The Bottom Line for the Bible

So what is the bottom line? Two things: First, when seeking truth, study the Bible contextually the way it was written and the way it should be interpreted. Study book by book, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph and text by text. Note its style or genre. Remember, all important truths are founded on contextual study.

Second, when someone seeks to indoctrinate you into his or her “special truths” and in doing so has to skip all over the Bible, reading a text here and quoting a text there, stop them. Force them to read the context and find out if the context of a given text clearly supports what they are trying to prove from the text. Chances are that if they cannot show clearly their “truths” in contextual study, their “truths” are not truth, or at most, are of minor significance. We should be as careful in our interpretation of the Scriptures as the Hebrew scribes were in copying it.

—Dale Ratzlaff (Served as an Adventist pastor for 13 year, founder of Life Assurance Ministries, Inc. for former Seventh day Adventists.)