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1:33Many of you have been asking me about my trip. We just went to Turkey and to Greece. And I said I'd be sharing some thoughts, and I will do that some tonight, particularly on this item of inspiration. I want to take you back to a place in Greece called Delphi. It is a place I've talked about before. In fact, I wrote a chapter about Delphi in my book, Jesus, the Alpha, and Omega of Bible study, and the very importance of Delphi and what was taking place there, and how that impacts how we understand our Bible today.

2:20Divination. The scripture is very clear. God wanted no spiritists, no diviners. He promised that He would raise up a prophetic offer and a prophet. Prophets and a prophet through whom he would speak. So God knows we need information from him. There are certain things about God we cannot know unless he tells us. And he knows we need information. And he has purposed to give us everything that we need. The headwaters of divination basically centers around there in Delphi. And divination, it's the idea of man seeking words from God.

3:23And usually they have a certain characteristic. Usually they're words that somebody is looking for. In other words, I'm going to God because I usually want to know something about the future. I want to know what course of action I should take. I want to know what person I should marry. I want to know what job I should take. Many governors and kings, I need to know who to make war with. I need to know where I should settle, where we should colonize. All these kind of questions, people would seek answers. And so, I'll give you a little brief background of Delphi. In the Greek pantheon of deities, Zeus wanted to figure out where the belly button of the world was. He didn't know, apparently. So he needs to figure it out. And so he sends a couple of eagles to fly around, and where they meet is going to be the navel, the center of the world. They meet at Delphi, and there is a spring there, and there is a big snake, Python, guarding it. Apollo, shorten the story, Apollo kills Python, and in the process of redeeming himself for that act or doing penance for that, he becomes the God of spiritual light. And that makes him really one of the most important deities in the whole pantheon. Practically speaking, what people mostly want is information about the future. And so the whole idea of Delphi was coming to Apollo and getting those divine words. Now, it would cost something, of course. But here, just last week, took a picture. Here is the picture of the great temple, what remains of it. And I'll tell you how this process works and how this impacts inspiration. There's a very different view of how divine words are inspired that is radically different from.

6:00How we received our words in the Bible. And so it's but many of these views of inspiration go back to what happens here at Delphi. And so just to give you a little lay of the scene, it just looks like ruins. But what these ruins are, they really are little bank houses. Delphi became a bank. It was a big banking center, believe it or not. Got this temple to Delphi or to Apollo, and you get all these expensive offerings to come up to inquire where are you going to put all that money? Well, you start building banks, and here's a picture of one that's been reconstructed, but the whole hillside was a bunch of treasuries. It was like a whole sector that was treasuries. This one that's been reconstructed was the treasury of the Athenians. So if you think about your people from Athens wanting insight, they would come and they would give huge gifts and they would be stored. Now there would be bars and they were secured, but they served as little treasuries. And then you have a whole banking industry, a lending industry. It's a huge Business. But these the income is coming from divination. And governments who need to know where to colonize, who to make war with, when to plant, all that kind of stuff would come and seek counsel. Now, of course, these brokers, these power brokers, are dialed in politically. They know what lands are fertile. They know stuff. They know where things need to go. And so they become not only just money brokers, but they also become the center of development. You have the divine words and the key to the divine words. Very powerful. And so this is what's happening at Delphi. Now, if you were, I'll just take you in. If you were one of these people who could inquire, and there was a long list, and very, it was expensive, and you had to come.

8:33And there were certain times when divination would happen, and it would sometimes be dependent on whether a goat could drink and all these little different things that would take place. But if divination was given and you were permitted, you would come and you would stand here in this area right before the altar, and the priests would come before it and would listen. Would take your, receive your offerings, would hear, and you would ask. Ask Apollo. And let me give you an example of a king who came, Croesus. He came and wanted to, the Lydian king wanted to know if he should go to war with Cyrus. Makes a big offering, king of Persia. And so he comes here and he asks. Now, imagine if this is you and you want to know what school should I go to, what career should I follow, you would go and you would ask. Okay?

