the Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 27 May 2012
and The Salvation Army Alberni Valley Ministries, 15 May 2022
by Captain Michael Ramsay
by Captain Michael Ramsay
This is the original version. To view the 2022 version, please click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2022/05/proverbs-17-910-yirah-fear-of-lord.html
This week – for those of us who have been reading through the Bible together as a community – we started on the book of Proverbs. As I was considering these readings, I ran across a number of more or less contemporary proverbs about optimists and pessimists:
– In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. ~Daniel L. Reardon
– Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. ~Oscar Wilde
– Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. ~Gil Stern
– An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan
– Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back. ~Author Unknown[1]
My favourite: This is more of a definition than a proverb actually but both Susan and Rebecca read this quote to me in the past couple of weeks so I thought that I would share this from Lemony Snicket:
– An Optimist is a word which here refers to a person…who thinks hopeful and pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!" ~Lemony Snicket[2]
A proverb is a wise saying with instructions for living an effective life. The book of Proverbs – along with Job, Psalms, and some apocryphal books (Wisdom, Sirach) – are classified as wisdom literature. Wisdom literature offers insights for living while pondering the difficulties of life. Proverbs are characterized by short, memorable statements that reflect the world as we know it, as well as the relationship between God and people.[3]
It is significant that proverbs use the divine of God (YHWH), the tetragrammaton, or other such names (ie. Elohim) which specify the LORD, the maker of the heavens and earth.[4] The writer of these proverbs and the writers of all the wisdom literature have no doubt that indeed, as Doctrine 2 of TSA affirms, ‘there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.’[5] And the compiler, the teacher of proverbs often contrasts the wisdom of following God to the folly of following our own will or of following generally bad counsel that does not display reverence for our Lord.
Proverbs do not pretend to represent a systematic theology; a proverb rather ‘imagines the moral life as presenting two ways, each with an intrinsic dynamism.’[6] There is no separation of Church and State. No matter what we tell ourselves, in reality there is no separation between the sacred and the secular realm.[7] Proverbs champions the truth, with many different examples, that people have very real choices in life but they all boil down to this: either we follow God and live or we can follow ourselves or anyone else for that matter and die (Cf. also Deut. 30:11-20, Judges 21:25, Ps 56:13, Prov 11:19, 13:14, 14:27, 18:21, Jer 21:8, John 5:24, Rom 2:1-16, 6:13, 1 John 3:14).[8]
The theme of Proverbs can be summed up in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 (Cf. Job 28:28, Ps 111:10, Eccl 12:13).[9] Proverbs 1:7: ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.’
Before we can be wise (Prov 9:10), before we can have any real knowledge (Prov 1:7) about the way the world works we need to fear the Lord.[10] The beginning of any understanding in this world is a fear of God. Well what does that mean? What does it mean to have the fear of the LORD’?
Does it mean to panic? Does it mean to be timid? No. It is different. To be timid is to cower. To be timid is like…have you ever seen an abused animal who has been terrorized? She pulls back as soon as you reach out your arm. Like the battered spouse, the timid person is walking on eggshells at all times. This concept shows up in scriptures in the book of Timothy, where Paul tells us that this timidity (Greek: deilia) is not from God. Timidity is not the beginning of wisdom. [11]
The timid person is like the person in the parable of the talents that the servants were given. Remember that parable that Jesus tells (Matt. 25, cf. Luke 19)? The king gives three people talents (money). The third one is so afraid (Greek: phobeo) that he does not even invest his talents. He is paralyzed with fear. This timidity creates what the Apostle Paul calls in Romans 8:15, ‘a spirit of bondage’, like a phobia. In Romans 8:15 (like Matt 25:35), the Greek word Paul uses is actually ‘phobos’ – from which we derive the word ‘phobia’, and this as we know refers to an irrational fear.[12] This kind of irrational fear is not the beginning of wisdom. It is not from God: phobia. A spirit of timidity (deilia) Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 1:7, God has not given us; He instead gives us power and love and a sound mind. Sometimes even we Christians forget this.
