The Written Word of God
Vouchsafing the Thoughts of the Most High
In the beginning was the Word . . . John 1:1
The Sum of your word is truth, And all of your righteous judgments endure for the ages. Psalm 119:160
Bind up the testimony, seal the Law <torah> among my disciples. Isaiah 8:16
And now, O Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I am teaching you to perform, in order that you may live and go in and take possession of the land which YHWH the God [Elohai] of your fathers, is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of YHWH your God which I command you. Deuteronomy 4:1-2 (emphasis added)
Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words lest He reprove you, and you be proved a liar. Proverbs 30:5-6
‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’ Matthew 4:4 (emphasis added)
Faith is out of hearing, yet the hearing is through the declaration of Christ. But I am saying, “Have they not heard?” Indeed they have, for “Their voice has gone out to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” Rom. 10:17-18
I testify to everyone who hears the words of prophecy in this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. Revelation 22:18-19 (emphasis added)
For Lovers of Truth
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Today’s seekers of truth have greater access to more books and written documents than any before them in the history of Israel and of Christendom, and that includes many more NT Greek manuscripts, which add to the historical reliability of our testimonies to Christ. The worldwide web has brought to peoples’ fingertips the wealth of knowledge far more extensive than the library at Alexandria. And yet, there is a dark cloud that hangs upon this promising scene, and it acts as a fertilizer for certain weeds that can corrupt the human mind. Of these, the haughtiness of humanity comes to mind (cf. Isa. 2) as a primary challenge to the humility which can bring true knowledge, especially of things Divine. After all, is it not required that we come before God empty of our limited selves, and in silence before Him, that we may learn? – “Let all the earth be silent before Him.” (Habakkuk 2:20)
Isaiah established for all time that there is a tremendous, irreconcilable gap between God and humanity. For God will always be God, and no matter how much we grow in relationship to Him, so much of His Infinite goodness and grace, not to mention His unfathomable riches of knowledge and wisdom, will remain beyond our grasp — How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (Romans 11:33) There is no magic by which the creation may grow into being creator.
For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Neither are your ways My ways, declares YHWH.
For the Heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts higher than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
And do not return there without watering the earth,
And making it bear and sprout,
And furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater;
So shall my word be which goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me empty,
Without accomplishing what I desire,
And without succeeding for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:9-11 (emphasis added)
Isaiah presents God’s word in its performative capacity as that which not only expresses His thoughts but actually accomplishes them. And just as God’s thoughts and ways are higher than our own, so His words are truly beyond our ken. For this cause, God in His incomparable grace, has found ways to communicate in our language, using prose and poetry and literary symbols to get at spiritual realities, giving us keys to understanding along the way, so that the symbols might be grasped not only in their earthly signification but for the unseen nature and quality of spiritual being that they represent. By this we may compare spiritual things with spiritual things. This is His Love.
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is out of God, in order that we may know the things freely given to us by God; which things also we speak not in words taught of human wisdom, but in [words] taught of [the] Spirit, comparing spiritual things (words) with spiritual things. (1 Cor. 2:12-13)
In this conversation we have to ask: are we embarking on some linguistic and philosophical excursion, or is there a very critical point to the journey? And the answer is that it is supremely important because it bears on truth and what we may use to discern truth. Jesus promised His disciples that He would send them the spirit of Truth so that they would remember all He had taught them. Now in that gospel of John’s, Jesus is/was Truth, so that would be His Spirit that He sent.
But let’s be honest with what we see around us: there is relatively little agreement on doctrine [Gk. didaskalia], or ‘teaching,’ except in closed circles of church memberships which function as tiny epistemological ghettoes that cannot speak the dialog outside their own shtetl (Yiddish for a small town with large Jewish populations). And besides doctrine, or teaching, there is constant disagreement, frequently combative or even violent, regarding the meaning of prophecy, and how it will unfold as Christ Jesus, the King of kings and Lord of lords, makes His return.
Teaching or doctrine simply cannot be dismissed as relatively inconsequential as long as Christians agree on the central articles of faith. To worship God in Spirit and in Truth requires knowing God in truth. So Christians who say that we can agree to disagree are simply compromising on our collective search for all truth, and the apostles demonstrated that in their lives by consistently teaching their faithful disciples not to keep fellowship with any who did not bring this ‘teaching’ of Christ (2 John 7-9) aka ‘doctrine,’ and with those who were lawless (1 John 3:6) who held to the mystery of lawlessness. It would seem that the struggle “for the faith once delivered” which Jude mentioned continues in our time, a topic we will briefly treat below.
