When I was a kid my dad bought a huge book, spent a lot of money on it, and was quite excited to have it. It was the Strong’s Concordance and Dictionary. At that time I had no idea what it was or how to use it, I was just a kid. Much later I found the real importance of it, and now that resource, along with many other resources, are freely at my fingertips online. That astounds me. With the advanced resources that only the dedicated few, mostly pastors or teachers had, now available to everyone, it amazes me the amount of false teaching that still goes on. Either you have some that like to hen peck scripture, ignoring others, or those that get too deep and try to redefine words and get lost in translation.
My story is not that exciting, I came to Christ at a fairly young age, but that also came with a price. I also had a very legalistic view for may years, and prided myself more in what I did, rather than what He did. For only about the last few years after a number of life changing events and a lot of listening, reading and experiences, have I come around to put that legalism aside and really see scripture as what it is, God’s Word. God gave me a “large picture” mindset, the thing that makes me a good troubleshooter. In the IT and computer world I have a solid foundation of basic principles and frameworks, that allows me to see the big picture and put a lot of individual smaller things that may seem irrelevant by themselves, but when complied all together help me see where the fault may be. I can shift perspectives throughout the smaller segments, looking at different angles, and then coming up with possible resolutions. Works great for fixing computers, networks or phones, so I started to use the same thing in my approach to the Bible. It opened up a whole new world.
I do not claim to that great of a writer, my education is not past high school and I have not attended seminary or other higher education for teaching, but I do know my way around common sense and a reference book. As social media has opened up a lot of opinions, I see more and more false idea’s and claims, also as I have studied and listened more, the more American churches look less than what was established in Acts. I have listened to plenty of sermons that little red flags show up, or more nudges of the Holy Spirit, that something is amiss, and afterwards a little studying up I discover a reason I questioned what was said. Sometimes I have written those down. I decided to compile all the things I have to keep repeating online into this blog.
In this blog I am trying to stay away from opinion, some of it will be, but scripture can speak for its self. Sometimes I will quote scripture (in NASB 19954 unless otherwise noted), but a lot of the time just give references. I did that for two reasons, first its easier to read and less space, but more importantly I hope you will look them up and read and research yourself. Please don’t take my word for it, its not my Word, let the Holy Spirit give you the interpretation.
As for the title of this blog, I lived in California for a while in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada facing the San Joaquin Valley.1 In the valley there is a meteorological phenomenon called tule fog2. It is a super dense fog that is less than 600ft off the ground, and can frequently bring the visibility to 0. It’s been known to be only 10 or 15 feet thick at times, those driving or waking can barely see in front of them, but look out a second floor window and its sunny, and looks like you are looking at the top of the clouds. In this world of misinformation, or over-information, scripture may be like walking around in a thick fog, but a little further up there is clarity. That is what I hope this blog can be, bring clarity of scripture out of the fog, where you can see it clearly.
1Cover photo is a picture of tule fog over the San Joaquin Valley, You are looking at Visalia, CA if the fog would not of been there. This picture was taken from the Sierra Nevada range and you can see the Coastal Ranges on the other side, typically its not that clear to see it, so this is not a common site.
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