Jan 24, 2017
What bullet?
We are not to hunt these spiritual foxes with real bullets, but with the spiritual bullets, pursuing them to repent and return to the right path, and by pointing them to their false, and leading them to the right way...The Living Word, Our Lord and God Jesus Christ.
Fox
And He said to them, “Go, tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.’
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Lk 13:32.
O Israel, your prophets are like foxes in the deserts.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Eze 13:4.
Catch us the foxes,
The little foxes that spoil the vines,
For our vines have tender grapes.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), So 2:15–16.
Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Jdg 15:4.
Because of Mount Zion which is desolate,
With foxes walking about on it.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), La 5:18.
Commentary:
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Lk 13:32.
O Israel, your prophets are like foxes in the deserts.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Eze 13:4.
Catch us the foxes,
The little foxes that spoil the vines,
For our vines have tender grapes.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), So 2:15–16.
Then Samson went and caught three hundred foxes; and he took torches, turned the foxes tail to tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Jdg 15:4.
Because of Mount Zion which is desolate,
With foxes walking about on it.
The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), La 5:18.
Commentary:
Tell that fox (32). The fox was considered a crafty animal, but without the power of the lion. Jesus chose a fitting figure to describe Herod—sly, but secondary in a Roman world.[1]
Go, tell that fox. It is certain, that the person here spoken of is Herod Antipas. Though he had throughout the character of a fox, and was as remarkable for servility as for cunning, I do not think that the term, fox, is intended to refer generally to the cunning of his whole life, but rather to the insidious methods by which he laboured to undermine the doctrine of the Gospel, when he did not venture to attack it openly. Christ tells him that, with all his craftiness, he will gain nothing by his schemes. “Whatever artifices he may devise,” says Christ, “to-day and to-morrow I will discharge the office which God has enjoined upon me; and when I shall have reached the end of my course, I shall then be offered in sacrifice.”[2]
My letter to the students in Far Eastern Bible College, Singapore.
To the students in Far Eastern Bible College in Singapore,
For I say to you, that unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.[1] Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.”[2]…..Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.[3]
Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, thatobserve and do, but do not do according to their works; for they say, and do not do. [4] |
The Lecturers in Far Eastern Bible College…..many of them were bad examples. They were like a well-known Bible professor of a generation or two ago. In the classroom, he was a brilliant interpreter of the Bible. His influence over his students was almost hypnotic. Few could sit at his feet for long without being inspired by his insights into God’s Word and being persuaded to his point of view. But off campus, he often destroyed what he accomplished in class sessions. His rudeness, especially to persons he perceived to be his social inferiors, embarrassed everyone with him. After a few hours in his company on such occasions, many former disciples could not listen to his Biblical expositions again. He was a good teacher, but such a bad example that he canceled his words by his actions.
This is Jesus’ opinion of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, who “sit in Moses’ seat” (as professors authorized to explain the correct meaning and application of Moses’ laws). Jesus’ disciples do well to obey their teaching, but would be ill advised to follow their example. Jesus knows them well. They have already made themselves His enemies. They have sought every opening to criticize and heckle Him. In the end, they look for a way to kill Him.
Yet they seem so respectable. Of course they do, because that is one of their chief goals. Jesus castigates them on at least these counts:
(1) You don’t practice what you preach (3).
(2) Your rules are a burden to sincere people (4).
(3) You put on a good show to win men’s applause (5–7).
(4) You glory in titles and honors (8–12). Jesus’ disciples, on the other hand, are not to seek to be honored with titles like “rabbi” or “father” or even “teacher.” They are to take nothing away from the Father or the Son. They are to remember they are servants, not masters. If there is to be any exalting, God is to do it!
(5) You are keeping people out of the kingdom of God (13). You are hypocrites, pretending to be serving God but really just using your religious role to puff yourselves up. You won’t heed My teaching about the kingdom of God, and you do everything you can to keep others from hearing and obeying. You won’t repent and you won’t let anyone else repent, if you can help it. (Verse 14 is reduced to a footnote in recent versions of the Bible, since it is not found in the most reliable early manuscripts. It is quite in keeping with the rest of Jesus’ denunciations, however. His heart always goes out to widows, who are often helpless to prevent themselves from being taken by unscrupulous profiteers.)
