Edition 103. December 11th 2011
Right and wrong interpretation and the consequences.
News events and comment.
●Syria and Iran may be at war with Israel by mid January. (Information picked up by Debka Files)
●Many intelligence sources reveal war with Israel, Iran and Syria is on the verge. Many nations are preparing now.
●At time of writing unsubstantiated reports are doing the rounds with various military leaders the Iran is due to be hit with an Electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) device within days. This can be directed from space. It cause no damage, but takes out all airborne communication.
●As we head for 2012 I just want to add that the media frenzy around the Mayan calendar is hogwash. Why would the true and living God give such knowledge to a demon possessed people who God allowed to be completely destroyed because of their witchcraft? 2012 is going to be a climactic year as the birth pangs of the soon coming seven year tribulation intensify. These things are all in God's word.
Right and wrong interpretation and the consequences
Why interpretation is so important.
The results of correct interpretation of scripture, and prophecy in particular, has wonderful results in your life. The results and effects of incorrect interpretation are deadly and monumental to say the least.
How many times have you heard people say, "Oh this Bible stuff is all open to interpretation"? I've heard that more times than I can remember.
Incorrect interpretation of the scripture can never ever produce correct living and is ultimately the road to destruction.
Incorrect interpretation is the root of all division, denominationalism and personal defeat.
Correct interpretation produces Godly results of security and stability as well as Godly fruit in our lives. It is the way to victory.
This is no small issue. It's Satan's primary playground. If he can get you believing the wrong things, he's got a major foothold in your life. Do not take these things lightly.
Our Lord has delivered a huge amount of promises to His family, in the Bible. He's given us the author of Bible, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in our hearts and lead us into all truth, if we meet the conditions.
He's also issued a huge amount of warnings to the world in His word.
The first deadly incorrect interpretation occurred in Eden. It's goal back then was the same as it is today and that is to destroy God's ways and plans.
My friends we are heading into some wild storms on every front. You don't have to believe it but how much better it is to be ready and prepared. If you know, what's coming, when, why and how, you'll be able to help many other people as they stumble in the storms.
There are so many wrecked lives out there. So many people started well and got shipwrecked along the way. So many don't even know how far they've gone astray because they've long since left our Lord and His absolute truth. Their new standard is the variable values of the world.
Psalm 36:9 "In your light we see light." In the world's light we see exactly what Satan wants us to see.
2 Peter 3:3 "Knowing this, that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts , and saying where is the promise of His coming...all things will continue as they have."
According to this verse above, the heart of the scoffer is lust. The modern homosexual movement is a classic example of people who've cast down the word so that pure lust can thrive. Of course if you want to live in ungodliness you won't want the intervention of the coming of the Lord, would you?
Biblical interpretation
Not surprisingly a spiritual conflict is on the go around these issues. Way back shortly after the resurrection there were two big church conferences -The Alexandra Council and the Byzantine Council. One insisted on the literal use of the Bible and the other insisted on the use of variable methods. One was of God and one of the devil. Today the same conflict is still on the go.
Do you want to follow our Lord? Do you want to be a disciple of His? Good, these are the conditions.
Matthew 16:24 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me."
Taking up you cross and denying self are conditions for discipleship in general, but they are most certainly the prime conditions for correct interpretation. The problem we all face is that we we're born rebels and the world system and it's ways have been so ingrained in us that we've been blinded in many areas.
I've said many times that Satan's big anchor in our lives is the world the flesh (self) and the demonic. The answer is the cross! So, only as we take up our cross do we really live and see things God's way.
Luke 8:18 "Take heed how you hear, for whoever has, to him will be given more, and to him who does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken away."
Matthew 24:4 "Take heed that no one deceives you."
Isaiah 55:8 "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord."
Note that in the above verses that we're cautioned by our Lord on this issue. Don't think you can just drift along in your Christianity! There are many requirements needed.
The biggest and most important things that's needed is to deny self, and cast down our own thoughts, ideas, plans and everything we've picked up that is of the world.
There are two main schools of interpretation. There are others but they're all founded in these two. These are the allegorical and the literal method. One is of God and one is of the devil and never the twain shall meet.
The allegorical method..
This is the way of the devil himself.
