"I could Be Wrong......But I Don't Think So".........Monk

                "A courageous and thought-provoking proposal to read the Psalter afresh." That is a blurb on the back cover of O. Palmer Robertson's 2015....The Flow Of The Psalms....Discovering Their Structure And Theology.
                Oh it is courageous all right....for the author is asking the reader to consider something in the book of Psalms that had never been explored before. We Reformed consider....Semper Reformanda....always reforming....to be a banner of sorts....but reform....or change....or anything new....is not always as easy as it sounds. The book is certainly thought-provoking....and it is a systematic proposal ordered enough to be considered.
                 I could not possibly recommend it more highly. The jest of the 'thought-provoking' part is that there is a structured chronology to the Psalms....in other words...the five books of the Psalms....trace the chronological history of the children of Abraham....so what happened in book one is followed by what happened in book two....right up to book five....and I will speak here on my own....book five is us today!
                J. R. Church....(1938-2011)....was a Baptist pastor and a typical prophecy teacher during the revival years of the 70s and 80s....but he was one of the better ones....my personal opinion of course. Maybe he thought a little too much....I don't know....but he got those of us out here thinking....and I would rather be thinking....and reforming when necessary....than not really thinking at all....only repeating.
                I'm not going to spend time on this....only a summary on one of J.R. Church's books....the title was....Prophecy In The Psalms....and I'm going to make this sound as bad as I can....because you're not going to believe it anyway....but he saw a connection between the number of the Psalm....and the year....beginning in 1901. I read that book back then....1986...in the waning years of my Pentecostal/Charismatic days....was not convinced....but kept the concept somewhere in the back of my mind....only to start thinking about it again around 2017.
                 Back to O. Palmer Robertson's book. He states a couple of times that something changed....he called it a "dividing point"....in that Book Five of Psalms around Psalm 118....a messianic Psalm....just like Psalm 18 was a messianic Psalm....and Psalm 119....a Torah Psalm....just like Psalm 19 was a Torah Psalm. Both are necessary....Torah and messianic....law and gospel! He states this....and I already knew it. He places the writing of this 119th Psalm....with uncertainty....at the time of the Babylonian exile....or shortly thereafter....where there was no temple....only the Torah. As for me and this odd concept of Psalm numbers correlating with years....something did happened in 2018/2019....it also was a dividing point....and this second term of this president is the most astonishing departure from American tradition and heritage that I have ever experienced or even read about. 
                  I do want to say this....in fact this whole post is just to be able to say this....Psalm 119 is a glorious 176 verses into the joy and utter importance of reading and digesting and even memorizing God's Word....in His law and His statutes and His precepts and His commandments! Every verse is uplifting in one way or in a different way! There must be a purpose in this Psalm for today....where in the church....Ichabod....the glory....in preaching....has departed....is so similar to the Jews losing their temple worship. This was a writer....(of the 119th Psalm)....who clung to God's written Word....as a drowning man would cling to a life vest! So maybe I am wrong on the correlation of the number of the Psalm to the year....but I am not wrong on the power for difficult times of that longest Psalm in the Psalter!