(6) Your converts are worse, not better, than before their conversion (15). As students often surpass the fanaticism of their teachers, so yours invite an even more disastrous judgment than you do.
(7) You complicate even such matters as oath-taking (16–21). We already know Jesus’ opinion concerning oaths: Matthew 5:33–37. The prevailing principle seems to have been to swear by the greater, so the Pharisees thought an oath “by the gold in the temple” would be more binding than swearing by the temple (made of stone) itself. All this does not matter to Jesus, who would do away with the whole system of swearing oaths.
(8) You commendably practice some doctrines—like tithing—while completely ignoring weightier matters like justice, mercy, and faithfulness (22–24). Mint and anise and cummin were garden herbs used in cooking and for certain medicinal purposes. The tithing of herbs was considered the ultimate in religious piety.
(9) You scrupulously observe the external niceties of religion while leaving the inner person unreformed (25–28).
(10) You honor dead prophets but, like true descendants of their murderers, you do as your forefathers did (29–32).
(11) When I send “prophets and wise men and teachers” to you, you will prove yourselves to be as quick to kill as your forefathers killed the prophets who came to them (33–36). The first reference is to Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest, who was slain in the court of the temple—2 Chronicles 24:20f. The second is to Abel, son of Adam, who was slain by his brother Cain, the first of a long and inglorious line of murderers—Genesis 4:10.[5]
Beloved students in Far Eastern Bible College,
Remember this, you may have learned a lot from those lecturers, but do not follow their bad example…..!!!
Harsh-sounding language was not unusual in religious debates in first-century Judaism. Words and phrases like blind guides, twice the sons of hell, hypocrites, and brood of vipers were typical expressions in such debates between Jewish religious groups at Jesus’ time. This kind of language was the way a person or a group staked out territory. Ancient listeners would not have heard these words and thought how much the speaker hated the other people. Rather, ancient listeners would have concluded that the speaker firmly believed the other party was wrong, and his or her party was right.[6]
Yours sincerely,
.......................................
[1] The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Mt 5:20.
[2] The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Mt 16:6.
[3] The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Mt 16:12.
[4] The New King James Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982), Mt 23:3.
[5] LeRoy Lawson, Matthew: Unlocking the Scriptures for You, Standard Bible Studies (Cincinnati, OH: Standard, 1986), 278–279.
[6] Roger L. Hahn, Matthew: a Commentary for Bible Students (Indianapolis, IN: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2007), 270.
Timothy Tow
Only a handful of Bible-Presbyterian old pastors dare to call Timothy Tow Siang Hui as "an old fox," these old pastors were very close to Timothy Tow from the beginning of Far Eastern Bible College, they were all at inner circle of Tow's life, they knew him very well, they were in the beginning good friend.....but Tow betrayed them and hurt their feeling...that is why they called him, "an old fox"
THE WORD OF GOD:
HOW AM I TO LOVE GOD BY LOVING IT?
from Daniel HydeLove is a complex thing. Contrary to popular notions, love is not a feeling or an emotion that you can fall into and then fall out of. Love is complex, meaning that love involves many things. Classically speaking, our human faculties are made up of the mind, the will, and the affections. Using these, then, love is rooted in knowledge; love is exercised in willful decision; and love is experienced in the affections. To love someone involves all of this. To love someone means that you also love the things about someone. This is most true of our love for God. We love Him, and that leads us to love everything about Him. One of those things is His Word. To love God is to love his Word. As Psalm 119 says, "Oh how I love your law!" (v. 97).
Because the Word is the means that God uses to speak to us, we need to love it and use it. Let me meditate with you on how.
By My Duty to Read It
I am to love God by loving His Word. Therefore, it is my duty to read it. Just as we give presents because we love someone, and they open it in reciprocal love and gratitude, so too has God shown His love for His people by giving us the gift of His Word. As the psalmist said, "He declares his word to Jacob, his statutes and rules to Israel. He has not dealt thus with any other nation; they do not know his rules" (Ps. 147:19-20). Show him you love him by reading his Word. Scripture explains that we do this in three ways.