9:38And so off they would go and up the ramp, this is just above the little balcony area. You'd come up, the priestess would be, would take your question, or the priest would relay it to the Pythia, the priestess, the woman prophetess, and she would go into the temple of Apollo to ask the question. Now, looking above, she would come all the way back into this back sector right here. It's kind of like, would be for lack of a better term, almost like the Holy of Holies, only the unholy of unholies, let's put it that way.

10:21And where there was a fissure in the earth that emitted ethylene gas or some kind of. Gas. She would go back there, and it's historically accurate and scientifically accurate. But right here, about where this break is, there is a fault, and that's where she would go and sit. She would chew on laurel leaves. There's an intoxicating effect just from chewing on the leaves. She would inhale the gas. She would fall over and go into an ecstatic utterance. She would say all kinds of things.

11:01Obviously, her mind is checked out, and she is then inspired or possessed by the spirit of Python. And she is speaking all these words. And then you've got these other groups, these priests, the ones who are really making the money, and they're writing down her words called the exegetes, Greek. And they would take down the words, and then they would put those words in some sort of poetic form and bring them back. Bring them back to the listener, and they would respond, like in Croesus' case, it would go something like this. It went something like this. If the king crosses the river, he will destroy a great kingdom.

12:01Okay, so what is, but itself has to be interpreted, doesn't it? The answer itself has to be interpreted. So, what does Croesus do? He interprets that, ah, that's an affirmative. So, he crosses the river, goes after Cyrus, gets soundly defeated and destroyed, comes back, and the exegetes say, you misinterpreted the oracle. The oracle was you, if you cross the country, cross the river, you will destroy a great country, and that country was your own. So, you can see, and this was the answer. The answer would come back like that.

12:43And so the answer itself had to be interpreted to such a degree that you couldn't really figure out, you couldn't really blame the oracle. I can remember years ago when Nancy and I were involved in a boys' ranch, a local boys' ranch, there was some people there who were what we would call extreme charismatic. And there was another couple there that really wanted to have children, and they tried, and they tried, and there were all these prayers, and a lot went up for them until one day, and it was late November, early December, right at the right.

13:30And in one of these meetings, a man stood up and he says, I have a word. After a long evening, I have a word for you. Here's the word: There will be rejoicing in the fall. There will be rejoicing in the fall. Now, what does that mean? Well, those standing around took it to mean you're going to conceive a child this fall. And a lot of excitement. Rejoicing in the fall because you are going to conceive a child. Well, they never did conceive a child.

14:10But you can kind of see, well, what does that word mean? There will be rejoicing in the fall. And so it was open to any kind of vague interpretations. And so, needless to say, this couple was very disappointed and disenfranchised, hurt, a lot of things like that. Well, that's the kind of routine activity that would take place at Delphi. And it amounts to divination, not obeying God's words, not hearing God's words. Listen, God knows what we need to know. And that's why he has spoken what he has spoken, and why we have written what we have. Written. He knows us, he created us, and he knows what we need. And so, what he has written, he has given, and it is sufficient because he knows. So, this takes us into this. I share this because I want you to think about some different thoughts on theories of inspiration. Now, this is going to sound a little technical, but don't let it.

15:27There's really two parts on this whole or three that I want to describe to you, and it'll make sense. Intuition. That's an inspiration, and you can think about this is where it's all about man. This is all dominantly human, and the idea of intuition. By the way, I got this chart from our tour guide, Brad Clausen, and he is a chair at the exposition department at Masters. We had a wonderful time. And by the way, if we ever want to put together a trip on any of these biblical tours, let me know.

16:05We need about 20 people, and we can fill a bus, and we can go on the road, and I'm happy to go on the road with y'all. And we need to go to Israel, of course. You need to spend some time in Israel. After Israel, I would say the second most important place to go is to Turkey. I would say the third place, maybe Greece. It's hard to separate Turkey and Greece. But also, Jordan, need to spend some time in Jordan. You'll really get a handle on your Old Testament and Jordan. You'll get a handle on your biblical times and times of Christ in Israel. You'll get a really good understanding and viewpoint of the early church in modern-day Turkey and also in Greece. So let me know. Happy to go.