In short, the testimony and the Torah are the essence of it all [see Isaiah 8:16 header citation], and the proof of being part of the body according to God’s message which John recorded as Revelation seen at 19:10 – “For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” and at 12:17 – “And the dragon was enraged with the woman and went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.”
The law and the testimony are seen actively fulfilled in those who are the brethren of Jesus as unveiled in both of those places in Revelation. So to agree to disagree on doctrine is the same thing as saying that truth does not matter and therefore light and darkness can have fellowship.
This, I am afraid, is the sorry state of affairs of the faith of Christendom. There is no unity of the faith which Paul says is the goal toward which we are moving (Eph 4:13) and is conjoined with the full knowledge of the Son of God. As Peter wrote in his second epistle, faith must have virtue added to it, and to that one must add knowledge. This type of knowledge, in Greek epignosis, is accurate knowledge and therefore must be participatory, else it remains outsider knowledge, intellectual, and incapable of penetrating to the truth of the ‘known’ reality. Thus, faith cannot be unified without a unified knowledge of the Son of God – there can only be knowledge of the One Lord (Eph. 4:5) to have all one in the one faith.
But in today’s world, everyone is a self-proclaimed expert on God, and this by people who do NOT know Him. Anyone who wants to quibble with some of the words that have proceeded from the mouth of God simply do not know Him (2 Tim. 2:14), and such wrangling about words leads to the ruin of the hearers. He is the Holy One of Israel, and very exacting, and He expects us to be Holy as He is Holy. So no, ultimately there is no quibbling or wiggle room. Either we will live according to every word He spoke, or we will, like Satan, decide the meaning for ourselves – and this is the pathway to death.
So now do you see how the question of the canon is central to the purity of the faith? And who closed it, determined its shape for the final part of the days would have to be men full of the Holy Spirit, and not in any way motivated by matters of this world. Based upon a mountain of text critical scholarship, archaeology, linguistics, and scriptural comparison, along with historical research in patristics, including what even later church historians had to say about the apostles and apostolic fathers, it is clear that the early church had a canon, and it was one which is almost identical with what we have now. Below, we will see that this was formalized in the 2nd century by the apostolic fathers.
Is that surprising? Doesn’t it seem contrary to all you have been taught about how the bishops working through various church councils took hundreds of years to settle on the canon for God’s church, the body of Christ?
Yet, in contradistinction to this commonly held belief, scripture – which is self-authenticating (see header quote Isaiah 8:16) and by this fact is able to fulfill what would be a trivial statement, namely 2 Tim 3:16, “All God-breathed scripture is reliable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training which is in righteousness.” From the sounds of Paul’s words to Timothy, it seems like things were solidifying in terms of a New Testament canon, and Peter confirms this (2 Pet. 3:16) by referring to Paul’s letters as standing in the body of Scripture with the rest of God’s word.
It looks like the authority for judging whether a writing was part of Scripture or not must have rested with the apostles (see Isaiah 8:16 above) and that they would have had to confirm the canon, both for the new testament and the old – and historical research should be able to confirm this. In fact, it does. John’s extraordinary pupil Polycarp, made bishop of Smyrna by John and Phillip, wrote a letter to the Philippians, in which he alluded to every single one of the books we hold in the New Testament canon today. In short, Polycarp witnessed to what he must have received from John and the other apostles with whom he had the opportunity to speak.
If the testimony was to be bound and the law sealed by the disciples of the Logos, then the last living disciple who knew the Logos, Jesus Christ, in addition to writing what appear to be the chronologically final books of the New Testament, but must have been familiar with the other writings of Christ’s ekklesia so that he could recommend what would be healthful reading for Christians, that is what would be true and consistent with the Hebrew scriptures. In this capacity, John would have been able to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah 8:16, and to deliver to the church that which would fulfill the ‘standard’ or ‘rule’ of life, known in Greek as ‘kanon’ and seen in a complete body of the Word that would have a flawless internal consistency of truth and suitable for God’s purposes in training for righteousness and making a holy people.
