This Week’s Feature Article by Jack Kelley

The Bible isn’t such a complex document that it requires years of formal education before you can begin to comprehend it. I’ve always believed the Bible was meant to be understood by any believer who can read and has a serious interest in knowing what it says. I say this because I believe the Bible is best approached by relying on the power of the Holy Spirit rather than one’s own intellect. James 1:5 says that any of us who lacks wisdom need only ask God who gives generously to all without finding fault.

Conversely the man without the Spirit can not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God regardless of his mental prowess. (1 Cor. 2:14) This is why we hear of people who tried to read the Bible as non-believers and found they couldn’t figure it out, but as soon as they were born again it began to make sense. They didn’t suddenly become more intelligent, they simply gained the supernatural insight of the Holy Spirit who teaches us all things. (John 14:26)

Over the 25 years or so I’ve been studying the Bible I’ve picked up a handful of principles that have also given me a better understanding of what it says. They help keep me honest so I know it’s the Holy Spirit teaching me, and not just my sin infested intellect coming to its own conclusion. From time to time I get asked about these principles, having mentioned them in answers to various questions, so here they are.

The Golden Rule of Interpretation

“When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore, take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate context, studied in the light of related passages and axiomatic and fundamental truths, indicate clearly otherwise.” Dr. D.L. Cooper

This hasn’t become known as the Golden Rule of Interpretation for nothing. If you ignore all the others and only follow this one rule you will avoid almost all the mistakes people make in reading the Bible. And the next one is like it, sort of an expanded version of the first.

Literal, Historical, Grammatical, Contextual

These could be called the most important words in Biblical Hermeneutics, which is the science of properly interpreting the Bible.

Literal means that each word is given the same exact basic meaning it would have in normal, ordinary, customary usage, whether employed in writing, speaking or thinking. Unless it’s clearly indicated otherwise, we’re to assume the Bible means exactly what it says. Examples of passages that are not intended to be taken literally are parables, dreams, and visions. These are all identified as such, alerting us to the fact that they’re meant to be understood symbolically.

Historical means that each passage is put into its proper historical setting and surrounded with the thoughts, attitudes, and feelings prevalent at the time of its writing. In Biblical times the Jewish view of the Messiah was one of a charismatic leader like King David. In other words, a man, not God in human form. Knowing that helps us understand how they failed to recognize Him, and why they accused Him of blasphemy when He claimed to be God.

Grammatical means that words are given meanings consistent with their common understanding in the original language at the time of writing. Grammatical interpretation also includes following recognized rules of grammar and in its more advanced form, applying the nuances of the Hebrew and Greek languages to the understanding of a passage.

A good example showing the importance of following the rules of grammar can found in Daniel 9:27 where the subject of the first sentence in the verse is a personal pronoun. “He will confirm a covenant with (the) many.” The rule of grammar regarding personal pronouns is that they refer to the closest preceding personal noun. In this case it’s “the ruler who will come” in verse 26 indicating that the person who will confirm the covenant with Israel is the anti-Christ, not the Lord as some commentators assert.

Contextual interpretation involves always taking the surrounding context of a verse/passage into consideration when trying to determine its meaning. The Holy Spirit has usually prompted the Bible’s writers to place indicators in the text surrounding a passage to guide you in interpreting it. In 1 Cor. 9:24-27 Paul compares our life to that of an athlete, training and competing for crowns. The mention of crowns tells us the passage is not about salvation, which is a free gift, but rewards believers can win after being saved. (In this case it’s the crown of victory, awarded to those who overcome the ways of the flesh by getting rid of selfish desires, bad habits and attitudes, etc.)

When you stop to think about it, reading the Bible this way actually makes perfect sense. If you received a letter from a friend you wouldn’t have to be reminded to apply these principles. You would naturally assume that your friend was using words that meant the same thing to both of you. You would understand them within the parameters of your shared history, you would assume that the rules of grammar you had both been taught applied, and you would interpret what was written within the context of your relationship. You would expect your friend to alert you if any of these assumptions were not going to apply, and explain the reason for it.

The only difference with the Bible is that it was written over a long period of time, during which the meanings of some words changed, and society is generally different now than it was when the Bible was written. This makes books on Bible history and a good concordance valuable additions to your library.

