Q&A 9: Why so many different interpretations?

The question, let me read it just so it's clear, how can there be so many differences of interpretation among those who even have a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, which we would typically consider to be powerful tools for understanding Scripture properly? And since the Holy Spirit involves every believer, and one of the Holy Spirit's ministries is to lead us into truth as the Spirit of truth, you have references there in John 14, 15, and 16, Why is it that genuine believers can end up with such varying interpretations of Scripture?

This is a big question. We had a fellow come visit here some years ago who was going to CCU, Colorado Christian University, and one of his professors there said, if anybody tells you that they know what the Bible says about something, that's heresy. A number of you may recall a fellow who was with us and went kind of back to his homeland, Chris Smucker, nicknamed Smuck. He had done some co-teaching with us and some study under some of the leaders here. He had also been through a seminary program. Well, he is back there in Ohio and he has been emailing me in the last few weeks. There is a church where he's had some association in the past where some people are coming in and trying to persuade everybody to embrace homosexuality as an accepted practice. And one of their techniques is two things.

One is just to simply undercut the reliability of and confidence in the Bible. And the second is to say we have no idea what it really means. Nobody can tell you what it means. So embrace homosexuality because the Bible is not authoritative and it's also not clear.

There was an article in the paper today about Supreme Court case, I guess, against colleges for not being able to get people out of their Christian groups, people that didn't want to follow their guidelines. Yeah, there are both in the courts as well as legislative and executive positions, there are those who are making decisions that are contrary to our freedom to say what the Bible says. I taught not too many months back on 1 Corinthians 6 which talks about homosexuality of a couple of different kinds.

And there are those who are working feverishly to try to make the ability for me to say that illegal. So anyway, there are those who are working pretty feverishly on that regard. So anyway, I've been trying to help Smuk deal with this issue, and so this is not a hypothetical question, it's very real.

Do we have any idea what the Bible says, or are we just guessing? Do we just throw our hands up, or do we arbitrarily embrace one teaching and another and just say that's what we believe? Yes. We absolutely know what the Bible says. Yes, we certainly do. Yes. I was going to say that You know, in the end times, they'll say that good is evil and evil is good. The falling away, the apostasy as it's sometimes called. Yes, quite so. We have this answer. It starts off with the first things first, all the way to the last things. Okay? Let me just share something else briefly. It was interesting.

There was a fellow who had quite an influence upon me in my earlier years, junior high, you know, high school, that kind of thing. And he actually used to sit down and, you know, open the Bible with me. And then when I got into my college years, he said, no, the Bible is not true. And he came up with all these, you know, theories and whatnot, and very strongly challenged my faith.

But interesting, my response was to say, well, I'm going to check this out. And basically, I've been checking it out for 40 years. And what I've come to is that, no, there is very good, very solid evidence behind Scripture. And we can know what Scripture says. And so, at any rate, I hope to address that. This is not an issue that I take hypothetically or academically. I take it quite personally. But it's also something that I think we can stand on good solid evidence, which is important to know when you step into a college classroom or other environment. Okay.

In order to make what God has intended clear, what scripture communicates is that the set of teachings from the apostles is consistently called the faith and the truth from Acts to Revelation. It starts in Acts chapter 6, the faith with a definite article and singular, the singular faith, the one faith, the set of teachings of the apostles. And the truth, those word pairs show up again and again and again starting at Acts chapter 6 and continue on into the book of Revelation. The truth, the truth, the truth. God did not intend that believers hold to a variety of interpretations nor agree to disagree. Ever heard that term? Agree to disagree? God does not say anywhere that you are to agree to disagree. It's nonsense. It's bunk. Bull feathers.

1 Corinthians 1.10, and I use the New King James Version here, or the King James would also be good, because it carries across an idea that I think some of the other translations do not.

It says, Now I plead with you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing. And that's the point. It's not that you all agreed. which is what the New American Standard, for example, says. It is not simply all supposed to agree, but you say the same thing. Your expressions, what you express as believers, is consistent. Not a variety of things.

