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"A fellow lecturer told his Bible class that it did not matter whether the biblical character Job was real or fictional.  For him, the point off Job's book is to teach us about suffering, and the historicity of Job is immaterial to that lesson.  I cannot disagree more strongly, and hopefully this illustration will help clarify why. 

Suppose you are going through a difficult time in your life.  Perhaps it is from the death of a close relative or you struggle with debilitating illness. Just like the psalmist who felt abandoned by God in his deepest time of need, you feel lost and adrift in your suffering, with no sense of God's care.  In this state, you ask me to bring you wise counsel and comfort.

I tell you a story about a man who built a spaceship to travel to Venus.  Due to a technological breakthrough, he was able to equip his vessel with heat-resistant panels, making it safe to venture close to the sun.  Unfortunately, along the way the panels failed and his eyes were burned out of their sockets.  With all hope seemingly lost, in his despair he called out for help and God rescued him.

What would your reaction be to my story?  Would you thank me for the incredible comfort I gave you?  Or would you look at me with a glare, wondering how I expect this silly story to assist you?....Fiction can provide little comfort for the realities of life.  It is akin to telling someone struggling through financial difficulty, "Don't worry, you'll win the lottery."  Or to a man who lost his legs in a car accident, "Let me read you a story about a man who drank some sugar water and his legs grew back overnight."

The real God of creation acts in the real events of human history.  Our Christian faith is not rooted in esoteric platitudes or ethereal propositional truths to which we grant our mental assent.  Our faith is rooted in concrete experiences, with God breaking into history in amazing ways…"

- Victor Kuligin - From his book: Snubbing God: The High Cost of Rejecting God's Created Order

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Our task is not to help people see God favorably but to see him accurately.  God has the power to touch hearts and to draw people his love and grace while they fully affirm his holiness and justice...God has appointed us to faithfully deliver his message, not to compose and edit it.  He has already written the message - it's called the Bible.  Who are we to spin it and tame it , or presume to be more loving than Jesus, who with outrageous love took upon himself the horrific penalty from our sin?  God's position is already taken; we need not apply.   We do not own the Christian faith.  It isn't ours to revise.  God's Word wasn't entrusted to us so that we could give it away piece-meal, leaving the next generation with the leftovers.  If we go on decade after decade parceling out fragments of the faith, what will be left?  When we abandon truths Christians once died for, will we no longer have truths worth living for?

- Randy Alcorn
From the Forward to 'God Wins:  Heaven, Hell, and Why the Good News is Better than Love Wins' - by Mark Galli

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You remember the apostle Peter's famous remark with regard to the writings of the apostle Paul. He says that there are things in them which are `hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest . . . unto their own destruction'. What he means is this. They read these Epistles of Paul, yes; but they are twisting them, they are wresting them to their own destruction. You can easily read these Epistles and be no wiser at the end than you were at the beginning because of what you have been reading into what Paul says, wresting them to your own destruction. Now that is something which we must always bear in mind with regard to the whole of the Bible. I can be seated with the Bible in front of me; I can be reading its words and going through its chapters; and yet I may be drawing a conclusion which is quite false to the pages in front of me.
There can be no doubt at all that the commonest cause of all this is our tendency so often to approach the Bible with a theory. We go to our Bibles with this theory, and everything we read is controlled by it. Now we are all quite familiar with that. There is a sense in which it is true to say that you can prove anything you like from the Bible. That is how heresies have arisen. The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere. If you read half a verse and emphasize over-much some other half verse elsewhere, your theory is soon proved. Now obviously this is something of which we have to be very wary. There is nothing so dangerous as to come to the Bible with a theory, with preconceived ideas, with some pet idea of our own, because the moment we do so, we shall be tempted to overemphasize one aspect and under-emphasize another.

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

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There can be little doubt, that the very obscurities of Hebrew form one of its chief recommendations to men, whose favorite delight is to grapple with difficulties, and to explore what is dark, dubious and uncertain.  But though this taste, within certain limits, is useful and praiseworthy, it is extremely dangerous, when indulged in excess, especially on subjects of Biblical investigation.  There is small scope for invention, in matters of Biblical criticism, and the closer we adhere to Divine authority the less likely are we to fall into human paradox.

