The very best book I ever read on Bible Prophesy was “The Sign” by Robert Van Kampen. According to the author, it started out as a huge cork-board on which they stuck 3×5 cards with every end-times prophesy and worked to arrange them so they all made complete sense with no disagreement among themselves or with the rest of Scripture. When it was finished, they had a new “position” on the rapture that had never been put forward before: “pre-wrath.” Because the complete synthesis of all the prophesies conflicted with just about every denominational teaching and doctrine, the book was not well received.
The only way to put it is that he was damned with faint praise. All the major groups praised his scholarship and promptly forgot about him because they didn’t want to get into an argument they were going to lose. That left the anklebiters and they’ve been attacking his position for years. Everyone has to come up with an argument for why he’s wrong in order to support their own incorrect doctrine. It’s not hard because so very few even read their Bibles.
I took the same idea and applied it to sexual morality and marriage. I am not an extremely wealthy businessman with the largest private collection of Biblical-era manuscripts in the world and a large group of very intelligent people to help me. I’m just one man. Which is probably why the project made it as far as it did, because as contentious as Biblical prophesy is… it’s nothing compared to the contentiousness of sexual morality, which includes “premarital” sex, prostitution, marriage (monogamy and polygamy), adultery, divorce; as well as all the other issues the Bible covers in its instruction on sexual morality.
My hermeneutics are basic and conservative, just as his were. Sola Scriptura to begin with because Scripture is the best interpreter of Scripture. Sensus Literalis was the next, which means that while we leave room for obvious figures of speech and metaphor, Scripture is to be taken in the literal sense. The third is that the implicit is to be interpreted by the explicit rather than the explicit by the implicit, not the other way around. Finally, obscure passages are to be interpreted by clear passages. If one passage is obscure, it’s a pretty sure bet that in some other part of the Bible the same point or issue is made clear. Scripture stands or falls as a whole and must be interpreted in such a way that it is completely in agreement with the entire Word of God.
This is the core of a much larger poster for teaching, linked to at the bottom. It’s still in somewhat of a state of flux as information gets shifted around, but you will rarely see Scripture laid out like this. Click on the image and you’ll get the full-sized view of the center of my digital corkboard.
That’s the center section of the chart, to give you an idea of what it looks like. This includes citation, analysis and exegesis, as well as church history to explain how things got the way they are, plus word studies. As I said, it’s not done yet and there are typos. It still needs work and keep in mind that it’s rather large. This is the .png file version, if you desire a copy of the .tif file to print, ask for it in the comment section.
1. Her marriage is annulled by her father
2. Her husband dies
3. Her unbelieving husband abandons her
4. She commits adultery and her unbelieving husband divorces her.