According to John: We Must Work while It Is Day
Well, that and some additional news …
Tonight (Thursday, June 25, 2015) via Google Hangout on Air I’ll be talking about chapter 19 of Dr. Herold Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John, title “We Must Work while It Is Day.” There’s a great deal of interesting material in this chapter, and I keep adding to it as I read and re-read the passages. I’ll be talking about what the Sabbath means to Christians and also about some basic concepts in eschatology, not to mention eschatology itself.
I also want to give everyone a tentative schedule for the next few weeks and let you know what I’m planning after this series is done.
Here’s the schedule (edited June 30 to add the interview with Drew Smith):
July 2 – Chapter 20 – United by Love
July 9 – Chapter 21 – Jesus Wept
July 16 – Interview with Dr. Drew Smith, author of Reframing a Relevant Faith.
July 23 – Chapter 22 – Rivers of Living Water (since I’m preparing for a Sunday School series in August on the time of the exile, I will doubtless reference Ezekiel’s temple!)
July 30 – Chapter 23 – Where Are You From?
August 3 – Chapter 24 – Abide in My Love
August 10 – Closing interview with Dr. Herold Weiss
I am also planning to schedule a re-do of my interview with Dr. C. Drew Smith, which may move some of these sessions, or it may simply fill the open slot on August 3. This interview is now on the schedule for July 16, with the later chapters moved down to fill in.
I think I’ve mentioned a few times how far out of the box this whole series has taken me. I diligently pursued nuts and bolts of biblical studies, avoiding theology and liturgy as I would abominations (whatever those may be!). So to spend this much time thinking about theology from a biblical book was somewhat of a challenge. I’m going to move somewhat closer to my roots as we move forward, both in the sense of my approach, which will involved more nuts and bolts, and in terms of the topic, which will be eschatology, something rooted in my upbringing and education in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
I’m going to start by using the book Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide by Edward W. H. Vick as a guide to learning the general terminology and getting a view of the map of ideas on this topic. That will be quite theological, of course. Then I plan to look at a number of apocalyptic and/or otherwise eschatological passages in scripture, looking for the author’s intentions in the text and then also at how those words have become part of the various views about eschatology in the Christian community today. The idea will be to understand how people come to their conclusions, why there is so much variety, and how one can find one’s own way through the material. This series will likely continue for some time, as I have the complete books of Daniel and Revelation, not to mention a large number of shorter passages elsewhere. And yes, I would treat the first six chapters of Daniel as material that is just as eschatological (or not) as chapters 7-12.
If nothing else, I’ll have plenty of opportunity to learn new things myself! I have been gratified, however, to see that a few of these sessions have YouTube views in the teens, though most stay single digit. I really expected three or four to follow along the way. Over time, who knows! I am grateful to those who have listened and who have commented, either via the Q&A app or by e-mail. It has been a great experience already, and we still have several weeks to go.
