An Evening on Revelation 20

Following my previous post on Revelation, a friend of mine told me of a debate chaired by John Piper on the millenium in Revelation 20 (which I completely omitted in my treatment, for reasons which will become apparent as you watch the video). For those of you who are interested in this, there is a link below. It is illustrative of how difficult to interpret this particular chapter is. Luckily it is probably the most difficult chapter to figure out in the New Testament.


Video Here

Revelation... in 5 minutes!

Revelation is the most controversial and debated book in the whole Bible. It is as full of odd numbers and weird symbols as there are weird and wacky interpretations of it. Reading it usually leads to two kind of responses: despair and speculation. Those who go for the former get so confused by the book that they give up on it all together. Those who opt for the latter read Revelation to the point of obsession - and not a good obsession. Guess what? Neither position is right. Revelation can be understood, and when it is it is profoundly uplifting and encouraging! However, I am the first to acknowledge that it is difficult to understand, hence the sheer mass of odd interpretations! What is the way forward?

The gist of this post is in the title. The idea is to summarize the message of the book of revelation in a post that can be read in five minutes or less (for an average reader). Once you have read this post, try re-reading the whole of revelation in one go (that should take you less than an hour) with this framework in mind and see if it makes any more sense. I should note before I start that I am so heavily indebted to John Hosier's teaching and writing that this post is practically plagiarism!

Revelation in five minutes

Revelation is like an X-ray rather than a Crystal ball. It is not primarily about predicting the future, but about providing insight into what is currently going on in heaven. Behind the difficulties of life, the persecution, John's (author) readers could perceive another reality in these visions - the reality of what God was doing behind the events that were unfolding before their eyes.

John, at the beginning of Revelation sees a vision of the Ascended Christ. After the shock of this encounter, Jesus tells him to write seven letters to seven churches in which Jesus himself warns them about various things (I'm trying to keep this short) and tells quite a few of them off. We're usually fine with the letters - they are easier to understand. The rest of the book (Chapters 4 onwards) is another matter altogether.

Chapters 4-5 provide the backbone to the book. In Chapter 4, John has a vision of heaven opened in which he sees the throne of God. In the midst of the church's suffering, John's eyes are opened to see that throughout this, God is on the throne. In chapter 5 this is extended. John sees a vision of the conquering lamb of God, who because he died for the sins of the world, has authority to unfold the events of history. The suffering church which read this would understand this: "God is on the throne and the lamb of God has conquered. Therefore we have a hope that this world will finally be put to rights!".

The bulk of the book is taken up with 3 cycles of seven. Seven seals (6-8.5), seven trumpets (8.6-11.19), seven bowls of wrath (chapter 16). Don't get bogged down with the odd imagery. Each of these cycles is a different perspective on the folding out of history which climaxes with the end and return of Christ on the seventh of each. In other words, the seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls of wrath tell the history of the Church in very broad strokes. The first two series are interspersed with an interlude on (1) the assurance of the saints (chap 7) and (2) the mission of the Church (chap 10-11).

The more discerning of you will have notice that I have jumped over chaps. 12-14. These three chapters describe the battle between the Church and Satan from a heavenly perspective. The beasts in chapter 13 may well refer to particular Roman institutions and Emperors, but that doesn't change the interpretation of the book as a whole. The idea is that behind the oppression of the Church are the spiritual forces of darkness. In the midst of this all, however, the Church can be sure that they are ultimately safe and that the forces of evil will be destroyed (chap. 14).

After the final bowl of wrath (chap 16), there are two chapters which describe the fall of the great prostitute Babylon, which represents Rome (and by implication all world super-powers). In chapters 17-18, it is exposed for what it really is: a sham! Moreover, she is ultimately destined to fall, just like every other earthly empire. This is celebrated in 19.1-10. 


In 19.11-21, Jesus returns to establish justice again on earth and destroy all of his enemies! After a difficult chapter to interpret (chap. 20), there is a vision of judgement (20.11-15) and ew creation (Chaps. 21-22). The dead are raised to life and judged. The righteous go into eternal life and the unrighteous to eternal wrath. What follows is a vision of the new earth and new heaven and the new Jerusalem (the Church). All things are made new, all wrongs are righted and all tears are wiped away.