Expositional Constancy

This is a fancy term to remind us that symbolism in scripture tends to be consistent. For example, through out the Bible leaven, or yeast, is used symbolically to stand for sin. Therefore there’s no justification for claiming that in the Parable of the Yeast (Matt. 13:33) and there alone, it stands for the Gospel. Expositional Constancy only applies to words that are used symbolically, so be careful. Peter’s statement in 2 Peter 3:9 that with the Lord a day is like 1000 years and 1000 years is like a day does not justify substituting 1000 years for a day every time it comes up. Peter was simply explaining that the Lord’s concept of time is way different from ours.

Internal Consistency

The Bible, being the word of God, cannot contradict itself. The Lord is just and righteous so He can’t say something in one place and something different in another. He knows the end from the beginning so He can’t change His mind or take back something He’s given. Everything He says has to agree with everything else He says. For example, if the Bible says it’s God who makes us stand firm in Christ, that He anointed us, set His seal of ownership on us and put His Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee of what’s to come (2 Cor. 1:21-22), then it can’t say that we can walk away from our salvation or have it taken away from us someplace else.

Principle Of First Mention

Often when an important concept is mentioned for the first time there is elevated significance in the context of the passage in which it appears. The first mention of the Church is in Matt.16:18 where Peter declared that Jesus is the Messiah, son of the living God. Jesus said that this truth would be the foundation upon which He would build His Church. Notice who’s going to be doing the building and whose Church it is. Studying the passage where an important concept first appears can be very helpful in interpreting subsequent passages on the same subject.

Use Clear Passages To Interpret Obscure Ones

Some passages of Scripture are more difficult to interpret correctly than others. When confronting one of these, it’s best to locate the clearest verses on the subject and use them to help interpret the difficult one. A classic example is Hebrews 6:4-6 which, when taken alone, seems to say that we can fall away and lose our salvation, and if that should happen we can never get it back. But the clearest verses on salvation are Ephesians 1:13-14 and 2 Cor. 1:21-22, and they plainly state the opposite. The Ephesians passage says we were included in Christ when we first heard and believed the gospel. Having believed we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, a deposit that guarantees our inheritance. In 2 Corinthians Paul went even further saying that God himself has accepted responsibility for making us stand firm in Christ and has set His seal of ownership on us, like a rancher brands his cattle.

Applying the principles above we must conclude that the writer to Hebrews had to be talking about something else. When we look at the context of the letter, we find that it was written to Jewish believers who were being lured back into the Levitical system, which used the sacrifice of a lamb to atone for sins. For the Church, the Lord’s death fulfilled what the sacrifice only symbolized, so going back to this was tantamount to sacrificing Him all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace, because by their actions they were saying that His death was not sufficient to atone for their sins.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, going back to the sacrifice was no longer acceptable to God because the Law was only a shadow of the good things that are coming, not the realities themselves. For that reason it could never make perfect those who draw near to worship no matter how many times they repeated it. (Hebr. 10:1) But when the Lord offered His sacrifice once for all time, He made perfect forever those who are being made holy (Hebr. 10:12-14) During the Church Age all we have to do after sinning is confess our sins to receive forgiveness, be brought back to repentance, and be purified from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9) Now Hebrews 6:4-6 makes sense because it conforms to the internal consistency of God’s Word.

There are lots of other rules and principles man has developed for application to God’s word, but in my opinion if we just apply the ones I’ve listed above we’ll stand a good chance of avoiding the errors and misinterpretations that seem to be so common these days.

The Bible is quite simply the most incredible book ever written. Some parts of it were written at least 4000 years ago, and by 95AD its most recent chapters were finished. But according to Paul it was written to teach us, upon whom the end of the age has come. (Romans 15:4, 1 Cor. 10:11) If we’ll just read it the way we would any other document, as if it means what it says, the Holy Spirit will reveal wondrous truths from within its pages. Truths that will give us an anchor against the storms of deceit and controversy that have become so common in our time. Maybe that’s why it was written primarily to us. Selah 11-14-09

A. When King David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband murdered so he could marry her, God informed David that the baby who resulted from their affair would become sick and would not survive. Seven days later the child died. (2 Samuel 11-12)  This was more likely an application of the “life for a life” principle (Exodus 21:23) than a punishment for adultery .

But why this was being taught to a 5 year old, and why the teacher turned this specific situation into a general principle is beyond me.  He or she could have taught them that even though David committed these terrible sins,  he was forgiven as soon as he asked, the child went to be with God and was spared a life of illegitimacy, and David was reunited with him after he died. (2 Sam 12:23).