The Septuagint comes before us, as the most ancient authorized interpretation of the Hebrew.  Such an authority quenches the spirit of theory, and rebukes the love of invention.  We then remain pupils and scholars, and sit patiently at he the feet of the original, and the version..  This is painful and humbling to human genius, but it is the best attitude of the Christian student and divine.  It should not be charged, as any imperfection of the Greek version, that it keeps us, from the elation of theorists and from the pride of dogmatists. When poor mortals sit down to study the Word of God, their first and most painful lesson is to abjure the love of originality.  It is their business to translate, not to invent; to follow; not to lead; to copy, not to originate.  The Greek version of the Old Testament, when united to the original, is admirably adapted to cherish and nurture this intellectual docility.  It should be used, as the teacher of the Christian student, in his approach to the awful mysteries of the Cross.  He will acquire from it far more valuable discipline, than from all the technical canons of Biblical critics.

 

Edward William Grinfield

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What use is there, it may be asked, in learning Latin, Greek, and Hebrew?  We can read the Bible very well in German."  "Without languages, we could not have received the Gospel…Languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit; they are the casket that guards the jewels; they are the vessel that holds the wine; and, as the Gospel says, they are the baskets in which the loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude.  If we neglect the languages, we shall not only eventually lose the Gospel, but be unable to write in Latin or in German.  No sooner did men cease to cultivate them than Christendom declined, even until it fell under the power of the pope.  But now that languages are again honored, they shed such light that all the world is astonished, and every one is forced to acknowledge that our Gospel is almost as pure as that of the apostles themselves.  In former times the holy Fathers were frequently mistaken, because they were ignorant of languages; and in our days there are some who, like the Waldenses, do not think the languages to be of any use; but although their doctrine be good, they have often erred in the real meaning of the sacred text; they are without arms against error, and I feel very much that there faith will not remain pure.

Martin Luther

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If you don't have the meaning of Scripture, you do not have the Word of God at all.  If you miss the true sense of what God has said, you are not actually preaching His Word! 

John MacArthur

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Don't ever come to a conclusion at the price of a proper interpretation. Don't ever come to a conclusion or make a point at the price of a proper interpretation. Don't use the Scripture to support your viewpoint. You come up with a neat idea, you think it works, so you just push the Scripture into it.

John MacArthur

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Mathew 5:32 states: 'Every one who divorces his wife, except for the cause of unchastity, makes her commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.' If with Erasmus we suppose that 'divorce' here means 'the complete dissolution of the marriage', the logic of this statement seems defective or at least unfair. For on this understanding Mathew 5:32a means that divorce with the right to remarry is only valid if the wife commits the particular sin of adultery.  Yet in other situations that result in divorce neither party can remarry as the unconditional statement of Mathew 5:32b declares.  Now if the sin of adultery results in the complete dissolution of the marriage, that allows both parties, the adulterous wife and the innocent husband, to remarry!  Dupont regards it as 'manifestly absurd' to allow a woman divorced for adultery to remarry, but to deny this right to a woman divorced for another reason.

This absurdity may be alleviated, as Dupont suggests, if one supposes that the divorced adulteress is refused the right of remarriage, but the innocent husband may remarry (=Erasmian view). But this is effectively to allow polygamy!  For if the woman cannot remarry she is not technically divorced, but separated. The marriage bond with her husband  still exists: that is why remarrying a divorced woman is adultery (5:32b).  Thus her former husband is really becoming a bigamist if he takes a second wife since the marital bond with his former spouse has not been dissolved.  The early church view, in contrast, leads to no such contradiction.  In no case is there the right of remarriage. Immorality may justify separation but not remarriage: in every case remarriage involves adultery.

William A. Heath and Gordan Wenham 

From their book "Jesus And Divorce: The Problem of the Evangelical Consensus"

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another thing just to mention by way of avoidance...avoid spiritualizing or allegorizing the Bible. Spiritualizing or allegorizing the Bible. This is that which gives to the Bible some kind of mystical meaning. In other words, what is on the surface is not the meaning, but what is hidden becomes the meaning. This is very popular. We could talk about allegorizing, it's quite...it's not quite as popular today as it used to be, although it's finding a resurgence. Allegorizing means to say that the historical meaning is not the real meaning, and in fact may be nothing but a fabrication. The historical meaning is not the real meaning, the real meaning is the spiritual meaning hidden beneath the surface. And once you say that something in the Bible is an allegory, that is it is only a symbol of the reality, you have just made it impossible to know what that reality is because if that reality cannot be discerned through the normal understanding of language, how can it be discerned?