The purpose of the allegorical method is actually not to interpret scripture, but to pervert it and give it whatever meaning the interpreter wants. This method is inconsistent. Those who adhere to it chop and change from literal to allegorical as it suits them.
The basic authority ceases to be to the God of the Bible, but the philosophy and mind of the interpreter.
This method exalts the interpreter. It raises him up above God making himself the supreme god. The allegorical method appeals to man's self effort and pride! Job 41:34 "He (Satan) is king over all the children of pride."
Of course there are many allegories in the Bible.
The big thing with interpretation of scripture is that you should seek to apply common sense and only apply allegory when it's obvious.
Some people use allegory for everything and put no limit to it. This leaves you in a world of multitudes of opinions and one big mess up.
Beware: The allegorical method is a slippery slope to hell. Once you open the door to error it breeds and feeds and grows...that's the nature of the real beast.
Error is the early stage of deception, which is a stronghold of monumental proportions. Once you get into fully fledge deception, you're in Satan's prison. You can look out but you can't get out until real deliverance comes along. Truth is veiled to you.
Isaiah 29:13 "In as much as these people draw near to Me with their mouths and honour Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me and their fear towards Me is taught by the commandments of men."
Jeremiah 17:5 "Cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord."
Mark 7:7 "In vain they worship Me, teaching as commandments the traditions of men."
The above three verses have one thing in common. They all identify the source of the problem as the heart of man.
Its only as we turn our focus from the variable values and opinions of man to the living God do we see things correctly.
The literal method of interpretation:
Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths."
The literal method gives to each word the exact basic meaning of normal language. It is also called the grammatical-historical method.
The method of interpretation at the time of Christ was undoubtedly literal. It was only when Satan chose to bring confusion into the scriptures that the troubles and divisions started.
Old Testament prophecies that were fulfilled in Old Testament times were fulfilled exactly and literally, with not one exception. Then we come to the prophecies of the Old Testament which were fulfilled in the New, and again we see the same pattern of fulfilment. For example all the prophecies of the coming Messiah in the Old Testament were fulfilled exactly and literally, with not one miss. Some of these were greatly detailed, like "He would be born in Bethlehem". Then we come to the prophecies of both the Old and New Testaments, relating to the second coming and this time period we are in now, and again we see exact literal fulfilment. For example, prophecy declares that Israel would become a nation again and Jerusalem would again be restored to the Jews. Both of these were fulfilled exactly in our time.
Here is the big question. If this is the past pattern of prophetic fulfilment, why is it suddenly now going to shift to the allegorical method where all is variable and open to interpretation? Obviously it is going to continue in the same literal way!
The past pattern of fulfilment is an extremely powerful case for the literal method. Ignore it at your peril!
There is no problem with the literal method accommodating certain aspects of allegory, figures of speech or symbols. All that is required is some common sense. For example the coming antichrist is also described as a beast. Yes he will soon arrive on the world stage literally as a person, but he will have many characteristics of a wild beast. He will be a real literal antichrist and won't be a real literal beast.
There is also no problem with prophecy having a double reference. There are many personal lessons to be learnt from prophetic events, but this does not invalidate the primary aspect, which is the literal event itself.
If the surface reading of a prophecy is plain and clear it requires no allegorical interpretation...seek nothing extra. Keep it plain and simple.
The Bible says that "Our God is not a God of confusion." It also says that "Satan is the god of confusion" So if you're confused about the subject you know who to blame!
The results of correct interpretation:
The first and most important result is pure, true doctrine.
Hebrews 6:1-2 "Let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith towards God, and of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection from the dead and of eternal judgement."
Note that our journey to perfection involves doctrine! It even involves the much-maligned doctrine of eternal judgement!
2 John 10-11 "If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds."
The above verses show how important doctrine is.
Today the great chant of the devil is: "Don't worry about doctrine, it divides" Of course it divides. It divides between those who love it and those who don't. You can't have 2+2=4 and 2+2=5!
Correct interpretation will lead you into all truth and all truth is a place of rest peace and untold glory!
John 16:13 "When He the Spirit of truth has come, He will guide you into all truth...and show you things to come."
The results of correct interpretation will always be seen in reality. For example all the coming troubles now relating to Israel and the Arab world are prophesied in the Bible. We can see it all unfolding in reality.