16:59But think about intuition. You think about human intuition. This view of inspiration is that inspiration is a natural, it's natural human giftedness. What is written is wholly determined by the writer. Intuition, person thinking about, and this is where you're German higher critics. Yeah, let's just human document somebody wanted to write a few words. Everything that has come about has come about out of the will, mind, and thinking of man. On the other extreme is what we would have called the ecstatic. Inspiration as the overtaking of the human writer to the exclusion of his full rational awareness and participation. What does that sound like? The Pythia. That the inspiration has overtaken the person to such a degree that the human mind is absent. And so that one writer. Puts it like this, it's that view that the Spirit of God is using the human like a trumpet or like a string. The person has no idea what they're doing, but a sound is coming forth. And so you have all human, and on the other extreme, you have a very ecstatic inspiration that God or the divine, let's put it that way, not necessarily the God of the Bible, but the divine takes over the faculties of the person like the Pythia. Her mind is completely absent, and she is speaking. That's ecstatic utterances.

18:52But where the biblical view is, and this would be affirmed by the Chicago statement on inerrancy, what we would hold here, the verbal and confluent. And the idea here is the verbal inspiration as the confluent activity of the Spirit and the writer. The text produced is truly the Word of God and the Word of man. It's important. So it's God. It is man. It is a confluence of both so that it is truly the Word of God.

19:30But it's also the word of man. Just like, do we see this anywhere else in Scripture? Think about the person of Jesus. Who is he? Fully God and fully man, confluence, so that he is both God and man. And so you have that same process taking place in the words that we have been given. Now, let me share how this impacts the way we read our Bibles and how these thoughts have really trickled down. And even today, we still struggle with some of these concepts and views of inspiration. Philo of Alexandria, he was a Jewish exegete. He lived a little before Christ, a little after Christ, right in the middle of it all. He was a Jewish exegete, but he was also a Greek. And so he syncretized Plato's metaphysics with Hebrew theology. There's always syncretism going in. That just happens. One of the things about God and what he calls us to be is holy, set apart, different. God is holy. That's one of the first things he says. Look, I am altogether different from you. I am holy, and I am to be treated as holy. I am not to be treated. Be syncretized with the human way of thinking. So God makes it very clear he is holy. Well, this is what Philo does, he seeks to syncretize with Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology. And so he is an advocate of this ecstatic view of inspiration, where the mind checks out and God speaks through sounds and words.

21:34Listen to some of the things he says. A prophet possessed by God will suddenly appear and give prophetic oracles. The word oracles, that's very, that's language of Delphi, the oracles, the oracle. That was what it was called at Delphi, the oracle. So when you're in a Greek thinking, you're talking about oracle, you're thinking about the word from God. A prophet possessed by God will suddenly appear and give prophetic oracles. Nothing of what he says will be his own. For he that is truly under the control of the divine inspiration has no power of apprehension when he speaks. In other words, he doesn't know what he's speaking, but serves as the channel for the insistent words of another's prompting. This is his view of inspiration. For prophets.

22:30Are the interpreters who, that's capital who, the divine who, makes full use of their organs of speech to set forth what he wills. So, what Philo is saying is the way we get words from God is that God superintends, and he's talking about the Hebrew scriptures, so that the one giving the words, the prophet, has no idea what he's saying. He says it again: for when the light of God shines, the human light sets. Get the idea, the sun, when the light of God comes upon the person, the human light sets. It goes out. The human, when the divine light sets, the human dawn rises. Get this picture. When God comes, man goes out.

