Abused Obscure or Misused Scripture

By Steven Paul

"Paul looks to Illuminate basic faith, tradition and practice, offering direction to those who may feel dizzy in a world where cultural, political and religious landscapes seem to be changing by the minute. Paul covers such hot button topics as divorce, homosexuality, and abortion . . .[also] the Trinity...good and bad angels, the Sabbath...

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Nov 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9781647535452

Steven Paul

Steven Paul is a passionate and dedicated believer in the Lord, who has been inspired to continually read through the Bible back and forth from Genesis to Revelation. Blue-collar by trade and husband to Caroline and father to three teenage children, Steven has faithfully collected his inspired thoughts on the Bible for over thirty years.

Book preview

ABUSED,

OBSCURE,

or

MISUSED

SCRIPTURE

What Does Your Bible Say?

STEVEN PAUL

Abused, Obscure, or Misused Scripture

Copyright © 2021 by Steven Paul All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any way by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the author except as provided by USA copyright law.

The opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of URLink Print and Media.

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Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020922271

ISBN 978-1-64753-544-5 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64753-545-2 (Digital)

08.09.20

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Time

Male and Female, Deep Sleep, and Marriage

Two Men in One Bed or Adam and Steve?

Adultery with Self

Incest

The Unborn

Hail Mary

Work and Worry

Marxist or To Each According to Need?

The Good Thief

Tax Collectors and Prostitutes

Eye Has Not Seen

On Judging

Thou Shalt Not Kill

Swords to Plowshares? Plowshares to Swords?

Sin and the End

Last Days

Last Days: Revelation (Dei Verbum)

Praise for God’s Wonders and Mighty Deeds: Red Sea or Sea of Reeds?

God’s Wonders and Mighty Deeds: The Flood

The Feeding of the Four and Five Thousand

Why?

Obedience and Mercy: Better than Sacrifice

Obey Leaders: Fear God, Honor the King.

Rulers and Wise Men Still Seek Him

The Bible or the Devil?

All Kinds of Angels

Physician

The Serpent on the Pole

Body Jewelry

Tattoos

Old as Methuselah and Others

Hebrew and Greek Scriptures

The Fulcrum of History: The Sabbath

Trinity

Conclusion/Guarantee

Endnotes

PREFACE

THIS STUDY OF the supernatural book is by an average ¹ Joe who was challenged by a client about his Catholic faith. He asked this client, a Baptist cabinetmaker, a question about Jesus. The cabinetmaker responded by giving him a copy of the New Testament and saying, It sounds like it’s about time for you to read this. So, reading a chapter a day—no more, no less—he finished the New Testament in nine months. Nine months later, he’d read it through again. Eager curiosity led him to read the Old Testament, three chapters a day—no more, no less—and finish it in one year. Then he began reading three chapters of the Old and one of the New each day, finishing the whole Bible in a year—and he did that again and again. That was in the 1980s. This book is an expansion of his thoughts and notes from then until now.

It is his hope that people will be challenged by, or at least curious about, this study and inspired to read the Bible. Reading about Jesus and all the greats of the Bible, both the New and Old Testaments, will give them a greater understanding of the most influential person and people in history. Saint Jerome, who lived in the fourth century, told us that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ. Dispelling ignorance is not always easy.

That being said, with any scriptural study there is the fear of casting pearls before swine (Matt. 7:6)—that what is being pointed out as misused, abused, little known, misunderstood, or perverted may be misused even more. Some Bible stories could be considered X-rated, but the book as a whole is about sin and God’s all-powerful grace.

Eight Bible translations were used for this work. Noticing the differences among them can help us be more patient with conflicting understandings of scriptures. After all, they are about a sometimes complicated, loving God and some of His creations. This work is also meant to show the beauty and relevance of the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament). The Old Testament is what Jesus came to fulfill, explain, and simplify—not to change. He was the last sacrifice, the one who would fix the sin of Adam and Eve.