In this fashion, the historical witness and the scriptural witness come together in a unified way to say that the canon became complete under the last living disciple, John. And the opening address of the book of Revelation to the seven congregations is a confirmation of this. Why? Because these are the congregations among which Christ walked, where He was present, and thus these would have to be the congregations that had the full canon of Hebrew and Greek scriptures – the full corpus of the written word of God.
Now let’s return to the question of why the library needs to be a certain size, especially in this modern age of abundant archaeology and the recovery of whole libraries, such as the Dead Sea scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library, both occurring in 1947. And this is a personally familiar question since I myself had great acquaintance with these documents 40 years ago during which time I purchased both the Book of Enoch and the newly published Coptic texts from Egypt, the Nag Hammadi texts.
I argued, for quite some time, as many do, that many books had been lost from the bible and these are examples, which should at least count solid materials like 1 Enoch and the gospel of Thomas. So I studied these texts very carefully for many years, comparing them with biblical textual parallels, and for a long time I was certain that these books were really canonical and should be included in the bible. After all, Jude quotes Enoch as a prophet, so why isn’t the Book of Enoch in the bible? Also, Peter does extensive paraphrases from it, and that just seems conclusive. However, one fact escaped my notice and that was the way in which 1 Enoch was pieced together from many ancient texts and the fragmentary nature of it, should make it suspect for inclusion in the sacred library of the God’s word. Furthermore, apart from the initial prophetic quotation of Enoch, much of the work is inconsistent with Scripture, and is more like a compendium of magic and fantastic beasts. In short, in an overall read of the book it comes off more like an early fantasy using the name of the patriarch to hallow its contents, most of which simply are out of coherence with the bible.
If Christ, through His apostles, sealed the law and bound the testimony, maybe there are things in the full book of Enoch that are questionable and can be called ‘worldly fables’ or ‘deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.’ And indeed, this is what has developed by the exaltation of 1 Enoch to quasi-scriptural status. In 1976 when I first encountered it, most people were skeptical about its authentic linkage with the true patriarch Enoch, or its validity as scripture. Today, many people accept is as a book that should have been included as scripture. And therein lays the rub. For the whole treatment of the giants in sections of that compound volume of writing, seems due to Greek misunderstanding of basic Hebrew terms, and may actually have given rise to myths and legends which are being considered literally true in our time.
In those days of the 1970s and 1980s, when I spoke from Enoch I had to establish its credibility to get a fair hearing. But critical scholarship can lend much to our understanding, and the legitimacy of one fragment – if indeed, Jude even intended to legitimize any of the prophecy at all – of a multifarious writing sewn together out of many diverse sources, does not grant legitimacy to the whole. Scripture establishes that Enoch was a patriarch and a prophet and that he spoke of the coming of the Lord of Hosts to execute judgment against all the ungodly. Among other things, that certainly validates that God’s plan of deliverance was set and known by the sons of men from a very early time.
The problem with the whole discussion of the ‘giants’ is that it rests upon a very materialistic translation of a few words from Genesis 6, and that translation actually arose under Greek influence in Babylon and subsequently so that the term ‘giants’ replaced the Hebrew meaning of the words, and became engrained in the mindset of faith communities through the Septuagint translation of Genesis. Today we see the grim consequences as people spend countless dollars on the speculative books about the giants and how they will be cloned out of ancient DNA and will stalk the earth again.
It is a simple matter to do one’s due diligence and to discover that not one DNA sample has ever been sequenced and validated as other than human, and not one skeleton has withstood the scrutiny of forensic analysis. So much for the ‘giants;’ they are a ‘fable.’
Certainly, history has produced giants, races of men that are huge, and the bible testifies to this in a number of places, but it does not thereby guarantee they are of problematic origin, i.e. the product of angels and women, which somehow requires the angels to have DNA, a material substance which spirits do not have. And that is just the tip of the iceberg on the difficulties in maintaining this theory which diverts multitudes from the really important mysteries of God, such as true prophecy may point to, viz. that named in Rev. 19:10 quoted above – testimony to Jesus. Is it a testimony to Jesus that he facilitated the impossible of sexual union between the strange flesh of angels and women? In that case, the Lord Himself would have been a liar, stating that angels do not marry. Yet these self-proclaimed scholars want to say that Genesis 6 must be read in a way that makes these angels to have married daughters of Adam. What a travesty!
