Twenty years is, like, six generations in internet time.
From March 13, 2005, “Hermeneutics“:
Our Text:
So this gorilla walks into a bar. The gorilla slaps a $10 bill on the counter and says, “Give me a beer.”
Bartender figures what does a gorilla know? So he gives him the beer, but only gives him $1 in change. It’s a slow night, though, so the bartender figures he should make some conversation. “We don’t get many gorillas in here,” he says.
Gorilla says, “Yeah, well at $9 a beer I’m not surprised.”
The Fundamentalist Interpretation
(Fundamentalists read the text literally. This means they adhere as closely as possible to the simplest, most obvious reading of its meaning.)
The talking gorilla indicates that the great apes, perhaps all beasts, once were able to speak. This, like the great longevity of the early patriarchs, seems incomprehensible to us. Yet the text says it is so, so therefore it is so.
How is it that gorillas could speak? How is it that Methuselah could live to the ripe old age of 969? Those of you who have been attending our Wednesday night Bible study series, “Six Days; 6,000 Years Ago,” already know the answer to these questions.
In Matthew 24:38, Jesus says that, “in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking …” Our story is set in a bar, a place designated for eating and drinking, so we can conclude that it takes place “in the days that were before the flood.”
Please note, however, that this was not what we today understand as the sin of drinking. The “beer” in our text is not the alcoholic beverage we think of today, just as the “wine” the Bible speaks of is not what we think of as wine. (Drinking wine is a sin. Jesus was without sin. Jesus drank “wine.” Therefore “wine” is not wine.) The “beer” the story speaks of thus was probably a nonalcoholic drink similar to malta.
In the days that were before the flood, the earth was still protected by the great vapor canopy, or “firmament” (Genesis 1:6-8, KJV only, of course). This canopy shielded the earth, protecting the grandchildren of Adam and Eve and allowing them to live much longer than humans can today without the benefit of its protection. Creation scientists have posited that another consequence of this canopy may have been that, um, gorillas could talk. They lost this ability of speech after God unleashed the canopy, creating the Great Flood.
Public schools refuse to acknowledge that gorillas could ever speak. This is an example of the persecution that we face as believers.
For the premillennial dispensationalist exegesis, click here.
We revisited this joke in 2012.
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