A verse jumped out at me during our public reading last Sabbath, and it's been bouncing around in my head ever since. The verse is Deuteronomy 29:29
"The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."
Now I absolutely will not allow this discussion (if there is one) devolve into a debate about what laws do or don't apply. That's for every man to decide for himself; but it occurred to me that this verse could apply to all of us at some point. We all have gotten bogged down by the secret things.
How many times have we gotten into a discussion about details of Melchizedek that we're just not given, or the Nephilim, or who Cain married or who he was afraid of being killed by. I've gone to the mat on whether Job was a pre- or post-Fall figure. I still think he was probably pre-Fall.
But these are secret things, they belong to God. It's the revealed things that are our concerns. If it hasn't been revealed, then it's not for us to speculate on. This affects everyone. I don't know that I've ever met someone who didn't have strongly held beliefs on things that simply aren't revealed to us. Hell, the Catholics have made a whole religion out of it. (Sorry to any Catholics out there, you're an easy whipping boy since there are so few of you involved here)
I have known a number of men to be led astray because they were looking for secret knowledge that hasn't been revealed. I'm not saying we can't have fun personal theories about lost tribes and Nephilim and spiritual warfare or historical anomalies, the correct name to refer to God by or whether Paul was the rich young ruler who was unwilling to give up his wealth to follow Christ (one of my personal theories). But they have to be kept in their place; they belong to God. They're secret. We have enough trouble with the revealed truths. We don't need to come to blows over the exact nature of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost ir anything else not revealed to us. Its secret. It belongs to God.
This means we have to be absolutely brutal in our excising of anything we believe that is not in the text. We can't add anything that isn't revealed. There are no assumptions in the text. If it's not expressly laid out for us then it's not our concern. Our concern is the revealed things.
What say you Bereans?
"The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law."
Now I absolutely will not allow this discussion (if there is one) devolve into a debate about what laws do or don't apply. That's for every man to decide for himself; but it occurred to me that this verse could apply to all of us at some point. We all have gotten bogged down by the secret things.
How many times have we gotten into a discussion about details of Melchizedek that we're just not given, or the Nephilim, or who Cain married or who he was afraid of being killed by. I've gone to the mat on whether Job was a pre- or post-Fall figure. I still think he was probably pre-Fall.
But these are secret things, they belong to God. It's the revealed things that are our concerns. If it hasn't been revealed, then it's not for us to speculate on. This affects everyone. I don't know that I've ever met someone who didn't have strongly held beliefs on things that simply aren't revealed to us. Hell, the Catholics have made a whole religion out of it. (Sorry to any Catholics out there, you're an easy whipping boy since there are so few of you involved here)
I have known a number of men to be led astray because they were looking for secret knowledge that hasn't been revealed. I'm not saying we can't have fun personal theories about lost tribes and Nephilim and spiritual warfare or historical anomalies, the correct name to refer to God by or whether Paul was the rich young ruler who was unwilling to give up his wealth to follow Christ (one of my personal theories). But they have to be kept in their place; they belong to God. They're secret. We have enough trouble with the revealed truths. We don't need to come to blows over the exact nature of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost ir anything else not revealed to us. Its secret. It belongs to God.
This means we have to be absolutely brutal in our excising of anything we believe that is not in the text. We can't add anything that isn't revealed. There are no assumptions in the text. If it's not expressly laid out for us then it's not our concern. Our concern is the revealed things.
What say you Bereans?
