Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / J.B. Hixson: Being Grounded in the Word, Avoiding Bible Interpretation Mistakes

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J.B. Hixson: Being Grounded in the Word, Avoiding Bible Interpretation Mistakes · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic, off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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  Hey friends, busy week, it's been a blessing to get to talk to some of the guests we get
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  to talk to every week and today is no different.
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  We've got J.B. Hicks and Back with us, pastor and author, his most recent book, Spirit
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  of the False Prophet, the Rise of the Global Technocracy.
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  And of course, that is in a series, Spirit of the Antichrist, Vol. 1 and 2.
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  And I know there's a package deal, I believe you can get on his website, notbyworks.org.
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  J.B., welcome and happy new year, brother, good to see you again.
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  Hey, happy new year, David, really just looking forward to the discussion and I hope I know
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  we're looking forward to a great year ahead in spite of all of the craziness and I know you are
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  too at World View Matters. Yes, and we got to bring back people back to the word of God that's
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  got to be our foundation always as Christians, but especially in the year that some of us are
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  anticipating not necessarily prophesying, but it's going to be with the election and with the
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  political divide, with the globalists and what's going on in the country, even in the churches,
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  man, we've got to be grounded. So that's what we're going to talk about today.
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  This is J.B. suggestion. I love it. We're going to talk about common mistakes in Bible
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  interpretation and I just want to go to one of the scriptures that you gave me, J.B.
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  2 Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 and 17, key verses here because all scripture is inspired by God
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  and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training and righteousness,
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  so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work. J.B.,
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  what do you want to start with today? Yeah, that's a great passage. It's great for so many reasons.
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  Of course, all scripture is inspired. We know that that's in fact what this verse says,
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  but here we have at the end of Paul's life, you know, the last letter that he wrote as far as we know
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  inspired in the scriptures, and he leaves us with this reminder about the importance of the
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  written word of God. That word scripture is Grafay in Greek. It means written words. It's where we
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  get the English word Graffiti, so you write Graffiti, you know, on something. So it's the written
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  word of God that's so important. And I just, it just, the Lord convicted me over the last week or so
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  as I was having my devotions and wrapping up the year and getting geared up for some podcasts
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  in the first week of this year that in such a time as this, we've got to stay rooted in the word of
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  God, you know, but Bible tells us the word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
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  And, but the word of God is only as effective as it is correctly handled, you know,
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  another passage earlier in that same letter in 2 Timothy 2, 15, Paul says, be diligent to present
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  yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed rightly dividing the word
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  of truth or correctly handling the word of truth. So yeah, I thought, you know, there's going to be
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  a lot of, you know, people out there quoting scriptures right and left and making, you know, false
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  predictions and hyping up fear and kind of doing it all under the, the guise of the Bible. I think
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  it'd be helpful to remind folks of some common mistakes when that we often make if we're not careful
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  when we read the word of God. Yeah, that's a good place to go because I think we need to be cautious
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  and we need to be watchful of those misinterpretations that we hear other people. And sometimes, you know,
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  we hear things and we repeat them without really going to the word of God and looking at, is that
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  an accurate interpretation? So one of the things that you wanted to talk about JB is just the failure
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  to acknowledge the original intent. Talk to us about that. Yeah, so, you know, a lot of times,
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  people have the mistaken notion that the Bible is some kind of a mystical book because, you know,
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  all of the other false religions out there were based upon demonically inspired false books, you
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  know, and so somehow the devil has convinced people that the Bible is just another spiritualized,
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  you know, book. And what we need to realize instead is that, you know, this book is written in a
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  historical context through the power of the Holy Spirit carrying these, you know, some 40 different
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  human authors that wrote over a period of 1500 years and revealed exactly what God wants us to know.
