Jeff, sometimes we all wrestle with the fine points of Scripture. Sometimes we fight so hard that sometime we wrest the passages of the Bible right out of their context, ripping them away and tackinging them to our conspiracy boards with strings going every which way. The mistake, of course, is the wrestling wrestling. Just as Jacob's wrestling match, with our own minds we wrestle against the one angel who is more than willing to explain things to us. It creates quite a mess . The "angel" I refer to is the Holy Spirit. He is the one that will lead, guide, and refresh our memory to things He has said. (You now that it oesn't really matter what anybody else says.)
Now, here is some things I have learned:
one word combined with another and another becomes one phrase.
phrases combine into verses.
verses combine into paragraphs.
paragraphs combine into letters.
letters combine with other letters.
combination of letters fit into the context of the entire Bible.
surgical excision only benefits doctors and patients in Hospitals.
A realization came to me a while back when I was confronted with the "predestination dilemma." Applying this, and and knowing that Scripture does not ever contradict itself, I reasoned that the key is understanding contests whether words or phrases or Books of the Bible, it simply does not matter. One has to swallow the whole Book. The key to the door of understanding is the phrase contained in Ephesians 1:5 "He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will…" Berean Standard Bible.
Think of it not as a phrase but as one word: HepredestinedusforadoptionasHissonsthroughJesusChrist
Maybe you can see that just like Jesus is one and only Word of God, predestination in Him is only one Word.
As an aside, I was raised in the University Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, and went AWOL in my early teens. The only benefit was early childhood Sunday School where I learned all the basic Bible stories, including the ones about Jesus. Perhaps it was the beginning of discovering the path, but the rest was just twaddle.
I hope I have conveyed the concept/idea/word to you correctly.