A. I can’t comment on events regarding Catholic traditions, but there are a number of occasions in the Bible where spiritual beings, be they angels, deceased humans, or the Lord Himself, have visited the physical realm as Moses and Elijah did in your example, just as there are descriptions of mortals visiting the spiritual realm, as in the cases of Paul (2 Cor. 12:1-4) and John. (Rev. 4:1-2) In each of these cases, permission was granted by God for the edification of mankind. Unauthorized communication between the realms is forbidden.

A. It’s difficult for all of us and the Bible doesn’t explain this in any detail.  In fact the only clues we have are His claim that before His death only the Father knew the details of the 2nd coming (Matt. 24:36) the promise we would do even greater things than He did (John 14:12) indicating that none of His Earthly ministry, aside from dying for us, was beyond the capability of a man with faith, and the statement that all this was subsequently revealed to Him, whereupon He revealed it to John. (Rev. 1:1)

Throughout the Old Testament Jesus appeared from time to time as The Angel Of The Lord. We don’t know what His Heavenly form was. But we can conclude from the above verses that in  some way we don’t understand He gave up His God-like powers when He came to Earth and became fully (and only) man.  He accomplished all His miraculous work through the power of the Holy Spirit, the very same power that’s available to all of us. When He returned to Heaven He did so as a man.  John spoke of seeing Him at the throne of God looking like the Lamb who had been slain (Rev. 6:6)  This has led some scholars to wonder if He ever got back all He gave up, or is confined to the body of a man forever.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

A. There is a ton of conflicting information about these 3 names.  The simple answer is that the Gadarenes (residents of Gadera) and the Gergesenes (residents of Gergasa) were neighbors whose lands may have actually adjoined one another on the banks of the sea where Jesus and the disciples landed.  (The Strong’s concordance says that the names Gaderenes and Gergesenes were interchangeable.)

Gerasa (modern day Jerash) was the nearest major city and was one of  10 cities that defined the large region east of the Galilee called the Decapolis (10 cities) in which the two smaller towns were located.  Its residents were called Gerasenes.  Since it was 30 miles inland it’s doubtful Jesus cast the demons into the pigs there. But it is possible that the people involved could have properly been called by any of the three names.

People who dispute the Bible’s authority have much bigger problems than the correct name for the location of this miracle and are usually just trying to steer the conversation away from the real issue, which is whether or not to accept the Lord’s death as payment for their sins.  Don’t let them get away with it.

A. In the Letter to Sardis (Rev. 3:1-6)  the members are separated into 2 groups, those who will walk with the Lord dressed in white and those who won’t. Those who won’t are warned to obey what they heard at first, which was the gospel.  Belief in the gospel is necessary to make their deeds complete. Those who take His advice and rely on the gospel are promised that their names will never be blotted out of the book of life. In other words they’ll have eternal life.

I believe Sardis represents the liberal denominations who never teach the need to be born again, but that people inherit eternal life through church membership or infant baptism. At the rapture, the people who believe only that will be left behind, their deeds incomplete, while the ones who believe we must be born again to see the Kingdom (John 3:3) will be taken.

A. The key to understanding Luke 21:36 is the word “about”.  Jesus said these things in 32 AD.  The rapture wasn’t about to happen, but the destruction of Jerusalem, of which He had just spoken, was (Luke 21:12-24).  That’s what He was warning them about.  There was no promise that they would be removed from harm’s way before the Roman armies came as there is for us at the end of the age.

Some might read this as a rapture passage due to  the fact that not all translations have the word about, even though the Greek word literally means “to be about, to be on the point of doing or suffering something” and carries an air of expectation.  In Young’s Literal Translation Luke 21:36 reads this way:

watch ye, then, in every season, praying that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are about to come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man.’

Is this a physical resistance, spiritual, or some form of restraining that can’t be explained to a human?  Do God sent angels and fallen angels fight in the sense that we humans fight with weapons?  Or does the spirit world fight with words from the Lord?

A. The angel sent to Daniel, the Prince of Persia, and Michael are all angelic beings. In a manner not explained to us the first angel was detained by the angel sent by Satan to influence the earthly rulers of Persia and prevented from delivering his message to Daniel. After 21 days of resistance, the archangel Michael, who is the protective power behind Israel, came to the first angel’s aid and secured his release to complete his mission.  In art and literature warrior angels are depicted as powerful beings.   2 Kings 6:17 describes warrior angels on horses and chariots of fire. In Psalm 103:20 they’re called mighty ones.  2 Peter 2:11 says angels are stronger and more powerful than we are.  We don’t know if they engage in hand to hand combat, but in the 99 times they appear in the Bible, angels are never described as carrying weapons.