Publicly
We love God by loving His Word read publicly. This was done in the ancient Jewish synagogue, as evidenced by Jesus' entering the synagogue and performing the appointed reading from the prophet Isaiah (Luke 4:16-24). This was done in the ancient Christian church, as evidenced by Paul's words (1 Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16). This continued in the ancient church. For example, Justin Martyr said, "And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits" (First Apology, ch. 67). And Tertullian said, "We assemble to read our sacred writings … with the sacred words we nourish our faith, we animate our hope, we make our confidence more steadfast" (Apology, ch. 39).
As a Family
We love God by loving His Word read as a family, if the Lord provides us with a family. Moses exhorted Israel, saying, "And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise" (Deut. 6:6-7). This practice of the covenant people was experienced by Timothy: "But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings" (2 Tim. 3:14-15). Family Bible reading is necessary to propagate the Christian religion in our children. Studies show the rising generation in American churches leaving those churches; is it any wonder when parents, especially fathers, are not taking the time to read the Word with their children? Ignorance of Scripture leads to ignorance of Christ.
Privately
We love God by loving His Word read privately. Psalm 1 speaks of the singular "man" (v. 1) who is blessed because "his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night" (v. 2). To read the Word and meditate upon the Word as a believer causes one to be like a well-watered and fruitful tree (v. 3). Psalm 119 is also the meditation of an individual believer: "Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day" (v. 97, emphasis mine). Meditating on the Word makes one wise (v. 98), makes one godly (v. 101), and gives us a spiritual delight as the Word is "sweeter than honey to my mouth!" (v. 103). This is why one writer said, "To neglect [the reading of the Word] is to despise our own souls, and deprive ourselves of the advantage of God's instituted means of grace." If you love God, it is your duty to read the Word of God.
By My Delight to Receive It
I am to love God by loving His Word. Therefore, it is my delight to receive it. Again, think about receiving a present. The word present is just another way of saying "gift." And what does the word gift mean? It means an act of grace-that a person gives you something not because you deserve it, but because they decided to express their love.
Ten times in the great Psalm 119 we read of the psalmist praising the Lord for receiving the Lord's Word, saying he "delights" in the Word (Ps. 119:14, 16, 24, 35, 47, 70, 77, 92, 143, 174). Why? Because the Word is the living Word of the Lord to us, His people. The psalmist also describes his delight in the Word in comparison to other delightful things. He compares the Word to gold and silver, saying in verse 72, "The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces" (cf. v. 127). He compares the Word to honey, saying in verse 103, "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" Elsewhere in Scripture, we read of the Word being compared to other things such as these. The Word is compared to a sword that defends against spiritual enemies (Eph. 6:17). The Word is compared to a lamp that guides us (Ps. 119:105). The Word is compared to milk that nourishes our souls (1 Peter 2:2).
If you love God, it is your duty to read the Word and your delight to receive it as the very Word of the true and living God.
Grace Bible-Presbyterian Church,
Singapore
This church is one of the good Samaritan among the Bible Presbyterian Churches in Singapore.
This church is one of the good Samaritan among the Bible Presbyterian Churches in Singapore.
Original Text Is Without Errors, Not the Copies.
As noted in the article Bible, Alleged Errors in, this does not mean that every copy and translation of the Bible is perfect. God breathed out the originals, not the copies, so inerrancy applies to the original text, not to every copy. God in his providence preserved the copies from substantial error. In fact, the degree of accuracy is greater than that of any other book from the ancient world, exceeding 99 percent [1]
Do not tell me KJV is perfect.....
[1] Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), 92–93.
Copies of the Autographs (to c. 150)
Most of the New Testament books were written during the second half of the first century. Those manuscripts were written under the direction of the Holy Spirit and were inerrant. They were undoubtedly written on papyrus and have all subsequently been lost. Nevertheless, the autographs of the New Testament were providentially copied and circulated before they became illegible or lost. These copies were made as early as a.d.95. If copying had not begun very soon after the autographs were written, there would be no Bible today because papyrus survives for long periods of time only under exceptional conditions. Just as the autographs were written on papyrus rolls, so the earliest copies were probably written on papyrus rolls. Soon, however, papyrus codices were produced, and parchment and vellum were employed still later. Very few, if any, of the early copies are extant today, for basically the same reasons as indicated with regard to the autographs (see chap. 20).
