Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Tim Chaffey: Why The Bible Was Written FOR Us, Not TO Us

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Tim Chaffey: Why The Bible Was Written FOR Us, Not TO Us · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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defending biblical Christianity, no topic, off limits.
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And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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Friends and family in Christ, we are getting into some apologetics today with our good friend
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Tim Chaffee.
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Before we get to him, though, I'm sorry I haven't responded to this.
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Friends have been sending in donations or they've been getting a hold of us asking questions
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about the upcoming World View Matters conference.
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I just want to share that right now, we are not thinking about live streaming.
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We are going to record every session that will be available on the internet on YouTube
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online.
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I think Harbinger's Daily is going to create a page for us.
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If we get close to filling up, and we're, I think, we might, but we'll see how that goes,
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then we would live stream.
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So I'm leaning toward that, but I just want to thank Nina.
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She's just such a blessing.
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She constantly sends letters.
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Thank you, Nina, from Charlottesville, Virginia.
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I'm excited about the World View Matters conference.
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Will you live stream?
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So I just wanted to address that question.
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And also, guys, ask you to share the conference links on social media if you're on social
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media.
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If you're not sending them in an email, send them in a text message, worldviewmattersconference.com.
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And I want to bring up Tim's page, Tim's author page, Tim Chafee on Facebook.
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There it is.
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Look at that.
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That's the video.
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So there are all kinds of different options.
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You can share the website, you can share the video, you can share the, where you register,
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whatever you'd like.
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There's also a Facebook event that was created so you can click interested, or if you're
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going, click going.
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So I just want to thank you for that.
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So Tim, brother, it's so good to have this man of God in here.
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He is the content manager of attractions at Answers and Genesis.
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He's an author and a speaker.
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Just show some of his book page over at midwestapologetics.org.
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Pull that up, Jeff, with his NOAA series, and all those books.
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I can't believe he doesn't look old enough to have written so many books, but he's with
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us today.
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Tim, Chafee, welcome back.
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Brother, good to see you.
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Great to see you, David.
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Thanks for having me on.
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All right.
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Thank you for your time.
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We've got a lot to get to.
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You sent me some great notes on this topic.
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We're going to dive into about interpreting scripture.
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But you were in Israel.
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I just want you to highlight with some bullet points, whatever you'd like to share about
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your trip recently.
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Yeah, I just went back there in December for my third trip, loved it each time.
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I don't think I'll ever get tired of it.
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And unlike Tucker Carlson, I was not detained on the way back.
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Actually, I was, in the sense that they checked your passport and they asked you questions
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before you got, which is what they do to everybody.
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So I'm not going to try to create extra drama and lie about what's going on there, like
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many people do.
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But it was a great time, but it was a really research trip for me.
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The first two times I'd gone were kind of self-guided tours, first time with families,
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second time with a few people from work.
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This one was a trip with the school that I graduated from, a shepherd's theological
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seminary, and it was the first time I got to do it as part of a tour to see how they did
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things.
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I got to see some new places, especially in the West Bank or Samaria, because when you're
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there on your own with a rental car, most of the time the rental car companies won't
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cover going into those places.
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So if you're proud of a tour group, then you can go.
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So I did get to see some new places, but a lot of what I was doing is for the big project
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that we're working on here at Answers and Genesis.
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We're building a huge model of first century Jerusalem from the days of Jesus, well, technically
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just a few days after he ascended.
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So that's what my team's working on, and I had several things to do while I was there,
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and loved it.
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I think I intentionally forgot to do a couple things, so I have to go back.
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Well, there's so much.
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I mean, there's, because everywhere you go, you look at the scriptures, and then you're
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walking in a place that scripture talks about.
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Talk to us about that.
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What is it?
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The pilgrimage path or from, talk to us about that.
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Yeah.
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So there's the pilgrims road or the, yeah, so that goes from the pool of Salam, which
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is in the very southern end of the city of David, very, the very lowest area of Jerusalem.
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People who haven't been there don't really understand.
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It's not flat.
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When you go from the lowest point in Jerusalem that, you know, near the pool of Salam up to
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the Jaffa Gate, you're going up 600 feet in elevation.
