Notice the Details

It’s all in the details…

Have you ever looked super close at the glass sitting on top of your smartphone screen?

If you tilt your phone at just the right angle and look super close at the glass and move it across a reflection like a lamp above you or some other reflection above, you’ll probably notice that the reflection distorts slightly. Some have explained this like a “fun house mirror” in the way that it distorts reflection.

Almost no one sees this. Do you know why?

It’s because it takes an eagle eye and concentration to focus on it and to recognize this phenomenon.

It is a natural phenomenon that occurs in glass. Your flat screen TV also does this.

Here is why I’m using this example

I repeatedly noticed this on my phone and kept asking people about it, and even had them check it themselves. They didn’t know what I was talking about, and they could not see it. But research has proven it to be a normal phenomenon on the glass of smartphones and flat-screen TV’s.

The thing is, 99% of people never look that closely at their phones. So they never see it, though it’s been there from day one.

And here is the actual point of this example.

The Bible is the very same way. It’s FULL of details. But 99% of Christians never see them.

Almost every Christian who attends church and learns about the Bible from a pastor approaches the Bible with a preconceived set of beliefs.

For example, let’s say that you begin with this as your foundation for interpretation: “The entire Bible is inspired by God. And God is perfect. Therefore, the entire Bible is perfect.”

If you begin with this belief, it won’t matter what the Bible says. It might say that Angels left heaven, had sex with women, and gave birth to demi-gods. These demi-gods became the rulers and gods of every nation on earth, except in Israel.

Now, if you begin with the tradition that no matter what the Bible says, it’s a fact because it’s inspired, then nothing will ever cause you to question it.

However, the moment you step outside of that framework, or “box,” kinda like opening the door to the box you’re in and stepping outside of it, then turning around and looking at the box from the outside, it will change your “perspective.”

If you study the details of your Bible carefully, you’ll eventually realize that you’re missing information to the story. Kinda like how an author might have three books in their series, and you read books one and three only. You might eventually realize that you skipped book two. And if you had read book two, it would have filled in the missing details.

We, the Church, are missing book two. We have the Old Testament and the New Testament. But those are books one and three. And all the answers to Demons, Hell, the New Jerusalem, the millennial kingdom, details found in the books of Jude, 2 Peter, and Revelation, are found in book two.

Book two is missing from our Bible.

It is the 400 years of Jewish life, traditions, beliefs, and worldview that developed between Malachi (the last Old Testament book) and Matthew (the first New Testament book).

I have been looking into and studying book two for 30+ years now. But what prompted me to learn about those 400 missing years of information and Jewish beliefs was an eye for detail. I inspect things, whether the glass on my smartphone or the details of the Bible, with an “eagle eye.”

I discovered we didn’t have the whole story. Which means we are misinterpreting certain passages in our New Testament. Passages in Matthew, John, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Timothy, 2 Peter, Jude, Revelation, and more that we’re simply not understanding because we don’t know what the authors are actually referring to.

But ALL the answers to these things are found in Jewish history, particularly in writings composed between Malachi and Matthew.

Therefore, I no longer hold to the belief that all the Bible is inspired. However, I do hold to the belief that God is real and that Jesus is real. But I also recognize that Jesus, while on earth, spoke as a “man” with cultural limitations because He intentionally was born into that Jewish belief system and actually “grew in knowledge and understanding” FROM the very culture that created the beliefs about Angels having sex with women, and demon offspring, and Hell and the millennial kingdom, and a heavenly Jerusalem, and things like these. Therefore, Jesus, “limited” in knowledge, used these ideas as part of teaching first-century Jews living according to their Jewish traditions that had grown and expanded over time.

WHY did God allow there to be Jewish myths in the Bible? Probably because the Bible was never inspired (in the way we understand that term) in the first place. However, He did inspire the Apostles to carry messages through their mouths and through letters to speak to “specific people” in a “specific time” in a “specific culture.” And now, today, we get the benefits of some of these teachings. In particular, the ones that cross time and culture.

Notice the details