Sacred Scripture #51
51. 1. The Word is not understandable without a body of teaching. This is because in its literal meaning the Word is entirely made up of correspondences, to allow spiritual and heavenly matters to be gathered within it in such a way that each word can be their container and support. That is why in many passages the literal meaning is not made up of bare truths but of clothed truths, which we may call semblances of truth. Many of them are adapted to the comprehension of ordinary people who do not raise their thoughts above what they can see with their eyes. There are other passages where there seem to be contradictions, though there are no contradictions in the Word when it is seen in its own light. Then too, there are places in the prophets where we find collections of personal names and place-names that make no sense to us - see the examples in §15 above.
Since that is what the literal meaning of the Word is like, it stands to reason that it cannot be understood without a body of teaching.
[2] Some examples may serve to illustrate this. It says that Jehovah repents (Exodus 32:12, 14; Jonah 3:9; 4:2). It also says that Jehovah does not repent (Numbers 23:19; 1 Samuel 15:29). Without a body of teaching, these statements do not agree.
It says that Jehovah visits the iniquities of the parents on the children to the third and fourth generation (Numbers 14:18), and it says that parents will not be put to death for their children and children will not be put to death for their parents, but each will die in his or her own sin (Deuteronomy 24:16). Seen in the light of a body of teaching, these statements do not disagree but agree.
[3] Jesus said,
Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. Everyone who asks receives, those who seek find, and to those who knock it will be opened. (Matthew 7:7-8; 21:21-22)
In the absence of a body of teaching, people would believe that everyone’s request is granted, but a body of teaching yields the belief that we are given whatever we ask if we ask it not on our own behalf but on the Lord’s. That is in fact what the Lord tells us:
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)
[4] The Lord says “Blessed are the poor, because theirs is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20). Without a body of teaching, we might think that heaven belongs to the poor and not to the rich. A body of teaching instructs us, though, that this means those who are poor in spirit, for the Lord said,
Blessed are the poor in spirit, because theirs is the kingdom of the heavens. (Matthew 5:3)
[5] The Lord says,
Do not judge, or you will be judged; with the same judgment you pass [on others] you yourself will be judged. (Matthew 7:1-2; Luke 6:37)
In the absence of a body of teaching, this could be used to support the assertion that we should not say that an evil act is evil or judge that an evil person is evil. A body of teaching, though, tells us that it is permissible to pass judgment if we do so in an upright, righteous way. In fact, the Lord says,
Judge with righteous judgment. (John 7:24)
[6] Jesus says,
Do not be called teacher, because one is your Teacher: Christ. You should not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, and he is in the heavens. You should not be called masters, because one is your Master: Christ. (Matthew 23:8-10)
In the absence of a body of teaching, it would turn out that it was wrong to call anyone a teacher or a father or a master; but from a body of teaching we come to know that this is permissible in an earthly sense but not in a spiritual sense.
[7] Jesus said to the disciples,
When the Son of Humanity sits on the throne of his glory, you will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Matthew 19:28)
These words could lead us to believe that the Lord’s disciples will be passing judgment, when quite the contrary, they cannot judge anyone. So a body of teaching unveils this mystery by explaining that only the Lord, who is omniscient and knows the hearts of all, will judge and can judge, and that his twelve disciples mean the church in the sense of all the true and good principles that it has received from the Lord through the Word. A body of teaching leads us to the conclusion that these principles will judge everyone, which follows from what the Lord says in John 3:17-18; 12:47-48.
[8] People who read the Word without the aid of a body of teaching do not know how to make sense out of what it says in the prophets about the Jewish nation and Jerusalem, namely, that the church will abide in that nation and that its seat will be in that city forever. Take the following statements, for example.