So this becomes important because it labels these purveyors of ‘fables’ and worthless books as the false prophets they are, because their ‘prophetic pronouncements’ simply do not give testimony to Jesus, but actually glorify the adversary and all things evil. In short, the desires of their heart which are evil, give rise to evil teaching that distracts people from keeping their mind stayed on the Lord and thereby cleaving to their salvation. Now this side journey has taken significant time and attention, but it illuminates the problem at hand, namely that we have a global community known as Christendom which is principally agreed in almost nothing, including the fundamental ontology of its Lord! These then must be declared to be what they are: “teachings of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1) Would God have His canon defiled with unclean food? Never may that happen. The silence of the Lord on any missing books is testimony enough.
This is why the canon is so important, that it exists, was established by Christ through His servants, and is useful in all the ways which Paul wrote to Timothy. And it underscores that most significant reminder which Paul, in all of his genuine humility, saw fit to utter to the Corinthians:
Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. . . . Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become puffed up in behalf of one against the other. 1 Cor. 4:1-2, 6
And here we find the principle which is, perhaps, the greatest single key to proper study of scripture and of teaching of the same. What is enjoined is the novel introduction of thoughts or ideas as projections, speculations, interpolations, or other such inventions which may not remain within the sense of the Divine Author behind the inspiration. John stated this principle another way in his second epistle:
Anyone going on ahead and not abiding in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. 2 John 1:9
Voila! John gives an indictment of a vast majority of biblical interpretation in our time.
Further, this is precisely the outcome of the Babylonian captivity of the church that picked up serious steam in the late second and third century as the Roman bishops began to engage in speculative theology, weaving in the threads of heretical pagan thought coming out of Egypt and Babylon, Persian Mithraism, and Greek mystery teachings. All of this has produced a Christian teaching that would be unrecognizable to the early bishops or ‘angels’ of the seven churches in Asia minor, who were and are the congregations among which the risen Lord walked, “the One who walks among the seven golden lampstands.” (Rev. 2:1)
The Closing of the Canon
In view of the fact that the last book of the bible, and maybe even the last book penned, is addressed to a small cluster of congregations and that these were ones that were faithful enough for Christ Jesus to engage and address in order to help correct them, then, is it not likely that we ought to examine what these congregations taught and observed to better understand what it might mean to remain or ‘abide’ in the teaching of Christ? And in that examination we discover that these congregations had a ‘canon’ or rule or measure and they had a body of texts of both Old Testament and New Testament, which gave them two witnesses to the truth which God had been proclaiming to His people from the earliest times. And thus, it is to the canon of this early cradle of Christianity that we look.
With John as the last living apostle, passing the baton to Polycarp and others in Asia Minor, we are compelled to conclude that for the prophecy of Isaiah 8:16 to be fulfilled, the canon would have been complete, bound and sealed until the final part of the days. And what a sign of the regency of Christ that is already manifest, that in this world which is governed by the adversary we should have received that which God Himself and His Christ signed, sealed and delivered as the authoritative collection of the Testimony and the Law, by which we could grow into holiness (1 Tim. 4) and be prepared to be received into the Kingdom.
While history teaches it, and an unwitting Christendom affirms it, it is nevertheless a fiction that the canon was ‘closed’ by the estimate of Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria in his Easter letter of 367 A.D., where he listed the 27 books which are now regarded as the New Testament canon. Furthermore, Christ did not mention Alexandria, nor Rome as congregations that stood with His seven lampstands, and those seven congregations were already in possession of and using the 27 books, and this fact was attested to by the ‘Muratorian fragment’ circa 170 A.D. (a fairly complete list of texts to be accepted, without Hebrews and a few others) almost two centuries before Athanasius. It would appear that Christ’s congregations led Rome and not the other way around, and that Rome was more likely forced by circumstance to accept what had already been in use by bishops, among whom were some who actually spoke with the real apostles of Christ, such as Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. In his famous letter to the Philippians, a document which still exists, Polycarp alluded to every single book of what we now recognize and claim to be the New Testament. And as he was the most famous of John’s disciples, doesn’t it make good sense to give weight to this early acceptance of an authoritative body of teaching that would constitute the apostolic witness? This, combined with Isaiah’s words, further compels the conclusion that the New Testament was sealed with the apostolic seal.