The other day I received an interesting response to my answer stating that the Bible supports an approximate 6000 year history for the human race. This person didn’t dispute the Bible, only our interpretation of it, in disagreeing with my answer.

The essence of his response was that since science has found what it considers to be persuasive evidence that contradicts the literal view of the creation account, then our traditional interpretation of the language in Genesis 1 has to be flawed.

The writer is a scientist and a Christian. He presented a calm and reasoned response claiming that every relevant field of science is in agreement that “enormous amounts of very convincing evidence exists for an old–very old–earth and even for evolution, including humans.”

Now I’ve said before that I’m OK with an old Earth. In other articles I’ve shown how an old Earth and young civilization are entirely compatible with a literal interpretation of Genesis 1. (Read More) But in his view the old Earth includes animals and other life, some of whom later evolved into humans. I’m not OK with that because the Bible says that animals came along on day 6, same as man.

He went on to ask, “So what is more likely, that thousands of highly educated, highly experienced, highly motivated, life-long scientists and thinkers are wrong about immeasurable amounts of finely done, peer reviewed data or that your interpretation of a document which is thousands of years old is ever so slightly incorrect?”

Then he repeated that He’s not contesting the accuracy of Scripture, only man’s interpretation of it.

Let’s set aside the fact that most of those thousands of highly educated, highly experienced, highly motivated, life-long scientists and thinkers are non-believers who don’t think the Biblical Creation account is even a remote possibility. We’ll consider only the believers among them, because they’re the ones who say that the Scripture is accurate, but our interpretation of it is flawed.

For all the generations from the dawn of creation until the early part of the 20th Century, almost all believers accepted the Lord’s account of the Six Day Creation. So what is it that we’ve “misinterpreted” for all these thousands of years?

It’s About Time

All believers agree that ultimately God is our Creator. So the basic conflict between the differing views of our origin really comes down to the time involved. Evolution requires millions of years, but the Bible says the creation was complete from start to finish in 6 days. Now there’s there’s only one sentence in the entire creation account that concerns time. Therefore the whole argument boils down to a claim that for all these generations we’ve misinterpreted one sentence. That one sentence, repeated 6 times, reads like this. “And there was evening, and there was morning, day (1-6) “ (Genesis 1:5,8,13,19,23,31) Furthermore, within that sentence there are only three words that relate to time; evening, morning, and day. If there’s been a misinterpretation, it has to be in one of those three words.

By the way, let’s address the Bible’s accuracy here in case you’re thinking maybe some words got changed along the way to cause our misinterpretation. According to Rabbinical sources, there are 79,847 words in the Torah, as the first five books of the Bible are called, made up of 304,805 Hebrew letters. Fewer than 2 dozen of these letters are in dispute, and then only for spelling differences. That means the Torah we have today is a 99.99% accurate copy of the one Moses originally wrote. We know this because every letter in Hebrew has a numerical value, so every line and every column of text has a correct sum. In hand copying the text every line was checked for accuracy by adding the sum of its letters and comparing it with the correct total. In the case of a difference, the page was destroyed, and the copyist started over. Remember, these people were entrusted with the very words of God and took that trust seriously.

Three Little Words

With that said, let’s take a look at the three words having to do with time.

The Hebrew word for evening is erev. It’s always translated evening, sunset or night.

The word for morning is boqer. There’s no question that it means morning. Hebrew speaking Jews greet each other at the beginning of each day with “Boqer tov” (good morning).

And the word for day is yomn. As does its English counterpart, yomn can have a figurative meaning as well as a literal one. Of its 2287 appearances in Scripture, 2008 describe a literal 24 hour day. In the figurative sense it can mean a longer span of time, such as in the phrase “Day of the Lord “ in Amos 5:18 where it refers to the 3.5 year long Great Tribulation.

But common sense tells us that when combined with evening and morning, as it is in each of the six references of Genesis 1, it’s meant to be taken literally, a single 24 hour period, because there are no figurative applications for the Hebrew words erev and boqer. And the Bible doesn’t say there were evenings and mornings, it says there was evening (singular) and there was morning (singular). One of each. And that means one 24 hour day.