Many –but not all- Christians believe in the so-called ‘rapture’. (The word is not mentioned in the Bible at all actually.) The idea behind the rapture is that at some point in time, God will snatch up either those He loves (the more popular belief) or those He hates (a less popular belief) and leave the rest behind. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have a popular book series entitled, ‘Left Behind’[13] that I believe follows the fictional lives of characters who were indeed left behind. Now there may be merit to the idea of the rapture and I am certainly not arguing against it here[14] but I have heard of people and denominations that concentrate so much on the rapture that they actually paralyze people with fear, creating phobias and timidity.
We had a professor at College (William and Catherine Booth College) who was raised in that phobia-producing kind of church environment and he tells us that one night (I think when he was a young adult) he heard a car horn or a train whistle and he woke up in absolute terror. He was so frightened that that sound was the trumpet of the Lord and that he had missed the rapture: he wasn’t chosen. He was left behind. He was terrified that he might have been left behind.
Last week I met a friend when I was walking to church. He told me a similar story. He was raised in a similar type of phobia-producing environment. He told me that as a child often he would wake up in the middle of the night and walk or run to his parents’ room, dread-filled, terrified that maybe they were raptured and he was left behind. Phobias, timidity and this panic: these are not representative of the fear of the Lord that Proverbs is talking about. This is a terror that people, often well-meaning people (sometimes unintentionally) put into the minds of innocent souls.
That being said, the word for fear here in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 is not totally absent of the concept of a terror of sorts. The Hebrew word is yir'ah – Allen P. Ross tells us that, “The term yir'ah can describe dread (Deut 1:29), being terrified (Jonah 1:10), standing in awe (1 Kings 3:28), or having reverence (Lev 19:3). With the Lord as the object, yir'ah captures both aspects of shrinking back in fear and of drawing close in awe. It is not a trembling dread that paralyzes action, but neither is it a polite reverence (Plaut, p. 32).”[15]
Strong’s dictionary and concordance both define yir'ah as this ‘fear’ or ‘moral reverence’ acknowledging that yir'ah encompasses more than that – it can refer to a sense of moral dread or even of an exceeding moral fearfulness.[16] What does this mean? What is the difference between this reverent, moral fearfulness that leads to knowledge or wisdom and the fearful, panic-stricken, timid phobia that leads to cowering?
We are all familiar with the word ‘deference’, right? Deference means respect. People often have a certain amount of deference (respect) for our uniforms. I have had many people alter their language and try not to swear in my presence because of my uniform that represents my office as a representative of God. Even non-believers tend to offer this token of deference to The Salvation Army uniform.
In many other countries or in private or still in some public schools here, students generally have a certain amount of deference for their teachers. They respect their authority. They seem to be a little less likely to speak out than children in most North American public school systems. I remember once when I was working at an international private school, there was this joke among the staff. It went like this: ‘How do you get a visiting private school student to be quiet?’ The answer: ‘You ask them to be quiet… please.’ This is respect.
I have witnessed deference firsthand in courtrooms too. You would be surprised at how quickly a person removes his hat or turns off her cell phone with just one sideways glance from that judge. I have seen people talking big outside the courtroom and then a moment later I have seen them inside bowing quickly to the authority and power of the courts. I have seen even your most law-abiding citizens who are not in the court on charges but simply there to assist someone else – I have seen people who know the judge quite well – when they are addressed by the judge, immediately defer to her position. This deference is not entirely without fear. Our courtrooms are probably one of the best parallels to the emotions that accompany yir'ah in contemporary western society.
I have a personal example of that same idea too. I have mentioned from this pulpit before that I regularly attend an AA group here in town. The Lord has ministered greatly to me through that. Now like most participants in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I have a past that involves alcohol and not just a little alcohol.