Thus it is that we have an ekklesia, ‘The Church,’ built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, and this bears tremendously on what we may, and may not, in all legitimacy, teach.
Although history teaches, and even early church documents confirm, that Rome modified the teachings of the apostles, and that the congregations of Asia kept the Sabbath, observed the Passover on the 14th of the first month as the Lord had commanded, taught the Law as obligatory – just as John did in his first epistle, and Paul did in all of his writings – Rome audaciously asserted that it had authority to do so, and thereby circumvented the Lord Himself as head of His own body. Rome removed the head of Christ and replaced it with an office that to this day uses the title Vicarius Filii Dei, which one can translate as Representative of the Son of God.
According to John’s rule, or ‘canon,’ the Roman church would have neither the Father nor the Son, for they have not abided in the teaching of Christ, and have engendered many daughters that likewise do not keep the teaching of Christ, but have replaced it with the mystery of lawlessness. Though the disciples bound up ‘the testimony’ and sealed up His Law (Isa. 8:16), false shepherds have failed to remain, or ‘abide,’ in these teachings of the Lord. Furthermore, though Peter identified all the writings of Paul, which he had read, as Scripture (2 Pe 3:15-16), and Paul himself confessed that he was “completing the word of God” (Col 1:25), and Paul also witnessed to the Ephesians (2:20) that they were of God’s household, “having been built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone,” there seems to be a never ending urban myth about the closing of the canon by the church at Rome, and that church not even recognized by Christ Himself. NO – It is beyond dispute that the apostles closed the canon of the NT, united with the OT canon that Jesus Himself quoted and which Melito of Sardis, a bishop in one of the 7 congregations addressed by Christ Jesus in Revelation 2, formally acknowledged after much investigation and conversation with communities of Jews and Jewish Christians.
It would be a mistake to expect the apostles to make a formal declaration. Their seal was of the Spirit, and therefore, in their teaching they confirmed what was known in their circle. Had there been doubt about the authenticity and harmony of Paul’s teaching, certainly Peter would have not given his imprimatur to the epistles, and John certainly would have let his principal disciple Polycarp, another bishop (of Smyrna), know about it and Polycarp would have published it in all of Christendom in the east. But this was not the case, and all of what had been written by inspiration of the Logos by the end of the first century was given an informal Nihil Obstat by the last living apostle.
In summary on this question, if God could not have fulfilled and delivered His word through those apostles chosen from before the foundation of the world, His Elect living in the years during and just subsequent to the life of His Beloved Son, then how could He possibly be expected to deliver the rest of the nations through the instrument of Christ’s Body, the Church, whom we call “The Elect?”
And this is part of what must be restored in the end time work of Elijah, of whom Christ Jesus said (Matt. 17:11) “Elijah is coming and will restore all things.” I would say, first and foremost on his list just might be the restoration of the testimony and the law. For if, as is most certainly true, His Church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets (Eph. 2:20), then to build the temple of the spirit which is the work of Zerubbabel (cf. Zech. 4:6, Hag. 2:23) as the civil leader in partnership with Joshua, the priestly leader. Such a united theocratic union under YHWH and His Messiah stands in stark contrast to the antichrist union of the beast from the sea and the beast rising from the earth, which reveals the unity of the antichrist powers across political and religious domains.
Lost Books of the Bible
But aren’t we missing something? There are some 9 books mentioned in the Old Testament which are lost such as The Book of Nathan the Prophet, and the Book of the Wars of YHWH, not even to mention the Book of Enoch, Jubilees, and other inter-testamental literature. Aren’t these lost books of the bible, and aren’t we possibly missing something critical to our understanding of God?
As a long-time student and scholar of pseudepigrapha and other extra-biblical literature, I once held the belief that these books are important, possibly even containing truth that is essential and not found in the canonical texts. The spirit of truth has revealed otherwise. My journey in the last decade or so has modified that mistaken belief from my youth. In coming to know God and His Christ (John 17:3) I simply cannot countenance an almighty Sovereign Creator who can hang the heavens like a gossamer veil, but cannot deliver His complete library of thoughts to His beloved according to His own wish.