John Macarthur

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The plea that the prophetic portions of the Bible present problems over which men disagree is not a worthy release from its claims.  There are no more problems in Eschatology than in Soteriology.  It happens that, owing to the central place accorded Soteriology by the Reformers and in subsequent theological writings, that it has had a measure of consideration not given to prophetic truth.  Disagreements as divergent as Calvinism and Arminianism have never been urged as a reason for the neglect of Soteriology, but disunity of the slightest degree among teachers respecting Eschatology has been seized on as a reason for its neglect.

- L. S. Chafer

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Some persons think they can know God by means of their own human reason.  But reason is a blind ally spiritually.  It has always been the great minds exercising their powers apart from the Word of God who have produced the great heresies.  Some think they can discover God by listening to a so-called 'inner voice.' But the voice is often nothing more than an expression of their own inner desires.  Quite a few think that spiritual truths can be verified by supernatural events or miracles.  But the Bible everywhere teaches that even miracles will not lead men and women to understand and receive God's truth unless they themselves are illuminated by the Bible (see Luke 16:31).  I believe that we can state categorically that there is no knowledge apart from Jesus Christ and that there is no knowledge of Jesus Christ apart from a knowledge of the Bible.

 

James Montgomery Boice

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Of them(the Jews) God thus spake hundreds of years before the destruction of Jerusalem: "I will scatter you among the heathen:" "Thou shalt become an astonishment, a proverb, and a byword, among the all nations, whither the Lord shall lead thee:" "Among these nations shalt thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest." 

Jerusalem has been "trodden under foot," literally and terribly, till now, by the iron heels of western Christians, who deluged it with blood, by the hoofs of Arab and Moslem horsemen, and by the bare feet of Greek, and Roman, and Armenian monks.  Each sect spared its rival in order to crush the Jew.  To plunder and maltreat the Jew was regarded as the expression of a piety singularly acceptable to God.  No experience of man can explain this.  The Jew is a living mystery, which prophecy alone clears up.

Many other predictions, intimate the destinies of this mysterious race till Christ come.  All nations have homes in Jerusalem, - the Jew has none.  They have been sifted through all nations, and have taken root in none.  They  are the subjects of every dynasty - the victims of every tyranny - the scoff of the infidel - the scorn of the great.  From the Thames to the Tiber, and from the Tiber to the Ganges, and from the Ganges to the Missouri - from "Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand" - they are found insulated from the sympathies of all men, indicating affinities with something above and before, but with nothing around.  That once great nation has been poured down upon the earth like quicksilver - it has split into innumerable scattered and disintegrated globules, which the Great Proprietor will yet collect, and form into a mighty mass that shall glow with imperishable splendor and reflect his glory.  Many thousand years ago, God in prophecy pronounced the future dispersion and doom of the Jews, and God in history has kept them like the bush on Horeb - burning and not consumed - till that day come when the glory shall return from between the cherubim, and the dry bones rush together from a thousand lands, and the groans of creation, and the oppression of the Jew, and the travail of the Christian, cease together.  Do we not hear every morning a deep-toned voice in our streets? It is the echo of the voice of God in prophecy - evidence to a skeptic world that God's word is truth.  No man can read the history of the Jews, and the prophecy of which that history is the shadow projected into many years and lands, and not conclude that the prescience of God pronounced the prediction, and that the presence of God in history superintends its fulfillment.

John Cumming

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If, as we read our Bibles, we heard Jesus speaking to us in this way to-day we should probably try to argue ourselves out of it like this:  'It is true that the demand of Jesus is definite enough, but I have to remember that he never expects us to take his commands legalistically.  What he really wants me to have is faith. …..If Jesus said to someone:  'Leave all else behind and follow me; resign your profession, quit your family, your people, and the home of your fathers,' then he knew that to this call there was only one answer - the answer of single-minded obedience, and it was only to this obedience that the promise of fellowship with Jesus is given.  But we should probably argue thus:  ' Of course we are meant to take the call of Jesus with 'absolute seriousness,' but after all the true way of obedience would be to continue all the more in our present occupations, to stay with our families, and serve him there in a spirit of true inward detachment.'  If Jesus challenged us with the command:  'Get our of it,' we should take him to mean:  'Stay where you are but cultivate that inward detachment.'  Again, if he were to say to us:  'Be not anxious,' we should take him to mean:  'Of course it is not wrong for us to be anxious:  we must work and provide for ourselves and our dependents.  If we did not we should be shirking our responsibilities.  But all the time we ought to be inwardly free form all anxiety.'  Perhaps Jesus would say to us:  'Whoever smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'  We should then suppose him to mean:  'The way really to love your enemy is to fight him hard and hit him back.' Jesus might say: 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God,' and we should interpret it thus:  'Of course we should have to seek all sorts of other things firs; how could we otherwise exist?  What he really means is the final preparedness to stake all on the kingdom of God.'  All along the line we are trying to evade the obligation of single-minded, literal obedience. 