That there be no divisions among you, based on doctrine, but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and the same judgment. Does that sound like one particular set of doctrines or what? And by the way, that be perfectly joined together is a word that was used by the medical doctors for setting broken bones. That being perfectly joined together means you got something broken, fix it. He is not mincing words when he lays this out. He says in what you say and what you think and your assessments of things, it needs to be uniform. That doesn't sound at all like we're not sure and we can't tell and let's just agree to disagree.

Ephesians 4.11-14 He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of these saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to what? The unity of, and here's this phrase again, the faith. The unity of the faith. The singular the faith, that set of doctrines and teachings, and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, verse 14, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine. So what it says is the multiple teachings, multiple doctrines is immaturity. The pastors and teachers in a church context have a responsibility to be bringing the body towards the unity of the faith, and that's maturity. If we embrace the, oh well, different people say different things, that's immaturity.

That's what he says in verse 14, right? It's like the pastor I who lived just north of Carson City and had a church there, and I asked him about what he taught about the end times. He says, I believe pan-millennialism. I said, what's that? He says, well, I believe, well, it'll all pan out in the end. He just teaches everything.

Jude 3, an apostolic revelation. Jude 3 is a very brief passage, but very powerful. Beloved, which by the way tells you that people are loved. This is based on love. While I was making every effort to write to you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, here's that two word pair, word pair again, the faith, which was once for all handed down to the saints. There are three points underneath that that are very valuable and important for us to know.

One is that contend earnestly as the Greek epiagonizomai. This is an intense athletic struggle. You could in the context of New Testament times, because that was the time the Greek Olympics were in process. As a matter of fact, 12 BC the Jews funded it. Herod volunteered, by the way.

He's basically saying this, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you put forth an Olympic effort on behalf of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. The faith as the body of teaching must constitute the apostolic teaching. that was once for all, that is the Greek word, there's hapax, and it's a very valuable word to know. It shows up here, it shows up several times in the book of Hebrews about Christ having died once for all. Once given, perpetually valid. The gospel was once given, perpetually valid. I shared that with some paramormon people who came and spoke to me one time and they were just quite baffled at that.

Because if it's once given perpetually valid, I don't need the Book of Mormon. You go to another group, I don't need LNG White. I don't need all these other things. I don't need the writings of Mary Baker Lubber Patterson Eddy or however many last names she has. I don't need all those things. I need the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. That's the faith that I need. Scripture is very specific about who is authorized to write Scripture. It's very specific about what is Scripture.

And by the way, we'll address that question of why do we have the books that we have and not the other books that we don't have in the Bible. We'll get there later. Let's look at page 2 here. One of the reasons why interpretations vary all over the place is that people deviate from what's called grammatical historical interpretation in order to arrive consistently at the single intended meaning of scripture. And by the way, that's a good way to put it.

Single intended meaning. When we said, hey, let's meet this morning and we'll have this elective and it'll start at nine o'clock, we don't have people wondering, I wonder, nine o'clock, what time zone does he mean? What's Holly Hill's Bible church? Did he mean you know, where everybody lived. No. There is an understanding of what I meant, right? And that's why we're here. Okay? A single intended meaning.

We must abide by a set of principles that is fundamental truths and primary guidance of interpretation based on observation, excuse me, of the elements of language, history, and culture in the context of each passage. The handle, the short term for this approach to interpretation is grammatical historical interpretation. Sometimes you'll find a few variations on that, but that's the basic idea, which the Holly Hills Bible Church doctrinal statement explains this way. And we go and give some further explanation there in our doctrinal statement under dispensational interpretation.

The idea is that we understand things with the plain meaning that would come out of the background of language and history and culture. What do we know about those three things, those three areas, and we take from that understanding what was intended. What did we mean, right?

But then the question, why knowledge of Greek and Hebrew doesn't assure consistent interpretation? Because you will have people who have taken lots of Greek and Hebrew and pull out all the books and everything, arriving at different conclusions. Why? Well, let's take a look at why.

