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Thread: Interpretation Is Not A Good Thing

  1. #1
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    Default Interpretation Is Not A Good Thing

    I am going to post some words and verses I used in a sermon I preached, with God's help, recently. Then you can add your views. One point I want to make to help guide any discussion is that when someone investigates a matter, whether they be a judge or a king or authority, they do not ask people for their interpretation of the event or events being investigated. They ask for the truth.

    We should not be satisfied with a person's interpretation of scripture but demand the truth
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    Truth v. interpretation

    Ever since I was an intern in a church to complete my undergraduate degree, I have heard the sentence—that is according to your interpretation’ This phrase has been used over and over again by those who claim to be a follower of Christ whenever the truth conflicts with what they think or want to believe.
    Today we are going to look at why that phrase is wrong and unbiblical and why truth is what matters.

    There are 137 Bible results for “truth.”

    Genesis 42:16
    Send one of your number to get your brother; the rest of you will be kept in prison, so that your words may be tested to see if you are telling the truth. If you are not, then as surely as Pharaoh lives, you are spies!”

    1 Kings 17:24
    Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”

    1 Kings 22:16
    The king said to him, “How many times must I make you swear to tell me nothing but the truth in the name of the Lord?”
    --------------------------------------------
    Psalm 15:2
    The one whose walk is blameless, who does what is righteous, who speaks the truth from their heart;

    Psalm 25:5
    Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long.

    Psalm 52:3
    You love evil rather than good, falsehood rather than speaking the truth.

    Psalm 145:18
    The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.

    Proverbs 12:19
    Truthful lips endure forever, but a lying tongue lasts only a moment.

    Proverbs 23:23
    Buy the truth and do not sell it— wisdom, instruction and insight as well.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Isaiah 45:19
    I have not spoken in secret, from somewhere in a land of darkness; I have not said to Jacob’s descendants, ‘Seek me in vain.’ I, the Lord, speak the truth; I declare what is right.

    Daniel 8:12
    Because of rebellion, the Lord’s people and the daily sacrifice were given over to it. It prospered in everything it did, and truth was thrown to the ground.

    Amos 5:10
    There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court and detest the one who tells the truth.
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
    Zechariah 8:16
    These are the things you are to do: Speak the truth to each other, and render true and sound judgment in your courts;

    Mark 12:14
    They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not?

    John 1:14
    The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

    John 3:21
    But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

    John 8:32
    Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    John 16:13
    But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.

    John 17:17
    Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.

    Acts 20:30
    Even from your own number men will arise and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples after them.
    ================================================== =================
    Romans 2:2
    Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth.

    1 Corinthians 13:6
    Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

    2 Corinthians 13:8
    For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.

    Galatians 2:5
    We did not give in to them for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you.

    Galatians 4:16
    Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?

    Ephesians 4:15
    Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.

    Ephesians 4:25
    Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.

    Ephesians 6:14
    Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place,

    2 Thessalonians 2:10
    and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.

    2 Thessalonians 2:12
    and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.

    1 Timothy 2:4
    who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.

    1 Timothy 3:9
    They must keep hold of the deep truths of the faith with a clear conscience.

    2 Timothy 2:18
    who have departed from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.

    2 Timothy 2:25
    Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth,

    2 Timothy 4:4
    They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.

    ***us 1:14
    and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the merely human commands of those who reject the truth

    Hebrews 5:12
    In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food

    Hebrews 10:26
    If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left,

    James 1:18
    He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

    2 Peter 2:2
    Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.

    1 John 1:8
    If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

    1 John 2:21
    I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth.

    2 John 1:4
    It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.

    3 John 1:4
    I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
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  2. #2
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    Another long post:

    Secular Science & The Believer

    {The following is copyrighted and published original material by DrDavidT no retransmission, copying, alterations, or any other use is permitted without the express written permission of the author}

    INTRODUCTION:

    The church has a problem. It has been invaded by those who take the words and methods of the unbelieving world who use those deceived ideas to alter God’s word and teach what God has not taught. They also misrepresent God casting a different picture about him, one that God does not paint of himself.