Even Christian history also teaches us something other than the tradition of men that speaks of “the lost books of the Bible.” In approximately 170 A.D. the bishop of Sardis, Melito, one later martyred for the testimony of Christ, journeyed to complete a survey of the Hebrew scriptures, to consult, and to discover, just which books would compose the canonical texts of the Old Testament. Upon completion of his task, he published his findings in letters to others, letters which we still have and which bear witness to a canon that existed for the House of Israel and for the early Church. These can be found in his Book of Extracts, to his brother in Christ, Onesimus.
Thus, we cannot make wild claims such as one ersatz bible teacher has on you tube, to the effect that the Book of Enoch was in the bible until about 500 years ago. It was a piece of fiction which is still creating mischief and division by virtue of contradicting God’s word and giving “substantiation” to what Peter has called “destructive heresies” (2 Pet. 2:1). The angels being dragged to judgment are not portrayed as spirits – the biblical truth articulated in Genesis, Psalms, and numerous other places – but rather they are formed in human and animal terms with sexual organs. Why would they have sexual organs when they do not marry and do not have either creative or procreative power? Indeed, deeper examination of the Enoch text does shed light on very lurid sections that are obvious works of fiction.
How destructive can they have they been? Actually, the debates over the Book of Enoch have caused great divisions in bodies of Christians, have introduced teachings of demons, undermining the doctrines of Christ, and have also distracted the faithful from keeping their eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, a commandment which Paul gave to the Philippians, and one which would foster an extraordinary of unity in Christendom.
Not only is God’s omnipotence and sovereignty called into question, but also His love for His people, if He is unable to deliver to them a complete volume of His thought. It would make Psalm 116 meaningless if there could be no fixed extent of His word so that there could be a sum. Also, if the disciples sealed up the testimony, why did they leave books out. Third, Jesus’ words to Satan in Matt. 4:4 (quoted in the header) would be confusing at best and impossible to fulfill at worst if there were missing books of the bible. How could one live on every word, if many were missing? This is only the beginning of the nightmare that ensues from the proposition that the Bible is missing essential texts.
The Faith Once Delivered
Foundational to the life of the church is The Faith, for without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb. 11:6). This needs restoration and it is precisely the sacred texts we have that provide that guide, if we read them according to the instructions included in the texts themselves. “The faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), is the glorious knowledge of the faith that was given in the days of the apostles, and has been corrupted and defiled by the mystery of lawlessness that has been growing since the days when Paul observed to the Thessalonians that it was already at work. God will certainly complete this job of restoration by means of Elijah – individuals in that spirit.
“He will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness.” Romans 9:28
How can Paul’s words to the church at Ephesus make sense without the words of the prophets and the apostles:
You are fellow citizens with the holy ones, of God’s household, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fitted together is growing into a Holy Temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being fitted together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit. Eph. 2:20-22
The reason the testimony of the apostles is so critical and the reason Paul mentions the apostles first and prophets second (Eph. 2:20) is due to the fulfillment of prophecy in Christ, and thus the faith of Israel recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures where we see that the Spirit of Christ spoke through the prophets (1 Pet. 1:10-12), but now the apostles were given the living confirmation of the Logos in the flesh, who delivered the true faith.
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more sure, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For, no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. 2 Peter 1:16-21, ESV
It is clear from the conjunction of 1 Peter 1:10-12 and 2 Peter 1:21, confirmed by Paul to the Corinthians, “Now the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17), that the words of the prophets spoke from the Spirit of Christ, about Christ, saying in “what person or time” He was indicating and predicting “the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow” (1 Pet. 1:11). Thus the Faith of Israel, “The Faith” delivered to the holy ones and made more sure, requires also the words of the apostles who were the bearers of direct revelation not only by the Spirit of Christ, but also by His historical manifestation as Jesus.
The final elegant equation we get on all of this is from John in Revelation where He writes in chapter 19 verse 10:
I am a fellow servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus; worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.
The testimony of Jesus is that He is the Word and messenger of the Father and that we are to worship God, and that His testimony through the prophets is the spirit of that prophecy and likewise with the apostles. This is the transmission of the “True Faith,” the faith of Jesus Christ, delivered once for all to the holy ones, and requiring the written testimony of apostles and prophets as a seal and confirmation of their testimony to that faith and all of the knowledge of God it inspires.