I remember my late teens. I was at a party at a friend’s apartment and I was drinking quite a bit. It was late. Most of the people had gone home but a few of us remained. Things went bad. (This is actually a long story but I will give you the Coles Notes version.) A friend and her boyfriend started fighting and when I say fighting, I don’t mean that they were just yelling at each other. She was hitting him quite hard and repeatedly and then he struck her with a violent punch. He gave her a black eye. Other than them, I was the only one there who wasn’t passed out. I pushed him out on the tenth storey balcony with me and I locked the door behind us so that she would be separated from him. I did not want to be in the middle of this. Well, I thought that I had locked the sliding balcony door but next thing I know she comes through the door and attacks him and in the ensuing scuffle, I am knocked off the tenth floor balcony. Literally, I am dangling by my fingertips. I am just hanging there as they are fighting, trying to kill each other. Now I am a believer. I have been a Christian since I was a child. But I have had way too much to drink and I am dangling from this balcony. I remember. I pray. I pray ‘God, please don’t let me meet you like this’ – what I mean is ‘God, please don’t let me die in this state;’ ‘God, please don’t let my last act at this time on earth be something so unglorifying to you.’ He answered my prayer obviously and saved my life as I climbed back onto the balcony and into the apartment with my friends and I sobered up and He used even me in that time and place to minister to my friends and I still pray for them whenever I recall this event.
In that moment when I am dangling over the edge of the balcony and coming before the LORD in prayer, I have the fear of the Lord. I have a moral, dreadful fear of the LORD. I am not afraid that He is going to punish me because I was bad. I am not afraid that I am going to go to hell. (I am after all in a real relationship with the Lord.) I do have that moral dreadful fear of the LORD though that I – in this moment, in this state – am letting my saviour down. I am not living up to my heavenly potential. I am not holy as I could have been holy. I am in the process of falling short. When the Lord saves me, He lets me hold onto not only the memory of these events but also the real memory of the moral, dreadful fear of the Lord. From that experience, I am able to learn so much. I no longer find myself drinking too much and dangling from balconies nor am I committing other such errors. I have grown in knowledge and wisdom from the fear of the LORD. This experience of the fear of the Lord has been with me before and since in my life but this moment is probably my most intense. It is one example of the fear of the Lord that I may always remember.
When we love someone we don’t want to fail him or her. When we serve someone we don’t want to let him or her down. When we love and serve someone we want to do everything we can for them because we love them. It is this fear of the Lord that keeps us holy. It is this fear of the Lord that causes us to follow the rest of the wisdom put forth in the book of Proverbs and the other wisdom books in the Bible. It is this love, this respect, this fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom for only when we have this real love for the Lord, this real intense desire to serve Him, it is only from this real love for and deference to the loving and the only real God, that we can possibly be wise enough to serve Him. If we want to be wise it must begin here. It must begin with an intense love for the Lord. Deference and, Prov 9:10: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, …”
What is wisdom then? What is this knowledge that is contrasted with a lack of wisdom? What is it? It is this. It is how to survive in this world. It is an understanding of how the world works. The Bible and Proverbs are not books of do’s and don’ts randomly generated to organise a society or to earn our way into heaven. The ‘Scriptures… were given by inspiration of God, and…they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.’[17] The Scriptures explain to us the mystery of how and why the world works. The more we read them the more we know about God, just like the more time we spend with God, praying and reading His Word, the more we know Him.
As we read through Proverbs, we will notice that indeed each proverb is a brief glimpse into the reality that is our life. These are words to live by as is the whole canon of Scripture but we can only understand that when we really do love the LORD with all our heart, mind, body, and soul, when we love our neighbour as ourselves (Lk. 10:17; cf. Dt. 6:5, 11:13, 30:16, 30:20) and when we honestly do have a healthy deference, yir'ah, a fear of the LORD, because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.