    Sadly, these people are respected and held in high esteem and many in the church are led to alternative beliefs which are not of God and not biblically taught. In this piece we are going to look at some of the favored ‘tools’ used by secular and alternative believing people as well as two theories, which are also held in high esteem.

    There is an old saying, ‘when confronted with printing the truth or the legend, you print the legend.’ That is what secular science does. It prints the legend, the best explanation, not the truth. As Dr. Del Ratzsch recorded in his book, The Battle of Beginnings, and many other authors have done so as well, secular science does not want God as a part of their work and when you remove the truth from guiding you then you have no hope of coming upon the truth.

    Yes they do get bits and pieces of truth but every con man knows that if your con is void of any truth it will not hold up. Some truth has to be included in order for the lie to sound convincing and work.

    I. Interpretation: This is nothing more than eisegesis at work. People who use this inadequate and vastly inferior tool read into other people’s words their own ideas, thoughts, beliefs, preconceptions and misconceptions.

    It is not automatic as some people claim and can be removed in order to do discussion, hearing, listening correctly. Jesus prayed that we would know God and his truth, he also told us that we would know the truth but those who use interpretation do not get to the truth because they have altered the intent and meaning behind the words of the other person.

    This is what makes the idea behind sexual har***ment so erroneous. It is not how the receiver takes the words spoken or written for the listener/reader does not have the gospel truth concerning what others say or write. This idea allows people to misunderstand what is being said or written and place the misunderstanding in greater standing than the actual intent of the words spoken/written.

    This faulty reasoning, and interpretation does this as well, brings injustice to innocent people as it claims to know the original intent and meaning over the person bring the words. That is impossible. The responsibility to make sure one has understood what has been said/written is upon the receiver not the speaker/writer.

    Interpretation, while it is a possibility it can lead one to some truth, usually leads people away from the truth and allows for false teaching to enter into the lives of those who use this tool. They often misunderstand what was said/written and fail to clarify in order to respond correctly to the spoken/written word.

    By placing your own ideas upon other people’s words, you are not responding to their thoughts but your own ideas. You also can hurt innocent people by using this tool as your interpretation does more damage than you think.

    The Bible does not teach anyone to use this inferior tool as it leads to confusion and confusion is not of God. This tool places subjectivity, existentialism above God’s objectivism and that is very wrong.

    II. Observation: Many in the secular scientific field place a high regard on this very inferior tool as they think observation is a key to understanding any given situation. Unfortunately for them observation can only lead to a multiple reasons for any action observed and the multiple choice they are left with only includes the truth as one possibility.

    Observation needs more information for it to work effectively and getting that information can be and is often very difficult. We use the ****ogy of a man and a woman are observed leaving a hotel room. This observation may come to the correct conclusion but it still needs confession to verify and validate its claim

    The observed situation actually has over 6 different possibilities for the two to be exiting the hotel room and the illicit affair is only one of the possibilities. Others include, they are actually man and wife, they are on a honeymoon, the owner or clerk is getting an estimate for work to be done, the clerk is showing a perspective guest the room and on it goes.

    Observation alone cannot ferret out the truth and it needs the help of other sources providing the correct information to get to the truth. Observation merely puts a person on the path to getting to the truth and if the observer makes an error or decides to go after false information then their work is worthless as any claims made from faulty conclusions could hurt innocent lives, just like interpretation does.

    III. Prediction: This is pseudo-science dressed up to be factual science. There is no other term for this as predictions come from fortune telling not scientific, rational thought. There is no objective authority that states we are to use prediction in any of our investigations. In fact, in criminal investigations predictions are frowned upon and consider unjust and unfair.

    Why secular science has adopted this as a lynch pin in its work can only be answered by the fact that secular science is evil influenced and led not God led or influenced. The fact that secular scientists only proclaim the predictions that work shows how dishonest they are. The many unfulfilled predictions that so many scientists encounter are ignored as the secular scientist tries to present an ideal picture of their field of research even though those failed predictions would disqualify the secular scientist from achieving any credibility and demonstrate that their theory does not work and is not true.