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  So it really is, as Hebrews 412 tells us, you know, alive and active, it's powerful, it's cutting,
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  it cuts right to the heart of the matter, it's infallible. And so, you know, one of the most
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  common mistakes people make is they treat the Bible as if it's some kind of a spiritualized,
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  mystical, allegorical body of work and that, you know, you read a verse and then you,
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  you kind of look to the clouds or look at a bowl of spaghetti or try to divine some goose bump
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  meeting, you know, from it. When in reality, the Bible is just a book that is written using
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  language, using grammar and syntax and normal rules of language in Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek,
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  the original languages that the Bible was written in. And so it's really not that complicated. I
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  mean, we don't do that with any other book, you know, we don't pick up a novel that we might be
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  reading, say, a Tom Clancy novel and we read a paragraph and go, boy, I wonder what that really
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  means? Let me read between the lines and try to divine some weird mystical meaning. No, we just
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  read it and we understand it. And that's the way the Bible works except that, unlike any other book,
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  when we understand it in its original context, it's powerful, it's infallible, it's true
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  with capital T. Isn't that interesting? How we want to read into something is what does that? And
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  you know, what I hate the expression, what does that mean to me? Oh, you know, no, no, we just
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  stop right there. What does it mean? What did God mean when he said that? And by the way,
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  God speaks through men. And we had Russ Miller on Monday on World View Matters. We talked about
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  the importance of Genesis. You get Genesis wrong. And if you don't believe that's the word of God
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  and that is inspired, whether that's the creation account, how God created male and female, whether
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  that's original sin, whether that's the global flood. If you get something, take any one of those
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  out, how do you base your faith on anything if the God's word is not intact as a whole? I want to
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  share with you a couple of scriptures that really speak to me when I think about this topic and
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  get your response. It's second Peter chapter one, starting in verse 19, it says, so we have the
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  prophetic word made more sure to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark
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  place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Verse 20 says this,
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  but know this first of all that no prophecy of scripture becomes a matter of someone's own
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  interpretation for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will. But men moved by the holy
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  spirit spoke from God. I know you've preached on this a lot, JB. I'm sure you have a lot to share
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  by it. Just go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I just alluded to that a moment ago and I talked about how these
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  40 human authors were carried along by the Holy Spirit. That's what that phrase moved by the Holy
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  Spirit means. But yeah, the Peter is when you mentioned second Peter two, a second Peter one,
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  my mind immediately went to verse three, which is worth mentioning as well, where it talks about
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  in God's word, we have everything we need for life and godliness. But you're right at the end of
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  the chapter. He makes it clear that the word of God is of divine origin. It's not man-made.
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  That word interpretation, it's not of any private interpretation in Greek that literally means
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  origin. So what he's saying is these men of God were a conduit for God's self-revelation
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  to the world. The Bible is God's way of saying here I am, look at me. Everything we need to know
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  about our creator is contained within the pages of the Bible. And going back to Genesis, you're right,
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  if that's where it all starts, we've been convinced by bad teaching that you can allegorize the first
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  11 chapters of the Bible with the creation account, the flood account, even the Nephilim and things
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  like that. And once you start allegorizing, then you're never going to arrive at the correct
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  meaning going forward, particularly about prophetic things. But in case our viewers don't know,
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  allegorizing just means the meaning of the text arises in your own mind, like you have this
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  fanciful idea so that when the Bible talks about, for example, the promises to Israel,
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  you can change that to me. No, no, he really means the church. But nothing about the words on
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  the page would lead you to that conclusion. That's a perceived idea. So that's allegorizing the
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  text. And instead, we need to let the words on the page speak for themselves. It'd be like if I
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  walked up to a McDonald's counter and I said, I'd like a Big Mac and fries. And the person on the
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  other side of the counter says, well, you said Big Mac and fries, but what I think you really meant was
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  a chicken sandwich. Yeah, right. So they don't get to determine what I mean. And we don't get
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  determined what the Bible means. We discover what it means by handling it correctly. But God
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  determines what it means. Amen. Brother, in the notes that you sent me, you've got, in parentheses,
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  when we're talking about failure to acknowledge the original intent, also has implications for
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  interpreting the US Constitution, because we're talking about mistakes people make in Bible
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  interpretation. Could you explain? I find that to be just a fascinating thought. Yeah. So in the same
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  way that the Bible is the guidebook for life, for all of humanity, the Constitution is supposed to
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  be the guidebook, the authoritative word for our country, right? And so in the same way that people
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  take the Bible and they forget about original intent, it doesn't matter what Paul meant when the
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  Quill hit the sheepskin and he was writing to the Thessalonians or whoever, they just make it
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  out to me and whatever they want. They're doing the same thing in our country today. The progressives
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  are with the Constitution. You may remember, you and I are old enough to remember back during the
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  Bush Gore debates when they were asked about what kind of Supreme Court justice they might
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  nominate. And of course, Bush said he would nominate a strict constitutionalist. And Gore
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  famously said, I believe the Constitution is a living, breathing text that changes with each
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  generation. And so what they're basically doing is allegorizing the Constitution, which is crazy,
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  because we have all kinds of data and writings and articles and letters from the founders who
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  wrote the Constitution so that we have no question what they meant. For example, the Second Amendment.
