[sword-devel] Red Letter text

PAT RICHARDSON sword-devel@crosswire.org
Mon, 24 Jan 2000 09:21:05 -0500


All the 66 books, then entire canon of scripture are "Mind of Christ" per
the Apostle Paul.  "I and the Father are one" per the Lord Jesus Christ
Himself, indicitive of perfect unity, perfect teamwork, perfect agreement,
neither having one thought concerning revelation of themselves to mankind
that the other did not share.  At the best it seems silly to red letter the
parts of the "mind of Christ" that the humanity of Christ spoke by His own
lips, when we know all scripture reveals his thoughts as God, coequal with
the Father.  At the worst, to red letter some words seems in danger of
blasphemy.  I don't want to stand before His majesty at the judges' reward
seat, the judgment seat of Christ where He would prefer I be commended, and
instead have to explain why I had agreement with those who said the words
spoken by his humanity had significance over the words thought and
communicated to men by His apostles who until the canon was complete were
communicating His word as prophets; or whether communicated by Old
Testament prophets; or by King David; or by Moses, etc.,.  When any Herald
of the mighty king brings words from the king, they must be heard and
obeyed as much from a legitimate messenger as from the king Himself.  We
are but servants of His majesty without rights or opinions to be compared
to His own.  We are not ordered to have favorite passages, nor favorite
doctrines, nor favorite commands to keep.  We are ordered to rightly divide
the Word of God.  We are to be proven wrong by the scriptures, rebuked by
the scriptures, corrected by the scriptures, and instructed by the
scriptures, by the entire realm of scripture, the whole of the Mind of Christ.


I understand that to be the Lord's thinking on the matter.

Patrick





>> There is a tag in the GBF spec for word of Christ in red.  Unfortunately,
>> this tag is only used in the WEB module right now.  To add these to other
>> modules would require going through line-by-line and adding them in the
>> appropriate locations.
>> 
>> --Chris
>
>Hi David and Chris,
>
>The problem with red letter text is that there are passages where it is not
>clear where Christ's words end and the words of the author of the gospels
>begin. Another problem is that the color makes it appear as though Christ's
>words are somehow more important than the rest of scripture; remember, ALL
>scripture is God breated, etc. I can't think of any good reason to color code
>the Bible. Does anyone on this list find red lettering useful? I wonder if
the
>only reason that it is still done at all is tradition. I think before anyone
>was to sit down and convert some of the modules to red lettering, the
following
>questions should be answered: 1. Is it a valid thing to do? (I.e. is it right
>to imply more information in the text than was in the original?) 2. Is it
>necessary? 
>
>What do the rest of you think?