Felix Bravo’s Weblog

Eusebio Tanicala (x@xy.com)  wrote: Mga Kasama sa pbcaa yahoogroups:
I’ve asked F_ and M_ to stop using the pbcaa blog in their issue clarification. I told them to use their private emails if there are items they want to study or clarify.  Let’s make the blog positive. I requested our webmasters (brother P_and brother A_) to screen entries/postings. Thank you for your cooperation. Your brother,  Eusebio Tanicala

 Ed Maquiling (y@xx.com) wrote:

And to add a positive note to that, here’s the news:

A lady came to our meeting hall one Sunday.  I did not recognize her from Eve’s side, but that’s no reason not to be nice. After the worship she told me she was strengthened by our positive approach to learning the Word, treating it as God speaking to us, making it our guide in everyday living, listening to its encouragement to live on as a people who are not meant for this world, looking beyond this age for our reward.

She heard about me from my own enemies, who did nothing but discredit me.  She wondered why I never retaliated, that is, paid harsh words for harsh words. That kept her thinking: Her husband made her a punching bag after they had an altercation, in which she fought back with all her might. Realizing that she was no match to a male abuser who forgot his vows to love and to cherish her till death do them part, she decided to come to our meeting hall. She wanted to commit suicide and came to me for advice.

For three Sundays she listened.  Finally, she took the courage to tell me that she wants to be a part of the group who calls themselves Christians. I immersed her then, in a nice pool in one of those exclusive subdivisions in Cebu, in the property leased by an American brother, Mark Vandyke of Lexmark Corporation.

This is one reason why in the midst of all these hot discussions, I remain cool. It is not the non-Christians alone who are watching us.  Brethren who are bored of our discussions are watching us. Christians who are non-committed to any issue pro and con are watching us. The nice young men who are looking for good examples to emulate are watching us.  The others who are just looking for trouble are watching us. And most of all God in heaven is watching us.

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We will now examine the text, 1 Corinthians 16:1-4, for what it teaches.

Now concerning the collection for the saints. “The collection,” “the contribution,” Greek tes logeias, is the word appearing in the papyri manuscripts, used in the sense of a religious contribution for the pagan temple and the pagan god (Rogers & Rogers, A Linguistic & Exegetical Key to the Greek New Testament, 389). It may refer to “taxes as well as voluntary contributions collected at worship for charity,” which in a way was “similar to the poll tax paid annually to the temple by the faithful Jews who lived inside as well as outside of Palestine” (Colin Brown, gen. ed., The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 3:854).

Here it is used by Paul in the sense of church contribution. Greek has no indefinite article, but it has a definite article which also corresponds to “the,” the definite article of English. What is the job of the definite article? It defines, limits or specifies the noun that comes next to it. The presence of definite article tes in this text signifies that this is a special collection, not just any other. It does not say, “Now concerning a collection for the saints.”

Should Christians tithe? The Old Testament taught tithing, and Judaism, which existed contemporaneously with Christianity, was supported by tithes, but “it is surprising to discover that never once is tithing mentioned in any of the instructions given to the church” (Colin Brown, 3:854).

For the saints. Greek tes eis tous hagious. This collection is for God’s people, the Christians in Jerusalem, who “evidently had grave difficulties in the society…(Acts 6:1)” (Rogers & Rogers, 389). tous hagious, “the saints,” is the fiscal term applied to the church, they who have been sanctified, “made saints,” “made holy,” by the blood of Jesus.

1 Corinthians 16 is one of those passages where Paul teaches that the Lord’s people should share their wealth to care for the needs of the poor (the others being 2 Corinthians 8:1-5; 9:6; Ephesians 4:28; Romans 15:26), “but never once does he demand, as a command from God, that any specific amount be given” (Brown, 3:854).

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Stop a minute and tell me if your Christian shield has been quite strong, and that you have not experienced, not even for a second, any disappointment at all.

I want to be honest with you. There were times I had. Disappointment with self. With family. With others.