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  There's no question what they meant. They wanted the American population to be able to
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  arm themselves to protect themselves against the government. That's what they meant. It wasn't about
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  hunting, it wasn't about anything else. But here we are 200 years later and they're twisting the
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  words. And so that's why original intent is such a critical concept. That's an excellent point.
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  I love that because it's true. And some people all even go so far to say is you think about what
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  they, meaning they on the left, progressives, people that do not uphold the biblical worldview,
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  what they've done to the US Constitution when it comes to the history books or when it comes to
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  the idea that it's a changing, a living, breathing document. We have Christians in the church that
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  believe that about the word of God, sadly, which is so, so it's very disappointing, JB, not surprising,
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  but disappointing, right? Yeah, it really is. I mean, in the seminary in the academic world,
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  they call how to study the Bible. They call it hermeneutics, right? It's your hermeneutic, the method
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  of studying the Bible. Well, in theology these days, it's really drifted like so many other things
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  into a liberal realm where they have a whole new hermeneutic that is called the redemptive
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  movement hermeneutic or this idea that every new generation can see something different in the
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  Bible. And so, for example, even though the Bible plainly says that homosexuality is an abomination
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  to a holy God, well, those people didn't know any better back then. Now we're smarter and better
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  and we can reinterpret the Bible to means something different. And that's, you know, that's a
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  travesty. It basically makes truth a moving target. Sounds like there's an assault on the image
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  of God. Anyways, a lot more coming up. The website is notbyworks.org and more with JB Hickson in a minute.
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  Did you see what I did there? I plugged my own book. That was a subliminal message. No,
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  seriously, I will say that because JB is an author and he knows how this goes. Christian books
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  trying to get the word out there. It's a battle and, you know, December may have been good,
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  but January comes around and sales typically drop and kind of, you know, taper off a bit. So we're
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  just, we're minding you. The books are out there. Thank you, Jeff, for putting that up.
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  And JB's, of course, a spirit of the false prophet. Now, JB, how long can we say as authors,
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  this is the latest or this is a new book or this is the latest book? Is there a nine-month
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  window? Is there a year? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know. Mine's probably approaching
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  that. I mean, we call it new until the next one comes out. I try to do one a year, but in my case,
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  yours is definitely new. And by the way, everybody needs to get, I'm looking at it right now across
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  from my camera here in my shelf, assault on the image of God. Everybody needs to get that.
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  As always, David does phenomenal work in terms of research and just putting his finger on the
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  problems in our culture today. But my latest book came out in September. So what's that for three,
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  five months? It's still new. It's still all of us is new. Yeah, yours is, yours is, yours is very new.
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  Mine is brand new. Let's just do that. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Okay, JB,
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  one of the things I wanted on this topic, ask you about is Israel because we're talking about
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  common mistakes in Bible interpretation. We can talk prophecy, but we can talk about what's
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  happened, even in America where we're seeing a lot of people in churches. Of course, the big
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  one is replacement theology, but let's share your thoughts on the dangers of misinterpreting
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  scripture when it comes to Israel. Oh, yeah, that's a perfect example. So so many people look at
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  the newspaper or current events first and then the Bible second and they interpret the Bible
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  through the lens of culture. It's got to be the other way around. The Bible is unchanging. It's
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  infallible. It's reliable. So we always start with the Bible. And so what happened over the,
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  you know, 2000 years of church history is as Israel disappeared from the map as a nation after
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  Rome invaded in 70 AD, Bible students, you know, found it harder and harder to accept the plain
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  fact of the unconditional promises to Israel for a future land and kingdom and temple and king and
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  so forth. And so along about the third or fourth century with church fathers like origin and
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  Augustine, they began to spiritualize the text and say that the church was the new Israel
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  and that God was through with Israel. Now, if they'd had just stuck with the Bible and the plain
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  normal teaching of God's word and plain, you know, Latin in their day or English in our day,
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  it's they should never have made that mistake. That's right. But they did. And so and then what
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  happened in 1948 is as miraculously just as God's word said, Israel became a nation again,
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  and now all of a sudden people are rethinking the biblical texts related to Israel and the old
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  and New Testament and they're realizing, you know what? God's word is true. Let every man be a liar.