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And so this one, this pilgrimage road goes from the pool of Salam right up to the southwest
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corner of the temple mount.
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And it's the route that pilgrims would have taken, that Jesus would have taken in the
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first century.
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And just a very broad street at times up to like 20 meters across in certain places.
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You can still see, you know, some of the places you're walking on are first century stones,
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because they've been covered for nearly 2000 years.
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And they just opened that up in, I think it was October of last year.
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I had the privilege of getting a tour back in 22 by the archeologist who was leading it.
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And they hadn't, they're still not quite done, but they have it where you can go most
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of the way.
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And then there's a little, you can, if you want, I'm not going to do it, but you can walk
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through like the drainage system that was there.
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I'm too big.
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And just like, I'm not going to go in Hezekiah's tunnel.
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People are, are you going to do that?
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No, I'm six foot eight.
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It's made for people who are like four foot eight.
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I'm not kidding.
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Yeah, the Jewish people are a little shorter generally.
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But by the way, the, the, the, the, the landscape of, of Jerusalem, there's so many places
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in Scripture that I can think of in the Gospels where it says Jesus and His disciples were
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going up to Jerusalem and that they say up to for a reason, right?
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Yep.
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It's all that's exactly right.
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Yeah.
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If you're going from, yeah, if you're going from Jericho up to Jerusalem, even though it's
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only about, you know, 12 miles or so on them as the crow flies, you're going up, that
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would be about 3,500 feet of elevation.
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You can essentially go over the Mount of Olives and then take your foot off the gas and coast
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all the way down to the Dead Sea.
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And even in the Bible, like it talks about going from Caesarea up to Jerusalem, well,
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if you look on the map, it's mostly south and a little bit east and we would say you're
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going down to Jerusalem.
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But no, it's because the elevation wise, you're going from sea level up to about 2800
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feet of elevation.
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So Tim, before we get into how to properly interpret the Bible, we're going to talk about
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some very important points today.
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So what was different maybe in this recent trip to Israel than previous trips and what
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was maybe one or two big takeaways for you this time?
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This time, the major thing that was different is being part of a tour group, we're having
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a tour guide who's been there 60 plus times and so I'm not trying to figure out everything
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on my own.
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But so that was a big difference in also going into areas that I hadn't seen before.
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I had never got to go to Jericho before.
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I'd been right next to it within a few miles, but because it's in Palestinian controlled
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area, I wasn't able to do that with a rental car.
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So that was new, staying in nicer hotels was new, but also seeing the amount of work
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that's been done, like the excavations on the Pilgrim's Road, we just talked about.
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The progress has been made in just three and a half years since I had been there before.
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So it's great to see, you know, like you talked about the Bible coming to life, you're
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seeing these places that are in the Bible.
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And archaeologists are constantly finding things that confirm what we see in Scripture.
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So this is the end of the Bible that we were finding written in Hebrew from, you know,
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well before the time of Jesus, meaning the Jewish people were there despite claims of
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the contrary in modern times with all the different conspiracies that was the land they
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lived in.
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So let's just, I know we weren't going to go there, but just when you're describing
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this, I'm thinking about the inscripture, the eyewitness testimony, people that died for
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their faith.
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They wouldn't die for a lie.
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We had Jesus appearances.
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You've got fulfilled Bible prophecy and we've got archaeology.
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We've got, and so for skeptics, for people that don't believe, it is truly an act of
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the will, because there is enough evidence and there is enough compelling reasons to believe
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in Jesus and the truth of Scripture, isn't there?
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Oh, absolutely.
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I think it is a Frank Turks book that's called, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist
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which is kind of a play on that.
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I maybe don't agree with every single thing he writes in there, especially the big bang
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stuff, but Frank's a good guy.
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Yeah, it's just a, it is a willful, it's like Romans 1 describes, even though they,
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that God has made it clear to them, you can look at creation and know there's a creator,
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but their fullest hearts are dark and they don't like to retain the knowledge of God
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and their thinking.
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They don't want it to be true, because if God is our creator and if the Bible is true,
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which he is our creator and the Bible is true, then he is also our judge and people,
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it's a heart issue.
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They don't want that.
