A thought on the Bible

After reading the Bible complete so many times I am beginning to reflect on thoughts and feelings I've had and have about it.

For instance, I really got angry reading through the history books this last time. I now know why. They are an ongoing depiction of fallen man being fallen man. Those depictions are designed to turn you to Christ and away from your own fallen self-will.

You probably don't need to be exposed to that particular message after you have understanding of it, but that takes a few or more complete readings, so exposed very fully you will be.

The books of the prophets too suffer from this intended limitation, they being commentary on the history books pretty much. And they really hammer points home. Repeatedly. Over and over. Quite a lot. No mistaking the message. If you didn't get it the first go round, then...the seventy-third will nail it down. (I am not mocking them or the style of them, but I am saying that once you have engaged them rather fully and gained real understanding of them then their work may have been accomplished as well.)

The mystery school is of course in the Gospels and Epistles. In everything, of course, but I mean blatantly there.

Another thought I've had today is how we need to remember that our business is really with death and warfare and where we stand and what we stand upon from here on out. These three realities I listed awhile back, kingdom, warfare, holiness, gather it all up rather completely I think. I mean soteriology is in Kingdom, in the sense that being a legal subject of the Kingdom of God involves all that soteriology is. Warfare and the subject of holiness - Christ formed in you - follow.

The end point is death or the Second Coming, and our ability to stand, and the degree of that ability. Yet with the call to watchfulness, and the fear of God alone, eschatology is a present-tense reality always.