The book concludes with the encouragement that Jesus is returning soon, which acts as a warning to complacent Christians and an encouragement to suffering Christians. Behind the intense persecution which the Church in John's day was enduring, God was sovereign, the lamb had conquered and would return quickly to make all things new. In other words, revelation speaks to generations of Christians who find themselves in persecution and complacency with the message: "God is still on the throne, the lamb has conquered and he is returning soon to right all wrongs!"

Warning: The legalists are here! Or is it the hypocrites?

Most people are familiar with the Pharisees. Or at least they think they are - A bunch of skulking, petty, crooked nosed legalists who have nothing better to do with their time than impose rules on common people in order for them to gain some kind of merit which will enable them to go to heaven. In other words, the Pharisees appear in the Gospels and in pantomime fashion a plethora of boos and hisses resounds in the average reader's mind along with the thought: "warning the legalists are here!"

That was the common consensus on the Pharisees for quite a while. In 1977, however, a historian called E. P. Sanders published a book called Paul and Palestinian Judaism in which he argues that Jews at the time of Jesus were not legalistic. They didn't think that obeying the Law would enable them to be justified. Rather they believed that they were part of God's people already and that keeping the law was simply a way of "staying in" the covenant. In other words, works of the Law were not a way of "getting in", but of "staying in". The Pharisees, to New Testament scholars, turned from being the legalistic bad guys into being the grace-filled party which tried to make the law accessible to all common Jews.

The influence of E. P. Sander's book was simply enormous. It kick-started the New Perspective on Paul, which is a new way of reading Paul - in this perspective Paul is not opposing legalism, he is opposing ethno-centric Jews. The reformers' talk of legalism was simply anachronistic - an importation of 16th century ideas (notably the legalism of the Catholic Church) onto first-century texts. Other scholars such as James Dunn and Tom Wright have taken on Sander's ideas and completely reread Paul and the Pharisees.

Needless to say, Sander's thesis has been met with fierce criticism from the Evangelical camp. Particularly noteworthy is Simon Gathercole's response in Where is Boasting: Early Jewish Soteriology and Paul's response in Romans 1-5. Gathercole reexamines the evidence from early Judaism and argues that Sanders has overlooked evidence which points to the fact that many Jews of the first century saw the Law as a way of obtaining salvation. I think Gathercole makes a strong case and has helpfully shown many of the flaws in Sander's logic.

Having read Luke 11 this morning and Jesus' response to the Pharisees, I was reminded of Ligon Duncan's comments on the Pharisees and legalism. Ligon Duncan is an evangelical who could not be more fiercely opposed to E. P. Sanders' thesis. However, he acknowledges that one benefit of Sanders work is that it re-orientates us towards the Pharisees, although he says that simply reading the Gospels properly should help us do this. He points out the fact that Jesus never actually accuses the Pharisees of taking the Law too seriously. He accuses them of being hypocrites. In other words, people who instruct others to follow the law, but fail to do it themselves. They tithe from their spice-rack, but neglect justice; they lay heavy burdens on people, but do not help them to carry it. Check out the brief video here.

Returning to the pantomime analogy, it seems that when you read the Gospels at face value, our response to the Pharisees should not be "warning: the legalists are here!" but rather "warning: the hypocrites are here!". Interestingly, Jesus encourages people to do what the Pharisees teach (Matthew 23:1-3), but not what they do. They have excellent theology, but awful practice. The "Pharisee in each of us" then is no longer so much about our attempts to add to our salvation, but our propensity to have a good belief system and good theology, but a bad practice. We don't want to be Pharisees, but for a very different reason than is usually put suggested.

"Warning: the hypocrites are here!"

Losing your salvation - the implications

Over on his blog, New Testament scholar Scott McKnight has been posting a series on the warning passages in Hebrews and Calvinism. In his final post on the matter, McKnight summarizes the implications of his view that the warning passages in Hebrews actually envisage the possibility of a genuine Christian falling away and forfeiting salvation. Whether you agree with his conclusions on Hebrews or not, the implications of his conclusions are sobering and thought-provoking. Here are three of them (in his own words):

First, I sensed a renewal of the fear of God that is so prominent in Hebrews. Once I came to the conviction that a person, yea that I, could believe and fall away, sin became more important and the prospect of falling away more realistic. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t live in some morbid fear. Assurance accompanies faithfulness for both the Calvinist and the Arminian. Both, at least in my case, knowing that redemption is rooted in the saving powers of Christ and that faith — in the sense of faithfulness and trust — is required. 

