- Now many people call themselves theologians. If somebody calls himself so, this is rather a signal that he interprets Bible in a wrong way.
- The matter is that theologians do research of what people, through which God wrote the Bible, meant. They say that Bible should be interpreted in context of culture of the ancient Israel. They call it with abstruse words like “exegetics” and “hermeneutics”.
- Certainly I do not state that we don’t need to know or take into account the ancient Israel culture when we interpret Bible. The knowledge cannot be excessive. We need to take the culture into account to understand better what God meant. For example, we could not understand Bible at all without lexicons, and lexicons contain the culture of ancient people. So culture must be studied.
- But if we interpret Bible in conformance with understanding these people which wrote it, we get absurd conclusions. For example, (Is. 40:22) “… over the circle of the Earth”. We know that Earth is globular and thus this should be understood as “over the globe of the Earth”. But if we would follow the principles which theologians follow, then this should be understood conforming to the culture and understanding of these people by whom and for whom it was written. The conclusion from the “theological” interpretation is definite: Earth is flat. But if the conclusion is absurd, then the principles which it was concluded from are wrong. So we should not interpret Bible accordingly conforming to the culture of ancient Israel. We should interpret first in the direct sense.
- Jesus says about the modern theologians (Mr. 7:9) “Full well do you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition”. Jesus here refers to the traditions of ancient Israel, by which the theologians replaced the word of God.
- So, all of this is invented with the purpose to hide their unbelief that Bible is literal, precise word of God.
- I tell the following motto: There are two Bibles: the word of people and word of God. The text is the same but the meanings are different. More often than nothing utterances of Bible look like some pathos utterances. Abstract yourself from the pathos and in interpret literally as written. This is that God deliberately hid hidden sense after pathos phrases, so that the meaning would be uncovered in its due time. Human sense of Bible is thoughts of ancient, comparatively non-educated, often mistaking and sometimes stupid people; it is ancient history not actual today. The word of God is errorless, perfect revelation.
- (Gal. 3:16) “Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He doesn’t say, “To seeds”, as of many, but as of one, “To your seed”, which is Christ.” Shall we interpret the God’s word to Abraham as about one man or about the nation?Paul (being directed by Holy Spirit, writing down errorless God breathed in the Gospel) says that this is about one that is about Christ. Paul just rudely breaks the rules of theologians, such as following the culture of these who receive the word and as interpretation in context. Modern theologians would not accept that Paul is a real theologian.
- As a general rule, the word “theology” is usually used to insult and humiliate these who interpret Bible in another way. For example, Baptists say that interpretation of Pentecostals is not a theology.
- The principle is very simple: Think about what God meant not what people meant and about how ancients understood this. (However, think about this, too.)
- People often are wondering, which of several translations of some Bible fragment is correct? The correct answer is that usually there are multiple meanings. God “packs” in one phrase several senses at once not one one. Consider the words of Jesus “Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” In the Greek original this may mean both that the repented criminal will be in Paradise today and that Jesus tells it to him today (and in the Paradise he will be only after resurrection of the dead). Which translation is correct? Both! An important question: Do we accept different meanings of God’s word or choose for ourselves translations accordingly our unbelief rejecting these variants which don’t please us?
- The story of a rich man and Lazarus is often called a proverb. This is untrue. Bible does not tell that this story is a proverb. So we must accept that this is a documentary story not a proverb.
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Everything, everything witnesses about Jesus Christ: (Jn. 5:39) “You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them you have eternal life; and these are they which testify about me.” If we don’t see Christ in some verse of the Bible, then we do not yet understand this verse.
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There are also false teachings that King Jacob Version and/or Russian Synodal Translation are God-breathed translations. This is nonsense, they are full of mistakes. God-breathed are only the Hebrew and Greek originals.
- Mysteries of Bible are uncovered only when we uncover the original.
