Handout - Western Christadelphian Bible School

afraid” - clearly a description of Israel’s condition before the Lord’s return and therefore
before the establishment of God’s kingdom.
Incidentally, speaking of the time that is to follow their deliverance from Gog, God says he
will never again hide his face from his people (Ezekiel 39:29) and that they will never again
be permitted to pollute God’s Holy Name (Ezekiel 39:7). This implies (notice the deduction)
that the Gogian invasion is the last time that Israel will ever be punished for their sins by an
invading army. And this invasion takes place before the return of Christ (to deliver them and
then set up the kingdom).
So parallel passages are an important way to converge on scripture teaching. But their
reliability is limited to the level of confidence associated with their underlying direct
statement(s), and we need to take great care that the parallelism is not merely superficial - or
is otherwise contradicted by the respective contexts of the passages being compared.
By the way, scriptural types, and parables, may be regarded as a particular kind of
parallelism.
4 The Scientific, or Hypothetical, Method
In this case, when confronted by an obscure passage, we guess at its meaning, and then
assemble corroborative facts in support of our guess. This is the way that scientists proceed if
the objects of their investigations are beyond direct observation. Of course they don’t call
their hypothesis a “guess”. The usual word is “model”. Nevertheless it is still a guess.
There is nothing wrong with this method - as long as we are aware of its limitations. We
constantly use it and it is very helpful; particularly when making exhortational points. For
example: we may suppose (notice the hypothesis?) that the centurion whose servant Jesus
healed (Luke 7:1-10) is Cornelius of Acts 10. There is not the least direct evidence for this
in scripture; nor can we deduce it from the record. But by applying principles of parallelism,
we may be able to support the hypothesis to the extent that it becomes sufficiently probable
(read, “believable”). In this particular case, examination of the records reveals these common
facts:
(a) Both men were centurions.
(b) They both had faithful, devout servants who were dear to them.
(c) They were both lovers of Israel.
(d) They were both benefactors of the Jewish people.
(e) They were both God-fearing men.
(f) They were both aware of the work of Jesus.
Perhaps further points of similarity might be added, but these may be sufficient to support the
notion that the two individuals are the same man. A single point of similarity would not
cause us to pay much further attention to the hypothesis. Two would make us wonder.
Three or more will progressively rivet our attention.
It should be realised that making the list of corroborative facts longer merely reduces the
probability of error in the hypothesis; but not to zero - it cannot produce certainty. Even if
we could add to the list that both men were left handed, enjoyed driving fast chariots and
wore a particular brand of sandal, we would still be faced, at bottom, with a guess. It would
be a good guess, to be sure, but could not be insisted upon with absolute decision. Unless
there are grounds for believing that the list of corroborative facts allows of only one possible
interpretation (and usually this is highly improbable), even the best-supported hypotheses are
uncertain to a degree. Generally, each new supporting fact contributes progressively less to
the total probability. But even the most thorough collection of supportive facts cannot
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