got a red-letter Bible it’s written in red, but those words are not found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. So how did Paul know Jesus said that? Luke, who was a companion of Paul, could have told him because he was an eyewitness and a historian about the life of Christ. Paul didn’t write this; Luke wrote it. This is Luke quoting what Paul says.

“If you read Luke’s narrative in the Book of Acts, it’s taken from Acts 9 at the conversion of Saul of Tarsus. Then in Acts 22 Paul gives his testimony and then again in Acts 26. So in the Book of Acts you have three records of Paul’s conversion--one that Luke writes, two that Paul gives (one in front of the synagogue to the Jews and one in front of Agrippa, the Gentile ruler) and all three of them contain additional information that is complementary to one another.

“They don’t contradict each other but each one has the basic story with different components that go along with it. And the reason for that is the audience is being addressed. If you gave your testimony in two different settings, and then somebody wrote it down, there would be the same story but with maybe a different emphasis on different issues.”

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James 5:17 says, “Elias was a man subject to like passions as we are, and he prayed earnestly that it might not rain: and it rained not on the earth by the space of three years and six months.”

Jordan says, “If you go back in Kings, you’ll notice you have the drought 3 ½ years, then it rains. You don’t read about it not raining and it raining because Elijah (Elias) prayed. It isn’t until James 5 that you learn it rained at Elijah’s prayer.

“There are some things God put in James about the incidents back in Kings because the illustration in James 5:16 is, ‘The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’ The point in James is the issue of prayer and he uses Elijah as an illustration of it.

“While Elijah prayed that it not rain back there, what Elijah was doing was praying God’s warning to the nation Israel (found in Deuteronomy 11 and Leviticus 26). What Elijah was literally doing was announcing to the nation Israel, ‘The next course of judgment has begun.’ And he reaches back in Deuteronomy and Leviticus and pulls out some core things that are going to take place in that next course of judgment and says, ‘This is it!’ What you learn in James is that he’s praying and God answers. You learn something about prayer.

“What you want to learn about the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man isn’t that you can stop it from raining or make it rain, it’s that what effectual fervent prayer is when you take God’s Word and have an understanding of where you are in the program of God as revealed in His Word and you talk to God about what His Word says is going on.

“Literally you pray God’s word and, when you do that, you get the answer to prayer. His prayer was effectual because it was initiated by God’s Word to him and he was praying from an intelligent understanding of where he stood in the plan, purpose and Word of God. Elijah just didn’t suck the idea out of his thumb.

“It wasn’t a mindless kind of zeal he prayed with. The zeal was in understanding God’s Word and he was fervent about the truth of the Scripture and he zealously prayed and believed and trusted God’s Word.

“If you remember the story back in Kings, Elijah was fighting against King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. Ahab was a spoiled brat who wanted Naboth’s vineyard and Naboth wouldn’t sell it to him because God said, ‘Don’t you let the stuff out of your family,’ and old Ahab went home, laid on his bed and turned his face to the wall and pouted.

“Jezebel comes in and says, ‘What’s the matter, sugar?’ and he tells her, ‘That mean old guy won’t sell me his vineyard!’ So she went and had the dude killed and came back and said, ‘Okay, you can have the vineyard now.’ She was ruthless and he was a kind of a milquetoast and that’s the couple that introduced Baal worship as the state religion in Israel! Jezebel was the daughter of Ethbaal.

“After Elijah met the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and had a great victory there it was Jezebel who sent him the message, ‘I’m coming to get you, sucker, and you’re dead meat!’ And that’s where you have the incident about Elijah in the cave and he hears the wind and the storm and the still small voice—that’s when he was running for his life from Jezebel.

“So this prayer and withholding the rain and having the rain coming back after the victory with the prophets of Baal, was no small thing for Elijah. He was a righteous man who knew how to effectively and fervently trust God’s Word and that’s what made the prayer, but you wouldn’t know anything about all that, the prayer part of it, if you didn’t have this subsequent narrative in James.”

*****

Critics of the Bible will look at a verse like John 7:38, “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water,” and say, ‘See that’s really not a verse of scripture Jesus’ quoting because there’s not a verse to quote that says ‘out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ But Jesus is just making a summary statement of the consensus of what the Messiah’s going to produce for the nation Israel through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

John 7:39 (“But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified”) clears up the fact that what Christ’s talking about is the new covenant ministry of the Holy Spirit in their midst.

“You just need to understand that, No. 1, that is what the Scripture teaches, and when we say the Scripture says something oftentimes what you’re doing is talking about the consensus; you’re making a summary statement about the consensus of the teaching of Scripture,” explains Jordan. “You also can be having the issue of the subsequent narrative, adding information that wasn’t there before that only complements what’s going on.”

Isaiah 48: 21, for example, says, “And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts: he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.”

Isaiah 58:11 says, “And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”

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Jordan explains, “Isaiah 58 is a picture in apostasy and in repentance and then Israel getting the blessings of her kingdom. And when the blessings come, verse 11, ‘the Lord shall guide thee continually.’ You’re going to have a drink of cold water in the midst of a desert. There’s that thirst metaphor.  God’s going to give them a drink that satisfies the thirst that was compelling them ‘and make fat thy bones…’

“Out of your belly, that part of you that has that ability never to be satisfied, is going to flow rivers of living water. It’s Jeremiah who identifies the fountain of living water as the Messiah; as the blessings the Messiah brings. He’s going to put His Spirit in them and it’s going to flow out of them.

“Flow, not just fill them up. There’s that verse in Mark where Jesus Christ talks to that Gentile woman and says ‘the children must first be filled.’ But they're not just simply going to be filled and have their thirst slacked; they’re going to be filled to overflowing, so that after He’s blessed them that blessing’s going to flow out THROUGH them to others. What he says in John 7 is just a summary statement of the consensus of what the Messiah’s going to produce for the nation Israel through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

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One other verse is James 4:5: “Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?”

Jordan says, “Bible critics use these kinds of verses to try to destroy confidence in God’s Word. There’s no verse of scripture in the Bible that says the ‘spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy,’ but there are a dozen scriptures that teach that! There’s no verse that he’s quoting that’s written but that isn’t what the verse says. The verse doesn’t say that ‘the scripture written says,’ it says ‘the scripture sayeth.’ Just like Jerry spoke and Zach wrote it down.

“What that verse is is a condensation, or a summary of the teaching of scripture. That’s why it doesn’t say it is written and quoted. What is written teaches in no uncertain terms that the spirit that dwells in us lusts to envy.”

(Editor’s note: The Book of Hebrews is full of examples. The writer will talk about ‘Moses sprinkling the book’ but if you go back to Exodus 24 there’s no indication that he sprinkled the book with blood at all.)