9: JUST IGNORE THE “DISPUTED” PASSAGES? 91thing” on which God has told us nothing. There are specific passages
that speak to the issue.
(2) Predictions of the future. I also agree that the Bible makes pre-
dictions about the future whose application to future events are uncer-
tain. It is hard for anyone to be sure exactly what kind of age is meant
when the Bible says that people “came to life and reigned with Christ
for a thousand years” (Rev. 20:4).^11 It seems reasonable for broadly
based Christian organizations to allow some freedom of interpretation
regarding Scriptures that speak of these future events. That is the nature
of the case when dealing with prophecies about the future.
For example, the Jewish people had many uncertainties about the
Old Testament predictions of a coming Messiah (see 1 Pet. 1:10-12), and
Jesus had to explain to his disciples how the prophecies applied to him
(see Luke 24:27). He had to explain how he came the first time to earn
our salvation (and fulfilled certain Old Testament prophecies about the
Messiah) and would come the second time to bring judgment and to
reign over the earth (and would fulfill other Old Testament prophecies
about the Messiah). Understanding predictions of the future is, in the
nature of the subject matter, a difficult issue for us. Some of these con-
troversies will continue to be impossible to resolve with certainty until
the future arrives! It should not surprise us that God has left us with
some aspects of mystery concerning the end times.
But the role of women in the church is not a “prediction of end times
events” as these prophecies are. It concerns the here-and-now, everyday,
ordinary conduct of every church.
(3) Practices with no direct commands. I agree that there are some
disputed practices in churches today, concerning which the Bible does not
give explicit commands. On baptism: should infants be baptized or not?
On church government: should local churches be independent or should
they be subject to the authority of bishops and archbishops or “district
superintendents”?
These are disputed primarily because there is no direct command
settling the exact point of dispute. There is no verse that says, “Parents
(^11) I have given my best understanding of the passages on the millennium in Grudem, Systematic
Theology, chapter 55. But there is still considerable uncertainty in the details of anybody’s posi-
tion on the millennium.