KneEmail - a devotional by Mike Benson associated with Forthright Magazine
Twist
IN SCHOOL I was asked to read, "The Right Doctrine from the Wrong Text..."
One chapter by S.V. McCasland, entitled, "Matthew Twists the Scriptures," was filled with outlandish statements. McCasland said, "Matthew felt free in changing and distorting the Scriptures." Someone was indeed "distorting," but it was not Matthew!
Far too often people read the Bible and miss the truth completely. Strangely, there are atheists and agnostics who call themselves Bible "scholars." They come to the Scriptures with completely different presuppositions. They lower the Bible down to the level of any other book and presume it is filled with errors.
THOUGHTS: Scripture is always right ( Psalm 19:7,8). We cannot discount how empowering this rule would be to millions of people. To come to the Bible presupposing that it is inspired and perfect ( 2 Timothy 3:16,17) would prevent so many problems. People will read two passages and dispense with one because they think it contradicts the other. Rather, they should realize that Scripture is perfect and they just have not figured out how the two passages agree. "The benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not unjustly assumed by the critic to himself"1 (Richard Mansel).
1/ Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), 408-409.
KneEmail: "As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hards to understand, which untaught and unstable people twist to their own destruction, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures" (2 Pet. 3:16).