Amen.
http://www.sheepspeak.com/
This week – for those of us who have been reading through the Bible together as a community – we started on the book of Proverbs. As I was considering these readings, I ran across a number of more or less contemporary proverbs about optimists and pessimists:
– In the long run the pessimist may be proved right, but the optimist has a better time on the trip. ~Daniel L. Reardon
– Pessimist: One who, when he has the choice of two evils, chooses both. ~Oscar Wilde
– Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. ~Gil Stern
– An optimist stays up until midnight to see the New Year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan
– Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back. ~Author Unknown[1]
My favourite: This is more of a definition than a proverb actually but both Susan and Rebecca read this quote to me in the past couple of weeks so I thought that I would share this from Lemony Snicket:
– An Optimist is a word which here refers to a person…who thinks hopeful and pleasant thoughts about nearly everything. If an optimist had his left arm chewed off by an alligator, he might say, in a pleasant and hopeful voice, "Well, this isn't too bad. I don't have my left arm anymore, but at least nobody will ever ask me whether I am right-handed or left-handed," but most of us would say something more along the lines of "Aaaaah! My arm! My arm!" ~Lemony Snicket[2]
A proverb is a wise saying with instructions for living an effective life. The book of Proverbs – along with Job, Psalms, and some apocryphal books (Wisdom, Sirach) – are classified as wisdom literature. Wisdom literature offers insights for living while pondering the difficulties of life. Proverbs are characterized by short, memorable statements that reflect the world as we know it, as well as the relationship between God and people.[3]
It is significant that proverbs use the divine of God (YHWH), the tetragrammaton, or other such names (ie. Elohim) which specify the LORD, the maker of the heavens and earth.[4] The writer of these proverbs and the writers of all the wisdom literature have no doubt that indeed, as Doctrine 2 of TSA affirms, ‘there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Preserver, and Governor of all things, and who is the only proper object of religious worship.’[5] And the compiler, the teacher of proverbs often contrasts the wisdom of following God to the folly of following our own will or of following generally bad counsel that does not display reverence for our Lord.
Proverbs do not pretend to represent a systematic theology; a proverb rather ‘imagines the moral life as presenting two ways, each with an intrinsic dynamism.’[6] There is no separation of Church and State. No matter what we tell ourselves, in reality there is no separation between the sacred and the secular realm.[7] Proverbs champions the truth, with many different examples, that people have very real choices in life but they all boil down to this: either we follow God and live or we can follow ourselves or anyone else for that matter and die (Cf. also Deut. 30:11-20, Judges 21:25, Ps 56:13, Prov 11:19, 13:14, 14:27, 18:21, Jer 21:8, John 5:24, Rom 2:1-16, 6:13, 1 John 3:14).[8]
The theme of Proverbs can be summed up in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 (Cf. Job 28:28, Ps 111:10, Eccl 12:13).[9] Proverbs 1:7: ‘The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline.’
Before we can be wise (Prov 9:10), before we can have any real knowledge (Prov 1:7) about the way the world works we need to fear the Lord.[10] The beginning of any understanding in this world is a fear of God. Well what does that mean? What does it mean to have the fear of the LORD’?
Does it mean to panic? Does it mean to be timid? No. It is different. To be timid is to cower. To be timid is like…have you ever seen an abused animal who has been terrorized? She pulls back as soon as you reach out your arm. Like the battered spouse, the timid person is walking on eggshells at all times. This concept shows up in scriptures in the book of Timothy, where Paul tells us that this timidity (Greek: deilia) is not from God. Timidity is not the beginning of wisdom. [11]
The timid person is like the person in the parable of the talents that the servants were given. Remember that parable that Jesus tells (Matt. 25, cf. Luke 19)? The king gives three people talents (money). The third one is so afraid (Greek: phobeo) that he does not even invest his talents. He is paralyzed with fear. This timidity creates what the Apostle Paul calls in Romans 8:15, ‘a spirit of bondage’, like a phobia. In Romans 8:15 (like Matt 25:35), the Greek word Paul uses is actually ‘phobos’ – from which we derive the word ‘phobia’, and this as we know refers to an irrational fear.[12] This kind of irrational fear is not the beginning of wisdom. It is not from God: phobia. A spirit of timidity (deilia) Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 1:7, God has not given us; He instead gives us power and love and a sound mind. Sometimes even we Christians forget this.