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  And this is this is God's plan for the future. Israel has a future. And so I believe one of the
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  biggest signs of the times of our day is all that's happening in Israel right now. It's it's heating
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  up the stages being set for the Battle of Gog and Magog and other end times battles and, you know,
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  people need to let the text speak for itself. And that necessarily will help them arrive at a
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  dispensational, pre-tribulational understanding of Scripture. Yeah, love our friend and colleague
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  Dr. Andy Woods in his book The Middle East Meltdown. He talks a lot about that coalition of
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  nations rising up against Israel. I don't know when that came out. Maybe I don't know five,
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  six years ago. I'm guessing. But what's happening now is it's you're seeing it ramping up.
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  One thing, JB, was it the Emperor Hadrian that mockingly used the word Palestine? Was it him?
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  And what century was that? Can you refresh our memory? Yeah, that's another example. I was just
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  talking to Dr. Randall Price about that. And I don't remember the exact time frame, but yeah,
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  that's another classic example of going to culture and politics and, you know, current events
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  first rather than letting the Bible speak for itself. I mean, you go back to 2000 BC when God made
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  the unconditional promise to Abraham. And he spelled it out in Genesis 15, the Bounders of the
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  Land. There's no question that the land belongs to Israel, that the Palestinian notion that came
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  along century, you know, millennia later. So it's really, it's really amazing. And people just don't
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  don't think, don't connect the dots. They're thinking, well, Israel wasn't in the land until
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  1948. And or the Jews weren't. I'm thinking, okay, didn't we just celebrate the birth of Jesus?
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  Wasn't Jesus Jewish? And was he in the land 2000 years ago? In that crazy. Yeah. And, you know,
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  especially young people, you know, over the holidays, I had the opportunity to talk to, you know,
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  a lot of millennials and even younger. And they're buying into the narrative of the genocide that
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  somehow Israel is guilty of genocide. Well, making no mistake about it. Israel is the good guy here
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  and Hamas is the bad guy. And, you know, Israel is not perfect. They may, you know, make a mistake
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  here and their war is messy. It's tragic. It's terrible. It's horrific. But, you know, Israel is
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  by no means the aggressor here. And yet that's the narrative that's being, you know, pushed out
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  there. And sadly, the young people are buying into it, thanks to all the propaganda on the internet.
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  I just want to share just one quick script. I know we're kind of getting slightly off topic,
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  because we're talking about mistakes in Bible interpretation. But I just shared this on my
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  Facebook this morning from Psalm 111. It says, the works of his hands are faithful and just. All his
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  precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever to be performed with faithfulness
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  and uprightness. And then it says, he sent redemption to his people. He has commanded his covenant
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  forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All those
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  who practice it have a good understanding and his praise and doers forever. But it talks often
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  about in the Old Testament, in the Psalms and other places, my eyes seem to pick that out now after
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  what happened in early October with the brutal attacks, the demonic attacks by Hamas on Israel.
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  When it talks about, you know, his covenant, he has commanded his covenant forever. He sent
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  redemption to his people. So there's a lot of scriptures that we overlook. And we, I don't know
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  how you can misinterpret things like that. But I guess people do human nature. Go ahead. Whatever you
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  want to discuss. No, I think I did a message here recently before Christmas on Israel and God's
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  plan of the ages. And it's not just the plain normal understanding of the Old Testament passages.
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  The New Testament is clear too, you know, the olive tree analogy in Romans 11, the book of Revelation,
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  my goodness, you can't even read that book without seeing Israel almost every other verse alluded
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  to and spelled out and the 144,000 Jewish witnesses and the two witnesses and the temple and the
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  abomination of desolation. And so unless you just allegorize as replacement theologians do the entire
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  book of Revelation, just like Ezekiel 40 to 48 in the Old Testament, it's plain as day. And so this
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  is why, you know, we're talking about this today is that in such a time as this as we seem to be
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  gearing up for the last of the last days, it's more important than ever for us to rightly
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  handle the word of God. JB, one of the things you sent me in the bullet points was a common mistakes
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  searching for multiple meanings of a single passage. I had to think about that. I'm thinking,
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  okay, well, if you read a passage and look at contextually and try to understand its meaning,
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  why would you want to search for multiple meanings? Can you explain that? Oh, yeah, it's very
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  common. It's a principle called the singularity of meaning and a lot of people hold to the multiplicity
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  of meaning. And so you kind of alluded to it. I don't remember if it was early on in the program
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  or maybe off air, but, you know, modern Bible study basically amounts to 10 people sitting in a
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  circle in someone's living room and going around the circle and saying, what does it mean to me?
