10 Common Mistakes Made When Reading the Bible Part 1

Answering Mormons Questions by Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson deals with 36 commonly asked questions by your LDS friends and neighbors. It's a great resource for Christians who want to share their faith with friends and loved ones.

Be sure to pick up your copy today at your favorite Christian bookstore. Viewpoint on Mormonism, the program that examines the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from a biblical perspective. Viewpoint on Mormonism is sponsored by Mormonism Research Ministry. Since 1979, Mormonism Research Ministry has been dedicated to equipping the body of Christ with answers regarding the Christian faith in a manner that expresses gentleness and respect. And now, your host for today's Viewpoint on Mormonism. Welcome to this edition of Viewpoint on Mormonism.

I'm your host, Bill McKeever, founder and director of Mormonism Research Ministry, and with me today is Eric Johnson, my colleague at MRM. This week we would like to focus on an article that Eric has written and can be found on our website MRM.org. It's titled, Ten Common Mistakes Latter-day Saints Make When Reading the Bible. Now before we get started, Eric, what's the address on our website where a person can go directly to this article? MRM.org slash ten one zero hyphen common hyphen mistakes.

Ten common mistakes with hyphens between them. Now the reason why we felt it important to go through this, and we're not going to be going into detail as to everything Eric puts in this article, we'll probably talk about some other things as well, but just because we know Latter-day Saints tend to make mistakes when they read the Bible, that doesn't excuse a lot of Bible-believing Christians from making mistakes when they read the Bible as well. And so I think what we're going to go through is not only a good primer for the Latter-day Saints that listen to this show, and there are many out there, but I think it would also be good for us as Christians to pay attention and hopefully not make some of those similar mistakes that our Mormon friends might make. We often tell people that they ought to read the Bible, and that's important. Of course, we want to read the Bible, but if you're reading it and misinterpreting what it says, then it really doesn't do any good.

So there are certain rules in what is called hermeneutics, interpretation, to be able to understand what the text says and how to apply it to our lives today. And as you said, Bill, this is not just for Latter-day Saints, this is for us as Christians, because we can also make the same common mistakes that others would make. And I can think of just recently of going through an email that a Latter-day Saint sent to a Christian friend of his who forwarded it on to me. Some of the things we're going to talk about this week, I saw them in this email. So this is something that's very real.

We're not making this up. The first point is interpreting a verse out of its immediate context. I would say that that is probably one of the, what would you say, Eric, maybe the most often problem we see when it comes to trying to discuss biblical issues with Latter-day Saints? It is, and I think the idea that people would take a verse and pull it out of its context. We call that a proof text, that you would take a verse and base maybe even an entire doctrine around that, and that's a mistake. Whenever you see a verse, somebody shows it to you and says, hey, this is what it means, I would say take the first seven verses before it and the seven verses after that and see what the context is saying. And I think about 80 percent of the time you're going to see that that is not the right interpretation based on that context. And if that doesn't work, then read the chapter before and the chapter after.

That oftentimes is going to be helpful, too. So we need to know why the author is writing, who the author is, and what the situation is. Those are all important things to be able to not make the mistake of just taking a verse and making something out of it that the author never intended. What immediately comes to mind in a verse that you and I have heard on the streets and in our correspondence with Latter-day Saints, what first comes to mind immediately is Matthew 548, where Jesus says, be ye therefore perfect. How many times have we heard Latter-day Saints use that as a, as you said, a proof text to show that works are necessary for salvation. But yet, do you really think Jesus was telling us to be sinlessly perfect?

Who is doing that? Latter-day Saints admit they're not doing that. So if that's what you think Jesus is saying, I think he's asking something of his creation that's just impossible to deliver. And so I might add, though, that many modern Latter-day Saints are getting away from that old Spencer W. Kimball interpretation that we have heard so many use, and they're realizing, hey, that's not what Jesus was saying at all. Yeah, for many Latter-day Saints who have been around for a long time in their church, they know that that verse has been used over and over again.

But we're not hearing it maybe quite as much anymore. I remember a few years ago, we did a show on President Samuelson over at BYU, and he purposely went out of his way to say, Matthew does not say that you have to be perfect. He was saying that to the students because, I mean, when you're talking about teenagers and young people, the idea of having to be perfect can be very suicidal.

So he was trying to help them out. And so understanding the context of what Jesus was saying, first off, it's in the Sermon on the Mount. There's a lot of things said on the Sermon on the Mount that we would not take literally. Jesus says, if your hand causes you to sin to cut it off, he wasn't saying to do that. And there are other things that were said that need to be taken in the context of what he was trying to communicate to his disciples in that sermon.

And I think in the case of Matthew 5 48, when we see that word perfect, it helps us to understand the Greek word that is used in that particular passage. And it's not talking about sinless perfection. But a verse that you have listed in the article itself is James 1 5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not. We're using King James mainly because that's what Mormons use.

That's the one that they respect. And it says, and it shall be given him. What about James 1 5? Well, a lot of Latter-day Saints will use that in conjunction with Moroni 10 4, the last chapter in the Book of Mormon. And what they're trying to do is show potential converts how they're supposed to pray about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.