Second, it influenced how I presented the gospel. However one wants to present the gospel, through some tract or through personal story or through some piece of rational logic, the summons to believe for me is a summons to become a believer — not just to believe once and for all in a singular moment. It is a summons to live under the rule of King Jesus. The summons to perseverance is part and parcel of the summon to believe. 

Third, I am persuaded that holding to this view does not mean that I (or anyone who shares it with me) believes that I contribute to my own salvation. Instead, what this doctrine encourages me to do is to believe, to watch, and to persevere. It makes me more conscious of the need of grace and the power of the Holy Spirit.

McKnight lists a fourth implication for the unity of scripture, which he suggests needs some more thought. Check out the full post here and have a read of the whole series.

Video on Romans 1-4

I've just found this recent video of Tom Wright's summary of Paul's letter to the Romans. It's a good overview of Wright's understanding of the letter and his particular take on it. For those of you who are interested, here is it:

Love your enemies!

Knowing what context someone is speaking or writing in helps understand the full power of their message. For example, take Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech out of the context of racial oppression and it loses its punch. The same is true with events from the Bible.

I was reading Luke 6.27-30 this morning. The words are probably familiar to anyone who has any acquaintance with Christianity:

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, tdo good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.

The sting of this passage was really brought home to me when I read it with some passages from the ancient Jewish historian Josephus in mind. Writing at the end of the first century AD, Josephus reports events in Israel roughly contemporary with the time of Jesus. Israel was under Roman rule at the time so it was not too difficult for the Jews to realize exactly which enemies Jesus might have had at the front of his mind. Read the following excerpts about how the Romans dealt with the Jews and then read Luke 6.27-30 again. Sorry about the language in the following passages, I only have an old-school translation of Josephus.

But Varus [a Roman general] sent a part of his army into the country, against those that had been the authors of this commotion, and as they caught great numbers of them, those that appeared to have been the least concerned in these tumults he put into custody, but such as were the most guilty he crucified; these were in number about two thousand. (Josephus War 2.75)

After this he raised another disturbance, by expending that sacred treasure which is called Corban upon aqueducts, whereby he brought water from the distance of four hundred furlongs. At this the multitude had indignation; and when Pilate was come to Jerusalem, they came about his tribunal, and made a clamor at it. Now when he was apprized aforehand of this disturbance, he mixed his own soldiers in their armor with the multitude, and ordered them to conceal themselves under the habits of private men, and not indeed to use their swords, but with their staves to beat those that made the clamor. He then gave the signal from his tribunal [to do as he had bidden them]. Now the Jews were so sadly beaten, that many of them perished by the stripes they received, and many of them perished as trodden to death by themselves; (Josephus War 2.175-177)

The main reason why [Titus] did not forbid that cruelty was this, that he hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterwards be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great, that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting for the bodies. (Josephus War 5.450-1)

"But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies"!

Lessons from 1 Peter 5

I've been thinking about anxiety and 1 Peter 5.1-7 over the last few weeks! 1 Peter 5 is a great text to get to grips with and has that key verse: "casting your anxieties onto him, because he cares for you!" - does that remind you of a song? Having tossed the passage over and over in my mind, I've come to see 3 simple lessons on anxiety which I thought I'd share on the blog. For the sake of simplicity, you can think of each lesson as subsumed under a verb - or action! - (1) bow, (2) throw and (3) know.

I might note quickly, as a wise man pointed out to me, that sometime a lack of peace over unrepented sin could sometimes be mistaken for anxiety. In this case, no matter how much you fight that lack of peace, it won't go away and the required response is to stop what you're doing and repent. 