How is such absurdity possible?  What has happened that the word of Jesus can be thus degraded by this trifling, and thus left open to the mockery of the world?  When orders are issued in other spheres of life there is no doubt whatever of their meaning.  If a father sends his child to bed, the boy knows at once what he has to do.  But suppose he has picked up a smattering of pseudo-theology.  IN that case he would argue more or less like this:  'Father tells me to go to bed, but he really means that I am tired, and he does not want me to be tired.  I can overcome my tiredness just as well if I go out and play.  Therefore though father tells me to go to bed, he really means: 'Go out and play.' If a child tried such arguments on his father or a citizen on his government, they would both meet with a kind of language they could not fail to understand - in short they would be punished.  Are we to treat the commandment of Jesus differently from other orders and exchange single-minded obedience for downright disobedience?  How could that be possible!

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

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Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness.  For certain giddy men have lately appeared, who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the Spirit, reject all reading of the Scriptures themselves….the true and full felicity of the…church will consist in their being ruled not less by the Word than by the Spirit of God….we must give diligent heed both to the reading and hearing of Scripture, if we would obtain any benefit from the Spirit of God, and, on the contrary, that any spirit which passes by the wisdom of God's Word, and suggests any other doctrine is deservedly suspected of vanity and falsehood.  Since Satan transforms himself into an angel of light, what authority can the Spirit have with us if he be not ascertained by an infallible mark?  And assuredly he is pointed out to us by the Lord with sufficient clearness; but these miserable men err as if bent on their own destruction, while they seek the Spirit from themselves rather than from Him.  But they say that it is insulting to subject the Spirit, to whom all things are to be subject, to the Scripture…True, if he were subjected to a human, an angelical, or to any foreign standard, it might be though that he was subordinate, or, if you will, brought into bondage; but so long as he is compared with himself, and considered in himself, how can it be said that he is thereby injured?  I admit that he is brought to a test, but the very test by which it has pleased him that his majesty should be confirmed.  It ought to be enough for us when once we hear his voice; but lest Satan should insinuate himself under his name, he wishes us to recognize him by the image which he has stamped on the Scriptures.

John Calvin

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Where there is no “moral gravity” – that is, no force that draws us to the center – there is spiritual weightlessness. We float on feelings that will carry us where we never meant to go; we bubble with emotional experiences that we often take for spiritual ones; and we are puffed up with pride. Instead of seriousness, there is foolishness. Instead of gravity, flippancy. Sentimentality takes the place of theology. Our reference point will never serve to keep our feet on solid rock, for our reference point, until we answer God’s call, is merely ourselves. We cannot possibly tell which end is up. Paul calls them fools who “…measure themselves by themselves, to find in themselves their own standard of comparison!”

Elisabeth Elliot

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The canon revelation is closed; there is no more to be added; God does not give a fresh revelation, but he rivets the old one.  When it has been forgotten, and laid in the dusty chamber of our memory, he brings it forth and cleans the picture, but does not paint a new one.  It is not by any new revelation that the Spirit comforts.  He does so by telling us old things over again he brings a fresh lamp to manifest the treasure hidden in Scripture; he unlocks the strong chests in which the truth has long lain, and he points to secret chambers filled with untold riches; but he coins no more, for enough is done.

 

Charles Spurgeon

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Science is not a hermeneutic for interpreting Genesis...or for that matter for interpreting any other portion of Scripture.  Science is not a hermeneutic.  It is not a principle of interpretation.  The Bible does not bow to science.  The accuracy of the Genesis text is no different than the accuracy of any other portion of Scripture.  All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.  All Scripture is God-breathed.  All Scripture comes not by any private interpretation but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit...Jesus summed it up when He said, "Thy Word is truth."  The Bible is true whether you're talking about revelation and eschatological prophecy or whether you're talking about Genesis and historic origins.  The Bible is true whether you're talking about the history of Israel or the history of the Canaanites.  The Bible is true whether you're talking about salvation or sanctification, whether you're talking about the life of Jesus or the theology of Jesus.  Whatever the Bible says is absolutely true.  And the Bible is as true in Genesis as it is anywhere else, and everywhere else. 

John MacArthur