Concerning the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures by man, the following are a few statements often heard when the Bible is the topic of conversation.  “How do you interpret ….”  “Well, I know this, we can interpret the Bible any way we want to.”  “God created denominations because different people interpret the Bible in different ways.”  “We’re all different, so the same verse might mean something different to me than it does to you.”  These statements seem reasonable if we are looking at the Scriptures from a human standpoint, which is a colossal mistake.  Man’s point of view is meaningless when it involves God’s Spirit-inspired Word.  God commands that we do this, but not do that.  He says nothing about man’s attitude about His instructions.  The formula is simple: obey them and live; disobey them and die.  The choice of life or death is ours.

In a meeting of religious minds one will hear any number of quotes from the Scriptures, each one a “headline.”  But a passage one will not hear is 2 Peter 1:20: “No prophecy of Scripture is of any private (personal) interpretation.”  MAN IS FORBIDDEN TO INTERPRET GOD’S WORD.  Doing so is a sin.  And the wages of sin is death.  Note the use of the present-perfect word “is,” which, in the context of Peter’s statement, means that the statement always has been in effect, is now in effect and will always be in effect.  For those who insist on knowing God’s Truth, THE BIBLE INTERPRETS ITSELF.  He uses His fine print to explain His headlines.  However, extremely few people are willing to expend the time and effort to find the Truths that, when combined, results in THE Truth about a particular subject.  In this case the subject concerns the relationship between sin and death and between God’s “gift” and eternal life.  We must study the fine print relative to the “gift” of God and salvation.  There is much more to it that headline hunters know.  We will delve deeply into this very important subject.  Satan has used Romans 6:23 to deceive the entire church world.  His success is evident as the above written quotes attest.  Scriptural interpretation is the basis for the two-headed, multiple-bodied, globe-covering religious organization that calls itself “the church.”  Through her and other various religious organizations “Satan has deceived the whole world” (Rev. 12:9).

The world-wide system of religious “isms”  is the work of Satan, the master interpreter.  In Eden he did the work himself.  Since then he has used volunteers to preach his messages to those who want to hear, believe and obey them.  Both leaders and followers do what they do because of man’s propensity to believe what he has been told.  He shies away from God’s command to compare what is being taught in church to what He teaches in His Word.  This failure to obey God includes a pastor friend of mine who, when I quoted 2 Peter 1:20, laughed out loud.  He then proceeded to explain that the church needs interpreters to explain what the Scriptures REALLY mean.  I could almost hear the Serpent of Eden telling Eve that she and Adam could interpret what God had said, reject it, eat of the forbidden tree and “You shall not surely die.”  My friend was (is) wrong.  Unfortunately, he has passed his wrongs onto his congregation who, like him, refuse to study the fine print, which makes up the vast majority of the Bible.  They are not alone; there are billions more who suffer from the same religious malady.  Let us learn how to eliminate this disease from our beings.  Warning, it is a life-long undertaking.  I am 79 years of age and I am still learning things from the Holy Bible.  If I do not live to see the coming of the Lord, I hope to die with a Bible in one hand and a pen in the other.

I have presented God’s Bible study formula in an earlier posting.  However, there is evidence that new people are reading my website.  Therefore, I ask you old timers to bear with me for a few minutes as I tell them how to study the Scriptures God’s way, which He tells us through the Prophet Isaiah.  In chapter 28, beginning with verse nine, Isaiah asks a rhetorical question: How can God teach His Truths to Truth-hungry believers?  He then answers the question–twice.  “Whom shall He (God) teach knowledge? and whom shall He cause to understand His doctrine (singular–Truth)?  Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breast.”  In verse ten he tells more mature people how to find God’s Truth (His “strong meat”–Heb. 5:12,14): “For precept (Truth) must be upon (added to) precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little.”  In verses 11 and 12 he warns Israel that God will teach them in a variety of languages, but that they will not hear.  Then he repeats the formula in verse 13.  He was right, they did not hear.  Neither do their spiritual descendants.

It is important to understand why verse 10 was repeated in verse 13.  To gain insight into the Lord’s duality principle let us turn to the Book of Exodus where we find Joseph talking to Egypt’s pharaoh about two dreams he had recently experienced.  The dreams, Joseph told him, had the same meaning.  But why two dreams?  Joseph noted that God’s sending two dreams meant that the future was set–the seven years of abundance would be followed by seven years of want.  Nothing could stop the dreams from coming true.  Many years ago God sent me two identical dreams, in living color, in the same night.  What He showed me has come to pass.  Knowing the future and the hearts of those involved in the dream, the merciful God was warning me ahead of time that something would happen that I did not want to happen.  Since then He has shown me several equally hard to believe events that would take place through my ministry, including the deaths of three people long before their times.  In each case they died because they did not believe what I told them about God’s Word.  I warned them.  Therefore their deaths are not on my hands.

In the case of Israel whom Isaiah was writing to, his warnings fell on blind eyes.  Ignoring Isaiah’s words and writings, each person became “right in his own eyes.”  They interpreted God’s Words according to their own mind-set, found them wanting and replaced them with more user-friendly versions.  The Almighty addresses this phenomenon in several places in His Word: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but that way leads to destruction.”  “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.”  Men “hide their eyes” from His Truth because they “are pure in their own eyes.”  Scripture-interpreting men are those that “call evil good and good evil; that call darkness light and light darkness, that call bitter sweet and sweet bitter, who are wise in their own eyes.  On such men God pronounces a “woe.”  L.J