Note 1: all biblical quotes are from the New American Bible, 1991 edition, unless otherwise noted. Note 2: the New Testament has four Gospels— Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Regarding the Old Testament, there is a documentary theory that recognizes four sources of the first five books (the Pentateuch): Yahwist, Elohist, Priestly, and Deuteronomist. (See pages 94– 97, Reading the Old Testament: An Introduction, by Lawrence Boadt.) This theory explains things like the two creation stories. The Bible had many authors, each with different styles of writing.

I thank God for the gift of faith. I also thank my patient brother Allen for all his typing and deciphering of my awful handwriting. I thank my wife, Caroline, for her patient first proofreading and everything else she endures. Mr. Bob Brothers and my sister Kathy were a great help—God bless them. They read this work and highlighted more of my mistakes in red. Allison G. at iUniverse, she is the real pro! Thank you all.

INTRODUCTION

THIS BOOK IS a labor of love after having read a number of different versions/translations of the Bible. I feel compelled to share my findings and thoughts abou t it.

Certain biblical teachings and stories have captured humankind’s attention over the millennia. This is an attempt to reveal some things about the Bible that people may not know or have thought about.

Modern cultures are drifting away from the wisdom and thrill of the Bible. This book aims to rekindle people’s interest in it—or at least their respect for those who know more than a few favorite Bible verses. A nation that seeks godly wisdom and godly peace cannot ignore history and guidance from the Bible and the people who study it. My purpose is to educate people and their governments about how Bible stories may have relevance to current times.

This study addresses random issues in relatively short order. It does not offer an exhaustive diatribe on each matter, but it does give some food for thought. The chapters are not necessarily interrelated, but each one can be connected to some current issue that affects church, state, or people in general. The topics covered here are diverse—from the Sabbath, war, and sex, to tattoos and even snakes on a pole. It is obvious that not all the subjects are related, but many of them have been subjects of contemplation by many people.

Will readers be able to think about issues in a broader and brighter light by reading this book and, ultimately, the Bible? Hopefully and prayerfully so— then they can help build better selves, better churches, and a better society.

TIME

WHAT IS TIME? Is time eternal? If it is, should we be consumed by what it is, why it is, and how it is? Why is time a concern? Believers in eternity have plenty of time! The idea of eternity was still developing as the Old and New Testaments were being formed. Some people believed in time eternal; others thought their time ended at death. Both ideas still abound today, but most believers in the Old and New Testaments think that there is time after death and that it is eternal. There lies the rub: Is it eternal heaven or eternal hell? Some people have been led by their beliefs about time to kill themselves or others. Some people have been killed, or have given their lives for others, because of their beliefs about time. Therefore, time and death seem to have some relation to each other, and they are very impor tant.

I believe that Jesus had the best, and sometimes most difficult, ideas about time eternal, but this chapter is more about the beginning of time. Because the beginning of time is now the past, it can be learned from but not changed. One can understand, misunderstand, or be deceptive about it, but one cannot change it.

Time is a variable in life and in the Book of Life. As time and life go on, we begin to understand, misunderstand, and, sometimes, appreciate it more. The following scriptural excerpts are stories with specific time frames. Reading them might expand our understanding of time. The first creation story mentions a time unit called a day.² The second story does not mention day or time, only a deep sleep.³ Is that a clue to how important day is or isn’t? Here are short versions of these stories, taken from the New American Bible.

The first chapter of Genesis tells us that.

Then God said, Let there be light. God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day and the darkness he called night. Thus, evening came and morning followed—the first day … Then God separated the water and called the dome the sky. Evening came and morning followed—the second day. The third day God made dry land and plants. Evening came and morning followed—the third day. Then, God said: Let there be lights in the dome of the sky, to separate day from night. Let them mark the fixed times, the days and the years … Evening came and morning followed—the fourth day. Then God said, Let the water teem with abundance of living creatures, and on the earth let birds fly beneath the dome of the sky … Evening came, and morning followed—the fifth day. Then, God made all kinds of wild animals, all kinds of cattle, and all kinds of creeping things of the earth. God saw how good it was. Then, God created man in his image, in the divine image, he created him; male and female he created them … God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed—the sixth day … God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested …⁴

This story of creation begins in the dark, and then there is light. … God then separated the light from the darkness.⁵ How do you separate light from darkness? How? Who put light and dark together? What does a combination of light and dark look like? Once they’re together, how does that combination separate? Maybe there was and is a continuing big bang—but what was before that? That separation makes a unit of time, I suppose, because the light is called day and He separated darkness from it on the first day.