What it amounts to is the differences between one person and another who studies Greek and Hebrew are quite minor. There's really very little, oh yeah, they've got journals and they debate little things, but there's really very little that's in question. It's all quite well known. The reasons for the different interpretations by those who've gone and studied this can be summed up this way.

We have two points there. Allegorizing imposed upon the text of scripture, which includes variations in allegorizing among groups and individual interpreters, and where the allegorization begins and ends. Where do we allegorize? What do we allegorize? Where do we stop? Where do we start? And then, secondly, what does the allegory mean? The truth is, once you start forcing an allegory on the text, you've lost all control of interpretation. You can come up with anything. And they do. Right?

The second one, is a basis of authority outside of scripture. Whether they acknowledge and understand it or not. Such as supplemental books. What are some supplemental books that you see taken as a basis of authority outside of scripture? Book of Mormon is certainly one of those others.

The Apocrypha is another one. The Jehovah's Witnesses Bible. The Jehovah's Witnesses have their own tweaked Bible. They don't have Christ crucified, they have Christ impaled on a single pole. Among other weird things. The Vulgate is the Latin translation. So if you make that the basis, then you've lost the ability to go back to the Greek and Hebrew and use that as the authority.

It is possible for us to surround ourselves around certain personalities. And that's one thing, there tends to be groupings of people who follow after big name personalities. And it might be, you know, Purpose Driven Life and the author of that. Prayer J-Bez. Prayer J-Bez kinds of things. Another thing is to follow after, say, John MacArthur. He's a fellow who's got a big name among certain groups. And it's, well, whatever John MacArthur says, that's what goes, right?

And so rather than looking at what does scripture say, it is a matter of saying what does this guy say? What does this guy say is what scripture says, instead of being able to look at scripture directly. Isn't the Apocrypha more a question of canonical rather than being a separate book? The Apocrypha is a collection of books, and it's a question of what's canon.

I think there is resource value in the Apocrypha of various kinds. There are, for example, understandings of certain words. It's also, since those came out of a certain period in history, understand, remember we said how we understand the Bible is language, history, and culture. So understanding the history, there's also a place of value in that.

But that's a different kind of statement from saying that those books are explicitly inspired by God. So a different kind of statement. We could add to that Ellen G. White. Ellen G. White wrote things for the SDA, including The Great Controversy and others. Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, who wrote Science and Key to Scriptures for the Christian Science Group. And there are different ones. Yeah?

L. Ron Hubbard.

L. Ron Hubbard, yeah, Dianetics, Scientology. Yeah, you'll have various ones where they put on these glasses, so to speak, as they look at scripture, and scripture is interpreted in terms of what the group says. Yes. The interesting thing about L. Ron Hubbard was that he didn't write this other, as much as he wrote science fiction, Yeah. Yes, that's right. And so then they wrote something, they didn't understand it was science fiction too. Yeah.

Now, there's also something else. You can have an appeal to certain people. You know, well, if this guy says something, I always believe it, right? Or institute, some institution. Another one is emotions, experience, or assumptions. In the charismatic realm, one of the rules of thumb is if I feel blessed, it's truth. If I feel blessed, it's truth. So that's kind of the measuring principle. is how I feel about it, if I feel blessed, or if I have generally positive feelings associated with a particular event or song or something. If I feel blessed, it must be true.

Certain assumptions. Some of the assumptions might be these. Back in about the 3rd century, one of the assumptions that got brought in was the Bible and Greek philosophy are both inspired by Okay? So that was one. I can have assumptions like, you know, I don't believe in any miracles. Okay? So anytime the Bible describes a miracle, I set that aside. Can you prove that there aren't any miracles? Never are, never were, never will be? You cannot do so scientifically. You cannot do so scientifically. But those who assume it's an unverifiable presupposition, those who assume that there cannot be, never have been, are not now, never will be any miracles, then use that assumption to override what Scripture says.

Pardon? Yes, and in fact there are those who go with that. And throwing the resurrection out, there is so much evidence for the resurrection There is more evidence for Christ's resurrection than that Augustus Caesar ever lived. Okay? Yeah. It is more well-documented than one of the major Caesars of the Roman Empire ever lived.

