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Eagle Eyes : Cloudy
Vision______________________________________________________________________
William Branhams followers insist that he was Elijah of Malachi
4, and therefore had a
divine right and supernatural ability to interpret the
scripture. His interpretation of
scripture is accepted over any other, no matter the source, even
scripture itself. This is
especially troubling because William Branham often paid little
attention to context or
even the simplest laws of grammar when interpreting a passage of
scripture. Oneexample is Matthew 24:28, a verse frequently repeated
in message pulpits today.
For wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles be
gathered together.
-MT 24:28 KJV
What is that carcass? The carcass is what the eagles feed on.
Now, an eagle is
considered in the Bible, a prophet. A prophet is the eagle.
God--God calls himself
a eagle, and we're eaglets then, the--the believers. You see?
And what is the
carcass that they feed on? Is the Word. Wherever the Word is,
the true nature of
the bird will show itself. See? A eagle, which wants fresh meat,
he must have his
fresh meat. -Questions & Answers, Conduct, Order and
Doctrine #2, 1964
(tape#64-0823M)
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What is the carcass? The Word. He is the Word, the Carcass,
Christ,
Christ in you, the same yesterday, today, and forever. -The Seed
is not
Heir with the Shuck, vol. 6, no 4R, 1965 (tape#65-0218)
William Branhams intention here is so clear that Voice of God
Recordings actually
chooses to capitalize the word carcass!
The Greek word translated as carcass, isptoma: 1. the fallen
body of one dead or slain,
a corpse, a carcass. 2. that which has fallen 3. (metaphorical)
a downfall, defeat,
calamity, error, or lapse into sin.
There is simply no way around the obvious here; the original
Greek word carries an evenmore negative connotation than the
English word can convey! In order to continue to
accept William Branhams interpretation of Matthew 24:28, one
would have to come to
grips with this disturbing picture:
Wherever theptoma is, there will the aetos be gathered
together.
To make it clearer still:
Wherever the (dead corpse, the lapse into sin & error, the
downfall &
calamity) are, there will the (vultures? or is it eagles?...
eaglets,
prophet, called out, elect, bride?) be gathered together.
One can see how moot the discussion ofeaglesvs. vultures is in
light of the clear --and
grim-- reality of what Jesus meant when he said
carcass.Whichever bird it is, you dont
want to be one of them. This isnt splitting hairs. This isnt
twisting a dead mans wordsfor the purposes of discrediting him, as
some will accuse. This is a poignant example of
reckless and irresponsible eisigesis of scripture, as Peter
himself warned:
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there are some things in them [Pauls epistles] that are
difficult to
understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their
own
destruction, as they do the other scriptures. - 2 Peter 3:16
The story here isnt the obvious error, as no one understands the
bible perfectly, all of
the time. The point is this: the man making the error claimed to
be the prophet to this
age, to have a divinely gifted ability to unpack the scriptures,
and yet time and again, we
see him reading his own bias into the Bible even when honesty to
the text will not
support that view, and worse, even changing the scripture in
order to make it work.
This is not a prophet of God opening the Word to the people. It
is a tragically deceived
man, intent of bending Gods Word to make it support his
delusions of grandeur, and in
the process, causing thousands of ministers to stand in front of
congregations --perhaps
hundreds of thousands-- and relay this type of biblical
exposition as the revealed Word
for the hour.
Paul urges us to present ourselves to God as one approved, a
worker who has no need to
be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2Tim.2:15) He
goes on in v.16 to
admonish us to avoid irreverent babble. Though many assume he
was referring to
gossip here, the context reveals that he was dealing with false
doctrine. (2Tim.2:16-18)
Will we reverently treat the Word of God as the very words of
God, filtering all mens
teaching through the totality of scripture, or will we drawn
away by the doctrines of a
man who is clearly identified many times in scripture, not as
Elijah, but as a false
prophet who made a career out of irreverent babble.
Eisigisis: The act of reading an understanding, or opinion into
a
text, usually biblical text, which may or may not be supported
or
evident by the text itself - in accordance with the persons
own
presuppositions, agendas, and/or biases. This is the opposite
of
exegesis, which means to derive the meaning out of the text.
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