If you see all of these things and still hold to the allegorical method, you really are a very clever idiot.
The results of bad interpretation
1 Corinthians 14:8 "For if a trumpet makes an uncertain sound, who will prepare himself for battle."
Bad interpretation always leads to bad living. In many instances that is greatly magnified and bad interpretation is actually the cause of war, hatred and murder on a massive scale.
Today we have replacement theology as the foundation of many churches. This will lead to another Holocaust! It will be spearheaded by a large part of the church. They are already laying the groundwork and turning a blind eye to the modern Hitler...Iran's Ahmadinejad.
Many traditional church denominations and belief systems have their roots in the beliefs of their church fathers. For example, the Calvinists and all their offshoots like the reformed churches, hero worship John Calvin. They elevate his teachings.
They want you to see the world through their eyes. They want you to see things their way and if you argue, they quote the founders of their religion.
But they're not going back far enough. Poisonous error and deception had already been mixed into the church in huge proportions long before the so-called reformers came along.
We need to go back much further, right to the early church days. The first church was gloriously successful. It could not be defeated by the murdering Roman emperors. Then Satan came along with his ace trump card, which was to defeat the church by mixing in error, allegory and paganism.
That created the dark ages. Can you see how important correct interpretation of truth is?
Incorrect interpretation can't sit with truth
I've read and heard so much rubbish on Bible interpretation. "Tools for Bible interpretation." How to interpret the Bible" and many others are all based on church doctrine and a view clouded in what some church father said.
Way back in the early 80s I saw Keith Green of Last Days Ministries do a series titled "What's wrong with the gospel" It's two hours on the "added parts and two hours on "what's been removed." What an eye opener that was. Just the title alone speaks volumes. It's all about how self interest has divided the church by adding, removing or emphasising what they want.
We're in a spiritually charged environment and Satan is behind the battle. He has tried his hardest, and succeeded in rendering much of the church powerless, by bringing in all manner of error, deception and evil.
Constantine was the one who brought in the mixture of Babylonian traditions into the church to make it more palatable to the masses of the day. Today nothing has changed. The god of this world has deep roots in the church.
You can't sanitise the world, you can only "come out of it" Yes we are in it, but we must come out of its spirit. For example, you can't sanitise Christmas, Easter and the other pagan traditions of Satan's Babylon, adopted by the church. You can only come out of it. If you think these traditions are harmless how do you deal with these verses?
Deuteronomy 12:2-4 " You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations which you shall dispossess, served their gods...You shall not worship the Lord your God with such things."
Jeremiah 10:2-4 "Do not learn the way of the Gentiles (lit pagans)...For the customs of the peoples are vanity; For one cuts a tree from a forest...they decorate it with silver and gold, fasten it to the floor..."
Do you know why the Sabbath was changed by the Catholics and why the pagan feasts of Christmas, Easter and others were introduced? They were all done to keep the Jews out of the Catholic church. If the Catholics preached the new birth (which they don't) then this means that Jews were being kept from salvation. That is spiritual murder. Of course let's not forget that the Catholics also physically murdered more Jews than anyone in history.
The Catholics gave birth to replacement theology. It was born in the allegorical interpretation of all the verses in the Bible relating to Israel and the Jews. This evil theology essentially replaces Israel with the church. It holds to the view that God has finished with the Israel, the Jew and Jerusalem and all verses dealing with them must be replaced with the church.
Constantine and then the Catholics added a whole lot of paganism to the church. They removed all the convocations of truth. They removed the Feasts of the Lord, changed the Sabbath, Passover and many other such things that God had set in the early church.
What the Catholics did was remove the Bible itself from the laity. It was banned and removed from public use. In fact today very few Catholics own their own Bible.
The leadership enforced their own allegorical interpretation of the Bible on the laity. This the Bible calls the doctrine of Laodicea, which "God hates". The separation of the clergy above the laity in dress, title and class is a hated doctrine which allows all manner of evil to come in. It allows private interpretation by the clergy, which they then spit out over their flock.
2 Peter 1:20 "Knowing this, that no prophecy of scripture is of any private (personal) interpretation."
The leaders of the Catholic, Anglican and many other churches insist on being called "father", while the Bible declares; "Call no man father" They do this to elevate themselves and separate themselves above the laity, giving themselves importance. They are poisonous vipers!