- Previously studying the Bible I extracted for myself a prophecy about myself that I must become a missionary in Tanzania, live there and preach in a tent. The details of that prophecy (which I don’t want tell about now) didn’t fulfill and I was forced to confess an error. That time I interpreted Bible accordingly a false principle: If a word of God is similar to our idea explaining its sense, then our idea is a correct understanding (in reality not always correct). Now I understand that it’s not enough to have similarity of our interpretation and a fragment of Bible. It is necessary that Bible directly says something.
- I was drawn to this misconception on the basis of the teaching that Bible is word of God for every reader. So, accordingly as I through, God will make our understanding correct, if we attentively and without rude errors (such as confusing the male and the female word groups) learn the scripture, because it is a word for me.
- Yet one false teaching is that Bible is easy for understanding. This is not such. Moreover the revelation of Bible develops gradually (This is called “progressive revelation”.) For example, it is impossible to well understand Old Testament not knowing the Gospel. And even now it’s not everything unveiled. Consider (Mt. 24:24) “For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will show great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the chosen ones.” It seems tome that the devil does not know whether he can lead astray the chosen ones, whether we can lose salvation. And to myself it is not yet revealed.
- Consider a seeming contradiction in Bible: Act. 9:7 says that the companions of Saul heard the voice but saw none, but Act. 22:9 reversely that they saw but not heard. The solution Is easy: Act. 22:9 is a direct speech, a quote from human’s words. Paul mistook. It was not said that he was filled with Holy Spirit, and thus he may err. But off course the words of Jesus are always errorless.
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The entire Bible has spiritual (figurative) sense. I have already said that every verse of Bible witnesses about Christ. Thus the most of Bible has at least double sense. And it may be threefold and fourfold. Another indication that the Old Testament has spiritual sense: (1Cor 9:9) “For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it for the oxen that God cares?” It’s absolutely clear that speaking about the oxen, God means something spiritual.
- In the eight chapter of the Apocalypse a comet falls from the heaven. In the past somebody has said that a mountain cannot fall from the heaven and thus it is a spiritual sense. Now however we know that this is direct sense, a real comet or asteroid. By the way, read about this in my book.
- But if we start to make alternative translations of the Bible, what is the criterion what to count a true translation and what a linguistic nonsense, when we dive deep into the spiritual meaning? I am only beginning to understand this and will tell my opinion about this, about which I don’t warrant that it’s true. (1Cor. 2:7-9) “But we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds for our glory, which none of the rulers of this world has known. For had they known it, they wouldn’t have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written, “Things which an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear, which didn’t enter into the heart of man, these God has prepared for those who love him.” The words “an eye didn’t see, and an ear didn’t hear” signify abstract concepts such as love, meetings, canceling, complement, etc. They were not seen by an eye and not heard by an ear. (Can you see the love?) and further the verse 13: “Which things also we speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things.” In my opinion to compare spiritual things with spiritual things means that we have reached the most deep spiritual sense of some Bible fragment, only if all words of this fragment mean for us some abstract concepts (“spiritual”).
- Until we reach the most deep interpretation, all other interpretations are half measures.
- Now knowing the principles of spiritual interpretation of the Bible, the next step is to start research Old Testament without vowels (because vowels were added in middle ages and were missing in the original of the Old Testament). Vowels only limit the number of possible variants of translations. The more variants of translation, the more revelations. If you want seriously study Bible, go to the site withoutvowels.com (without-vowels-dot-com) and study Bible together.
- Don’t follow every example in Bible. For example, you should not follow the biblical example of Cain (Jud. 1:11) “Woe to them! For they went in the way of Cain, and ran riotously in the error of Balaam for hire, and perished in Korah’s rebellion.”
- What I told, is all theory. It is important. But in practice the mysteries of Bible are uncovered only by Holy Spirit. To interpret Bible you need faith and faith is a gift of God. See also (Lk. 24:45) “Then he opened their minds, that they might understand the Scriptures.”
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In this sermon I gave few particular examples how to interpret Bible. I offer you to read my book “New Testament Commentary by a Mathematician”. There there are many examples of Bible interpretation. You can study based on these examples and begin interpret Bible yourself. Take into account that I am a man too and my interpretation may sometimes be wrong.
