Although the Scriptures are paramount in the Christian diet, other resources can be helpful. We should search the Scriptures like the Bereans in Acts 17 who “received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily”, but also we should recognise that God has used people throughout the ages to establish a beacon for biblical truth. In fact, God ordains that there have been teachers throughout the history of the church to help us grasp and apply the truth of Scripture. God Himself says of this in Ephesians 4:11-15 “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ … so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” Also, in Hebrews 13:7 He says “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.”
God has called a long line of godly people to “contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3) by producing resources which He wants us to use.
God has also ordained increasingly abundant access through technology to a rich array of resources from people like the early church fathers and the reformers of the 16th Century.
The reality is that although there are today people who are fulfilling this mandate from the Lord, it is of immense value that we leverage the full spectrum of additional resources God has provided. In short, we should “read dead men”!
Have you heard that a fish knows least of all what it is to be wet? You’re thinking this must be part of another blog post right? Wrong! This saying perfectly illustrates why we should “read dead men”. The benefit of reading books written by the leading shepherds in previous generations and era’s is that it provides a sort of portal through which we can escape the natural bias that is built into anything which anyone in your own time says or writes. This is critical because the lenses of your culture do have a distorting effect which you most often cannot even discern, never mind escape.
With hindsight, the distorting effect of culture can be seen in the mistakes or omissions that have been made by some of the greatest teachers that ever existed, who were unable to escape cultural bias.
This effect is especially magnified today when the average number of media messages each person is exposed to is in the thousands. The post-modern world distorts ideas and concepts in very specific and unhelpful ways, some even blatantly satanic. Our culture today is one in which there is an exponential numbing to things which even a generation ago would have caused an outrage.
All this is important for Christians, because we are supposed to be the stewards of a gospel message that never changes, and the lamps from which the light of the glory of God is seen by the world. Flowing on from that, the under-shepherds of the body of Christ especially need to be well equipped to teach away from the errors of our day.
Finally, we should “read dead men” because the Lord has instructed us to do so.
“Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)