Many –but not all- Christians believe in the so-called ‘rapture’. (The word is not mentioned in the Bible at all actually.) The idea behind the rapture is that at some point in time, God will snatch up either those He loves (the more popular belief) or those He hates (a less popular belief) and leave the rest behind. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins have a popular book series entitled, ‘Left Behind’[13] that I believe follows the fictional lives of characters who were indeed left behind. Now there may be merit to the idea of the rapture and I am certainly not arguing against it here[14] but I have heard of people and denominations that concentrate so much on the rapture that they actually paralyze people with fear, creating phobias and timidity.
We had a professor at College (William and Catherine Booth College) who was raised in that phobia-producing kind of church environment and he tells us that one night (I think when he was a young adult) he heard a car horn or a train whistle and he woke up in absolute terror. He was so frightened that that sound was the trumpet of the Lord and that he had missed the rapture: he wasn’t chosen. He was left behind. He was terrified that he might have been left behind.
Last week I met a friend when I was walking to church. He told me a similar story. He was raised in a similar type of phobia-producing environment. He told me that as a child often he would wake up in the middle of the night and walk or run to his parents’ room, dread-filled, terrified that maybe they were raptured and he was left behind. Phobias, timidity and this panic: these are not representative of the fear of the Lord that Proverbs is talking about. This is a terror that people, often well-meaning people (sometimes unintentionally) put into the minds of innocent souls.
That being said, the word for fear here in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10 is not totally absent of the concept of a terror of sorts. The Hebrew word is yir'ah – Allen P. Ross tells us that, “The term yir'ah can describe dread (Deut 1:29), being terrified (Jonah 1:10), standing in awe (1 Kings 3:28), or having reverence (Lev 19:3). With the Lord as the object, yir'ah captures both aspects of shrinking back in fear and of drawing close in awe. It is not a trembling dread that paralyzes action, but neither is it a polite reverence (Plaut, p. 32).”[15]
Strong’s dictionary and concordance both define yir'ah as this ‘fear’ or ‘moral reverence’ acknowledging that yir'ah encompasses more than that – it can refer to a sense of moral dread or even of an exceeding moral fearfulness.[16] What does this mean? What is the difference between this reverent, moral fearfulness that leads to knowledge or wisdom and the fearful, panic-stricken, timid phobia that leads to cowering?
We are all familiar with the word ‘deference’, right? Deference means respect. People often have a certain amount of deference (respect) for our uniforms. I have had many people alter their language and try not to swear in my presence because of my uniform that represents my office as a representative of God. Even non-believers tend to offer this token of deference to The Salvation Army uniform.
In many other countries or in private or still in some public schools here, students generally have a certain amount of deference for their teachers. They respect their authority. They seem to be a little less likely to speak out than children in most North American public school systems. I remember once when I was working at an international private school, there was this joke among the staff. It went like this: ‘How do you get a visiting private school student to be quiet?’ The answer: ‘You ask them to be quiet… please.’ This is respect.
I have witnessed deference firsthand in courtrooms too. You would be surprised at how quickly a person removes his hat or turns off her cell phone with just one sideways glance from that judge. I have seen people talking big outside the courtroom and then a moment later I have seen them inside bowing quickly to the authority and power of the courts. I have seen even your most law-abiding citizens who are not in the court on charges but simply there to assist someone else – I have seen people who know the judge quite well – when they are addressed by the judge, immediately defer to her position. This deference is not entirely without fear. Our courtrooms are probably one of the best parallels to the emotions that accompany yir'ah in contemporary western society.
I have a personal example of that same idea too. I have mentioned from this pulpit before that I regularly attend an AA group here in town. The Lord has ministered greatly to me through that. Now like most participants in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, I have a past that involves alcohol and not just a little alcohol.