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They want to chase after the things of this world, because it looks so promising, looks
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so good, you know, sin looks fun and yet it has a devastating impact and we, as believers,
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we have to live godly lives.
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It's a great example for people rather than being hypocrites who are constantly fighting
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and bickering about everything.
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We have to show people what Jesus is really like in the way that we live.
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So for answers and Genesis and the Ark and counter and creation museum, you are building
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a model of the city of Jerusalem.
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You guys could be doing all kinds of things there, but you thought this was so important
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that you're building this model.
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Explain that a little bit, tell us why and we'll jump into what we were going to talk
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about.
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Yeah, it's part of the overall master plan that we had down at the Ark anyways.
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We wanted to have a, basically walk through the entire biblical history.
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So we had announced years ago we wanted to build babble and we want to eventually take
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people through the rest of the Old Testament too and then bring them into the New Testament.
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So having this model will actually cover that, the time period of the New Testament.
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And it's the, the most direct connection we have to Jesus in any of our exhibits, you
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know, we do have an exhibit in the creation museum called Christ Cross Consumation, but
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it's not a very deep exhibit in terms of the amount of content that's in there.
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It's more like an art gallery type of thing where you get to reflect on what he did.
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This will be the first time that we really get to dive in and teach people a lot about
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what he did, who he is, what that world was like.
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We did a little bit of that with Borderland in the creation museum as well, but this will
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flush that out even more.
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So here we go.
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We're going to dive into this and I just love some of the notes you sent me, Tim.
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I'm going to let you share as much as you want.
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You say the Bible was not written to us, but it was written for us.
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Huge distinction.
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Go ahead and take it away.
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Yeah, one of the frustrated things and you and I had talked about this before, at least
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chatted about it, the biblical interpretation or the lack of how to interpret the Bible.
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It's a big problem in the church day.
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You have people every year at graduation, you know, you get my life first, during my
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20, 9, 11, I know the plans.
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I have for you, the Lord says.
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I'm like, okay, but you're not a Jew living in Babylon and exile for 70 years.
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That's who that was written to.
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I mean, try saying those words to a Muslim man in Saudi Arabia who converts to Christianity.
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It's maybe today.
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Tell him, hey, read Jeremiah 29 11, God had a great plan.
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Well, he might get executed later that day.
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So we can't just yank something out of its context and then make it about us.
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Are there principles that we can draw from that, of course, but it doesn't mean that we
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get to directly apply everything.
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I told Noah to build an ark.
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It doesn't mean that every one of us is supposed to do it, although we kind of took that
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pretty literally to build the ark encounter.
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That's funny.
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We're not saying that everybody should be doing that.
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And so it's a big distinction.
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And when we're trying to figure out what does the Bible say, we have to keep in mind not
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just the verbal context, you know, the words on the page.
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That's oftentimes what we teach.
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You got to look at the grammar, the syntax and everything.
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You have to know the cultural context.
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You have to know who the people were that that was written to and what were their beliefs,
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what sort of custom did they have, what idioms did they use in their language?
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Because there's times or scriptures using idioms or figures of speech.
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And so we need to recognize those things.
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And unfortunately too often we focus on things from our 21st century perspective.
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And we want it to, we're expecting it to say what we want it to say.
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So we go looking for that rather than trying to dive in from the perspective of the original
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audience.
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And I think the goal of interpretation of God's words should always be to try to find
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the author's intended meaning.
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And of course the ultimate author is the Holy Spirit.
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So what was the intended meaning, not what, what do I want it to mean?
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What are my favorite pastor, my favorite theologian, what are they saying?
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No, what does scripture say?
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And if you, if you find that, even if you don't like what it says, too bad, that's what it's
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said.
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You don't get to change too many devotionals today, by the way, focus on what does this mean
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to me?
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Right.
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It's not about me or you.
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It's what did God say and what did he mean to the people that he wrote it to, right?
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That's right.
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And there's a difference between interpretation and application.
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I think a lot of times people are taking that application step in and sticking that
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in as the interpretation, that's a problem as well.
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But one of the things I've, I've been doing a lot of thinking on over the last several
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years is most of us, at least within like the creation movement, because a lot of people
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are science-minded or a lot of times theologically minded.