Now here's some examples of how these things get carried about. Number one there on the bottom of page two. Someone's holding what is known as limited atonement. The third of five tenets of Calvinism often represent the acronym TULIP. This is total depravity, that is, and when we put it, kind of the colloquialism, you're out on a slab, cold dead spiritually, unable to respond. U is unlimited, excuse me, unconditional election, and then limited atonement is the The third one, that is, Christ only died for the elect.

He did not die for the sins of the whole world. Only for those that he had chosen. Irresistible grace. If God chose you, you're going to be saved, period. And P, the perseverance of the saints. Those who are truly saved will persevere to the end. So that's the two up there, real quickly. Those would say that Christ died only for the elect. Those chosen before the foundation of the world.

So, for example, in 1 John 2.2, they would insert this meaning into the text. And he himself, that is Christ, is the propitiation, the satisfaction of God's character, so far so good I would say, for our sins. Not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. Though it has nothing at all to do with a clear understanding of Greek, the Greek word meanings or grammar to the end of this verse, they mentally add this set of words and arrive at their understanding of the text as they do similar verses.

Christ died for the whole world of the elect. You get the difference there? Christ only died for those who are going to be saved. He did not die for the sins of those who are not going to be saved. So you, for example, in trying to share the gospel with somebody, you can't go up, according to this teaching, you can't go up and say, do you know Christ died for your sins? You can't tell them that.

Imagine, here's Paul, the Philippian jailer says, what must I do to be saved? And Paul says, well, we don't know if you can be, because we don't know if you're elect, we don't know if you're chosen, and there isn't anything you can do about it, because if you are elect, then you will be regenerated and given life, and then you'll be given the gift of faith, and then you'll believe. So don't worry about it, you can't do anything. Right? Is that what he said? No, he said, you must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and then you'll be saved. It's as simple as that.

Here's how John 3.16 and 17 would read.

Actually, it should be just John 3.16.

For God so loved the world of the ones he already chosen elected, that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him of the ones he already chosen elected. shall not perish like the ones whom he did not already choose and elect, but have eternal life which is reserved only for those whom God already chose and elected."

Do you know who the Calvinists were during New Testament times? They were the Essenes. That was a group that's not mentioned by name, because we always hear about the Pharisees and the Sadducees, right? The Essenes was a group that was more of a recluse type group. The only mention of them is incidentally in Matthew chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus said, you have heard that it was said, hate your enemies?

That was the Essenes. The Essenes justified it because you could hate your enemies because God chose who would be saved and who would not be. And the ones who were not chosen, they must be your enemies. So go ahead and hate them. Jesus corrected them. He did not support the Calvinism of the first century. And so he said, no, that's not quite right. Love your enemies. The next one here, number two. Someone holding to an allegorical interpretation of Revelation 7, 1-8 might look up all the Greek word definitions and analyze the grammar with great skill. And I'll quickly summarize that. You're free to look it up.

Revelation 7, 1-8 is where it talks about the 144,000. It first says that these are Israelites. It says that 144,000 Israelites, and it gives 12,000 from each of the tribes, and it gives that number for each one, and it names the tribes, every single one, and the numbers, the 12,000 times 12 adds up to 144. I mean, it's all mathematically right there. You can look it up, get all the numbers, get down to precision because there isn't any variation from 12,000 for each tribe and no variation from the total of 144,000.

It's as simple and clear as could be. Now, so how does that get interpreted? Those who are pulled to an allegorical interpretation almost universally, because I've checked into it, almost universally look at this passage as representing the various Christian denominations. Yeah. Now, how many Christian denominations are there? Are there twelve? And yeah, there's something on the order of 30,000. So it's not 12. And I don't know that any of them has exactly 12,000 people in them.

But the bottom line is, regardless of what the passage says, if you impose the allegorical interpretation on it, you set aside that it says there are Israelites, you set aside that it spells out the name of each tribe, you set aside the total of 144,000 which is given, and you set aside the 12,000 number which is given precisely for each tribe.

