Monday, June 23, 2014

"How Readest Thou?"

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Although the Bible is inspired, it is God's Holy Word, it is a fact that it can be twisted by dishonest people to support evil. For example, the ante-Bellum Southerners horribly twisted it out of shape in their efforts to support their evil of slavery. It was also twisted to support the false doctrine of "the divine right of kings." The Son of God was murdered on His cross by Bible-reading "saints" who twisted and misread Scripture in order to justify what they were doing. Millions of Christians were martyred in the Dark Ages by people who misread the Bible. Now, can it be distorted today in order to support the idea that it's "okay" for us to go on sinning, that the blood of Christ covers willful sin?
Jesus asks us in Luke 10:26, "How readest thou?" And He commands us, "Whoso readeth, let him understand" (Matt. 24:15).
In fact, the closer we get to correctly understanding how the Bible explains the gospel, the greater the capacity of dishonest people to twist it into teaching fatal error. Just now we have come to a time to be "careful, exceedingly careful" as to how we read Scripture. Someone has wisely said, "Never should the Bible be opened without prayer," and the writer meant sincere, heart-felt, honest prayer! It's possible for dishonest ones to teach that it's "okay" to go on sinning, but it's also possible to force the Bible to teach raw legalism, taken out of context.
One simple example: John says, "These things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1). What is he saying? "Don't sin, but I know you can't help it, so keep on, and Jesus will fix it all for you"? Some read it that way, especially as verse 2 says "He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." Every word of that is solemn truth; He is that "propitiation," but no honest, reasonable person can twist that into a license to go on sinning! "Whoso readeth, let him understand"!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 22, 1998.
Copyright © 2014 by "Dial Daily Bread."

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