“The case of the missing verse”

"For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool and troubled the water: whosoever first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." John 5:4 When reading John chapter 5, the translation that your using has great bearing on the outcome. Many of the modern translations do not include verse 4 in their narrative, sighting that it is absent in many of the older text. The hypocracy of this is that it is also included in many of the older text. It was simply the translators choice as to whether to include this verse or not. Reading this chapter without verse 4 Becomes problematic in that no explanation is given for why so many impotent and lame folks were laying in the porch at the pool of Bethesda. No explanation is given for why the lame man needed to get into the water when the water is stirred or why the water was being stirred to begin with.

This chapter seems to reflect modern Christianity's need to removed all supernatural interaction between heaven and earth. You end up getting only Half the information and you are left without context. The thing is that you need verse 4 in your life, to stir the natural man up, and to let him know he's not in charge of this religion. That God's got so many ways of doing things that it will mess with your neat little cookie cutter religion. Faith is a wildcard. It allows for the supernatural interaction between heaven and earth. Try it sometime, we call it the "God Factor." The God factor is what true believers have on their side when things look impossible. Your religion needs this, and your translation needs to include John chapter 5 verse 4.

Amen,

Brother Rusty!

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