Righteous Methods of Bible Study

Text Copyright © 2022 Ronald Ray Lambert

All Rights Reserved

God can save people even if they lack accurate knowledge of Him. However, the more accurate knowledge of God people have, the more likely they are to love Him, and thus the more likely they are to be saved.

None of us are born right. So if we want to be right, we must become right. And right knowledge and understanding must be obtained by righteous means. I prefer to discuss matters honestly, basing all conclusions strictly on the factual evidence (with priority given to Scriptural evidence). It helps for this to be a shared experience, since God may gift each one of us with some significant insight. Sharing this seems enjoyable to me.

Most important in studying the Bible is being honest in the effort to find out what God is really meaning for us to understand. The Bible is the library of written works by the people whom God called and specially inspired with His Spirit to write down His messages for the people of the earth. As the Apostle Paul teaches us: “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17, NASB)

This does NOT say there are degrees of inspiration, as if Psalms is more spiritually authoritative than Chronicles or Esther, as some people claim. The different written works in the Bible may have different purposes, but all are the work of the Holy Spirit, and not just the work of human intelligence.

Also the Apostle Peter testified: “knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21; NKJV)

The only way we can avoid a private interpretation is to allow the Bible to interpret itself. This means that we should expect to see a uniformity in basic teaching and in meaning of terms and symbols employed, since ultimately it all comes from one divine mind. Though written in different languages a thousand years apart, the same divine mind meant the same thing by the same symbol.

So when we read in Song of Solomon 1:9 where the Lord says of His beloved people: “I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh's chariots.” We can understand that to define for us what God means by the prophetic symbol of a horse, such as in Zechariah 6:6 and Revelation 6:2. He is talking about His professed people. The church poetically is the steed upon which Christ would ride in His campaigns upon earth.

So “the Sun of Righteousness” which arises to those who respect the Lord in Malachi 4:2, is the gospel of salvation in Christ, which is said to be partially darkened and obscured in Revelation 8:12.

Now, it is true that no translation of the Bible is perfect. Human translators have at times allowed their preconceptions to influence their translations. Such as Luke 23:43 where

Jesus is represented as saying, “Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” Translators usually place the comma before the word “today,” which gives the impression that Christ was promising the thief on the cross beside Him, that he would be with Jesus that very day, on Friday. However, this cannot be correct, because on Sunday morning, after His Resurrection, Jesus told Mary, “Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father” (John 20:17).

So since Jesus Himself was not in Paradise on Friday, He could not have meant that the thief on the cross would be with Him in Paradise on Friday. So the comma in Luke 23:43 should properly be placed after the word “today.” Jesus’ promise was made today, but its fulfillment did not come that same day.

Another example is the assumed identity of the 24 elders in Revelation 5:9, 10. Some people wish to believe that these are humans, who were resurrected when Jesus gave up His spirit on the cross, and went about witnessing after His resurrection. This is based on the incorrect insertion of the first person plural pronoun in Revelation 5:9 in the old King James version. But newer translations, such as the New American Standard Bible (NASB), go by equally ancient manuscripts that do NOT have the first person plural pronoun. Following the proper rules of Greek grammar, the correct translation is seen to be: You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation. You have made them into a kingdom and priests.” (NASB)

We have to conclude this is the only right interpretation, because it is not just the 24 elders who sing the song praising God for saving humanity in the judgment, but also the four beasts or creatures sing the same song with the 24 elders (see verse 8), and they obviously are not humans. Only humans could sing this in the first person. So consistency demands that the 24 elders are not humans either. The ancient manuscripts without the first person plural pronoun must be the correct ones, and the other ancient manuscripts that do have the first person plural pronoun must be the result of some scribes presuming to insert the pronoun thinking they were making the text clearer.

So who are the 24 elders? I suggest that they are patriarchs of other worlds, other “Adams” of other races. This further implies that God may resume His creative work of populating the worlds of space after sin has been finally dealt with. After all, each galaxy has millions of stars, and many of them have planets, and there are billions of galaxies. The mind staggers at the attempt to envision how truly vast the universe is. Surely God did not mean for all these worlds to go to waste. “He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it as a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18; NASB 1995). And who is to say that life can only exist on earth-like worlds? Many scientists and science fiction writers have envisioned kinds of life that could exist in the dense atmospheres of gas giants like Jupiter.

The really exciting thing is that Jesus has promised us we will sit with Him on His throne, as He sits with God the Father on His throne. (See Revelation 3:21.) So if God is to continue His work of creation in populating the other worlds of space, then we will likely be privileged to share in this work. Thus we lowly humans will be given the privilege for which Lucifer envied Jesus.

But even more, think about this: As we participate with God in creating new life to populate new worlds in space, it will be our special mission and charge to tell the new intelligent life forms our story of sin and salvation—thus we will have an essential part in ensuring the eternal security of the universe, making sure that sin never arises again! What a mighty honor and privilege!

When we apply truly righteous methods of interpreting the Bible, being careful to be strictly honest about it and let the Bible speak to us as the Word of God, abundant new depths of truth are revealed to us, things that are wonderful beyond our greatest imaginings.

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