Taking it literally, ladder and limb

During a Q & A period following a live Bible study over the internet, a man asked for advice on how to move his "head knowledge" of God's Word into his heart.

The preacher suggested, in part, that he go out and share the Word with other people. This would, in essence, "stir up" what he knew intellectually and give it a deeper, more personal context through the interaction and discourse with people from varied backgrounds who may have very different ideas about God and the Bible.

I thought this was a good answer and I can certainly attest to being helped myself through the years doing the exact same thing.

If this same question had been posed to me, though, I would have answered differently.

For me, I have to say some of my biggest faith leaps have come from more fully internalizing the fact that in the English language, the King James Bible—and only the King James Bible—is God's masterpiece as both the Book's author and editor.

Absolutely every single line—down to the last "jot and tittle," as Matthew 5:18 says—reveals His full intention as the supreme Artist behind it all.

There's not one word that's not the precise word He meant to use and He's placed every word exactly where He meant it to be. Each of the 66 books is ordered with this meticulousness.

*****

Jordan puts it this way:

"If you take your Bible this literally, and you don't say it's anthropomorphic expressions, and that it's wonderful words, but it isn’t really real because it's so far beyond you. . .

"You’re never going to completely understand God, but He's created a universe in which to manifest His glory, and if His glory can't be manifested so that you can comprehend it as best that you can comprehend it, then it isn't real.

"So the fact that He has deigned to condescend Himself to manifest Himself to us, and to speak to us in terms that we can understand, means that the things that He's communicated to us are real and you don’t need this Platonic kind of Neoplatonism where, 'It's these words but it's not real; it's just this shadow-on-the-wall kind of stuff.'

"That's just a bunch of superstitious stuff. I don't care if the best brains of the last 1,000-1,500 years says it's true, it's still just nonsense. But I know that when you take your Bible literally, it's like you climb out on a limb and pretty soon you're so far out on that limb that people look at you and say, 'You're nuts, man, that thing's going to fall out from under you.'

"You know that thing is strong and steady and it holds you up. Years ago, I used to paint and I used to watch guys climb up a 40-ft. ladder. I climbed up a 40-ft ladder to the end of it one time, and painted a little while and came down, and told the guy I was working with, 'You know, now I know why painters are either drunks or crazy. You either got to be drunk or nuts to go up that ladder twice and you wouldn't get me up in one again.'

"But you understand, I know what it's like to kind of be out on a limb. I used to watch Mr. Mackey climb up that ladder, fully extended 40-ft ladder, and then he'd bounce that ladder across the building. Literally walk that ladder. I could do that with a 20-footer, but man, I wasn't going to do it with a 40-footer!

"Nothing to hang on up there and, man, it's a long way to the ground. But after you do it awhile you gain a confidence and that's sort of what it is when you read these verses.

"After you study it 25-30 years you won't find it's quite so nutty."

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Similarly, Jordan said the other week in his Wednesday night study on Hosea, “The more you study your Bible, the more you climb up a tree of faith, and eventually you go out on a limb. The more you study, the more confident you are that that limb’s going to hold you up, and so you kind of go out on it a little bit more and you take what I call the dare of faith.

“You just dare to believe it and you begin to see things, and pretty soon you realize, ‘I’m way over here and the trunk of the tree’s over there and somebody’s going to come along between me and the tree and saw it off and then I might be in trouble.’

“But if you’re hanging onto the trunk and they saw the limb off, well, you still got the trunk. So I don’t mind when people come along and call me goofy and make all kind of accusations. What’s the chafe to the wheat? I don’t worry about it. The fascinating thing is that these kinds of things just keep multiplying.

*****

“Isaiah is sort of a miniature Bible and it’s one of these fascinating things about God’s Word that I don’t know how to explain except to say that it’s there for the eye of faith to see and to encourage your heart about. There’s 66 chapters in Isaiah that correlate with each of the 66 books in the Bible.

“You go to Isaiah and find that chapter that corresponds with the chronological order of the books and if you’re familiar enough with the particular book, you’ll see corresponding thinking in the chapter in Isaiah. You’re not going to see the relative doctrine necessarily, but you’ll see thinking patterns where you say, ‘Whoa!’ But you have to be familiar enough with those books.

“For example, there are at least 15 direct kinds of correlations between Isaiah 28 and Hosea (the 28th book) that I can identify. If I can find 15 I’d guess there’s probably another 8-10 I missed. I say that because I didn’t do 15 the first time I ever did this. I just kind of keep adding to them as I go along.

“Hosea ends with a reference to, ‘Who is wise, and he shall understand these things? prudent, and he shall know them? for the ways of the LORD are right, and the just shall walk in them: but the transgressors shall fall therein.’

"Now an obvious cross reference to that is back in Isaiah 28, beginning in verse 9: ‘Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts.’

“This is a very popular verse in regards to these things. If you look down at verse 26, it says, ‘For his God doth instruct him to discretion, and doth teach him.’ Verse 29 says, ‘This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.’

“When He’s talking to Hosea about who is wise and who has understanding, and who is prudent and knew these things, the answer is in these people back here in Isaiah 28 who had the attitude of being a baby, a child in faith, and being instructed point by point, consistently over and over, by the Lord.

*****

"Now, if you take the Book of Isaiah and you break it in half, you’d have chapters 1-39 and then there’d be a break and you’d have chapters 40-66.

“That break between those two sections is so obvious and so startling that unbelievers, and textual critics and Bible critics, actually have a teaching they call ‘Deutero-Isaiah, meaning two Isaiahs.

“The idea is the Isaiah who wrote the first 39 chapters wrote in such a mindset, and about such topics, that is so different from the latter chapters that the same guy couldn’t have possibly written these ‘two books’ because they were so diametrically opposed to one another.

“The whole function of (chapters 1-39) is judgment and how the nation Israel’s going to be cursed and the captivity’s coming. You see the first verse in chapter 28? ‘Woe to the crown of pride.’ Chapter 29: ‘Woe to Ariel, to Ariel, the city where David dwelt! add ye year to year; let them kill sacrifices.’ That’s Jerusalem.

“You come down to verse 15: ‘Woe unto them that seek deep to hide their counsel from the LORD, and their works are in the dark, and they say, Who seeth us? and who knoweth us?’ Chapter 30:1: ‘Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin.’

“You go through chapter 28 and following and there are a series of six different woes against six different groups of people that end up with destruction.

“Then, in chapter 40, all of a sudden you have comfort: ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. 2] Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.’

“You now have God delivering people and Israel’s restored; you have salvation.

“So the idea is, ‘This is so different,’ and they say the first set of chapters were Isaiah 1 and the second set is Isaiah 2. Now you know that’s not true. You know one Isaiah wrote it all. How do you know that?

“Because in John 12, Jesus Christ quotes Isaiah 6 and then He quotes Isaiah 53 in the same breath and attributes both to the same guy. So Jesus Christ knew more about who wrote Isaiah than the textual critics but they come from a position of unbelief anyway.

“My point to you is there is such a division there. How many books are the in the Old Testament? 39. What’s the last word in the Old Testament? Malachi 4:6. ‘Curse’ is the last word. What does the law produce? Galatians 3:10.

“The 40^th book in the Bible is Matthew and the first thing you read in Matthew is the ‘voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord.’ That’s John the Baptist introducing the Messiah and you have the Redeemer and His redemption over here.

“The very first verse in Isaiah talks about the heaven and the earth. The last chapter talks about the new heaven and the new earth. Genesis, the first book in the Bible, starts with, ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ In Revelation, it’s the ‘new heaven and new earth.’ "