Leaderboard

I believe it is the young people who are leaving... and they were never really quite here. They are making up their mind, and a church that is not relevant, and closing doors on them for preparing to serve how they experience the Holy Spirit leading them.... they will go and serve the Lord where he leads. and it is not just the WO issue that we are losing them over, although that is one. EG White speaks of the masses who remain outside of the sda church because of the unconverted in the church, who feel they are great Christians. They are so offensive and misrepresenting of Christ that the children of God outside of the church would not survive if they joined the church.

I have so many that I want to quote. No Gerry, an Adventist hermeneutic is not the same as having an Adventist Bible. I wanted to try to describe the difference and Debbym took my thoughts and put it far better than I could. And hch, that is not quite what the Jews did. They actually had a wonderful system of Hermeneutics. Their problem was 2 fold: First they had lost much of the historical and cultural events that could help them so a better exegesis to give them a more proper analogy. Second, they did not do enough study of the Bible. In the Jewish school system in Jesus' day the children would first learn to read and write and basic skills and learn the Bible and when they were done with this system they were probably at the equivalent to a 6th grade education in our standards. But then they could either go on in other fields, or else go more into religion and study with great Rabbis. The problem was that once reaching that stage of education they sadly got away from the Bible and began focusing on the thoughts and applications and arguments and disagreements of the great rabbis. These developed into traditions and speculations upon traditions. Mrs. White talked about the conflict with Mary, Jesus and the educational system of the time. While most "uneducated" Hebrews had at least the equivalent of 2 to 4 years of college by our standards (basic skills and the Bible and moving on into trades) some out of the way towns, such as Nazareth only had the first 6 years of education. They never expected the headlines to read "Local Boy makes Good." The "wickedness" of Nazareth was not like Sodom or Times Square. It was that they thought they were limited with their 6 years of schooling Sometimes when we deal with inferiority we turn it into contempt to look down on those who we see as better than us. So Jesus probably had the 6 years of synagogue schooling, but after that the big city rabbis wanted him to come where they could get him into their advanced education and there the conflict would be. So getting to their hermeneutic, I believe that I follow their basic hermeneutic system only that I focus more on the Bible and live in a day where archaeology and linguistic studies gives us a stronger base in exegesis. They understood that the texts had a local application. But that it is the eternal word of God and thus cycles around again where the principles of earlier texts can be drawn into an analogy for what we are facing today. Both the Rabbis and Paul would talk about making an analogy. Hermeneutics are things such as Do you see the Bible as historical or do you not see it as historical. If you see it as historical then you can ask whether or not they have a fundamentalist mindset towards the passage or not. And you can ask if the person sees the text that we have today as coming directly in it's final form exactly as we have it today, or if different sources were edited together. As for me, I believe that the Bible is historical. I tend not to be a fundamentalists. I tend to see the Bible produced similar to Mrs. White's books with her having a vision and then studied it out and presented the information to us in the best she could. I believe that we should start with an exegesis of the passage. What did it mean to the local people. How could the work have been finished then and how could God have set up the kingdom at this time? What went wrong? What were the issues the people then faced. Are they similar to what we are facing. I'd be worried about an Adventist hermeneutic like how the Adventist Theological Society says not to use any higher criticism. Granted higher criticism has been used in bad ways and deserve Mrs. White's criticisms about how it is misused. But in his book on Old Testament Theology which is a text book in many seminaries (not just ours) Elder Hassel said that while there is evidence of editing, we need to pretend that it is not there. We have to treat the text as if the form it is today was it's original form. Sadly this does not fit. There are passages in scripture where we have to treat very carefully to try to make it fit this hermeneutic. For example, the book of Amos has two very different writing styles. The one writing style has curses on Israel's neighbors and the 7th nation is Israel (the northern kingdom). And the book is focused on the sins of the Northern Kingdom and how they were going to face exile. The second writing style is based on the first but places Juda in the 7th spot moving Israel to # 8 (which affects the writing style) and it applies the message of the one writing style to Judah. Indicating that there was a prophet named Amos who came to the Northern Kingdom and spoke against them and their need to repent or face exile. Someone about 100 years later in Judah took Amos' message and said "This is not merely our cousins to the north. We are now equally as wicked and if we don't repent we likewise will go into exile. " I know that I will be stepping on some toes here, but we have the story of Isaiah of Jerusalem dealing with issues in his day, which included the wonderful reformation of Hezekiah. Then there is Hezekiah's illness, and the visitors from Babylon. If Hezekiah shared with them is true riches, his God, they could bring that back and Hezekiah's reformation could have covered the whole world leading in a few Generations to good king Joshua. But sadly he only showed them his stuff. They went home with memories of his stuff and eventually they came back for that stuff. But then in following chapters we find two different messages. Deuteronomy 4 predicted that the exile could be the last days. So we find a section of Isaiah sounding like William Miller on the imminent coming of the promised one. Then we find chapters no longer focusing on the imminent coming of the Messiah but about being back in the land and setting up the post exile society and focused on the temple. Whether we want to believe that it was all predicted by Isaiah in Jerusalem, or if there was the Isaiah of Jerusalem and his school of students carried on into the exile where another prophet arose first wanting to preach the message on how the Messiah can come to lead them back home from exile, but since the work was not finished had to deal with the great disappointment of going back and starting another period of time in the land before the Messiah comes. (Just as Daniel and Ezekiel do). Being aware of these sections help us in reading the texts.

I wasn't actually thinking of a Bible passage, but was thinking that I've heard or read that before! Was really asking if that is what he was called?? I have looked at a few Bible translations and have personally not read that as of yet!

Hermeneutics are very powerful in determining how you derive is truth from scripture. i have observes people deriving truth from scripture in a very superstitious way, or a very dramatic free association of one scripture to another, selectively ignoring other text. i have seen approaches as if the whole bible were such a mysterious strange concoction of expression anything anyone wants to think or believe the bible says they will find it. I have also seen this with people who approach the bible to utterly ridicule the possibility the scripture even has truth. There are many ways to find oneself in a ditch and off the road, and getting nowhere in understanding God's thoughts towards us communicated in Scripture.

Hermeneutic: This word has a range of meanings and people form differing religious traditions understand it differently. Wikipedia has a good article on this. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_hermeneutics In brief, Wikipedia says below. But it goes well beyond that and is informative to me. Gerry, with my understanding of hermeneutics, I will have to say that it is essential that Adventists have a good understanding of hermeneutics. And I disagree with your comparison to having an Adventist Bible.