I remember my late teens. I was at a party at a friend’s apartment and I was drinking quite a bit. It was late. Most of the people had gone home but a few of us remained. Things went bad. (This is actually a long story but I will give you the Coles Notes version.) A friend and her boyfriend started fighting and when I say fighting, I don’t mean that they were just yelling at each other. She was hitting him quite hard and repeatedly and then he struck her with a violent punch. He gave her a black eye. Other than them, I was the only one there who wasn’t passed out. I pushed him out on the tenth storey balcony with me and I locked the door behind us so that she would be separated from him. I did not want to be in the middle of this. Well, I thought that I had locked the sliding balcony door but next thing I know she comes through the door and attacks him and in the ensuing scuffle, I am knocked off the tenth floor balcony. Literally, I am dangling by my fingertips. I am just hanging there as they are fighting, trying to kill each other. Now I am a believer. I have been a Christian since I was a child. But I have had way too much to drink and I am dangling from this balcony. I remember. I pray. I pray ‘God, please don’t let me meet you like this’ – what I mean is ‘God, please don’t let me die in this state;’ ‘God, please don’t let my last act at this time on earth be something so unglorifying to you.’ He answered my prayer obviously and saved my life as I climbed back onto the balcony and into the apartment with my friends and I sobered up and He used even me in that time and place to minister to my friends and I still pray for them whenever I recall this event.
In that moment when I am dangling over the edge of the balcony and coming before the LORD in prayer, I have the fear of the Lord. I have a moral, dreadful fear of the LORD. I am not afraid that He is going to punish me because I was bad. I am not afraid that I am going to go to hell. (I am after all in a real relationship with the Lord.) I do have that moral dreadful fear of the LORD though that I – in this moment, in this state – am letting my saviour down. I am not living up to my heavenly potential. I am not holy as I could have been holy. I am in the process of falling short. When the Lord saves me, He lets me hold onto not only the memory of these events but also the real memory of the moral, dreadful fear of the Lord. From that experience, I am able to learn so much. I no longer find myself drinking too much and dangling from balconies nor am I committing other such errors. I have grown in knowledge and wisdom from the fear of the LORD. This experience of the fear of the Lord has been with me before and since in my life but this moment is probably my most intense. It is one example of the fear of the Lord that I may always remember.
When we love someone we don’t want to fail him or her. When we serve someone we don’t want to let him or her down. When we love and serve someone we want to do everything we can for them because we love them. It is this fear of the Lord that keeps us holy. It is this fear of the Lord that causes us to follow the rest of the wisdom put forth in the book of Proverbs and the other wisdom books in the Bible. It is this love, this respect, this fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom for only when we have this real love for the Lord, this real intense desire to serve Him, it is only from this real love for and deference to the loving and the only real God, that we can possibly be wise enough to serve Him. If we want to be wise it must begin here. It must begin with an intense love for the Lord. Deference and, Prov 9:10: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, …”
What is wisdom then? What is this knowledge that is contrasted with a lack of wisdom? What is it? It is this. It is how to survive in this world. It is an understanding of how the world works. The Bible and Proverbs are not books of do’s and don’ts randomly generated to organise a society or to earn our way into heaven. The ‘Scriptures… were given by inspiration of God, and…they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.’[17] The Scriptures explain to us the mystery of how and why the world works. The more we read them the more we know about God, just like the more time we spend with God, praying and reading His Word, the more we know Him.
As we read through Proverbs, we will notice that indeed each proverb is a brief glimpse into the reality that is our life. These are words to live by as is the whole canon of Scripture but we can only understand that when we really do love the LORD with all our heart, mind, body, and soul, when we love our neighbour as ourselves (Lk. 10:17; cf. Dt. 6:5, 11:13, 30:16, 30:20) and when we honestly do have a healthy deference, yir'ah, a fear of the LORD, because the fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom.
Amen.
http://www.sheepspeak.com/
---
[1] The Quote Garden! Quotations about Optimism and Pessimism: http://www.quotegarden.com/optimism.html Cited 03 May 2009.
[2] Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill. (New York, NY: Scholastic, 2000), 26-27.
[3] Cf. DA Hubbard, ‘Wisdom Literature’, NDB, p. 1334
[4] Richard J. Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p. 9.
[5] Doctrine 2 of The Salvation Army.
[6] Richard J. Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.12.
[7] Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘The Book of Proverbs’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.34.
