How to get to understand the Bible.

How? Many are saying they wish to read the Bible but the Bible is difficult for them. They do not know where to start. They feel incompetent. So how do we move from here?

You are going to see Ellen White quotations maybe three in this writing. Very good. All predating 1907, at least the latest of the three. Humble, no doubt, believing. Three ingredients suggested by her to be necessary for understanding the Bible. She is right because all these principles suggested are coming from the Bible anyway.

Skeptics counter that one look at an object like the Bible, say beforehand that it is true, the Word of God, create a belief in it and then go to the Bible to ask it how to believe. They say it is circular argument.

Humanly speaking yes but if God exists, and the Bible is His word in human hands then the ball-game is different. And that is the first key. You need to accept that God exists.

How do we know that He exists? There is nothing on Mars, Jupiter, Moon and other planets. Not even a stick. No vegetation. The high universes in everything that exists here (universe within) well designed, following the Fibonacci laws and also the others who studied it, that was discovered by the way long before the 12th century A.D. by the Indians and that is why they are pantheistic in their religion. Nature has fingerprints of God. But, the Bible will cancel pantheism as an option because God has plans with the human race.

OK. God exists then what? He wrote a book for us called the Bible.

How do I read it?

I will cherry-pick some texts from this Book of God.

Is the book not just human reflections of what they think God is like instead of really God? Skeptic. The Relativistic theologians of the post 1950’s all talked like that. Do not allow them to pattern your thinking. They became nihilistic in their views, nothingness. Agnostics. Atheists. You do not want to go that way. Avoid Bultman, Brunner, all liberal theologians. Wolves in sheepclothes. They cling to Spinoza as their hero and Galileo and those guys. They Bible never said the earth is flat! Instead of Spinoza listens to Newton. He was not only the guy on who the apple fell from the tree. He wrote an excellent commentary on the Book of Revelation.

So what is the ingredient for starting to read the Bible.

 

2 Chronicles 20:20

“Believe in the LORD your God, so shall you be established; believe His prophets, so shall you prosper”. The think here is that the word for “Believe” and for “established” has the same roots. You will be stable. Fixed. Not swaying too and fro. The first word “believe” is in the original in a form that is very strong asking for a will-aspect to enter in. A dedicated determined effort to approach the Lord. If you have the same dedicated determined effort to read his prophets, you shall be successful or prosper. This is thus the beginning key. No believe - no understanding. It is as simple as that.  I am going to believe God exists and I am going to ask Him to show me in His book some things that I need to know for my life. That is a good start. He will reveal Himself to you. At first you may not know or see it but as time goes on you will be surprised.

                                               

                                                                                   

                                    

 

                  

 

                                   

 

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The second part is praying.

If the Bible is a Book from heaven to us on earth, then we need to pray to get help from heaven how to understand it. Period. There is promised help. So why not asking for it. Just a short help me prayer?

 

1 Timothy 4:5

 

“For everything God created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving,  because it is consecrated by the word of God and prayer.”

This is Paul in the New Testament and he want to say what we can eat and what not. Our diet is not just a loose case of eating everything. No, prayer is needed to sanctify the food and secondly, the Word of God must be consulted in Leviticus 11 for example if the food is kosher or right to eat. Pigs cannot be eaten. It does not help to pray for blessing for the pig-sausages in the pan. It is not sanctified by the Scripture. Thus, the next important mechanism in our understanding process of the Bible is prayer and the Word of God.

 

 

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Ellen White’s Steps to Christ pages 110 and 111 is very helpful in this regard about the role of prayer.

“When the word of God is opened without reverence and without prayer; when the thoughts and affections are not fixed upon God, or in harmony with His will, the mind is clouded with doubts; and in the very study of the Bible, skepticism strengthens. The enemy takes control of the thoughts, and he suggests interpretations that are not correct. Whenever men are not in word and deed seeking to be in harmony with God, then, however learned they may be, they are liable to err in their understanding of Scripture, and it is not safe to trust to their explanations. Those who look to the Scriptures to find discrepancies, have not spiritual insight. With distorted vision they will see many causes for doubt and unbelief in things that are really plain and simple.”—Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, pp. 110, 111.

 

Readiness of the mind is the next aspect.

 

Acts 17:11

It is said that when Paul was preaching in Berea the people there used to take their Word of God and check him out. They control check if he was correct in his preaching.

 

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“All who will come to the Word of God for guidance, with humble, inquiring minds, determined to know the terms of salvation, will understand what saith the Scripture. But those who bring to the investigation of the Word a spirit, which it does not approve, will take away from the search a spirit which it has not imparted. The Lord will not speak to a mind that is unconcerned. He wastes not his instruction on one who is willingly irreverent or polluted. But the tempter educates every mind that yields itself to his suggestions and is willing to make of none effect God’s holy law. “We need to humble our hearts, and with sincerity and reverence search the Word of life; for that mind alone that is humble and contrite can see light.”—Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, August 22, 1907.

 

There you have the next ingredient, humbleness.

 

Study

 

2 Timothy 2:15

“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.”

Paul said to Timothy that he should study the Word of God diligently. Study? Many through the centuries studied. They were not in a digital age. But in our age people answer that they read the Bible with the Smartphone. Smartphone? It is said that a goldfish focuses up to 12 seconds on a piece of food in the tank. Smartphone users only focuses maximally 8 seconds. Thanks Lord. That is where your Bible is flashed passed to other quarters. God’s Word is thrown under the train by digimodernists.

 

 

 

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“Some look to us gravely and say, ‘Don’t you think there might have been some mistake in the copyist or in the translators?’ This is all probable, and the mind that is so narrow that it will hesitate and stumble over this possibility or probability would be just as ready to stumble over the mysteries of the Inspired Word, because their feeble minds cannot see through the purposes of God. Yes, they would just as easily stumble over plain facts that the common mind will accept, and discern the Divine, and to which God’s utterance is plain and beautiful, full of marrow and fatness. All the mistakes will not cause trouble to one soul, or cause any feet to stumble, that would not manufacture difficulties from the plainest revealed truth.”—Selected Messages, book 1, p. 16.

 

Heart-searching

This is the next ingredient to better understand the Bible.

Ezra 7:6, 10

“For Ezra had set his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and ordinances.”

 

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Ezra set his heart deliberately and determined to search the Word of God. Then when he read it he decided to do what it asks and do what it says. He did. “And do it”. Not just theory but practical. Not just thoughts but behavior. Not just dreams but reality. Ezra acted on what he came to understand.