All that gets set aside and so you know your Greek, you know, analyze it down to the finest detail, but when you're all done, it's swept away into allegory. Now how do you like that for precision? Now, why do you have different interpretations? Because the Greek and Hebrew are uncertain?

No. Is it because we're not sure if it's exactly 12,000 for each tribe? No. There's no uncertainty about any of that at all. We don't have a bunch of varying texts that are unclear. It is not at all unclear. The approach to interpretation throws out all the precision and therefore you've got multiple interpretations. and virtually all of the cult groups hold to some form of allegorized interpretation of scriptures.

What do I mean by most of Christendom? Catholicism, the various Orthodox churches, over 20 of them, all hold to the allegorical interpretation. Lutheran, Reformed, Presbyterian, most of those, not all of them. Lutheran, Reformed, Methodist, all hold to the allegorized interpretation. Would that include Greek Orthodox? Yes, Greek Orthodox as well. I have a Coptic Orthodox commentary on Revelation, and yeah, it's just the same thing, uniformly. And here's why.

There was a time, a few centuries after the New Testament, When allegorical interpretation began to dominate in the church, it was the same time that they began looking at the church as a kingdom. It was the same time they began saying Christ as the church's king.

That allegorized interpretation was looked at this way. Literal interpretation was thought as spiritually immature. In order to have a mature interpretation, you had to allegorize. That was the teaching. And so, of course, nobody wanted to be immature, so they all went to the allegorical interpretation.

Would you explain Coptic? I know the Coptic Church in Egypt. Actually, you said the word Egypt. Egypt and Coptic come from the same word root. And it is simply the North African, and particularly in the area of Egypt, that particular branch of what was Christianity at the time, The allegorical interpretation had become prominent and had been prominent for a few centuries when Islam came in. When Muhammad died 632 AD, Islam swept into Europe, Islam swept into North Africa, Islam swept into Asia, all the way over into Indonesia. hold of the, they had military dominance over the Coptic Christians, the ones from Egypt.

The Coptic Christians made an agreement not to evangelize, because that was a part of their arrangement to stop the bloodshed. They said, we will maintain our faith but we won't evangelize. And so the Coptic Christians are still persecuted and suppressed. They're not allowed to evangelize in any degree. And they can only carry it on as a tradition within families.

There's a Coptic church in Congress Springs. The total congregation is about 280. came here at that time and I made a video for his activities at the airport. He came over and blessed me. He actually blessed me twice. Again, walk. See, I did a lot of good. Here's an important thing.

The allegorical interpretation was not not something that Christ blessed. The allegorical interpretation was not used by the Pharisees. Jesus corrected the Pharisees in a great many things, but he did not correct them for their use of allegorical interpretation because they didn't. Allegorical interpretation was adapted from the Greeks who didn't believe their myths. One of the more prominent of those was Plato.

Yes? What's the difference between an allegorical interpretation and a parable? Okay, a parable, or Paul actually in Galatians does use an allegory, but the idea is the parable or allegory is intended and clearly intended from the context. An allegorical interpretation, or I would say a forced allegory or an allegorized interpretation is where you force an allegory on the text that it's not plain that it's intended to be interpreted that way. When Jesus gave examples of parables, they were intended to be interpreted as a parable. When Paul gave the example of an allegory in Galatians, and we went over that when we studied it, he made it clear that he was making an allegory. He was intending that it be understood that way. Here's an example of the allegorical interpretation.

In Isaiah, where it says the wolf and the lamb, by the way, not the lion and the lamb, but the wolf and the lamb lay down together, the baby will play near the hole of the asp, you know, that is a millennial passage, and Orthodox Jews have understood that to be a literal description of things during the coming reign of the Messiah. The allegorical interpretation of that is not that there will be a literal wolf and lamb together and a little baby next to the aft.

What it means is different groups who had antagonistic relationships would suddenly resolve themselves. Do you like that? The baby will play next to the whole of the aft. Those within Christendom who had dangers would somehow be in a position to no longer be in danger.