Also on this first day, light is created and is called good, but darkness is separated from the light, not created. It is not called good or bad, only night. Another separation happens on the fourth day, when two great lights are created: one greater, one lesser. Also, it is not until the fourth day that these lights separate day from night and mark the fixed times, the days and the years … Did it take four days for the days and years to come into being? It sounds like something greater than Solomon here.⁶ Theology —what a study!

The second story of creation, in Genesis 2, begins with a stream welling out of the earth and tells us that God formed man out of the clay of the ground and then planted a garden in Eden and settled man there—no mention of time. Next, God formed animals and birds. They were not suitable partners for man, so God formed woman: The Lord God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. God made woman with the man’s rib and brought her to the man—still no mention of time. There is the casting of a deep sleep. What is or was a deep sleep? That’s another discussion for another time. Note: The four rivers and the garden were given names, but the names Adam or Eve are not mentioned in the second story. He was made a living being⁷ and called his bone of bone, flesh of flesh, woman.⁸

A brief recap of the two stories: we see in the first that this God can separate light from darkness—and who but He could put them together? As time goes on, there may be added meaning to the concept of the separation of light from darkness. (Perhaps it is the separation of the wise, obedient angels from the arrogant, disobedient ones. Is good versus evil the main theme of the beginning and end of time?) Anyway, back to our everyday understanding of time, with words like day, night, evening, morning, and years. Now the author is breaking down time for us, at least in the first story. Again, in the second story we only have the deep sleep—but that’s another subject for another time. Now that we’ve recognized this breakdown in the first creation story, we can look at instances in the Bible that are time unusual.

Joshua, Moses’s successor, had been asked to help the people of Gibeon. On his way to help, Joshua was told by God not to fear. Joshua and his men marched all night and then began their surprise attack on the enemies of Gibeon (the Amorite kings). God helped Joshua and all the Israelites with a great hailstorm, which killed more enemies than the Israelites killed. Still in danger, Joshua prayed … Stand still, O sun, at Gibeon, O moon, in the valley of Aijalon! And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, while the nation took vengeance on its foes. Is this not recorded in the Book of Jashar? The sun halted in the middle of the sky; not for a whole day did it resume its swift course. Never before or since was there a day like this, when the Lord obeyed the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel.⁹

The writer of Sirach confirms this phenomenon when he asks, Did he not by his power stop the sun, so that one day became two?¹⁰ And Isaiah reflects on the strange deed¹¹ in the Valley of Gibeon.

Almost five hundred years later, Hezekiah, one of the better kings of Israel, became sick and was told by the prophet Isaiah to get his things in order because he was about to die. The king prayed, and God heard his prayer, telling Isaiah to go back and tell King Hezekiah that he would live for fifteen more years. When the king asked Isaiah for a sign for reassurance, Isaiah gave him miraculous options, asking, ‘Shall the shadow go forward or back ten steps?’ King Hezekiah answered, ‘It is easy for the shadow to advance ten steps, rather let it go back ten steps.’ So the prophet Isaiah invoked the Lord, who made the shadow retreat the ten steps it had descended on the staircase to the terrace of Ahaz.¹²

Which is the greater miracle—that the king was healed and lived fifteen more years; or that the sun was made to retreat the ten steps it had descended? Isaiah reserves all of chapter 38 for these miracles of healing and time. The sun coming back ten steps it advanced is mentioned, but the emphasis of the chapter is that the king is grateful for the extension of his