    1 prediction correct in a thousand or even 500 or 50 is not a good track record and shows that secular science is not doing anything correctly and is far from the correct information. This predictions are often very generalized and do not exclude other sources from producing the same results. In other words, predictions do not exclude anything but simply muddy the waters a lot more. They do not pinpoint a source but make it easier for false theories like evolution or micro-evolution to get a foothold in the minds of the unwary or those who do not want to believe the Bible.

    You will notice that the Bible does not teach the use of predictions but does state to thoroughly investigate a matter. Predictions are not part of a thorough investigation but a lazy, cheating way to avoid the truth and get one’s pet theory a hearing. These also allow for injustice to take place as well as teach people to accept lies over God’s truth

    IV. ***umption: It seems that secular science has taken every bad thing, things we are taught by our parents, grandparents, teachers and pastors not to do, and declared them good and useful. ***umption is never good and needs lots of correcting as the person making the ***umptions needs the time to remove their feet from their mouths.

    ***umptions are never good and are very misleading. Declarations that have the words, ‘we believe’, ‘we think’, ‘it may’, it is a possibility’ are not proven fact and cannot be taken seriously. What someone thinks or believes does not make it truth or even close to the truth. It is their ideas they are expounding not what God has said or done.

    We can put the terms ‘speculation’ and ‘conjecture’ in with ***umption but unlike the last action the former two can lead one to being put on the right track to the truth. ***umption is a belief or preconceived idea that has no foundation and too many people take that preconceived idea to their experiments and all objectivity is lost as is all hope of finding the truth.

    ***umption distorts what is observed and wrongly influences predictions. It also influences interpretation to go for the error over looking for the truth. The same verse used earlier about investigating thoroughly applies here as well as ***umption does not investigate thoroughly but takes the wrong shortcuts which end up ruining an investigation, which then has to be done all over again. ***umption is not honesty and has no role in the Christian’s life.
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    {The following is copyrighted and published original material by DrDavidT no retransmission, copying, alterations, or any other use is permitted without the express written permission of the author}


    V. Einstein’s Relativity: I place this and the following topic here as they illustrate how brilliant men can make mistakes and how those mistakes are blindly accepted and adopted by lesser individuals then taught to generations of unwary students.

    Einstein’s theory of relativity has a fatal flaw and it resides in his ***umption that gravity affects time and that mechanical or atomic clocks are the source of time. But time is not a material en***y that is influenced by gravity. It is a separate non-material factor in our human lives which runs at the same pace no matter what is taking place in this world.

    Time’s source is not a terrestrial clock but was created by God in Genesis 1 when he created light and separated it from the darkness. Terrestrial clocks, whether mechanical or atomic or whatever material they are made of, do not produce time, they can only measure its p***ing, thus if a person travels for 60 minutes by walking and a person travels 60 minutes at the speed of light, they both have aged by 60 minutes.

    Time is not relative and it is not governed by speed either. While gravity can and does influence and slow down material objects, like atomic and mechanical clocks, it has no control over immaterial en***ies like Time.

    Time p***es the same for everyone no matter what they are doing.

    VI. Hubble’s Expanding Universe: I had a blogger/scholar tell me once that Hubble’s expanding universe theory and his equations (Hubble’s constant) were refuted and rejected by astronomers long ago. He was wrong, of course, as both remain very active in the research on the universe and the moving galaxies.

    The problem with Hubble’s theory, and I am well aware he was not the originator of it others contributed to its construction, is first he ignores those galaxies that are not moving outward but inward. He calls then anomalies. (Must be nice to disregard important information when doing research and get away with it)

    Second, it ***umes that the outward movement comes from some explosion that took place 14 billion years ago. That theory has many problems to it as well, one being how could that event produce energy so great that 14 billion years later it is still influencing the movement of galaxies. That thinking just demonstrates the irrational, illogical and unrealistic thinking of secular scientists and secular science.