So that's a forced allegory. The forced allegory was the example we gave there in Revelation, where despite the fact that it says Israel, and despite the fact that it gives the names of the tribes, and gives you the numbers down to the last digit, all that swept aside in order to make it the denominations of Christianity. That's a forced allegory. That's where it's clear that that wasn't the original intended meaning, but that's the meaning that it's said to have.

There's another one, this is item 3 on the bottom of page 3. Those who see the elimination of gender role distinctions as a priority, typically based on cultural influences, will come to a biblical passage wanting to justify their egalitarian viewpoint and so will find ways to set aside the literal meaning of the text in favor of their own viewpoint. Example, this is one, Nancy, when I was going to a seminary, she worked at the seminary office to help pay for my tuition. And she got a call from the Christians for Biblical Equality, which is based in Texas as well. and they were wanting to get, you know, her in the seminary there to support Christians for biblical equality. This is what they have headlining, this verse, on their webpage.

Galatians 3.28, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. They use this as the basis for saying then, since that is true, since there is neither male nor female, that we should have no male or female distinctions in roles in the church and that sort of thing. My brother went through this and I have the reference there if you want to look it up on the web. It's a rather lengthy and high-end intellectual text, but feel free.

Anyway, the bottom line is he went to show that if you set aside the distinctions of male and female within Christianity, and you don't understand that what that's talking about is just your position in Christ is the same, but instead use it to set aside gender differences, well then it doesn't matter if you're homosexual. Right? Doesn't male or female, doesn't matter. Right?

In other words, if all gender distinctions are erased because you're Christians, then any gender distinctions having to do with morals, or function in the family, or in the church, all need to be thrown aside too. We'll start letting you guys have the babies. What's that? We'll start letting you guys have the babies. Yeah, I'll be glad to volunteer.

If you look at 1 Timothy 3, 1-7, it is very clear there, and again, here's where we look at the Greek multiple times, that the elder is intended to be a male, a male gender. All the words are masculine. It specifically says It says a husband of one wife, or I think a better conveyance might be a one-woman kind of man, but not the other, which by the way shows up as a qualification for widows in Chapter 5.

What happens in all these instances is the differences in interpretation are not because nobody has any idea what the passage says. The differences in interpretation have to do with the approach that a person takes before they even step into the pages of Scripture.

If you assume that God makes all the choices and human beings don't make any choices, it's all really based on God's having chosen. If you assume that and then go to Scripture, then you're going to arrive at the conclusions that the Calvinists come to. But it has to do with your assumptions, not what Scripture says. They use the assumptions to actually add to or set aside what Scripture directly says.

And the same can be said of a lot of things. And by the way, I picked on Calvinism. I'll say this. Calvinism, Arminianism, and Open Theism all agree absolutely on one thing. They agree that the human mind can comprehend how God works with mankind. They all agree completely on that. The difference is what they do as the next premise. The Calvinist says God's will is sovereign. The Arminian says that man's will is sovereign. The open theist says God doesn't know the future. And God changes.

They pin the next assumption on that, but they agree completely on the first assumption. Human beings can understand entirely how God works. They all agree completely on that assumption. Most of them don't recognize it. Which is why they're at fisticuffs with each other. Okay. Middle of page four.

What about the Holy Spirit who is supposed to lead believers into truth? We have various passages. Certainly the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth, has the ministry of leading believers into the truth among a variety of ministries given in the New Testament. And we quote here as we did earlier, John 14, 15, and 16. What is also revealed in Scripture is that the believer has a part in carrying out that leading of the Holy Spirit to its ultimate conclusion. Scripture points to diligence and to maturity as two key factors on the believer's part, impacting the understanding and wise application of Scripture. So, one is diligence.

