You have probably heard that question before. Brace yourself…
Avoid superficial interpretation. One of the common problems in interpreting the Bible is this little phrase, “This verse means to me….” so forth and so forth and so forth. Let me tell you something. It doesn’t matter what it means to you, the question is what would it mean if you weren’t alive? What would it mean if you didn’t exist? What does it mean PERIOD is the issue, not what does it mean to you. Sometimes you’ll hear people get together and supposedly have a Bible study which is little-more than a pooling of ignorance. People say, “Well, I look at this verse and I feel this verse is saying…”
It doesn’t matter what you feel. That has nothing to do with it.
It’s not a matter of how you feel about the verse, it’s not a matter of what you think it means to you. Avoid ad-libbing in Bible interpretation. Avoid free wheeling in Bible interpretation.
It’s haphazard handling of God’s Word. [More John MacArthur]
Excerpt from The Old Truth.
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Absolutely. It doesn’t matter what we think or feel about Scripture. What matters is what is God saying.
It always makes me wince when I hear that phrase. I’m happy to be leading the adult class at my church for VBS, last year it was the pastor’s wife who started every discussion with that question.
“If the Scripture has more than one meaning it has no meaning at all.” – John Owen
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Reblogged this on Truthinator's Blog and commented:
Yep…
The bible has layers of meaning, and you will understand them at the level of consciousness that you encounter them with. Truth is Light, of which God is the unimaginable Source of all… When you begin to see that you have a filtered perception you will begin to see that without having that filter cleansed by the Divine itself, it will alwaysjust be ‘your’ interpretation of the bible, and ‘your’ interpretation of what God truly is, and of what Christ truly is. Only those with eyes to see and ears to hear are going to even get close to understanding the Truth hidden in plain view in the bible. We are all more ‘wrong headed’ than we can possibly know, but we convince ourselves we are right!! .Even Luther himself confessed that without a knowledge of Hebrew, only a partial understanding of the bible is possible- Hebrew cannot be accurately translated, i May we all continue to grow and walk towards the Light, rather than patting ourselves on the back that we have arrived. …Straight is the gate, and few there are that make it…. .
I dont understand 😦