Language, the Written Word, and the Thoughts of God
When we stop and think about it, language is a remarkable gift and as with every good and perfect gift, it comes down from Heaven, from the “Father of the celestial luminaries.” (James 1:17). That the spoken word can be rendered into a written form and can remain as a testimonial or a memorial of the thought or communication of the sender is similarly astounding. Without this “perfect gift” how would we preserve the thoughts of God and pass along the knowledge of God?
Filmmaker and investigator Timothy Mahoney examined the origin of the alphabet – in contradistinction to ideographic or pictographic forms of written language – tracing its beginnings back to Moses and the Israelites in Egypt. In his recent film Patterns of Evidence: The Moses Controversy, Mahoney arrives at what verges on a revelation: that alphabetical language is a gift from God that has enabled mankind to preserve the knowledge of God. Presenting thorough archaeology, history, and linguistic scholarship, he makes a solid case that this conclusion is likely true. In turn, this would bring greater depth to the intention of God expressed in Isaiah 55:8-9, viz.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
and it would undergird the crucial importance of mastering the original communication as the purest expression of the Creator’s divine transmission. If God could not refine His words, and preserve them through a “relatively flawless” method of reproduction, then how could He insure His judgments to endure from generation to generation?
The words of the Lord are pure words,
like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
purified seven times. Psalm 12:6
And again:
Every word of God is refined. Proverbs 30:5
If each word is refined and purified as in a smelting process, then doesn’t it seem necessary to create a way to make sure those words are passed along pure and unalloyed? And this is precisely what a written alphabetical language with grammatical rules can do. Once the Holy Spirit has spoken to the prophet, and the word of YHWH recorded, then it was a simple matter of careful copying – the reason scribes were considered so important – and educating through the priesthood, so the people could know the mind of God.
In the shadow of future things, the priesthood of Israel was responsible for teaching the people (cf. Ezek. 44:23), and those who were not chosen to be charged with that holy office were not allowed to touch holy things. Look at the sorry state of affairs in our time with the churches allowing anyone to teach the bible, even though they may not have any knowledge of the holy doctrines of God and Christ, being barely acquainted with milk, and in almost all cases, being unable to identify the teachings of Babylon, i.e. “the teachings of demons,” which have so corrupted the word of truth as Christ gave it.
The advent of the New Testament or New “Covenant” which was originally transmitted in the Greek language has provided a corrective to any lost understanding of the original Hebrew language which was already arcane by the time David became king. That is to say, the elusiveness of some of the meaning of Hebrew words, long rendered fuzzy by exile in Babylon and Persian influence, and then completely truncated to material constructs and stripped of spiritual realities under Hellenistic influence, was actually shored up by Christ Jesus, the Lord Himself, and His apostles, by their use of Septuagint OT references in the Greek, and a commitment to speak to the world in its lingua franca, the Greek language.
Thus, for example, the richly nuanced word Torah in the Hebrew has numerous applications ranging from “law” to “teaching” along with many others. In the Greek language, however, nomos is more consistently applied for “law” and didaskalia for “teaching,” and in such manner, ambiguities are minimized. In this mysterious way, God has allowed His Word to go out to the nations in a way that can partially and fragmentarily, at least, reverse the disastrous consequences of Babel.
The first two verses in Hosea 4 hit home the extreme necessity of preserving ways to transmit knowledge.
Listen to the word of YHWH, O sons of Israel,
For YHWH has a case against the inhabitants of the land,
Because there is no truth or loving kindness,
or knowledge of God in the land.
Admittedly, the dearth of knowledge is rooted in very many factors, all connected with Grace and Truth, but how much more disastrous would it be, had Israel been unable to hand down the thoughts of God in a consistent form?
Surely, this was part and parcel of the people Israel, even unto their identity – for have they not always been known as “the people of the Book?” Indeed, they were commanded to use writing in the teaching and remembrance of God’s word, so they should pass on to their children the knowledge of God – “write them upon the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:9, 11:20).
Authority of Scripture over Tradition
Jesus excoriated the lawyers and the Pharisees for keeping the traditions of men while violating the Law of God. (Mark 7:8)
In the restoration of all things consequent on the return of Elijah, whether anyone is looking to an actual individual or to the fiery spirit that will restore all things, we should assuredly expect the authority of Scripture to be restored over tradition.
