Sometimes the craziness people come up with, both scholar and layman, amazes me. Yes, the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and must be followed to the letter, or why bother at all? But God did spend over a millennium trying to communicate with us in our language, exactly the way we use language, so that we could understand exactly what that Word means and follow it. And guess how we communicate? We use idioms. We use hyperboles. We use all sorts of figurative language every day. Yet still people think that every single word in the Bible is meant to be taken literally and ignore obvious figures to the point that entire convoluted false doctrines can come from it.
Here is a simple example: And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (she was of a great age, having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she had been a widow even unto fourscore and four years), who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day (Luke 2:36-37).
We could spend a lot of time on those two verses alone. We could talk about the family Anna came from, and their obvious devotion to God, a devotion that sometime in the distant past caused them leave their property in the northern kingdom and travel south at probably great loss. We could talk about the difficulty translating her age and marriage so that we really are not sure if she was 84 or whether it had been 84 years since she became a widow—not really as far-fetched as you might imagine if you do some research. But let's just concentrate on the last couple of phrases: who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day.
Many would have her living at the Temple and doing nothing else in her life. But look at the things she did "night and day." I don't have to be a Greek scholar to know this: if "night and day" means 24/7, she would not have lasted more than a few days because one of the things she did "night and day" was fast. What applies to fasting applies to the rest. She simply made a habit of fasting. Not every single day all day long. What does an exasperated mother mean when she says of her teenage son, "All he does is play video games?" See? We use the same sort of language all the time. (See what I just did?)
So this good woman made a habit of going to the Temple, of worshipping God with fasting and prayer. We can do the same thing, except our temple is the body of Christ, the church. Are you following Anna's example so well that someone would say of you, "She worships God all the time?" That's what we should learn from Anna, if we learn nothing else at all.
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple (Ps 27:4).
Dene Ward
Here is a simple example: And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher (she was of a great age, having lived with a husband seven years from her virginity, and she had been a widow even unto fourscore and four years), who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day (Luke 2:36-37).
We could spend a lot of time on those two verses alone. We could talk about the family Anna came from, and their obvious devotion to God, a devotion that sometime in the distant past caused them leave their property in the northern kingdom and travel south at probably great loss. We could talk about the difficulty translating her age and marriage so that we really are not sure if she was 84 or whether it had been 84 years since she became a widow—not really as far-fetched as you might imagine if you do some research. But let's just concentrate on the last couple of phrases: who departed not from the temple, worshipping with fastings and supplications night and day.
Many would have her living at the Temple and doing nothing else in her life. But look at the things she did "night and day." I don't have to be a Greek scholar to know this: if "night and day" means 24/7, she would not have lasted more than a few days because one of the things she did "night and day" was fast. What applies to fasting applies to the rest. She simply made a habit of fasting. Not every single day all day long. What does an exasperated mother mean when she says of her teenage son, "All he does is play video games?" See? We use the same sort of language all the time. (See what I just did?)
So this good woman made a habit of going to the Temple, of worshipping God with fasting and prayer. We can do the same thing, except our temple is the body of Christ, the church. Are you following Anna's example so well that someone would say of you, "She worships God all the time?" That's what we should learn from Anna, if we learn nothing else at all.
One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple (Ps 27:4).
Dene Ward
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