Disappointment puts on two faces: Unfulfilled desires and expectations unmet. As a result, you feel as if the world has caved in under you, and you find yourself floating and without support, and you’re unhappy. Disappointment is just that. It is “unhappiness caused by the failure of one’s hopes, desires, or expectations” (From Thesaurus, provided by Houghton, Mifflin & Company; see Answers.com).

And if that is not enough, disappointment too may result to discouragement. Some out-of-duty Christians who have been disappointed have also been discouraged. These two words— disappointment and discouragement— may differ in meaning, yet one of their similarities lies in the number of letters they have. They may be two peas in a pod.

One of the great men in history experienced discouragement that resulted from some disappointment. In 1841, he wrote: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall be better I cannot tell. I actually forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is impossible. I must die or be better.” On April 15, 1865, he died, a victim of an assassin’s bullet. His name’s Abraham Lincoln.

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Why are American voters preoccupied with presidential birthdays? Questions have been asked: “How old is John McCain?” “Hillary Clinton?” “Obama?”

If age means anything, McCain is 72, Hillary is 60, and Obama is by far the youngest of them all: 46. If Hillary is elected, she would be the first woman president of the US. If Obama, the first African-American to occupy the White House; but definitely not the youngest (both Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy became president at age 43).

Why are they so concerned about presidential ages? Is it because of John McCain? If elected, McCain would be the oldest to occupy the Oval Office (Ronald Reagan became president at 69).

They never ask this question of Romney (if elected he could be the first Mormon president of America); or of Edwards (he could be the second member of the church to occupy the White House, next to James Garfield); of Giuliani (he could be the first American president with an Italian-sounding name). These three are not strong contenders.

Vladimir Putin, president of Russian Federation, does not like McCain, not because he is also a Republican like Bush but because he could follow in the steps of Bush. But to Felipe de Jesus Calderon Hinojosa, president of Mexico, such bloody fears of Vladimir are unfounded. The Mexican president cares for neither Obama nor Hillary. So what?

Well, so what? They say that wisdom comes with having many birthday candles. King Rehoboam’s damnation was because he had listened to his youthful advisers, they add. So you want someone older? As one American columnist has pointed out, in the case of Miss Britney Spears this doesn’t seem to ring true. The wisdom of age eludes her. Her Baptist background was no help either.

Methuselah holds the record of the being the oldest man in the Bible (age: 969). Wonder what he was doing while his grandson Noah was constructing the ark. For the information of everyone, Methuselah had perished in the year of the Flood.

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(This article is written per request of two Christian ladies, now based abroad, and of the five who like others have been reading this blog. Thanks for not being discouraged by the mind-boggling intricacies of the New Testament Greek).

The Greek verbs are somewhat like and somewhat unlike the English verbs—they have tense, voice, mood, person and number. Five very important traits a Greek verb cannot do without. English verbs have four: tense, voice, mood, and number.

Tense here does not mean the Greek verb is capable of having nervous tension (See the meaning at Answers.com). We are talking here about grammatical tense. It is the way language expresses time, and you will know by just looking at the verb if the action or event happened yesterday (as in English verb saw), is happening today (see, is seeing, are seeing), or will happen tomorrow (will see, shall see). This property of a verb, shown in the endings of a Greek verb, which may also be found in the endings of an English verb, shows information relating to time. See Wikipedia, in Answers.com.

In the present active indicative, the verb is in the present tense and speaks of the action happening today.

“Tense is the quality of the verb which has to do with action. There are two outstanding things as to the matter of action, i.e., the time of action and the kind of action. As to time of action, there are three possibilities: past, present and future. As to kind of action, there are (for present consideration) two possibilities: linear or punctiliar. Linear action is an action regarded as a line ( ______ ). It is also called progressive or continuous action. Punctiliar action is action regarded as a point (.), i.e., action contemplated as a single perspective” (Ray Summers, Essentials of New Testament Greek, 11. Broadman Press, 1950).