[8] Cf. also. Michael Ramsay, ‘Paul and the Human Condition as reflected in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:1-16’. Presented to William and Catherine Booth College (Winter 2007). Available on-line: http://www.sheepspeak.com/NT_Michael_Ramsay.htm#Paul%20and%20the%20Human%20Condition
[9] Derek Kidner. An Introduction to Wisdom Literature: The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job & Ecclesiastes, (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), p. 17.
[10]Warren E. Berkley, Expository Files 4.9 (September 1997), available on-line: http://www.bible.ca/ef/expository-proverbs-1-7.htm: You must carefully consider the context in order to assign the proper meaning to the word. It is one of those words that is context sensitive. So, the "fear" we are concerned with in Prov. 1:7 is not identical to the "fear" of Rom. 8:15 or 2 Tim. 1:7.
[11] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘1167: deilia’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.20.
[12] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘5401: phobos’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.96.
[13] Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Cambridge, UK: Tyndale House Publishing, 1996).
[14] But I will argue against it here: Michael Ramsay, The Sheepspeak Commentary. Farewell to the Rapture! March 19, 2009. Available on-line: http://renewnetwork.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html#1407993155574202234 Cf. also N.T. Wright, Farewell to the Rapture! Bible Review, August 2001. Available on-line at: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_BR_Farewell_Rapture.htm
[15] Allen P. Ross, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Proverbs/Exposition of Proverbs/I. Introduction to the Book of Proverbs (1:1-7)/C. Motto: The Fear of the Lord (1:7), Book Version: 4.0.2
[16] Yirah, in The New Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words. (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1966), p. 395. Cf. also Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘5374: yir’ah’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.59.
[17] Doctrine 1 of The Salvation Army
[1] The Quote Garden! Quotations about Optimism and Pessimism: http://www.quotegarden.com/optimism.html Cited 03 May 2009.
[2] Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill. (New York, NY: Scholastic, 2000), 26-27.
[3] Cf. DA Hubbard, ‘Wisdom Literature’, NDB, p. 1334
[4] Richard J. Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p. 9.
[5] Doctrine 2 of The Salvation Army.
[6] Richard J. Clifford, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘Introduction to Wisdom Literature’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.12.
[7] Raymond C. Van Leeuwen, NIB V: Proverbs-Sirach, ‘The Book of Proverbs’, (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.34.
[8] Cf. also. Michael Ramsay, ‘Paul and the Human Condition as reflected in Romans 1:18-32 and 2:1-16’. Presented to William and Catherine Booth College (Winter 2007). Available on-line: http://www.sheepspeak.com/NT_Michael_Ramsay.htm#Paul%20and%20the%20Human%20Condition
[9] Derek Kidner. An Introduction to Wisdom Literature: The Wisdom of Proverbs, Job & Ecclesiastes, (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1985), p. 17.
[10]Warren E. Berkley, Expository Files 4.9 (September 1997), available on-line: http://www.bible.ca/ef/expository-proverbs-1-7.htm: You must carefully consider the context in order to assign the proper meaning to the word. It is one of those words that is context sensitive. So, the "fear" we are concerned with in Prov. 1:7 is not identical to the "fear" of Rom. 8:15 or 2 Tim. 1:7.
[11] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘1167: deilia’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.20.
[12] Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘5401: phobos’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.96.
[13] Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Cambridge, UK: Tyndale House Publishing, 1996).
[14] But I will argue against it here: Michael Ramsay, The Sheepspeak Commentary. Farewell to the Rapture! March 19, 2009. Available on-line: http://renewnetwork.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html#1407993155574202234 Cf. also N.T. Wright, Farewell to the Rapture! Bible Review, August 2001. Available on-line at: http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_BR_Farewell_Rapture.htm
[15] Allen P. Ross, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Proverbs/Exposition of Proverbs/I. Introduction to the Book of Proverbs (1:1-7)/C. Motto: The Fear of the Lord (1:7), Book Version: 4.0.2
[16] Yirah, in The New Strong’s Complete Dictionary of Bible Words. (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1966), p. 395. Cf. also Cf. The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘5374: yir’ah’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.59.
[17] Doctrine 1 of The Salvation Army
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