Response to BI101
Let me first start by saying that Michael Heiser is a really good teacher. The way he
arranged this course was very good and the flow of the course was well thought out. Though I’ve already heard a lot of it earlier in other contexts, his segments were so dense that I felt I got the most relevant information in a very short time.
First of all his 10 obstacles were a good starting point. Though no obstacle came as a surprise, it is very good to hear Michael’s thoughts on them and to hear them all put together. I almost wish every Christian should learn about them. As Michael put it: “To think is to interpret”, and it is my opinion that we today think a lot when we read the Bible. I think the Bible too often is treated simply as something you can do whatever you want with. Sometimes I wish Christians, and especially Christian leaders, should think more of the Bible as something that requires deep study to fully understand. I’m not against the Bible meaning something personal to someone reading the text. (I often find God speaking to me personally through Scripture and it edifies me in my walk with Jesus, though I don’t make any theological claims from my personal words.) Too often, however, Christians don’t stay there but make bigger assumptions and interpret the text theologically and claim that they have “figured out” what the text really means. I find this to be especially true concerning prophetic texts from the Old Testament or the Book of Revelation. Coming from Europe I’m not a part of North American culture so I don’t know how people in the USA and Canada think in general about these things, but I’m almost overwhelmed by all the “prophetic” people from North America I see on Youtube claiming to know what the prophetic parts of the Bible “really” mean. I wish they all would at least have some humility and realize that the prophetic parts of the Bible were written in a different time, by people from a different culture having a different worldview. Michael’s segments on “Interpreting Prophetic Literature” really addressed this issue and that’s also something I wish every Christian should hear. I know Michael is doing a big job trying to address this issue (interpreting Bible prophecy in an arbitrary way) and for that he is to be thanked. I have worked with the prophecies in the Bible from both a futurist perspective and a preterist perspective and I know it’s not always easy to tell how to interpret Bible prophecy. Therefore I really enjoyed Michael’s distinction between prophetic and apocalyptic texts. I have never seen such an easy-to-understand chart with them both lined up next to each other. Normally people mix up the prophetic with the apocalyptic (moving all the prophetic parts in to the far future), or people mix up the apocalyptic with the prophetic (moving all the apocalyptic parts into the destruction of the temple either by the Babylonians 587 BC or by the Romans 70 AD). The tools Michael provides will help people interpret the prophetic and apocalyptic parts of the Bible better, and hopefully will end all crazy interpretations circulating in the Body of Christ. As Michael brilliantly shows by comparing Amos 9 and Acts 15, interpreting biblical prophecy is even harder than we normally think because sometimes the text is not to be taken literal (as we think of “literal”) or with a single intent. The prophecy of David’s booth being raised up shows us that the apostles interpreted OT prophecies with nuance and complexity. The sensus plenior, analogical fulfillment, and typological fulfillment were as important when they interpreted prophecies as were the “literal” fulfillment. How I wish that more Christians would realize this.
My last words will be on the 3 contexts Michael introduced. It’s not something new he talks about but once he again he talks with clarity and simplicity. All three contexts must be combined and studied, not just one of them. I think the average
Christian often ends up studying one context. You might be interested in the background of the Bible, studying the worldview context. Or you might be interested in the linguistic context and study how words are used in the Bible. How important to study all three of these contexts, and I’m especially glad Michael spent so much time on the literary context since this is often neglected by me personally. I will now move on to other courses about biblical interpretation, and this course laid a very good foundation for me.
Kind regards
/ Henrik