Voice. Every verb has a voice. It does not mean that verb can speak, or that it has a sound. The voice of the verb indicates how the subject performs, whether it is doing the action, or it is being acted upon. In the sentence, “The Lord heals Peter’s mother-in-law,” the Lord is doing the action of healing. The verb of this sentence is in the active voice. The subject of the sentence is “the Lord,” the verb is “heals” (present tense, singular), and the direct object is “Peter’s mother-in-law.”

The voice, in grammar, is “the form of a verb indicating the relation between the participants (subject, object) in a narrated event and the event itself. English grammar distinguishes between the active voice (”The hunter killed the bear”) and the passive voice (”The bear was killed by the hunter”). In the active voice, the emphasis is on the subject of the active verb (the agent performing the action named), whereas the passive voice indicates that the subject receives the action” (Britannica Concise Encyclopedia, in Answers.com).

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Indeed, why? Homer was Greek, so Greek was his language. Why should I be interested in the language of this man? Homer spoke and wrote in classical Greek, and I heard that the New Testament Greek was koine, the dialect of the unrefined, the language of the common man. I even had a hard time with English. And Greek is a difficult language, in fact much more difficult than English. Why make things so hard on myself?

“Do I have to know Greek to go to heaven?” The answer is, No, you don’t have to.

“Do I have to know New Testament Greek to read my New Testament?” Again, the answer is, No, but someone, maybe not you, has to have a working knowledge of New Testament Greek.

If you trust your theologians, you don’t have to know Greek. But listen…

Renaissance dealt a great blow to the Middle Ages, when some scholars revived the art of learning ancient languages, one of them Greek. When the Greek New Testament was made available in costly copies, that also made available the knowledge that had been withheld from the world for centuries. These readers of the Greek New Testament began to distrust Catholic theologians. Luther, a Catholic theologian, even distrusted his fellow Catholic theologians.

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THE EARNEST OF THE SPIRIT. Earnest is a noun, not adjective and is used to translate the Greek arrabon. Vine says it is probably a Phoenician word (because of its Phoenician root) and introduced into Greece. This word refers to the earnest-money or pledge deposited by purchaser and forfeited if the purchase was not completed (Vine’s, 2:11).

In classical Greek. The Greek word arrabon was borrowed from the Semitic erabon, “a legal concept from the language of business and trade” (Colin Brown, 2:39). Found rarely in Aristotle and later grammarians, it means: (a) “an instalment with which a man secures a legal claim upon a thing as yet unpaid for”; (b) “an earnest, an advance payment, by which a contract becomes valid in law”; (c) “in one passage, a pledge (cf. Genesis 38:17ff)” (Ibid., 2:40).

In modern Greek, arrabona is an engagement ring (Vine’s, 2:11).

In the Septuagint, it is used to refer to the pledge Judah gave to the supposed harlot (his daughter-in-law Tamar) in payment for the fleeting pleasures of sex (Genesis 38:17, 18, 20).

In the New Testament, is used in reference to the “Holy Spirit as the divine pledge for all future blessedness” (Vine’s, 11). It is taught in 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:14.

2 Corinthians 1:21-22. The passage reads: “Now he that establisheth us with you in Christ, and anointed us, is God, who also sealed us, and gave us the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts” (ASV).

God is identified as the one who “establishes,” the Greek phrase ho de bebaion hemas, a participle used as substantive, translated as “the one making us firm.” The infinitive verb, bebaioo, means “to make a legal guarantee” (Rogers & Rogers, 394). bebaioo is a word that “appears often in the guarantee clause of a bill of sale” (Ibid.). God is the one who makes Christians firm in Christ, and He himself guarantees that act. Since it is in the present tense, it could be translated thus: “Now He that keeps establishing us in Christ,” “Now he that continually makes us firm in Christ.” His faithfulness is a guarantee that even until now He can keep on making Christians firm in Christ.

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