23:26This is what regularly befalls the fellowship of the prophets. The mind is evicted at the arrival of the divine spirit. But when that departs, the mind returns to its tendency. So when the divine comes, the mind checks out. When God comes, the mind checks out. And then when God leaves, the mind is able to re-engage. That's Philo's view of inspiration. He makes this statement: mortal and immortal. May not share the same home. The mortal and the immortal. Now think about that. God and man cannot share the same home. Now you can imagine how this thinking, if you are a student of biblical history, you know there were a lot of heresies in the early church, specifically dealing with the person of Christ. Can the mortal and the divine share the same home is basically the question. So many of your different heretical views have an error. The answer is yes, the mortal and the immortal can share the same home. This is what Christ is all about: God in man, and our relationship with God. God, yes, we can share the same home. In fact, Jesus very clearly, behold, I stand at the door and knock. If you will open the door, he will come in.

25:04God resident in the hearts and lives of his people. Yeah, of course. Philo, no, they cannot share the same home. And therefore, the setting of reason and the darkness which surrounds it produce ecstasy and inspired frenzy. So that's what Philo is saying: that he's explaining this phenomenon, how prophets. Come about. Basically, their mind checks out and they enter into an ecstatic frenzy. You can't help but think of the Pythia and what's taking place in the temples of Apollo and that kind of thing. Well, this leads generations through the church, especially in Alexandria, northern Africa, into seeing a deeper spiritual meaning in Scripture. And this is where the whole school of thought of origin arises. And even though the church later rejected some of the extremes of Philo and Origin, many down through the line, Augustine and down through the line, even into the time of the Reformers, would draw on this school of thought. The deeper meanings in Scripture, this became a very Catholic understanding that there are deeper meanings and there are more senses to be understood than the literal. And so this is what Philo says in terms of how to read the Bible. And he's speaking about the literal sense. And he says this, I would exhort not to halt there. That is the literal meaning of a biblical text. And he's using an example in. On the confusion of the tongues. This is dealing with a writing on Genesis 11. He says, I exhort you not to halt there. In other words, don't just stop reading Genesis 11 and come to the conclusion that, okay, this is about the, this gives us an idea of where the languages come from. He says, don't stop there. He says this, but press on to allegorical interpretations and to recognize that the letter is to the oracle but as a shadow to the substance. Think about what he's saying. The letter, the word itself, is but a shadow of the substance. The letter is just, it's not the real thing, it's just the shadow to the meaning.

27:55And that the higher values therein are what really and truly exist. In other words, he's saying the words themselves are just symbols and they're just shadows, but the higher value is not in their literal meaning, but in what they really do say. So in other words, what they're literally saying is not what they are really saying or what they are truly saying. This becomes philosophy. View of the Hebrew scriptures and adopted. And so you get this allegorical method of Bible interpretation. It comes out, and one author said it well.

28:46Greg Allison says it, historical theology professor, says this. Just as Plato had stressed the reality of a spiritual world lying hidden behind our tangible, visible world, so Philo emphasized the spiritual meaning lying behind the words of Scripture. So just like Plato would look and say, okay, there's a spiritual world behind all this. Likewise, Philo emphasized behind the words of Scripture there is a spiritual meaning, a deeper meaning that is the real meaning. That's really what it's about. An allegorical method of interpretation was necessary to discern this deeper meaning. So now all of a sudden, you need a whole nother view of Scripture, another approach to Scripture, because what you're really after is not the plain literal sense, but the deeper meaning. And so the whole allegorical method of interpretation was necessary to discern. And this, all of a sudden, the historical setting and the occasion. For which the words were given becomes secondary and even non-important at all.

30:07And what happens is you get then the words and people reading meaning into it. And this, you think about, go back to the Pythia and the oracle that was given back. Then it, the answer itself, had to be interpreted. And so now you have the same taking place, and that begs the question: who is the authoritative interpreter? And do we really have revelation at all? And so you think about going back to this view, boy, I'm about to fall over.

30:50If you think about this, what you have happening in the German higher criticism is this whole man-centered document. It's all human. This is the German hierarchic's intuition. Then on the other side, you have this ecstatic and extreme allegoricalism. And that's you have like a lot of your pagan and all your divine to the point that the human mind doesn't know what's going on. But in the center of this, you have what is the biblical self-attesting view.

