Title: 13
Author: Joe G
Last saved by: PJD-SymCast
Company: GDC

© 2004 Joe Griffin		04-10-12.CC02-351 /

Thieme: Isagogics, Categories, & Exegesis; Client Nations, Historical Downtrends, & Predator Nations, Isa 28:10

32.	The spiritual leaders of Israel have gone so far astray from their assigned duties of studying and teaching the orders from God in His Word that they are about to submit to orders from the invading Assyrian armies:
Botterweck, G. Johannes, Helmer Ringgren, and Heinz-Josef Fabry (eds.).  Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament.  Translated by Douglas W. Scott.  (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2003), 12:563-64:
The expression tzaw latsaw tzaw latzaw qaw laqaw qaw laqaw ze‛eyr sham ze‛eyr sham in Isaiah 28:10-13 in the oracle against the priests and prophets of Jerusalem has received extremely varied interpretations. Some scholars suggest that it represents the rendering of Assyrian orders and as such the impending deportation.
33.	Isaiah’s message was a stark warning directed toward the spiritual leaders of Israel.  It denigrated their deviation into idolatry, mocked their teachings as incomprehensible, and prophesied the nation’s submission to the even greater incomprehensible commandments of an invading Assyrian army.
34.	Isaiah thus implies the disastrous result of rejecting and then ignoring the clear commandments of the Word of God which they were commissioned to study and teach.
Thieme, Tongues, 6-7:
Doctrine must be presented in an isagogical, categorical, and exegetical manner—not once, but repeatedly, until it lodges permanently in the soul.  [Isagogics is the interpretation of Scripture within the framework of its historical setting or prophetical environment.  Exegesis is a word-by-word, verse-by-verse, grammatical, syntactical, etymological, and contextual analysis of Scripture from the original languages of the Bible—Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek—to extract principles and delineate biblical doctrines.  Categories are the classification of Bible doctrine according to its subject matter.  By using the hermeneutical principles of exegesis and comparing Scripture to Scripture, biblical subjects emerge and are organized into divisions of doctrine in order to progressively build truth upon truth, complex doctrine on basic doctrine.]
When doctrine is faithfully taught and consistently assimilated, “a little here, a little there,” the various portions of Scripture eventually fall into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Gradually, you expand your frame of reference for receiving and retaining further doctrines.  You are now able to comprehend more advanced concepts and doctrines until, saturated with divine viewpoint, you become spiritually self-sustaining.  [Divine viewpoint is the thinking, value system, and problem-solving ability gleaned from Bible doctrine.  Spiritually self-sustaining refers to the absolute sufficiency of the spiritual life.  To be spiritually self-sustaining is to think divine viewpoint gained from doctrine resident in the soul, relying solely on God for strength, encouragement, comfort, and problem solving instead of relying on people or circumstances.]
Isaiah tried to convey these concepts to Israel, but the Jews continued to reject his message.
35.	Israel was a client nation but in a major historical downtrend and under the prophetic plan of their dispensation Isaiah had the delegated authority to denounce their spiritual apostasy and prophecy divine discipline for it.
36.	A client nation has great privilege and protection in the Devil’s world but these assets are accompanied by great responsibilities.
37.	The Roman Empire emerged in the fullness of time as the government best qualified to become the Church Age’s first client nation.  The reigns of the Antonine Caesars provided the environment for the rapid growth of incipient Christianity.
38.	But as we have learned, Rome’s fall in the late fifth century was coincidental with the demise of the school of Antioch and its literal system of hermeneutics and the rise of the school of Alexandria and its allegorical system.
39.	The subsequent dominance of the Roman Catholic Church led to a millennium of ignorance enforced by an illegitimate hierarchy in Rome and imposed by an illegitimate priesthood throughout Europe.
40.	The United States emerged in due time to become the client nation that provided the environment in which these papal shackles could be broken while freedom of religion allowed Protestant theologians to recover the legitimate system of literal hermeneutics and rediscover dispensational theology.
41.	But like Israel and like the Roman church, Protestant America is in an historical downtrend and Isaiah’s prophetic warning of an external invasion accompanied by the incoherent babblings of a strange language remind us of our present status as a client nation.
42.	Client nation responsibilities include teaching doctrine to the saved, evangelism of the lost, stewardship of the Word, sending out missionaries to other nations, and providing a haven of refuge for the Jewish Diaspora.
43.	Too few teach doctrine to the saved, evangelism is has lost its impact due to fuzzy Gospels, stewardship of the Word is challenged by assaults promoted by a degenerate secular population, most missionaries are ineffective due to lack of doctrine and subscription to fuzzy Gospels, and we detect an undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the land.
44.	All of these downtrends can be focused back on the pulpit and its failures over the past forty years.  And the greatest failure is abandoning the stewardship of the Word of God which is the subject of Dr. Radmacher’s next paragraph.

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