Original Intent

Original Intent

                                                               By Richard P. Joseph

    Just about anything that David Barton writes is worth reading.  Barton has a passion for explaining the Christian origins of the United States government. These origins have a blatant biblical foundation which has been blotted out and perverted by modern day liberal judges and educators.  Their hatred for all that is holy and good has caused them to disregard the original intent of our founding only to replace it with an imaginary and twisted distortion of American history.  In Barton’s book Original Intent,  he produces the historical documentation to prove his point concerning the writing of our constitution and amendments showing that our modern courts, in many instances, have altered the meaning to such a degree that it is unrecognizable and completely detached from its actual meaning.  

Many of our founders expressed their concern when people attempted to use “modern thought” to interpret ancient documents.  Noah Webster expressed this when he said “..not only misinterpretation but even serious error can result when original meanings are ignored.”  Joseph Story added: “The first and fundamental rule in the interpretation of all instruments is to construe them according to the sense of the terms and intentions of the parties”.  Preterists call this “audience relevance”.  

An example of blatant misinterpretation by way of the disregard for audience relevance would be the misapplication of our first amendment.  

In a nutshell, the amendment is written only to congress, not to individuals.  To apply this to individuals is a gross misapplication of the law.  This amendment is not intended for any individual, its only purpose is to limit congress from enacting any law that would restrict religion, free speech etc.  It has nothing to do with telling someone they can’t have a bible in a school or the ten commandments in a courtroom etc.  But because they have ignored the original intent and have a complete disregard for audience relevance, they got away with brainwashing 90% of American citizens that they can’t express their inalienable right to worship when and how they wish.  What is funny about this whole thing is that David Barton is a futurist!

    If David Barton applied this same logic to his bible studies, he would quickly turn into a preterist.  Preterism is really nothing more than a proper interpretation of the bible via audience relevance.  In other words, what did that passage mean to those that first heard it.  Nearly all new Christains today pick up the bible and think that it was written just last week and commence to interpret it that way.  The scamsters feed on this ignorance and prey on the ignorance of the new believers.  What is worse is that seminaries actually teach in this same manner.  People that should know better dig their feet in and will not relent because of either money or pride; both of which will destroy you.  For example if I ask nearly any pastor “who was the book of Timothy written to?”, he would smile and say “to me, of course”.  I hate to be the one to tell him that this book was written to a young man named Timothy who lived 2,000 years ago and must be interpreted in light of that.  What would Timothy think about the letter that was sent to “him” not me.  That is how we can benefit from Timothy’s letter, by extracting the original meaning from it.  It is ironic that someone like David Barton has not done such a thing so I now encourage him to do so (like he is going to be reading this!!!).   So let’s all glean the precious meaning from past historical documents, which includes the bible, in the most accurate way possible by applying the concept of audience relevance to our study.  

Ps, I heartily recommend Barton’s book.