    It is unrealistic as how can anyone expect a force to last 14 billion years? The ***umption that it does is distorted thinking and a distorted view of the evidence.
    Third, Hubble’s theory is undermined by the fact that no one at any time has ever seen the edge of the universe. There is no way to measure any expansion. We have no ‘stretch marks’ that reveal the different boundaries of the universe over time and no other markers that can be used to support the thinking that the universe expands or has expanded.

    Moving galaxies are not evidence and using those as evidence is like saying, the city of Denver is expanding because cars are travelling away from the city. Without accurate, constant historical records measuring the expansion of the universe the expanding universe theory falls flat as moving galaxies only prove that God gave the galaxies enough room to ‘live’ and move in.

    God shows his protection of the earth and the solar system it resides by this fact. He also verifies those verses which state that he has set the foundations of the earth and those foundations shall not be moved.

    VII. Secular Scientists: The believer needs to remember one very important fact about secular scientists. They have not been redeemed by Jesus, they have not been made a new creature nor has the old man been removed from their lives.

    These people are deceived, blind and under the influence of evil thus their ideas, theories, conclusions, etc., will not be the truth. Though they may contain elements of the truth, this is merely a trap to deceive believers into leaving the truth for the lies of evil.

    No amount of education, no amount of experience, no amount of conducted experiments will overcome this fact. The secular scientist remains in sin, a prisoner of evil and blind to the truth. At no time does the Bible teach that we are to follow the unbelieving world and at no time are we taught anywhere in scriptures that we are to adopt or adapt their theories, ideas or conclusions.

    The choice is you either believe God or you believe secular scientists (evil) There is no middle ground.

    Conclusion:

    These points should help the believer to see the weakness and inferiority of secular science and the error of adopting its terminologies. This does not mean that the believer cannot ‘do science’ but help them understand that they must ‘do science’ God’s way not the secular world’s way. The believer must go for the truth not the best explanation as again I point people to Jesus’ prayer to his father were he says ‘that they may know your truth for you are truth.’ (paraphrased)

    At no time do either God or Jesus teach anyone to go for the best explanation. For example secular scientists proclaim that evolution is the best explanation for our origins and variety we see in the world today. But how can the ideas of sinful, secular, deceived, fallible, corrupt men trump the revelation of the most holy, infallible, incorrupt, sinless God who did the actual creating?

    They tell us to go for the truth and the truth does not depend upon interpretation, observation, predictions or ***umptions and so on. It depends upon getting to the facts through careful and thorough investigation under the guidance of the HS. The secular world does not have the spirit of truth helping them and Jesus made that very clear in John 16.

    No matter what some supposed believers say, the unbelieving world is influenced by the father of lies not by the holy God. This includes the area of all scientific research fields that reject the inclusion of God, which secular science does vigorously. Without doing science God’s way and following the HS to the truth, one cannot expect to have the truth.

    The believer cannot partner with the secular world not adopt its terms or theories for that would be a violation of God’s instructions in 1 Corinthians. Nor can they compromise and ‘Christianize’ those theories or terms, keeping what God has defined as false teaching but trying to justify those faulty ideas with altering scripture.

    The believer must stand with God, represent him as he represents himself and investigate biblical terms thoroughly so that they completely understand the truth about what God is saying instead of using those verses to support the lies of secular science.

    The believer is NOT anti-science, they are against the lies told by secular science and scientists. A guideline to this is if science disagrees with the Bible then it is not the Bible that is in error.

    Science, any variety, was not given the authority to over-rule or alter God’s word and it does not possess a monopoly upon the truth. It is NOT the only source for truth it is merely a tool to find knowledge but that objective does not mean that the knowledge it uncovers is correct, true or perfect. Since science is not immune to the sin and corruption that entered the world at Adam’s sin, its conclusions, theories and ideas are very suspect as well as usually wrong.

    We cannot take any secular scientific idea blindly but investigate it thoroughly and when it turns out to be false, like evolution, big bang and micro-evolution theories, we toss them aside for we go for the truth not the false alternatives.

    Science, any variety, does not know more than God or the Bible.
    Last edited by DrDavidT; 08-29-2016 at 02:06 AM.
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