BOW

The first lesson I learn from 1 Peter 5.1-7 is the reason Peter wants his church to cast their anxieties onto God. There are obviously logical reasons to want to get rid of anxiety - no-one wants to be anxious. However, the reason Peter gives in vv.5-6 is deeper than that. Peter (and therefore God) doesn't just want a church rid of anxieties, he wants a humble church and recognizes that getting rid of anxieties is a step towards this.

Humility is an action of the heart when we lower ourselves before God and before others and consider them to be more significant than ourselves (Phil 2.3) - hence the action "bow". If this is so, and humility involves considering other more significant, then anxiety will make that process difficult since, by definition, anxiety is focussing inwards on your problems, not outwards on others!

So how do we humble ourselves? Simple answer really: look to Jesus. Check out Philippians 2.5-9:

Have this mind amongst yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God did not count equality with God a thing to be taken advantage of, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death - even death on a cross.

Wow! That's how you become humble - you look at the most outrageous, ridiculous display of humility ever heard of!

THROW

Action two is throw! Notice that 1 Peter 5.7 says "casting your anxieties", not "dropping" or "rolling". The idea here is that we need to get violent against anxiety, just like we would towards any other sin (yes anxiety is a sin). Simply put, rather than being bowl players with anxiety who roll their ball slowly and gently, we need to be shot-put players who display tremendous amounts of energy in casting a big lump of metal as far as they can possibly manage.

How does that actually work in practice though? In part, Philippians 4.6 can help us here. Paul, a man who by all stretches of the imagination should be allowed to be anxious (read a bit about his life), writes "do not be anxious about anything". In other words, take radical action. Decide: "I am NOT going to let this care or thing over which I have no control dominate my mind". Paul writes that instead of worrying, why not pray and give thanks to God and then God's peace will cover over our hearts! Why don't you make it a reflex, next time you are anxious, to pray and praise instead of worrying - it will work!

KNOW

Our third action, "know" refers to this: How do we know that when we cast our anxieties onto God, he will actually deal with it and not simply throw it back? The answer? He cares for you (1 Peter 5.7). The one who put the stars in their place and sustains them, cares for you! Can you get any more mind-bending than that?

We need to know God! It will be an antidote to worrying which no attack of the enemy, nor cares of this life can defeat! So my question to us is this: are we growing in your knowledge of God? If not, how can we expect to cast our anxieties with confidence and attain the aim of maturity and humility? Here are a few quick ways we can grow in our knowledge of God:

-Pray!

-Be filled with the Spirit!

-Become familiar with God's word!

-Obey God's commands!
-Serve others sacrificially!

-Preach the Gospel to yourself!

As we grow in the knowledge of God, anxieties will take their rightful place (which is not our minds or hearts) and joy and peace will grow in the midst of the deepest challenges of life! Can I urge you? Get to know God!

Translations or distortions?

Whilst I was reading for an essay this morning I came across this opinion by Tom Wright. Tom Wright writes of his enthusiasm when the NIV translation of the Bible was originally published because it claimed to translate exactly what was there. However, after using it for a while, he writes:

Again and again, with the Greek text in front of me and the NIV beside it, I discovered that the translators had had another principle, considerably higher than the stated one: to make sure that Paul should say what the broadly Protestant and evangelical tradition said he said. I do no not know what version of scripture they use at Dr [John] Piper's church. But I do know that if a church only, or mainly relies on the NIV it will, quite simply, never understand what Paul was talking about.

Now that's quite a strong claim, but it set back into motion something I was thinking about a while ago. I used to be (before learning New Testament Greek oddly enough) an ESV purist - in other words, the literalness of the ESV meant that it was better than the NIV and more paraphrased versions. However, lately I've become a little less dogmatic on the issue, mainly after listening to New Testament scholar Gordon Fee who claims that most literal modern translations are not written in English, but Greeklish; in other words, your average human being would struggle to recognize the language and sentence constructions. Having heard that I thought: "fair enough, maybe a paraphrase is better than literal since it's more understandable."

But Wright's observation got me thinking about Bible translations in general. I don't have an answer on the issue and so would like to hear what people who have no knowledge of Hebrew or Greek think about this. Is it better, in your opinion, to have a literal translation which is harder to read, or a paraphrased one which is easier to read but will already be an interpretation by the time it reaches the stage of translation?