We also have the first mention of the word day in Genesis 1:5 and it demonstrates the Lord’s intention for the word’s use.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day. (Genesis 1:3-5)

This verse established the way time would be reckoned. First there was evening, the beginning of the dark period, night, and then there was morning, the beginning of the light period, day. This cycle has repeated itself every 24 hours throughout history.

Are we supposed to believe that for almost all of human history the words evening, morning, and day haven’t meant what people thought they meant?

How Could This Be?

In an effort to reconcile the creation account with evolution, some believers try to give the Lord more time to do His work of creation. They call the six days of creation by a new name, “creation days”, implying that each one is more like an age than a 24 hour period. But the accepted meanings of the words evening, morning, and day don’t accommodate this dramatic stretching of time. The Hebrew language has other words for that purpose, so these words are never used to describe an age, especially when used together.

I also realize that some believers don’t accept the Bible as being the word of God. They say it merely contains it. This allows them to discard parts of the Bible with which they disagree. Some discard the entire Old Testament, including the creation account, as little more than a collection of folk tales. But in Romans 15:4 Paul said that everything that was written in the past was written to teach us. In 1 Cor. 10:1-11 he cited a number of events from Israel’s history when the people rebelled and were disciplined. Then he said that these things happened to them as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. And in 2 Timothy 3:16 he said that all scripture is God-breathed, or as we would say, written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. In all these cases he had to be referring to the Old Testament, since the New testament didn’t exist yet. Who are we to dispute this and ignore his warnings? The Old testament is the inspired Word of God, just like the New, and is meant to play an important role in a believer’s life.

But between the liberal denomination I grew up in and the public schools I attended, evolution was the only explanation of our origins I ever heard until I was well into adulthood. Sure God was our creator, but evolution was the way He did it. No body I knew thought to even question it. It wasn’t till I was born again at age 40 that I heard any teaching about the Creation, and then it was something I had to seek out for myself. I’m sure thousands of you had similar experiences growing up.

In the last 100 years or so, a heresy called the documentary hypothesis has infested liberal theology. This hypothesis makes the claim that Moses didn’t write the Torah, but that it was pieced together long afterward from writings by several unrelated groups. Proponents of this view ask us to ignore the fact that Moses is mentioned by name in 85 verses of the New Testament, and that among them are multiple references to his authorship of the 5 Books of the Torah, including direct quotes from the Lord Himself. Was Jesus unaware of the real authors of these passages He quoted? Was he just going along with a tradition He knew was false, or did He know that Moses had written them?

Stop And Think

As you can see, these reasons for denying the 6 day creation won’t stand the test of rational thought. They’re just excuses people use to disregard the truth.

Most scientists don’t say, “Our science is based on universally accepted assumptions, and yet our findings disagree with the Creator’s account of what He did. Our assumptions must be incorrect. “

Instead they say, “Our science is based on universally accepted assumptions, and yet our findings disagree with the Creator’s account of what He did. His account must be incorrect.”

“For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?” (1 Cor. 2:16)

I can understand non-believers searching for an alternative to the Biblical account. They have to find one in order to justify their disbelief. But how can scientists who are Christian actually think man can know more about how we were created than the One who did it, to a point where they can dispute the accuracy of the Creator’s account?

For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” (1 Cor. 1:19)

The time will come when we’ll know everything, just like God does. At that time we won’t have to take His word for anything. As Paul said, “We will know fully as we are fully known.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Until then I don’t believe we have the right to pick and choose what parts of His Word we want to believe. We certainly don’t have the perspective. “Who has known the mind of the Lord? we’re asked, Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:34) Selah 10-31-09

A. In their different ways, both translations say that even Jesus didn’t know about the day or hour of his coming.  Only God knew.  When Jesus said those words from Matt. 24:36, He was on Earth as a man, and had put aside His Godly powers.  We don’t know exactly how this was accomplished but the effect was to make Him totally human.  (If you read it carefully, you can see that one aspect of the wilderness temptation was to get Jesus to take up His godly powers again. Had He done so, He would have blown the mission.)

Later, after the ascension, the details of the End Times were revealed to Him, and He then revealed them to John.  Rev. 1:1 says “the Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to Him to show His servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to His servant John …”

In other words, God revealed it to Jesus who revealed it to John. (The Greek word for angel simply means messenger. Jesus did not come to John as an angel in the sense that we understand the word.)