31:30Inspiration. It is the confluent activity of the Spirit and the writer. The text produced is truly the Word of God and the Word of man. Now, what am I getting at? Well, this is where B.B. Warfield, that last of the great Princeton theologians, the mind that really fought the battle for inspiration and inerrancy that would really still is the authority, even though he's back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he's still the definitive mind that has shaped so much of American evangelicalism on this subject, and still does. But this is what he says: the human and divine factors in inspiration are conceived as flowing confluently. I love that. I'm a hydrologist. I get the idea of two streams coming together. I just, I love that language. The human and divine factors in inspiration, and when we're talking about inspiration, everybody can get this. What are we talking about? We're talking about how do we get the words of the Bible. Are these words that some person fought up and came up with in their own mind, or is there something else involved? There is something else involved. Is the work of God and it is working through his people.

33:08And so the human and the divine factors in the inspiration are conceived as flowing confluently and harmoniously to the production of a common product. So God has so superintended, and I won't go into all of what Warfield has written on this, of course, but the idea is that man, that God has so superintended the process that He has brought the person along, He put them in the place and time, He shaped their personality, their disposition, and He brought them into relationship with Him. And He so superintended that not only that the time and the place, but even the preparation of the writer, so that what comes out on the page, it spirates from God Himself, but through the channels of human agency without violating their humanity and without compromising His deity or the divine product.

34:24The Bible says, and this is still Warfield quoting, the Bible says Dr. Westcourt. Westcott is authoritative, for it is the Word of God. It is intelligible, for it is the Word of Man. That's very important. Why is this confluence? Why is it important that the writers of Scripture have their mental faculties when they are writing Scripture? Have they checked out and just ecstatically uttering things that they have no idea what they mean? Why is it important for it to be intelligible to you and me?

35:06They needed to understand what they were writing. And so, because it is the word of man, it is intelligible. It's something we can relate to. God has condescended. God has spoken to us. We understand the language of humanity because we are humanity. And He spoke to us in terms of humanity through agents, His human agents. Because it is the Word of Man, in every part and element, it comes home to our hearts. That's why we can truly understand it, is because it is the Word of Man. And it comes home, it resonates. We can relate because it is from one human to another.

35:58It's in human terms. And that's because it's the Word of Man. But because it is the Word of God in every part and element, it is our constant law and guide. So it comes to us as authority, as our authoritative guide. It's not just the Word of Man. And so, this was our tour guide, Brad Clausen, a friend and master's. And I agree with his conclusion in a paper he wrote on this. The path to understanding this word, therefore, goes through the biblical writers, not around them. Very important for you to understand.

36:51To understand the word goes through the biblical writers. It doesn't jettison them. It's to understand what they understood. The need, then, is for a method of interpretation that seeks their intent. For it was that intent which was intended by God. It is that intent which is accessible to the readers. You see, we that's a lot to say this simple thing. We need to. Understand what the authors would have understood because therein is our connection to understanding the meaning of the text. If they didn't understand it, I can assure you, we never will.

37:48But they did. And if there are sections that they didn't understand, which I'm going to read to you in a little bit, they told us they didn't understand it. And so we can go to Daniel chapter 12 for just a moment. And let me compare a couple scriptures, and maybe we'll just look at this. Daniel chapter 12. After Daniel has seen a whole host of visions, he comes to the end and he gets another vision about the end. There are things he doesn't understand, and he says this, and he's asking, How long are things going to be?

38:52What am I seeing? And he says this in verse 8, chapter 12, verse 8: As for me, I heard, but I couldn't. Could not understand. So I said, My Lord, what will be the outcome of these events? He said, Go your way, Daniel, for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time. In other words, as I said this morning, there are several more prophetic things that must be given and must happen before you can understand them. But the end, the time of the end, they will understand.

39:33And he goes on to say this: many will be purged, purified, and refined. But the wicked will act wickedly, and none of the wicked will understand. The wicked are not going to get it. They have a whole different reason. They have a whole different view of Scripture. They're not going to approach Scripture in a way that could be, if they approach Scripture at all. The wicked are not going to understand, but those who have insight will understand. So what is concealed will readily be understood by those who have insight.