And ultimately, if Mormonism is true, if the president of the church is true, and Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God as well. And so that is a verse that Joseph Smith supposedly used to determine that there were no two churches when he receives the first vision. However, that verse is not saying anything about knowledge, which is when you're asking if the Book of Mormon is true, you're asking about, is it true knowledge wise?

But it's talking about lacking wisdom. And in the context of James 1 5, it's talking about trials and temptations. Whenever you face trials of many kinds is what James writes.

And it goes on and talks about how to deal with these things. You will be tried and it's your flesh battling what is supposed to be right. God doesn't tempt anybody, James says later on in that passage. And so to take that verse and to make it into praying about either the Book of Mormon or Mormonism, if you're going to take that as a test that we should take, then are we going to do the same thing with Islam?

Are we going to pray about Muhammad being a true messenger of God, the Quran being God's word for today? Are we going to do that with Jehovah's Witnesses or any other religion? A point that I've often brought up with Latter-day Saints when they use James 1 5 is I will ask them, okay, you're getting that from the Bible, which you believe is correct if only translated correctly. First of all, how do you know James 1 5 is translated correctly? And whatever test you've used to come to the conclusion that James 1 5 should be trusted the way your church is telling you should be the same test that can be used with every other verse. Second of all, is it really using wisdom to go to the Bible for a verse such as James 1 5 and then believe someone like Joseph Smith who's telling you something that contradicts the very book where you found James 1 5 in the first place?

I would say that would be foolish to do that and not wisdom at all. Point number two is taking a verse or passage, literally, when it was not to be taken in such a way. And the example you give in the article, Eric, is Psalm 82 6 and 7. It says, I have said ye are gods and all of you are children of the Most High, but ye shall die like men and fall like one of the princes. And Latter-day Saints will use that passage along with John 10 34 and that says, Jesus answered them, is it not written in your law? I said ye are gods again in the King James, as you mentioned before, which is how the Mormon is going to read this. Now we need to understand that if Jesus is telling the people he's talking to, the Jewish leaders, that they are gods, then maybe there's a point, but not even the Latter-day Saints believe that the people that Jesus was talking to are gods and that they can be gods today.

That Latter-day Saints believe that someday they hope to achieve godhood, but they believe that maybe there are gods in embryo, that they're potential gods. Well, also the people that he is having this discussion with, Jesus had some pretty harsh things to say about them. So the question I've often asked Latter-day Saints that use John 10 34, I'll just simply ask, well, would you consider the people that Jesus is speaking to, to be God material according to the dictates of your church?

Now, they usually have to stop and think about that because in order to answer that question, you have to know a little bit more of the context. And of course, when Jesus has been saying very harsh things about the religious leaders of his days, especially the ones that he is being confronted by, I don't think any Latter-day Saint would look at that language as Jesus commending them for being worthy of what Mormons would say is exaltation. So if these people that Jesus is speaking to are not worthy of exaltation, why would any Latter-day Saint want to assume that somehow, as you said, are gods right now, or let's even set that aside. How about gods in the future?

They wouldn't even qualify in the future. They don't meet the principle of celestial law as most Mormons are familiar. So why would you use this verse to say that these people Jesus was talking to were worthy of that exaltation when clearly Jesus didn't seem to think so if he believed in that Mormon version of exaltation, which of course, I wouldn't go that far.

I don't think he believed that at all. Bill, in the article I quote from Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, two apologists in their book, When Cultists Ask, page 178, and I think it's a good overview of explaining what this means. Jesus was showing that if the Old Testament Scriptures could give some divine status to divinely appointed judges, why should they find it incredible that he should call himself the Son of God? These judges were gods, quote-unquote, in the sense that they stood in God's place judging even life and death matters.

They were not called, quote-unquote, gods because they were divine beings. Indeed, the text Jesus cites, Psalm 82, goes on to say that they were mere men and would die, verse 7. It also affirms that they were, quote, the sons of the Most High, end quote, but not because they were of the essence of God himself. It is possible, as many scholars believe, that when the psalmist Asaph said to the unjust judges, quote-unquote, ye are gods, he was speaking in irony.

He was saying, quote, I have called you gods, but in fact you will die like the men that you really are, end quote. If this is so, then when Jesus alluded to the psalm in John 10, he was saying that when the Israelite judges were called in irony and in judgment, he is in reality. Jesus was giving a defense for his own deity, not for the deification of man. I think that's a great explanation of that passage. And when you notice the reaction of those that Jesus is talking to, do you think they were flattered by that, by quoting Psalm 82? Because I'm sure most Jews realize Psalm 82 was a psalm of rebuke. It wasn't meant to be taken with flattery.

That is often overlooked. Even the word judges, sometimes in the Old Testament, comes from the word Elohim. So what do you do with that, Latter-day Saint? That's why I think what Geisler and Rhodes have said about this verse is perfectly accurate. Not to mean that men can become gods or are gods right now, but it has an entirely different meaning, one that I think Latter-day Saints need to look into. Thank you for listening. If you would like more information regarding Mormonism Research Ministry, we encourage you to visit our website at www.mrm.org, where you can request our free newsletter, Mormonism Researched. We hope you will join us again as we look at another viewpoint on Mormonism.