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  The more fanciful and crazy and complex the meaning, the more everybody in the room goes,
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  oh, wow, that's amazing. I wish I was as spiritual as you. I didn't see that in there at all
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  because it wasn't in there. So this gets into the difference between meaning and significance.
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  When the quill hit the sheepskin, the creator of the universe intended to communicate one thing
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  in the same way that we do when we talk, right? When I ask you, what time are we doing the
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  broadcast today? And you say, noon or whatever, I don't have to wonder, well, what else does
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  he mean? Or what else could that mean? I know what you mean. It means one thing. And yet we are so
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  prone to assume that one passage can have multiple meanings. And the problem with that is if a
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  passage can have more than one meaning, then it can have an infinite number of meanings.
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  There's no limit. And so we've got to hold on to the singularity of meaning. It doesn't mean
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  just because two people come to the same passage and one says it means this and another says it
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  means that either one's right and one's wrong or perhaps they're both right. I mean, both wrong,
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  but they cannot both be right. That's not possible. The Bible doesn't contradict itself.
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  Amen. Good point, brother. Do you think one of the reasons for that? We're running out of time.
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  Really quick. Do people tend to want to, especially in America, maybe romanticize the
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  scriptures and like, God wants to give you the desires of your heart. So what does that mean to me?
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  Was that saying to me? Do you think that's part of the problem? I do. Yeah, it's called proof
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  texting. We really love to pull a passage out of context and make it all about us.
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  You know, Jeremiah 2911, all of those types of passages. And the fact of the matter is
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  there are two problems with that when you do that. Number one, you're wrongly interpreting the
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  Bible. But number two, you're missing out on the value and the preciousness of the actual meaning.
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  For example, Jeremiah 2911, you know, God has plans for Israel. If we really understood that
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  that's a national promise to Israel, that's encouraging. It shows us that our God's a covenant
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  keeping God, which is people that he keeps his promises. So yeah, that's, I think you're right.
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  It is a form of romanticizing. I'm glad you brought that up because a lot of people take that,
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  you know, a future and a hope. Oh, that's for me. You know, the context is that was to Israel.
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  Wasn't that in context right after God was talking about judging them? Yeah, and the new covenant,
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  the whole new cult promises of Jeremiah 31. Now, it's true. I know we're out of time,
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  but it's true that God has plans for individuals. Yes. Yes. Question about it. He loves you.
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  He has a plan for you all of it, but that's not what that verse means. Right. Right. Amen.
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  Brother, this has to continue. I love these types of conversations we need to get back to be
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  just grounded in the word. And that's our foundation for the crazy times. We will, and I'm not a
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  prophet. We will experience and go through in 2024, most likely in some way, but brother,
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  not by works.org. Thank you for your time again. We will talk to you soon. Amen. God bless.
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  Thanks, JB. All right, guys, I'm just going to look ahead to next week and just share who we have
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  on the line in the lineup on the lineup, whatever you want to say. Matt Trewella, we haven't had him
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  on worldview matters yet. He's a pastor and he's with missionaries, founder of missionaries to
• 26:25
  the pre-born. I'm looking forward to talking with Matt actually quote him as well as I quoted JB
• 26:30
  and many others in my book. Rusty Thomas, he's an author and voice in the pro-life movement.
• 26:38
  Rusty's got some updates for us. Chad Davidson of good fight ministries and pastor Dean Dwyer of
• 26:46
  in Australia there. We're going to definitely catch up with him. He had a big accident, a major
• 26:51
  accident in December. We're going to tell you about that story and how he's doing, but still blessed
• 26:57
  to be able to talk to the people we do here. Thanks for your support and your prayers and for sharing.
• 27:01
  God bless you and as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.