40:22And he goes on to say, from the time that the regular sacrifice is abolished and the abomination of desolation is set up, There will be 1,290 days. How blessed is he who keeps waiting and attains to the 1335 days. But as for you, Daniel, go your way to the end. Then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age. Daniel, you will be resurrected at the end of the age. This time is at the end of the words I've spoken are for the end time. You won't understand them. And he's told us he will not understand them.

41:03And the wicked, he tells us, are going to continue to act wickedly. I would like to have spent a little more time on this this morning, but Revelation 22:11. You remember this text we looked at this morning. Let the one who does wrong still do wrong, and the one who is filthy still be filthy. And let the one who is righteous still practice righteousness, and the one who is holy still keep himself holy. The idea being, the one who is going to do wrong, or who is the one who is doing wrong, is going to keep doing wrong. They're going to keep acting wickedly. They're not going to understand. Daniel saw this way in advance, even though he didn't fully understand.

41:54He understood that these things are concealed, but that the wicked are going to continue. To act wickedly, the wicked are not going to understand. Even though all things have been prophesied, all things are coming together as the Word of God says, they're not going to understand. But the one who has insight, in other words, the one who approaches Scripture in the way that allows Scripture to speak to us is going to have insight. Why? Not because He's special, but because God's Word is clear and intended to be understood. And so God knows what we have need of. He knows what needs to be written. He wrote what needed to be written. And it is sufficient. And it tells us. Because He knows what we need to know.

42:49Let me just stop there and see if anybody wants to express a thought or ask a question. I don't think I'll go into the parables. I think we. Okay, yes, yes, back. So, in your book on hermeneutics, you talk a lot about kind of this idea of understanding a text in the way that the people who received that text originally would have understood it. Have you ever found in studying Old Testament texts that your understanding of it Just from a plain reading was contradicted by your understanding after studying it in the cultural context?

43:40Well, certainly cultural context is important. It's not authoritative. And so we have the words of Scripture, and so that is what is inspired. That is what is inerrant. Our understanding about the culture sometimes comes from secondary sources. If that understanding of the culture comes from Scripture itself, then yes, there is an authoritative scripture to bear on the culture and like leverite marriage, when you're understanding the book of Ruth, as you're reading through Ruth, yeah, you read it, and then all of a sudden you're informed culturally by the leverite marriage, and then your understanding of Ruth goes up, and yeah, you may have to readjust some completely different thoughts. I mean, so to answer your question, yes, as I continue, I grow in my understanding of Scripture. Contradictory, totally contradictory. Well, I suppose that that may happen. May have happened. It's not something that, as you grow in your understanding of Scripture, that happens less and less. And I think that's one of the purposes of systematic theology is to be able to set up those boundaries to where you don't cross. But systematic theology itself is to be informed by Scripture and come out of what I call a biblical theology. That is, you understand a book. You understand a book in its context, in its historical situation and cultural context. And so, and then that adds to your understanding. And yeah, so, yes, I think I say it before, we all move through several shades of heresy on our way to orthodoxy. And I would say I've been that and have had some very different views on things.

45:59But cultural context, you know, the example I gave, I think understanding the Leverite marriage, I've taught Ruth in the past as, you know, it's about the love story. After I really understand, I've been taught it as God's Cinderella. We love the book of Ruth. And then the more I studied and understood the Leverite marriage, no, it's about the real estate. It's not about the. Love. It's not, that ruins the story for a lot of people. No, it's about the real estate, maybe. And so, yeah, in that sense, that may be an example.

46:44Yes, sir. Would there be any damage to inspiration if so? A lot of the time it just says thus says Yahweh, and then versus the prophet starts writing, right? That that seems to be more dictation than a verbal. Yeah, and you know, I think B.B. Warfield uses that confluence language. I think you could have portions of scripture like the Ten Commandments that may be more dictatorial, so where the writer is actually more like acting like a secretary. I think that's when, but to go into the ecstatic, I think, like Moses, when he went up there and received that, so yeah, I think there may be some portions of scripture that a more dictatorial place might be appropriate, but certainly by and large, what has come would fit more in that verbal good questions? Yes, sir.

