"Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage - with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths." (2 Tim. 4:2-4)
This prophecy of the Apostle Paul is well and truly upon the Church today, if it has not already been in times past. The Sydney Anglican Diocese, through its theological institution, Moore College, is making shipwreck of people's faith.
It has been said and implied many times in this blogspot that those within the Diocese who hold to a Theistic Evolution and Long Age view of origins have capitulated to the world. They allow the world to tell them how to interpret the Word of God. It does not bother them that they have to contort the clear meaning of language contained in the early books of the Word of God. They wouldn't dare do the same to the language in the accounts of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Well, not yet anyway!
Further testimony to their itching ears has been the acceptance of chronology of the Old Testament according to Edwin R. Thiele and William F. Albright. These 'princes' themselves have gone outside the Word of God to establish a chronology of the kings they could make sense of. Their inability to overcome 'perceived' difficulties in the Holy Writ led them to put their trust in the Assyrian Eponym, thus placing the Assyrian Eponym over the Word of God. Many today use the Babylonian account of origins to interpret the Biblical account. Aren't these instances akin to Israel going after other gods for rule of life? It was an offence to God then as is this latter day version.
Thiele and Albright were perhaps on the wrong track initially when placing too much stock in the Greek Septuagint over the Masoretic Text on the matter of chronology of the kings.
There are, no doubt, some difficulties yet to be resolved with the Masoretic Text but it seems to me that Dr Floyd Nolen Jones has done a very good job of setting right the chronology of the kings in his book and charts 'The Chronology of the Old Testament' published by Master Books. The remarkable thing is that Dr Jones has, as an aside, demonstrated how astute (the much latter day derided) Archbishop James Ussher was in his work 'Annals of the World'.
The 'perceived' problem of discordant chronology of kings dissipate in the light of the dominant (there is a good reason for the one exception) 'accession' year dating of kings in Judah and the 'non-accession' year dating of kings in the Northern Kingdom. Dr Jones presents a very neat fit of the dating of the reign of a king in one kingdom against the reign of a king in the other kingdom.
This is not to say that there aren't difficulties yet to be resolved because it is clear that Holy Spirit did not inspire writers of what we call the Old Testament to record an absolute chronology of times and events contained therein. However, Dr Jones brings the reader to a confidence that he or she is within ten years of an absolute chronology. I also appreciated his God honouring and commonsense explanation of the 'perceived' problems of some missing names in Matthew's genealogy of the Lord Jesus and Luke's inclusion of an 'additional' name.
The sharp observation for me was that of seeing once again how those who Sam Drucker calls biblical creationists of today are in step with those who God elevated to positions of good influence in the time of the Reformation viz Luther, Calvin and Ussher among others.
Sad to say, many in the Sydney Anglican Diocese today stand not with the good influences of the Reformation but more with idolatrous and calamitous Israel.
Neil Moore
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2 comments:
Over the last years you notice that the Anglicans in Sydney don't limit their liberal exegesis to Genesis 1. In so many cases you see it slide into other parts of the Old Testament. This capitulation to, for example, atheist-orientated archaeology I've witnessed in entries on the discussion groups on their website, as well as being espoused (as if I need to alert people to this!) from the mouths of their priestly hierarchy. How many times, for example, have you heard an Anglican in Sydney doubt the historicity of those people who preceded Abraham or of the existence of Caanites in the land when the Israelites re-entered the promised land. Another one of our favourites, the bishop Robbie Forsyth, doubts the miraculous element of Moses and the parting of the Red Sea. He thinks the Bible doesn't spell it out as a miracle.
I'm afraid their version of faith is a diluted form of what God pleads with us to possess. Theirs can't even trust the Holy Spirit to accurately get the truth across and prefers to lean on humanistic understanding. The irony here is that when confronted with a humanist i.e. face-to-face, as in the previously mentioned discussion at an EU table at Syd Uni, they have no idea how to deal with him and shut the door with the key of knowledge and lock out a potential son or daughter of God by their refusal to inspect their own view of origins. When a humanist and a Christian have the same explanation of origins then what can a humanist gain from the other?
Thanks, Neil, for giving attention to Floyd Nolen Jones' work.
I see it as being a monumental work for Christian reference.
It astounds me how so-called Christians put their faith in a secular record such as the Assyrian Eponym when it is based so much on vanity. How can it be reliable when so many monarchs removed all record of previous monarchs who they didn't like?
It is a dead set shame what passes for Christian scholarship and faith today.
Sam
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