But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Hebrews 11:6
I have been asked, How do you know that God is speaking to you when you are reading the Bible so you understand it correctly? You need to obey the rules of diligent study.
- Context: keep all in context, do not just take a verse by itself.
- Context: maintain proper grammatical structure. Nothing less than a whole sentence has definite meaning.
- Study sentence by sentence. Context: a sentence must have a complete thought. The complete thought might be made up of several thoughts.
- Verses divide the Bible into individual thoughts. A sentence might be contained in one verse or contain several verses. The thought within a verse might be modified or limited by the context of the sentence it is within.
- Context: If your interpretation contradicts another passage you have something wrong; the Bible does not contradict itself. From: Seven Precepts to Understanding the Bible
- Study diligently
- Believe all that is written
- Do not add nor diminish from the words, meaning, or sense of the Scripture
- The Bible is God’s revelation to man, we are not looking for what God could have, should have, what we think he ought to have, we are looking for what God revealed.
- God uses similitudes, word pictures describing things that may be designated differently at differing times in history.
- Study that you might rightly divide the word of truth
- Doctrines are built of precepts and precepts are formed here a little, there a little, line upon line.
Another old adage that needs to be followed:
I had six honest serving men,
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist
They taught me all I knew,
Their names were
Where and What and When And Why
and How and Who.
Figure out the what, where, when, why, how, and who of a passage of Scripture before assigning an interpretation.
The word of God will stand a thousand readings; and he who has gone over it most frequently is the surest of finding new wonders there.
James Hamilton (1814–1867) English Clergy
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