HISTORY SHOWS US IT HAPPENS OVER AND OVER AGAIN, and Jesus confronted it once for all time with the Pharisees and Sadducees!
“Why do you transgress the commandment of God on account of your tradition?” Matt. 15:3
If Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, then isn’t this His charge against Christendom as well? Christendom keeps the traditions of Babylon rather than living on every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and truly keeping the very holy and true commandment of God.
For example, He commands to keep the Sabbath holy and people worship on Sunday according to the tradition of men (viz. when Constantine made the Sabbath Sunday), when on March 7, 321 A.D., he passed his national Sunday Law!
Around 364 AD, the Roman Catholic Church outlawed resting on the Sabbath in the Council of Laodicea when they decreed 59 Canon laws. Here is the final law:
Canon XXIX: “Christians must not Judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be Judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ.” (Percival Translation).
While resting on the Sabbath was outlawed in favor of resting on Sunday as per Constantine’s Sunday Law, Cannon law 16 was also issued by the Bishops in the Council of Laodicea (A.D. 363-364) that confirms that Christians were in fact still worshipping on the Sabbath!
The seven churches show us the topography of the mind diachronically, i.e. throug time, vis a vis the Temple of His Body (2 Cor. 6:16), which is the checkered status of the Church throughout history from Pentecost until the day of the Lord. It must serve as a model in each and every age, or else Christ could not be speaking from the perspective of Is, Was, and Will Be!!!
So the traditions of men are clearly illuminated in the significations He chose such as the Nicolaitans, Balaam, and Jezebel. These metonyms refer to those who bring in the teachings of demons and allow the traditions of men to hold sway over the word of God.
To repeat yet once more, the restoration in the days of Elijah will necessarily address this rebellion and overthrow of the regency of God and establish His Word and His truth, so that His Kingdom may reign.
To that end, a brief litany of several passages should help in the confirmation of that priority of the written word. They remind us how Christendom is rife with traditions, from holidays to practices, myths and useless wranglings over words, which confound and confuse the faithful, and obscure the faith once delivered.
Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that in us you might learn not to exceed what is written, in order that no one of you might become arrogant in behalf of one against another. 1 Cor. 4:6
Anyone who goes on ahead and does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son. 2 John v. 9
The sum of Thy word is truth, and every one of Thy righteous ordinances is everlasting. Ps. 119:160
Sanctify them in the truth; Thy word is truth. John 17:17
You shall not add to the word which I am commanding you, nor take away from it, that you may keep the commandments of YHWH your God which I command you. Deut. 4:2
I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God shall add to him the plagues which are written in the book; and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part from the tree of life, and from the holy city, which are written in this book. Rev. 22:18-19
Every word of God is tested; He is a shield to those who take refuge in Him. Do not add to His words, Lest He reprove you, and you will be proved a liar. Prov. 30:5-6
For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. Rom. 15:4
. . . and that from a babe you have known the sacred writings which are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Every God-breathed Scripture is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, in order that the man of God may be fitted having been furnished for every good work. 2 Tim. 3:15-17
It is worthy of note that Paul says this of the sacred writings alone, the holy Scriptures, and not the traditions of men that are suitable for all these things. For all these reasons and a host more, it is essential that the Bible be established as God’s true word, and not the writings of different men. For if it is not a written expression of God’s thoughts and communications through the Logos, His messenger and Son, Jesus Christ, — His Mouth, His Arm, His Word, His Name (Isa. 30:27) – then truly we are adrift without a compass. Surely it is an undercurrent of atheism present in the majority of rebellious humanity that would want to discredit the Bible, and nullify God’s love in disclosing Himself, His thoughts, His grand Plan for humanity, and the incomparable Grace-filled salvation of all of humanity through the sacrifice of His own Son, which was set at the foundation of the world. It was not an afterthought, or response to Mankind’s wickedness, but God’s very Plan.
God’s word both reveals and is a critical tool in the manner by which He is able to create Sons of God, in the image and likeness of Christ. This entire Treasury of knowledge and wisdom and an incomparable amount more is there hidden in plain sight in His written word. He, the Most High is fully capable of delivering His thoughts in the languages He gave to men, and in all the books He wanted them to have, without anything being missing; without having been bested by Satan or the rebellion of men. His Written Word is truly among the good and perfect gifts which has come down from Heaven from our Father of the celestial lights (James 1:17).