In the past, when I still used scriptural footnotes, I often had the experience of following the footnotes only to discover that important scriptures that threw a lot of additional light upon the subject were left out of the loop. By loop, I mean, for example, let’s say that there are 20 verses that speak of the same subject, but only 10 of them are footnoted and referenced, while 5 of them are only referenced. This means that when you come to five of them, there will be no footnotes in them nor references pointing to them, whereas another five have no footnotes but there are references pointing to them and the other 10 have both footnotes and references pointing to them. When a person comes across a footnoted scripture, the footnote will reference other scriptures, which, when followed, will also have footnotes referencing other scriptures, which if followed may cause you to end up at the beginning scripture. This is a loop. As long as all scriptures relative to that topic are referenced, allowing you to footnote surf through all of them, such a loop is helpful. But if 5 verses are out of the loop, not being referenced or footnoted, the loop becomes a method to keep information out.
Human minds, when writing learning books, do things in sequential order, building from basic knowledge to more advanced subjects. No so with the mind of God. His scriptures contain both the basic and advanced subjects all over the place, a piece here, a bit there, with apparently no rhyme or reason to it. Continue reading “A peculiarity of the scriptures is that the information is scattered with smatterings everywhere, in a seemingly random manner”