To give you a bit food for thought, here are a couple of instances (off the top of my head - I am sure there are more pertinent ones) in the Bible which most modern translations obscure slightly:

Galatians 3.10a

Literal: "For as many as are from the Law, are under a curse, for it has been written..."

ESV:  "For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written ..."

(The difference is that the literal translation seems to imply that there are a group of people who are "of the Law" [i.e. Jews], whereas the ESV broadens it).

1 Peter 5:6

Literal: "Be humbled therefore under the mighty hand of God..."

ESV: "Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God..."

(Difference being active humbling and passive humbling)

I have no particular judgement on the matter, but wondered what people thought. What is better: easier readability or literalness. The two aren't completely exclusive, but readability a lot of the time necessitates more interpretation before translation.

Debating with humour!

Yes, it is possible to have academic theological debates with humour! For those of you who have some kind of interest in the Justification debate, Kevin J. Vanhoozer gave a lecture responding to N. T. Wright's view of Justification a while ago. It is quite simply hilarious as well as interesting. Have a look for yourselves!

Video is here

Distractions!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen it may come across as a surprise to you, but I easily get distracted. Just when you thought that nothing could rip me away from being enthralled with the latest page-turner Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition, I decide to log into facebook, or check my emails (every 3 minutes), or check out the price of a 6-Volume Bible dictionary on amazon that I would never end up buying anyway, or go onto youtube to find a lecture on theology (makes me feel less guilty about not doing what I should be doing and it's less taxing than reading), or decide that 20 minutes without a cup of tea is verging on an infringement of my basic human rights.

In short people... I get far too easily distracted. Radical action must be taken! Whilst I go and install a facebook, amazon, and email blocker on my front brain-lobe, I'll leave you with this video...

By the way... blogging doesn't count!

The Resurrection of the Son of God!

Christians, by definition, believe that God raised Jesus from the dead! That claim constitutes the very center of Christianity. Disprove the resurrection, and as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, everything else crumbles to pieces and when the dust settles you will find the sorry remains of a church whose hope and very raison d'être has been taken away. The resurrection in central. Therefore, surely it is necessary to know why we believe it! 

In his epic volume The Resurrection of the Son of God, the prolific New Testament scholar N. T. Wright (Tom Wright) provides the most in depth and thorough defense of the historical physical resurrection of Jesus to date. In fact, so in depth that 99% of the world are never going to read this book. It is over 800 pages along and is written with an academic audience in mind. That being said, I read it over the summer of 2010 and thought it was absolutely brilliant. For those of you who don't fancy trawling through the unending chapters, here is a summary of the books argument:

N. T. Wright divides his work into 5 sections, each of which constitutes an essential building block to his overall argument. 

In part I (pp.1-206), Wright surveys texts from the pagan background (from Homer to Plato and beyond) and concludes that Greeks simply do not believe that people are raised from the dead. Whether death is a one-way street (as in Homer's Illiad and Odyssey) or an opportunity for blissful disembodied existence (Plato and others), the pagans at the time of Jesus simply did not believe resurrection happened. Once you were dead, you were dead and that was it.

The situation is different when one considers Jewish writtings. Wright argues that the only explicit mention of resurrection in the Hebrew Bible is Daniel 12, but that many passages (such as Ezek 37) could have given way to the belief that God would raise his people from the dead on the last day. In second temple Jewish sources (between the Old and New Testaments), there are varied beliefs. Some, such as the Sadducees, did not believe in resurrection, whereas others, like the Pharisees believed that there would be a day when all the dead were raised to life. There was no uniform Jewish belief at the time of Jesus, however, the word resurrection (anastasis in Greek) was always used to speak about bodily resurrection or of the restoration of Israel, but never to refer to a bodiless "spiritual" existence.

In Part II (pp.209-398), Wright deals with Paul's writings. He argues that since Paul was a pharisee, he would have believed in physical resurrection of the saints at the end of time. This was a belief that he kept after his conversion, but with a major twist. A belief which was important to pharisees, but not central suddenly became a major and central belief to Paul: one day the dead would be raised. Another twist which Wright detects in Paul is that the pharisaic belief in the resurrection had been split in half. In other words, God had done for Jesus, what he said he would do for all his people in advance. The new age had already started through Jesus' resurrection.