Although there were many early copies of the autographs, they are not all of the same quality, for as soon as a manuscript was copied misprints began to creep into the text. Some of the early copies were highly accurate and quite expensive, as they were copied by professional scribes. Manuscript copies made by less capable scribes were less expensive, but they were of a generally poorer quality and wider distribution. Still other copies made in this early period were quite poor in quality, as they were often copied by nonprofessionals and were often all that an individual or group could afford to have made. Gordon Fee correctly calls this a “Period of Confusion (to a.d. 400)” and adds that
during the second century in particular, when each NT book was being transmitted independently of the others and when there was wide geographical distribution of these documents with little or no “controls,” such scribal errors proliferated. Once an error was introduced into the text, it was then copied by the next scribe as his “received” text. Sometimes a scribe “corrected” what he thought to be errors and in doing so created errors of his own.33[1]
33 Gordon D. Fee, “The Textual Criticism of the New Testament,” in Frank E. Gaebelein, ed., The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, p. 425.
[1] Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Rev. and expanded. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 445–446.
New Testament Greek
Cremer’s dictionary deals with a problem that has not yet been solved, namely, that of NT Greek.
a. This question was already discussed in the early church.34 When the NTwas becoming known in the Greek world, the educated attached great value to the writing of good Greek. The NT could not compete with the published literary works of the time.35 Celsus compared the sentences of the Bible with Plato and came to the conclusion that everything was better expressed among the Greeks than in the NT (Orig. Cels., VI, 1). The apostles were uncultured tax-gatherers and fishermen who could not measure up to Greek philosophers(I, 62). Similar objections were constantly raised. How did the church respond to them?
Two arguments were used in defense of the Greek of the NT. First, it was said that the apostles deliberately used simple speech to make themselves generally understood. The preacher’s task is not just to win the clever. Out of love for all men he consciously turns as well to the simple and uneducated, to women and children, even to the uncivilised, in order to convert them. Hence the Christian teacher has to use a language which all can understand and which can captivate all.36
The second argument starts with the fact that the apostles themselves were simple people who could not match the skilled speech of the philosophers. Another reason was thus given for the success of primitive Christian preaching. According to Origen, what won people to Christ was not fine speech or oratorical skill, not the art of dialectic or rhetoric, but Christ himself. If Jesus had chosen clever folk to proclaim his teaching, Christianity might have been taken for a philosophical school. But now that uneducated people, fishermen and tax-gatherers, who did not have even the rudiments of learning, have not only spoken to the Jews with shocking boldness about faith in Christ but also preached Jesus successfully to all nations, one has to ask what is the source of the unparalleled power of their words to convince. The only possible conclusion is that a higher than they has been speaking and that he has endowed their words with persuasive force (Orig. Cels., I, 62 [GCS, 2, 113f.]).[1]
My point is please use simple English to reach out to the unsaved, use NIV please....
34 E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa, II5 (1958), 521–534; J. Vergote, Art. “Grec biblique” in Dict. Bibl. Suppl., III (1938), 1321–1323.
35 “To use a non-Attic word was a very serious literary offense and a work not adorned with figures of speech had no claim to a place in literature; in short, writing well or badly distinguished Greeks and barbarians. A public of this kind could only regard the religious documents of the Christians as monstrosities,” Norden, op. cit., 516f.
Orig. Origen, of Alexandria (185–254 a.d.), pupil of Clement of Alexandria, and most learned and fruitful representative of ancient Christian scholarship and culture, ed. by different scholars in Die griech, christl. Schriftsteller der ersten 3 Jahrhunderte, 1899 ff.
Cels. Contra Celsum.
36 Orig. Cels., VI, 1 (GCS, 3, 72); Isidore of Pelusium Ep., IV, 67 (MPG, 78, 1124f.).
Orig. Origen, of Alexandria (185–254 a.d.), pupil of Clement of Alexandria, and most learned and fruitful representative of ancient Christian scholarship and culture, ed. by different scholars in Die griech, christl. Schriftsteller der ersten 3 Jahrhunderte, 1899 ff.
Cels. Contra Celsum.
[1] Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, eds., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 632.
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