48:01For reasons I don't fully understand, because I'm not a Jewish prophet, but a Jewish prophet would never speak for the Lord unless he was actually speaking for the Lord. For the Lord or to the Lord, what did you say? For God. Yeah. Well, not a true one. And God and Moses talks a lot about the rise of false prophets from among you, so there's going to be false prophets even among the Jewish groups. But yeah, a true prophet would not stand up in this. Yes, sir. Patrick?

48:45I know you know, and I think everybody else does too, but just in case, the Pythia, when it speaks, it's not really words, it's ecstatic utterances. That's right. Right. Gibberish. And they also basically had these private detectives working for the priest who would go back to the homeland wherever the person came from, they would investigate, and then they would come up with what they thought was the most likely outcome. But like you say, it would be economic, or as they'd always voice it where you could have double meanings, you know. So, but it's You know, that's a lot of people need to understand when Paul's talk about Thomas there in Corinth. You could go right from the church up the road to the temple there, and they were doing sad others in those times. That's right. A temple of Apollo was right in the heart and center of Corinth. We just went and went to it again. And right there, the meat markets, everything is right there. The Apollo, and so what he is saying, he's saying, look, if people come in and you are speaking ecstatic gibberish, people are going to associate you with Apollo worship, not the true God. That's why there needs to be order in this area. And that was his, because syncretism. And that's what we struggle with that throughout church history, and they were doing that at Corinth. You have Temple of Apollo, what you saw at Delphi. In fact, the Pythia in Philippi, if you remember when Paul cast out the spirit of Python out of a fortune-telling girl, that got him in trouble. But he uses the word Pythia, the Pythoness. And so, yeah, so thank you. Yes, ma'am. So when you say come forth, you don't mean that the prophet is sitting in his two sense over what God is saying and including it. We mean that he understands.

51:05That's right. He's moved by the Spirit of God through the faculties that God has given him, through the setting, the history, the experience, personality, and everything. And he understands and is writing. He is in relationship and is writing as an intelligent participant in the process. So it's fully human. But it does not superintend God's activity. So that what is produced is the Word of God. 7:15, one more, and then. What you've done here is you've explained why we have different interpretations of Revelation. An allegorical interpretation kind of falls into that static final value. But it's interesting to me, and I've thought about this and I've struggled with other friends. This allegorical style of interpretation is not limited to Revelation. They apply that all to scripture. And so they say, no, no, this is the days of creation, it wasn't really seen today. It has a view or meaning. That's right. The flood wasn't a really global flood. There's an allegorical meaning to it. And so it infects all of their viewer scriptures.

52:30So, and I think much of the Reformation, Luther, was, it was, in fact, if I may, well, no, I won't. Much in the biblical statement on inerrancy, there is this emphasis upon the sense, the plain sense. That is the meaning. It's not just that we believe these words are divinely inspired by God and that they're inerrant, but the way we understand them is through their sense, their normal sense, not through one of these other. And that became encoded in a lot of, anyway.

53:11Well, friends, let me close this out, and I'll be happy to talk some more about this, but I do want to let you all go. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you, Father, that we can, after all that was said tonight, we can come to your word and understand it. We know you want us reading our Bibles. Because through these words, we engage and interact with you. As we go down the same vein of thought that the authors went down and the many implications that had for them and implications that it has for us today, and applications. That it had for them and applications that it has for us. We understand that you are speaking to us.

54:09So, Father, help us to have a view of Scripture that matches your view of Scripture and not one of ignorance, divination, but one of sobriety that comes recognizing your activity and humbly bows as a student before you to learn. Teach us, Father. Thank you for these words. Thank you that you've made them accessible. And thank you that we can have confidence that they are accessible. Go with us now, Father. May your word transform us. May we glorify you this week in all that we say and do. In Jesus' name, amen.