How NOT to use the Bible!
Dear Friends,
The Bible is the most wonderful book in the world and has brought untold blessing to innumerable people but some people abuse it by twisting it to say what it never taught. Peter warns that you can twist the Scriptures to your own destruction. Today’s devotional gives an example. God bless you.
Because of Calvary,
John Janney
II Timothy 2:15 (ESV)
Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
II Peter 3:16 (ESV)
as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.
“A young couple from another church came to one of our assistant pastors for counseling about marital problems they started having soon after their wedding. After just a few minutes of interviewing the two, he could see they were miles apart in tastes, ideas and opinions.
“‘What made the two of you get married?’ he asked.
“‘A sermon our pastor preached on Joshua conquering Jericho.’
“‘What did that have to do with getting married?’
“‘Well,’ explained the husband, ‘Joshua and his army claimed Jericho, marched around it seven times and the walls fell down. Our pastor told us that if we trusted God, claimed a certain young girl and marched around her seven times, the walls of her heart would collapse and she would be willing to marry. So I did it, and we got married.’
“Our assistant pastor stared in disbelief. Was the husband putting him on? No indeed. In fact several couples in that particular church had gotten married on the same basis after hearing the same sermon!” [John F. MacArthur, Jr., Why Believe the Bible? (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980), p. 170]