And that's 2 Timothy 2.15. It is an active imperative. There is an active diligence, an active will. It's also a must to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the Word of Truth. If someone is not diligent, they won't accurately handle the Word of Truth. And what do you end up with? Multiple interpretations. So lack of diligence is one of the reasons why you end up with numerous interpretations. Here's Hebrews 5, 13 and 14.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature who, because of practice, and that's a word out of a vocabulary of competitive gymnastics, kumnatso, which is, we have our word, the gym or gymnasium, right? This is the verb form of that. Because of gym practice, because of athletic discipline, have, and that's the present active participle, or right now having, okay? Their senses train to discern good and evil. How do you have discernment? It's by training and discipline. You have to understand how things are done. You don't just walk up to the text and just, yeah, I think it means this. There are some aspects of the Holy Spirit's ministry that as a part of the believer's eternal position cannot be resisted or impacted by the believer, such as the Holy Spirit's indwelling. And we'll address that this morning in the main service.

But scripture makes it quite apparent that there are other aspects of the Holy Spirit's ministry which can be impacted negatively by the believer's own mindset, decisions, and actions. We give quotes there from Acts 5, how Ananias, he says, lied to the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5, it is possible for a believer to not walk by the Spirit. So there's the urging, walk by means of the Spirit. and then do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God. It is possible to grieve the Holy Spirit, right? So it's possible for a believer to thwart what the Holy Spirit is seeking to do in leading us into all truth. Can be. Then it's also possible for a believer to override the ministry and leading of the Holy Spirit in various ways, including the realm of interpretation and application of Scripture.

We have five bullet points there. A centuries old interpretive tradition, one of the ways that a particular denomination will enforce a specific allegory is they'll say in our denomination we have for centuries allegorized it this way and we have held to this allegory and that allegory and this is allegorized and that is not. So you'll have within the dozens of Presbyterian denominations, some on the more conservative side, who believe in a literal tribulation of seven years and a 1,000-year millennium. And you'll have others of the Presbyterian group of denominations who says there is no literal tribulation and there is no literal millennium. And they're both Presbyterian. Why?

Some of them have chosen to allegorize passages that others do not. and it depends on their tradition within their denomination. Or another, a deeply held belief rooted in culturally-based ethics and morals. Of course, our culture is always changing, right?

How many of you have heard, for example, that people are born with homosexual inclinations? Yeah, you know that's not scientifically well-founded at all? There's an organization called NARTH, N-A-R-T-H, you can look it up, narth.org. They've got a long, long list of scientific studies showing that that's not true.

But the culture has embraced that and we're getting laws put in place and everything else based on that assumption. Here's another one. The influence of a strong personality from the past or the present. We have whole denominations and systems of theology based on one person's name. Can you think of some? Luther, named after Martin Luther. Others? The Methodist is John West. Yeah, the name isn't there, but they're certainly after the Westlies. Jonathan and Charles Westley. Jonathan was the theologian and Charles the hymn writer. Mennonites, named after Menno. We could go on and on, but a great many of these either have a name for the denomination based on a person, or you can quickly identify the founding leader or group that started it.

Intense personal experience is perceived subjectively as spiritual in nature. I've had people tell me, Vern, I will not listen to what you say the Bible says about tongues because you don't believe in tongues and I've had that experience and so I won't hear what you say. A lack of diligence in handling the Word of God is another reason. So while the Holy Spirit has a ministry of leading us into truth, it is quite possible for people to grab on to other things or to fail to be diligent, to accept personalities, additional revelations of various kinds, traditions, that set aside the Holy Spirit's ministry of leading us into the truth.

Now, you have a handout like this, fits with the one overhead there, and it's simply a graphical representation of some steps. We have God's message through scripture, the Holy Spirit. He inspired it, preserved it, and guided in the recognition of it in the scripture. So we have scripture in Hebrew, the Old Testament, a little bit of Aramaic, but mostly Hebrew. intended for us to receive it. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by what? Word. Every word that comes from the mouth of God. No exceptions.

Objective observations regarding the written text, including language, history, and culture. Objective observations. Scripture interpretation is objective. It has, in fact, far more to do with science than how do I feel about it. The next thing is logical, singular interpretation of the text based on a complete and objective set of observations. You've made the objective observations. The interpretation is objective as well from that.

