“Yea, hath God said....?”
Four simple little words, but oh, how
they can cause damage. These are the first four words that Satan
spoke to Eve. And because she agreed that God did not mean exactly
what He said, we now suffer the consequences of that terrible
decision, namely sin. Christ had to die to undo that terrible
mistake. Yet still today, Satan finds that these four words are his
best weapon against Christians, for if there is one thing that causes
a great deal of dispute, it is the subject of what God's Word – His
literal words - says.
I cannot count the number of times I
have read something like this, “I know what the text says, but that
doesn't mean you have to interpret it that way.” In fact, I read
those very words just yesterday. Today I read another comment by
someone and they said basically the same thing. “You say it can't
get much clearer than that! [the text] all sounds so cut and dry, I
admit that....but...” Now here are two people that both admit
that the text says something that is clearly understood in its
straightforward reading, yet both of them argue that God does not
mean what He said. In other words, Satan has managed to convince
them, just as he convinced Eve that God does not actually mean what
He has said.
Now my
question is, if that were really the case, how on earth is God
supposed to communicate something to us, if we constantly argue with
Him that He cannot possibly mean what He has said? How many times
when our children have misbehaved and deliberately done something
that we have clearly and unmistakeably told them not to do, have they
said that they did not understand us to have actually meant what we
said? They choose to “interpret” what we have said in order to
disobey us. I am sure every parent has had this happen at least once
in their child-rearing years.
I
cannot begin to count the number of people who have told me that
God's Word is not to be understood in a straightforward manner, but
that we are to “interpret” it in a symbolic or spiritualized way.
Many well-known preachers even preach that we are to do this. The
problem becomes, we have been told by God, through Peter, that we are
not to try to put a personal or private interpretation upon His Word,
especially prophecy. We are told it is not our place to “interpret”
it, 2 Peter 1:20 “Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the
scripture is of private interpretation.” Now considering that the
vast majority of the Bible is prophecy, (not only all the major and
minor prophets and Revelation, but also much of the gospels,
epistles, Psalms, and Torah. And I am fairly sure that there are
verses here and there in the few books not mentioned as well. That
means that most of the Bible is not up for private interpretation.
Therefore God actually means what He says, and He wants us to
understand Him exactly as He has said it. So to say that, well, yes,
you know that what is said makes sense as written, but you choose not
to believe it is simply rebellion against God. Just as Eve rebelled
against God.
Now I
know that some read this will argue that there is more behind God's
words than what is simply written - that there is symbolism as well,
such as Abraham offering Isaac being a picture of God offering His
Son. I will not deny that this is true. And naturally God's Word
includes metaphors, anthropomorphisms, and similar grammatical
devices, which we should intelligently be able to separate out. There
are also visions, which God always interprets for us, so we need not
try to interpret them ourselves. BUT, and this is a big BUT, besides
those few things, we must always first and foremost accept what is
written at the face value level and understand God's Word at that
level before looking for any other meaning. THEN and ONLY then can we
move on to look for the deeper meaning that may be symbolic. And this
second or even third level of understanding will NEVER contradict the
face value meaning at the first level. If we skip over the first
level and try to “interpret” God's Word without a foundational
understanding, we turn it into nonsense, for with no foundational
truth underneath our interpretation, it will not stand up, but
collapse under its own weight. Any theories derived without a
foundational truth underneath it will only be a false interpretation
and will lead one from the truth, not to it. This is why we find so
many doctrines throughout the churches in Christendom. Instead of
staying with a straightforward understanding, a great many of the
“great scholars” or “giant Christian leaders” through the
centuries have propagated their own private interpretation,
which then became doctrine and then dogma. The very thing we were
told not to do, was done by the very leaders of the church in
defiance of God's command, and look where it has led us. People do
not study their Bibles, our pastors do not study their Bibles,
everyone studies their churches dogmas and doctrines and then defends
them to the hilt, by using their privately derived
interpretations of the Word of
God, skewing His Word in whatever way is necessary for them to
validate their beliefs. This is not what we were supposed to do.
So the
question again becomes, “Yea, hath God said?” And our answer to
that question posed by Satan to this day should be, “Yes, He most
certainly has.”
