The Forgotten Christ 06

The final main session of the Affinity Study Conference at High Leigh was this morning. The evening before we had a good time of prayer together. I then got talking to fellow blogger Martin Downes and a very thoughtful fellow from Cardiff about the law and Christians and entertainment, etc. It was quite late by the time I hit the hay. Fellowship with friends old and new is part of the deal.
For some reason the name of Greg Beale from Wheaton College near Chicago had been below my radar. 'Haven't you seen his books on Revelation and the Temple?' everyone said to me. Ah well.

Anyway his paper was inevitably on Christ in Revelation. Perhaps unfortunately he chose to focus on just a few texts. His headings: 1. Christ is the divine genuine and true witness of his resurrection and the new creation (Re 1:5, 3:14 cf Is 65:16, 17) 2. Christ also presents himself as true end-time Israel, who is a true and faithful witness of his resurrection as the beginning of the new creation (Re 3:14, cf Is 43) 3. The first rhetorical purpose of using Isaiah in the letter to Laodicea 4. The second rhetorical use ... An appendix looked at Re 17:14b against Da 4:37.

In his presentation Dr Beale chose to focus on the broader issue of dealing with OT quotations in the NT and some even broader NT hermeneutical presuppositions. The discussion time strayed far and wide also. This was all very interesting but it did not provide what I guess was intended to be the climax to a conference on The Forgotten Christ. Ironically, Christ himself whom we had focused on most intently, especially in the second and third sessions and those that followed, earlier on, was beginning to be pushed into the background again. That may well be too harsh but there was certainly that danger.