In part III (pp.399-583), Wright considers the rest of the early Christian literature outside of the Gospel resurrection narratives. He concludes that with the exception of a very select few 2nd and 3rd century sources, the New Testament and the early Christian writings expressed a hope in physical resurrection on the final day. Resurrection was (with a couple of possible exceptions) always a reference to a physical resurrection, not a bodiless existence or a resuscitation of a dead corpse Moreover, their belief in the resurrection of Christ is what enabled the early Christians to call him Messiah and Lord.


Part IV (pp.585-682) deals with the resurrection narratives in the Gospels. Drawing on the seeming discrepancies between the four accounts (the accounts need a bit of imagination to fit in nicely with each other), Wright suggests that this shows that the stories (or at least the disciples experience of the stories) were not fabricated - they are not the work of later theological reflexion. Wright concludes: From the details of the four easter accounts in the Gospels, it is historically probable that the disciples truly believed that they had seen Jesus raised from the dead and that the tomb was empty. The question is: does that mean that what the disciples believed happened actually did?


Wright answers this question in Part V (pp.683-738). He claims that the best explanation of the data (an almost universal belief in resurrection in early Christianity, the disciples belief that they had encountered Jesus raised, the empty tomb...) is that what the disciples claimed was true actually happened, that is Jesus of Nazareth was actually bodily raised from the dead! For Wright, the idea of subjective visions and experiences doesn't work (they are insufficient to explain that the disciples believed that a crucified man was actually the Messiah), neither does cognitive dissonance (the idea that when you want something to happen you believe it has) because the disciples had no category in their mind for someone to be raised to eternal life before the final judgement. The only plausible explanation is that what the disciples and early Christians claimed happened was actually true: Jesus rose from the dead!


Although his work is a scholarly and academic juggernaut, Wright does not leave this conclusion at an academic level. He appeals to his scholarly brothers and claims that if this conclusion is true, then it cannot leave us indifferent. I leave you with a citation from his conclusion on the matter and hope that it will encourage you to think through the implications of the claim "But Christ has in fact been raised from the dead" (1 Corinthians 15:20):

We cannot simply arrive at a topic and make grand declarations, as in Francis Drakes celebrated annexation of California, and suppose that all the local inhabitants will take them as binding. Saying that 'Jesus of Nazareth was bodily raised from the dead' is not only a self-involving statement; it is a self-committing  statement, going beyond a reordering of one's private world into various levels of commitment to work out the implications. We cannot simply leave a flag stuck on a hill somewhere and sail back home to safety. (N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, p.717)

Amen to that! 

Bitzer was a banker!!!

As I sit here translating Zechariah from the Hebrew for university (as you do), I'm listening to a sermon on preaching by John Hosier. He is speaking about a book by John Piper called Brothers, We are not Professionals. In one chapter of the book, Piper cautions pastors and teachers in the church against the laziness of not learning the original languages of the Bible. It seems like a provoking read and, in my view, the quote below is one which all elders, and aspiring elders, preachers and teachers should read carefully before they dismiss the need and usefulness of learning at least the basics of Biblical Greek and Hebrew. John Piper writes of a layman called Bitzer. He was not a pastor, an elder or a preacher - he was a banker. With characteristic panache, Piper rants:

His name was Heinrich Bitzer. He was a banker. A banker! Brothers, must we be admonished by the sheep as to what our responsibility is as shepherds? Evidently so. For we are surely not admonishing and encouraging each other to press on in Greek and Hebrew. And most seminaries, evangelical as well as liberal, have communicated by their curriculum emphases that learning Greek and Hebrew may have some value for a few rare folk but is optional for the pastoral ministry. 

I have a debt to pay to Heinrich Bitzer, and I would like to discharge it by exhorting all of us to ponder his thesis: "The more a theologian detaches himself from the basic Hebrew and Greek text of Holy Scripture, the more he detaches himself from the source of real theology! And real theology is the foundation of a fruitful and blessed ministry".

 Bitzer studied Greek and Hebrew - and he was a banker!