Study

This study is all about knowing God. There is a difference between knowing about Him and knowing Him. Knowing about Him is a theoretical thing and can be done at a distance. We can know facts about God and still not know Him personally. Knowing Him, as He intends us to know Him, involves building a personal relationship. Through Jesus we are invited to a relationship more intimate than between a human father and his child. It is more pure and intimate even than the relationship between a husband and wife. Getting to know Him is like an immersion process.As you use this study guide, pray that you will be drawn closer into God’s presence, abiding in His Spirit, more and more.

Pray and expect this to happen for you. Each of the themes for study should be taken in this way, as we build an understanding step by step. The study guide introduces points for meditation and should be studied prayerfully. Ask God to draw near and bring inspiration as you study these themes,and see if you are led by the Holy Spirit in unique and special ways.

This study can be done alone or in a group. If you study alone, expect God to lead you personally through the studies. If you study in a group you should be sensitive to the leading of God both individually and for the whole group. Be sensitive to one another and join together in a prayerful approach.

As you progress through the studies you should expect to understand how to know God better and also grow in your experience of knowing Him. Ultimately this is a total immersion in the Spirit of God. See how far God takes you in this as we study together.

The study may take a short time or a long time. Proceed at the pace most suited to you. You are studying the most important thing that can be studied. For us to know God personally as Father and Friend, in deep reverence yet in profound intimacy, is the chief goal of every person on the face of the earth. The central reason that Jesus went to the Cross was to make this possible for us.

Under the Fig Tree is the central course for the Certificate in Bible Studies. The notes are designed to take the reader through the Bible in one year, binding together the Old Testament (Tanakh) and New Testament in a way that establishes Torah (the first five books) as the foundation of all Bible study, whilst taking a generally historic journey through covenant history. The notes are not intended as a commentary but as an example of how the reader will write their own notes as a personal commentary on their studies.

This book is a compilation of papers written over recent years.

In the book I have emphasised the fact of there being one covenant community with one teaching and one purpose – to walk (halakh) together with God. I have introduced some of the major Hebrew words (Yeshua for Jesus, Torah for teaching, Halakhah for walking with God) in order to contribute a little to the restoration of hebraic terms in a Church that has drifted too far into Greek philosophical ideas in its scriptural interpretation. I have tried particularly to be sensitive and clear in my use of these terms in the balance of God’s teaching through the whole of Scripture. The whole of Scripture is the teaching of God.

However, I generally use the word Torah as applying specifically to the foundation of all Bible teaching laid in the first five books of the Bible, so freeing these books from the word law which I use specifically in relation to the clear legal instructions and their interpretation given to Moses at Sinai. The “Law of Moses” is therefore a subset of Torah, and can also apply to the authoritative interpretation of what was given through Moses in the Wilderness years. In this way we can see that grace always came before law, the life of faith always being higher than ritual legalism, setting the scene for our prime call into a walk by faith in fellowship with God by the power of His Spirit.

From the preface:

The subject of Relativity is fundamental to the mental- paradigms that control our thinking in so many areas of life, that any challenge to its basic tenets has very far- reaching consequences. Even a non-scientist such as me can appreciate this much. What is especially important about the work of Francis Pym and Clifford Denton in their book Absolute Space And Time is that their proposals are so elementary.

The two writers stimulate our minds immensely by presenting us with the very first First Principles that we have to deal with in a way which grips our imagination and fires our enthusiasm. Inevitably, we are left wondering quite where it will all end in an age that is wedded to Post-Modernism’s anti-absolutist world views, but these little concerns must never be allowed to smother such an important enquiry. To say this book is challenging is seriously to downplay it; it is a coherent, intelligent and lucid invitation to reconsider the entire meaning of life; because real evidence for the genuine existence of absolutes would change everything.