And finally, based on the one correct interpretation, there are many applications. And this is where people get confused. There are a multitude of applications that can be made based on the objective observations and interpretations. The applications are the point at which it becomes subjective.

And that's where I can sit there and look at all the Greek and here's all the chiasms and sentence diagrams and everything, and when it gets all done, I'll get cheered up when I think about the Lord's coming. We can go ahead and be quite subjective once we've reached the right conclusion. and pour ourselves, frankly, into that subjectivity. We, in fact, need to be subjective. If I remain, and this is the danger of, say, going to Bible college or seminary, if I remain academic about what God's Word says, that's not good. God never intended that I remain academic about His Word. Okay? Okay. It's buzzed enough. Questions? Thoughts? There's aspirations. Yes, Marilyn? A couple things.

One is that the Bible is the only book that is... I mean I'm just thinking of other books that are studied and stuff. I mean the only thing that comes close is maybe like the Constitution or something that is interpreted and stuff like that. I mean it's a different paradigm than any other book.

What's interesting is the system of interpretation has been called hermeneutics, and it comes from the Greek god Hermes, who was the messenger god. Mercury is an alternate name in a different pantheon. And the idea is carrying across the message. And in fact, in areas of law, and in literature they use hermeneutics as well. There was a book written some years back, still in print, How to Read a Book. It basically is just hermeneutics. It is how do I understand the writing of other people.

What has happened in our culture is is at the same time we have stopped asking the question, what did the original authors of scripture intend? And the truth is we are better equipped now with all of our resources and internet studies, we are better equipped now to know precisely what the author of scripture intends than at any time in history.

But we have lost it because we don't ask the question, and we even dismiss the idea that it's possible, what did the original author intend? Therefore, that is also why we have lost the meaning of the Constitution. Because we don't ask, what did the original authors intend? We ask, what would I like it to mean in the context of our current culture? And so what the original authors intended, which by the way is quite clear. The Federalist Papers, you ever heard about that? They explain what they intended.

But that's all set aside because it's not... So divergent from that, right? Yeah, and so what happens is we don't interpret the Constitution or the Bible with the question, what did the original author intend? In spite of the fact that we are more capable of doing that technologically than we have ever been at any time in history, for both the Bible and the Constitution.

Other questions? Comments? This is an important question, isn't it? It's a biggie. Much of Christendom has lost track of this. People use this, what we looked at this morning, as an attack on Christianity. They use it as a means, as our friend Chris Smucker, or Smuck as we call him, is finding in the church back in Ohio. They use it as a means of trying to introduce things that the Bible teaches against. Very clearly teaches against.

Unless you know the author, how do you know what he intended? You have to know the author. Okay. Right? I mean, doesn't the Word... you go to the Word to know the author. Yeah, let's ask that question. Obviously we don't have a lot of time, but let's ask the question.

How do we know the author in order to know what the author intended? How do we know the author of Scripture? Okay, but ultimately the Holy Spirit, scripture claims, is the ultimate author behind the human authors. We also, however, even with that, we know things about the human authors.

We know quite a bit. For example, you ask about Paul. Boy, we know quite a bit about Paul. Entire books have been written. I mean thick ones, not little pamphlets. Thick books have been written just about the Apostle Paul and what we know about him. Yes, you know, the authors of, like, here's Dr. Luke, wrote over a quarter of the New Testament. We know quite a bit about Luke. And you can go through the rest of the Bible.

Here's, John was a significant author of the New Testament. We know a lot about John. We know where he was born and raised. We know his family background. We know what happened over numerous years. He was the last author of any book of Scripture. We know where he ended up and died. We know a lot about John.

So, yeah, you're right. You're quite correct. But the truth is, we know a great deal. And we do have the tools necessary to understand precisely what Scripture says. The areas where there is any ambiguity are actually very small. Very small. Okay, now they're starting to press their nose against the window again.

Lord, we do thank you. We do praise you for the precision with which you have carried across the meaning of your word. And you did that because you love us so much. And we thank you for that love and that amazing grace. We thank you for this time together.