The founders of the Catholic church were responsible for giving it an entirely new character, based on their evil allegorical methods of interpretation. They split true Biblical Christianity from the Hebraic nature of the early church.
There is one very easy quick way to know if prophecy is being interpreted correctly. If so, it will correctly place and deal with the land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Jewish people and it will be at odds with the world and it's ways.
***Please take note of this shocking but powerful verse of scripture:
Jeremiah 23:22 "If they had stood in My counsel, and had caused My people to hear My words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from their evil doings." Verse 27 goes on to say that "they try to make My people forget My name."
***What an amazing verse that is. Can you see the gravity of it. This verse is actually an incredible indictment on both Catholics and Protestants who have robbed the Jew of salvation by turning the church into some worldly club, foreign to the true Hebraic expression faith. This verse is a damning prophecy of replacement theology. It speaks of those who have failed to see God's prophetic word relating to the Jews.
Pastor, very reverend and bishop reading this, I tell you that you that you hate God and His word. God says do keep the Feasts of the Lord and not to learn the way of the pagans. You do the opposite of both and you teach this to your flock! You see, you can say that you love the Lord, but it's what you do that counts!
The only way you can celebrate Christmas, Easter and the like is by casting down or ignoring God's word.
Do you know what true discipleship is? Here is what the Bible says:
Matthew 28:19-20 "Go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you..." This is a command to teach all things that "I" have commanded you, and not Calvin, Wesley or Luther or all the divided church fathers.
Do you know why the unsaved world loves Christmas, Easter and other traditions? Do you know why the world will not celebrate the Feasts, Passover and the Biblical convocations? It because the world loves its own. All that is born of Satan is glorified by the world. Biblical truth is rejected by the world.
Finally.
Jeremiah 20:9 ...But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back and I could not."
True pure interpretation produces a world of security, and real staggering beauty and great glory. Personally, I'm a passionate lover of nature, environment and all things beautiful. But I see much greater wonders coming soon. It's all in the Bible plain to see.
Pure truth, undefiled is a wonderful road of promise leading to great peace. When you surrender and submit in brokenness and humility to our great exalted Messiah, you are actually on the road to real life-giving transforming, freedom and liberty!
On the other hand, incorrect, faulty interpretation releases the spirit of evil, into you. It builds up your pride and blinds you to the truth. It makes you a true child of the world and it's doomed god Satan.
2 Peter 1:19 "We also have the prophetic word made more sure, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts."
The earlier verses speak about seeing with your eye and hearing with your ear. So now Peter says that there is something even "more sure" than seeing and hearing. It is this recognising that the prophetic word is the most sure thing. The morning star is the planet Venus and it rises in the darkest part of the night indicating that the day is about to dawn. You can see clearly once the day has dawned.
Is the prophetic word the "most sure thing" in your life? If it is, the "morning star has arisen in your heart" and you're set to see many things clearly.
When you surrender to our Lord in all your ways, you can say 'yes' and 'amen' to all of His word. If there are things difficult to understand, you would not dare be so arrogant to rise above God and come up with your own private interpretation.
At the end of the day, that which is of God has Godly (Biblical) results. How simple is that?
1Peter 4:7 "The end of all things at hand, be watchful"
Isaiah 55:6 "Seek the Lord while He may found, call upon Him while He is near."
Proverbs 8:17 "When you seek Me diligently, you will find Me".
Proverbs 1:28-29 "They will seek Me dilligently but they will not find Me, because they hated knowledge (lit. of God) and did not choose the fear of the Lord."
Heaven or hell:
It really is important how you see things. Your spiritual sight must be purified and surrendered to the living God. If not, you may see, but you are blind. What a shame to see things through the eyes of the world later to be shocked when you stnad before God and discover that He was standing by ready to really open your eyes.
The way you see things works out in what you do. Don't for one minute think that because you have some sort of nominal belief in a God that you're okay! Have your hands been the world's workers or have they been instruments in God's hands?
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Here's a painting by Carl Heinrich Bloch done in 1870 titled "The transfiguration"
Kind regards and many blessings...Shalom and grow in grace!
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