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Most of people like that are left-brained.
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We want everything.
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We're kind of data-driven.
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We take all the information from the Bible and we say, okay, what does it have to say
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about angels put it in this category?
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What does it have to say about God put it in this category?
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And so what we're doing is systematic theology.
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We're categorizing or classifying all these different bits of information, because that's
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the way that we think.
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That's the way that we process information.
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But for the last 13 years, I've been working on with a design team where most of the people
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I work with are extremely talented artists who are very right-brained.
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And they think in turn more in narrative and story and not so much in a systematic way.
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But when you're dealing with theology, systematic theology is what I was describing before putting
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things in categories, biblical theology is where you're assuming that you're reading
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the Bible for the very first time.
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You pick it up and what could the audience know and when could they know it?
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Noah can't be telling people that Jesus died on the cross from the dead because that
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hasn't happened yet.
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So as you're reading through the Bible, what can you know at that time if you were in that
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place?
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And I think when we do that, it's going to reveal some things that are pretty interesting.
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For example, when we talk about here at Answers and Gents, we talk about how each of the
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days of creation, those sick days, were literal 24 hour days, there were normal length days.
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And we go through things that I think are correct, that there was evening, there was morning,
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that's how you're defining this word day here, it's 24 hour day.
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When you're using it in a sequence, when you're using it with the word night, any time
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you see those things in historical narrative in the Bible, it's always a normal day.
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So why would this be any different?
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And then we point to Exodus 20, verse 11, where God says, he's talking about the Israelites
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who are supposed to keep the Sabbath, work sick days in the rest for one, and he says,
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because that's what I did.
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For in six days, the Lord made the heavens the earth to see and all that is in them,
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and he rested the seventh.
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And so we build a strong case like that, but I think if we take it from a biblical theology
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perspective, we can make it even stronger because that verse that I just cited Exodus 20,
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verse 11, that's part of the Ten Commandments.
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And if you think about the context of the Israelites, they'd just come out of Egypt, they
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don't have the Bible yet.
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They don't have Genesis yet.
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They get to Mount Sinai.
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What is the first thing they hear from God?
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The Ten Commandments.
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And they've already collected Mana for six days and on the six day collected it twice.
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So they already know the six plus one concept.
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And they're at Mount Sinai.
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They hear God say, you're going to work six days in the rest of one because that's what
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I did.
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And then sometime later, probably during the wilderness wandering, God inspires the writing
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of Genesis.
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And Moses gives that.
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And when he reads Genesis one or when they read Genesis one for the first time, how are
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they going to understand the word day?
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They're already going to know it's a normal day because that's what they heard God say at
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Mount Sinai.
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That's the context for that they're that they are living in.
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So that's the context through which they'll understand the Genesis creation account.
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It's not through some Babylonian lands or some Egyptian lands like a lot of liberal writers
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will talk about.
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At least the Egyptian want to make a little bit more sense than Babylonian because they
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just come from there.
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But yeah, they're not borrowing from the Enuma, Elis or Gilgamesh, anything like that there.
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They're taken in terms of, we just heard God say that the God who brought us to the Red
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Sea, we saw that we go to Mount Sinai.
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He tells us his law, he tells us he made everything in six days and rested one.
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Oh, now we have the scripture for that a little bit later.
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So when you read it that way, you realize we can build an even stronger argument than
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we've had before because this is clearly how the original audience would have taken that.
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And we have people today saying, oh, they were pre-scientific.
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They weren't trying to do a science textbook, no, they weren't, it's not a science textbook
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but when it touched on science, it's accurate.
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God knows what he did and he told us what he did.
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But if we interpret it in the way that they would have, then it becomes a lot clearer.
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There's another passage that a creationist will disagree on.
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And some of the things I'll say will probably be a little controversial.
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But you said in the intro, you talk about controversial things.
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So that's right.
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In Genesis 6 3, you have where the Lord says, my spirit will not strive with man or abide
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in man forever.
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He is indeed fleshed.
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His days shall be 120.
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Now a lot of times his creationists will say, well, this is a countdown of the flood because
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remember thinking systematically, we group everything in these categories and like, well,
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that's Genesis 6.