Jehovah will visit his flock, the house of Judah, and transform them into a glorious war horse; from Judah will come the cornerstone, from Judah the tent peg, from Judah the battle bow. (Zechariah 10:3-4)
Behold, I am coming to dwell in your midst. Jehovah will make Judah his inheritance and will again choose Jerusalem. (Zechariah 2:10-12)
On that day it will happen that the mountains will drip with new wine and the hills will flow with milk; and Judah will abide forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation. (Joel 3:18, 20)
Behold, the days are coming in which I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of humankind, and in which I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. This will be the covenant: I will put my law in their midst and I will write it on their heart, and I will become their God and they will become my people. (Jeremiah 31:27, 31, 33)
On that day ten men from every language of the nations will take hold of the hem of a man of Judah and say, “We will go with you, because we have heard that God is with you.” (Zechariah 8:23)
There are other passages of the same nature, such as Isaiah 44:24, 26; 49:22-23; 65:18; 66:20, 22; Jeremiah 3:18; 23:5; 50:19-20; Nahum 1:15; Malachi 3:4. In these passages the subject is the Lord’s Coming and what will happen at that time.
[9] However, it says something very different in any number of other passages, of which I will cite only the following:
I will hide my face from them. I will see what their posterity is, for they are a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faithfulness. I have said, “I will cast them into the most remote corners, I will make them cease from human memory, ” for they are a nation devoid of counsel, and they have no understanding. Their vine is from the vine of Sodom and the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are grapes of gall; their clusters are bitter. Their wine is the venom of dragons and the cruel gall of poisonous snakes. All this is hidden with me, locked away in my treasuries. Vengeance and retribution belong to me. (Deuteronomy 32:20-35)
These words were spoken about that nation, and there are similar statements elsewhere, as in Isaiah 3:1-2, 8; 5:3-6; Deuteronomy 9:5-6; Matthew 12:39; 23:27-28; John 8:44; and all through Jeremiah and Ezekiel. All the same, these statements that seem to contradict each other turn out to be in agreement in the light of a body of teaching, which tells us that Israel and Judah in the Word do not mean Israel and Judah but the church in each of two senses - one in which it lies in ruins and the other in which it is to be restored by the Lord. There are other contrasts like this in the Word that enable us to see that the Word cannot be understood apart from a body of teaching.
John 4
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Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
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(although Jesus himself didn't baptize, but his disciples),
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he left Judea, and departed into Galilee.
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He needed to pass through Samaria.
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So he came to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son, Joseph.
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Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
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A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink."
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For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
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The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?" (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
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Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. From where then have you that living water?
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Are you greater than our father, Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself, as did his children, and his livestock?"
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Jesus answered her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
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but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw."
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Jesus said to her, "Go, call your husband, and come here."
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The woman answered, "I have no husband." Jesus said to her, "You said well, 'I have no husband,'
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for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly."
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The woman said to him, "Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
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Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship."
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Jesus said to her, "Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father.
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You worship that which you don't know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
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But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers.
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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
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The woman said to him, "I know that Messiah comes," (he who is called Christ). "When he has come, he will declare to us all things."
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Jesus said to her, "I am he, the one who speaks to you."
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At this, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, "What are you looking for?" or, "Why do you speak with her?"
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So the woman left her water pot, and went away into the city, and said to the people,
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"Come, see a man who told me everything that I did. Can this be the Christ?"
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They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
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In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, "Rabbi, eat."
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But he said to them, "I have food to eat that you don't know about."
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The disciples therefore said one to another, "Has anyone brought him something to eat?"
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Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish his work.
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Don't you say, 'There are yet four months until the harvest?' Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.
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He who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit to eternal life; that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
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For in this the saying is true, 'One sows, and another reaps.'
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I sent you to reap that for which you haven't labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor."
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From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, "He told me everything that I did."
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So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days.
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Many more believed because of his word.
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They said to the woman, "Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world."
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After the two days he went out from there and went into Galilee.
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For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
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So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went to the feast.
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Jesus came therefore again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water into wine. There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.
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When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him, and begged him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
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Jesus therefore said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe."
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The nobleman said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies."
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Jesus said to him, "Go your way. Your son lives." The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.
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As he was now going down, his servants met him and reported, saying "Your child lives!"
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So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. They said therefore to him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him."
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So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives." He believed, as did his whole house.
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This is again the second sign that Jesus did, having come out of Judea into Galilee.
