Massaging the Scriptures

Interpreting Scripture is a critical and strategic step in teaching, preaching, and discipling. I don’t mean interpreting the Greek or Hebrew text into English. What I mean is explaining, or exegeting, the true meaning of the Scriptures, what God intended to reveal to us through the Holy Spirit and the Holy men of God who wrote it down. Paul told Timothy, his young protégé, “Study to show yourself approved unto God, a workman who… correctly handles the word of truth.” His advice was probably multi-faceted, but the dominant theme was this: “Be a good student of Scriptures, before you open your mouth. You must be spot on accurate in what you teach.” Timothy had a huge responsibility. Paul was not suggesting that he buy a bunch of commentaries, decide which well-known preachers to emulate, or keep your ear to the ground for trendy new theological insights. Timothy was to be a student of the Holy Spirit, the one who wrote the Scripture, the one who could lead him and guide him into truth and understanding.

Preachers and teachers have a tendency to massage the Scriptures to their own liking. It is a practice that started with the serpent in the Garden. It defined the Scribes and Pharisees, and it continues right up to our present day. The concept of “massaging the Scriptures” is not original to me, so I must tell you where I got it. I led a men’s group for a number of years. I had been encouraging the group to not always trust their own wisdom or their own best guess, but listen for the inner voice of the Holy Spirit. Pete, perhaps one of the most transformed men of all of us, came in one night and said he had heard some thoughts in his quiet time and did not know what to make of it. He pulled out a piece of paper and read to us. “You stiff-necked people, you always massage the Scriptures to your own liking.” This word of knowledge (or word of wisdom, or prophecy, whatever label you want to put on it) came in response to a dynamic heresy rising up in the church that most of us belonged to. They were bringing in a woman teacher whose entire message was that women were never intended to be submissive to, or subjugated to men in the church. They should be equal – in authority, in position, and in teaching and preaching. “Mutual submission” was the catch phrase for that theological enlightenment, as many would want to call it.

Paul was led by the Holy Spirit in what he wrote about women in the church. He was not a victim of cultural misogyny. But that is not the issue I want to discuss. End-times prophecy is my calling to write about. And I want to clearly state that teachers of prophecy are just as guilty of massaging the scriptures to their own liking as teachers or preachers in any area of theology. Perhaps more so, I tend to think. Speculation has become dogma, and deception parades itself as truth.

Not all teachers of twisted interpretations do so out of their own origination. In fact, most are following the script of other writers and teachers, parroting what everyone else is saying, lacking diligence and courage to seek the truth and stand on it. They subscribe to the predominant viewpoint, the prevailing dialogue. But that does not lessen their guilt or absolve them of responsibility.

Prophecy teachers parrot whatever they hear, whatever they read. For example, they all say the same thing about Antichrist, massaging scripture, using the prophecies of the little horn, the feet of clay, and the seventh beast of Revelation 13 to paint a picture of a super-human world ruler so powerful that he will even rise from the dead. But that’s nonsense – all of those images refer to a nation, not a person. Another example, everyone is saying that the trumpet “judgments” are going to happen during the “Great Tribulation”, and they will be so horrific that they will be beyond imagination. But the fact is that the trumpets are warnings, as well as judgments. They are warnings to the world that God’s ultimate judgment at the end of the age is rapidly approaching. And they have been sounding since World War 1, almost 120 years, now. They are not in the future. And speaking of the Great Tribulation, every prophecy teacher has been spinning the same yarn, ever since John Darby invented the concept and promoted it fastidiously in the 1800’s -- once again, massaging the Scriptures. There is no Biblical support for the seventieth week of Daniel being removed from the first sixty-nine, to be fulfilled in the twenty-first century rather than the first century. That is preposterous.

That great big false teaching of a Great Tribulation has a mesmerizing hold upon today’s prophecy teachers. Uncontested, it has become foundational to every other detail of prophecy interpretation. Prophecy teachers must make every other detail of Revelation fit into the Great Tribulation mold. It is just like trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole. It doesn’t work, but they do it anyways, oblivious to the absurdity of some of their interpretations. All the trumpet and bowl judgments must fit into the seven-year period. The Antichrist will make peace with Israel, rebuild their temple, then have a change of heart and outlaw their sacrifices and destroy their temple. That’s not going to happen. Worst of all, they teach that Christians will be spared any and all judgment, suffering, and turmoil at the end of the age by being raptured before the Great Tribulation. Talk about false hope – “pie in the sky” theology.

Massaging the Scriptures, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, and nobody seems to have a clue. Our current inundation of false teaching on prophecy is deceptively misleading. Prophecy must be re-examined, with every ingrained bias cast into the fire. Truth must prevail in these last days.