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That's like right next to the flood.
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So it's got to be about the flood.
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And so we'll say, this is a countdown of the flood.
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No, imagine if you had never read the Bible before and you pick it up, you start in Genesis
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1, 1, here you have the creation, Genesis 2, man is created and woman from a side, Genesis
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3, you have the fall, Genesis 4, Cain kills Abel and then there's Cain's lineage, Genesis
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5, you have the lineage from Seth to Noah.
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But what do you read about in that genealogy?
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We lived 930 years and he died, 912 years and he died, 899 died, you know, 969 years
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and he died.
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What question do you think you might have as you're reading about these people who are
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living 900 plus years?
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Why don't we live so long?
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And then what's the very next passage we get to?
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It's the Genesis 6, 1 through 4, which is about the Son of God and the Nephilim which we've
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had it up before.
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I've written a nearly 500 page book on that, and I don't need to rehash that, but right
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in the middle of that, God said something about man days being 120 years.
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In other words, he said, I used to give you nearly 1000 years and look how wicked you
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would become.
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Now you get 120 and what do we see the very next generation?
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600.
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Then down to the 400s.
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Then down to the 200s, all the way to a guy named Moses who wrote that passage.
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He lives 120 and after Moses, how many people live 120 years?
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Just one in the Bible.
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Jehoia to the priest.
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And even today, when you look at the longest lived people, 116, 117, 114, they don't get
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to 120.
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There's one French woman who died in 1997, they say that she was 122.
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I think it's been proven or shown pretty strongly that she was a fraud.
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That was actually the daughter of the woman who had born 122 years earlier who took on
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her mom.
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They didn't know you and her mom died.
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But even if there's an exception, so what?
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He says that's a point for a man to die once and after this judgment, yet tell it to Lazarus
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or gyerson's daughter or other people that Jesus raised from the dead.
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They as far as we know, died two times.
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So God can make exceptions if he chooses to, but I don't think she has one.
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So if you read it in that context and if you're in Israel like wandering in the wilderness
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and you read about these people living 900 years, you're thinking, why don't we live that
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long?
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Well, here's your answer.
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The very next passage tells you you get 120 years.
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So Tim, we need to jump to this next topic, really in the flow of what we were discussing.
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And that is Israel, because we talked about that at the beginning, because you just went
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there.
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They still, God's chosen people.
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And why do you think replacement theology, meaning people think when it mentions Israel
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and Scripture, it means the modern day church, the church in America, the church overall,
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Christian church, which I don't know.
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I don't read it that way.
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I don't know how they got there, but I know there's some scriptures people use to try
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to back up that idea.
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Go ahead and share your concerns about that.
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Yeah.
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Now, I'll stick in the outset.
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That's not something that answers in Genesis.
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It just takes a position on, you know, we have people on both sides of that that I work
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with that we get along great so that that's not a salvation issue.
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But it is an issue that the Bible discusses in detail, in Romans 9 through 11, Paul starts
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off each chapter by talking about, has God rejected his people and then he goes on and
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says, by no means.
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In fact, Paul even says he'd be willing to be condemned or accursed if they could be
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saved.
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And he's talking about his countrymen, according to the flesh.
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So he's very clearly talking about the Jewish people.
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And that's how he starts chapter 9, chapter 10, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer
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to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
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He's still talking about that.
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Chapter 11, he goes on, has God cast away his people, certainly not for I am an Israelite
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of the seat of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin.
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He's still clearly talking about that.
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And yet what we do, if we take this back to our discussion before, we're not reading
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in the context of the people of that time.
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We're reading it through the lens of a debate that started taking place, well, it really
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came to the forefront in the 16th century.
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It actually kind of started back in like the 5th century about how does God elect certain
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people individually, does he do it, is this about individual elections of it?
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That's not what the passage is even about.
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And people have these debates and everything.
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Paul is talking about, has God cast aside Israel and his answer is no.
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He says that they have suffered a partial hardening in Romans 11.
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And at this point, their enemies are the gospel yet.
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He goes on and talks about that they all Israel will be saved.
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So I don't see, in fact, of the 73, 74 depending on which Bible you have translation, the 73
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or 4 times that Israel is mentioned in the New Testament, there's not a single time where
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it means church.
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It means the nation of Israel or it means the people of Israel or it means like the remnant
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of believers, believing Israelites.
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The only places where they ever get that from is Romans 9, 6, which we just talked about
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a little bit.
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He's clearly talking about Israel and he's talking about that believing remnant.
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And Galatians 6, 16 were from the end of Paul's first letter that he wrote.
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He says, peace be upon them and all who follow this rule and upon the Israel of God.
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And they'll say, oh, that must be the church.
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Now, I think he's talking about the believing Jews who are now part of the church as
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well, plus the Gentile believers.
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That's what the contrast has been throughout Galatians and if he's now suddenly making
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the church Israel, how come he never does that any of his other letters that came after
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that?
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Why would he just give some cryptic one at the very end of Galatians where he have to use
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the Greek conjunction Kai in a, not in a most normal way, but in a secondary way.
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And then you reshape all of your theology on that.
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I don't see it.
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In fact, historically, you don't see it either.
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And this where it plays into what we've been talking about, that if you take it from
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the, if you're in the mindset of the people at that time, obviously Israel means the people
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of Israel.
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It's that land.
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It's the nation.
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That when the Bible was written, that's who was there.
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But what happened shortly after the close of the New Testament in 132 to 135 of the
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barcook by rebellion takes place.
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And the Jews are kicked out of their land.
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They're expelled from the land by Hadrian and the he reigned and renamed it Syria, Palestine.
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Or so that's where you get the, that's where you get this Palestine name from.
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And then he renamed Jerusalem, Alia, Capitolina.
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And so the Jews are gone.
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If you're a Christian reading your Bible in the late second century, early third century
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and you're reading all about Israel, Israel.
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And you believe this book to be true, it has to be true somewhere.
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But Israel doesn't exist anymore as a people, as far as you know, it, it must mean something
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else, right?
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Maybe, maybe it's us, maybe we're the true believe, maybe we're the, maybe he's talking
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about us, we're true Israel or the Israel of God or something.
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And yet you won't find that in the first couple centuries of the church, not, not to the
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very end of the second century, that, that belief started to be taught and something else
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that contributed is a lot of the early church fathers, who are they debating against?
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Other Jewish, unbelieving Jews.
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And so they're the bad taste in the mouth of a largely Gentile church against the Jewish
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people.
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And that's where replacement theology comes from.
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I know that my friends who believe it think that it comes right from the text.
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I just don't see it anywhere.
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I don't either.
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And I've had to try to understand where they get it.
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And yet people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, they had these ideas, the reformers, some
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of them.
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So it developed over time, but I agree with you, looking back, it just wasn't in the
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early church.
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Wrap us up in the last minute and a half about Bible interpretation and how it was written
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for us, not to us.
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Yeah, well, anytime you get a letter, you want to make sure you know who the recipient
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is.
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So when Paul writes to Philemon, that letter is not, I don't have a slave that I need to
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take, you know, I run away, I save that I need to take back because there's a certain
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context for that letter.
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And we should understand that.
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And the same is true for the rest of scripture that their certain books are written to certain
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people or groups of people at a certain time and place.
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Now when they are communicating, which is all of scripture is God's word.
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So when it's communicating God's message, yes, there's going to be principles we draw
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from that.
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But not everything in there is directly applicable to us in everyday life.
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You know, like we're not all told to build the arc, like I said.
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So we have to learn to read it in context.
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Not just the words on the page, but also the cultural historical setting, all of those
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things.
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And even geographical setting, like we talked about, all of those things are important.
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Yes.
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So important today, friends, with the biblical illiteracy in the church and all the false
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teachings and false gospels out there and theologies that don't line up with scripture.
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Anyway, Midwest apologetics.org, Tim Chaffey, Lord willing, we'll do this again.
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Thank you, sir, for your time today.
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Great to see you, David.
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And we'll see you in a couple of months, too, looking forward to that conference.
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Good.
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He's coming back to Green Bay.
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That's right.
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He's stopping rounds.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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All right, friends.
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God bless you.
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And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
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We'll see you next time.