SCRIPTURE ISN’T A MYSTICAL CROSSWORD PUZZLE (PART I)

“Biblical Truth Is Not Mystically Received; It Is Mentally Discerned”

By Akin Ojumu

Whether you are a celebrated minister of the Gospel, or a venerated preacher of God the Gospel, or an obscure and inconsequential Christian, we are all brokers of the Truth of God which He transmitted to mankind in one book, the Holy Scripture. 

As brokers of God’s Truth, we are required to discover the truth, learn the truth, understand the truth, love the truth, guard the truth, proclaim the truth, and live the truth. But this Truth itself is outside of us. We are not its source. We make no contribution to it. 

Authentic Christianity understands that the Scripture is an objective…absolute…divine truth. No person has ever had in himself any idea or any experience or any thought or any intuition that determines the truth. The truth is already determined by God and revealed in Scripture. No human individually, no humans collectively are sources for establishing the truth. Neither is any angelic being a source for establishing the truth.

That’s why Paul says:

Galatians 1:8-9

“But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.”

What someone thinks is true does not make it true. 

Unfortunately, there’s so much of that folly floating around these days. You find people who believe and promote the idea that you can, by your own ideas and by your own will and even by your words, create reality. That’s totally and absolutely not true. 

There’s no such thing as personal truth or individual truth. Scripture is God’s revealed truth. If you never lived and I never lived, it would have no bearing on the truth. Scripture is true. It is perspicuous, meaning it is clear. The meaning is evident on the face of it. There are no puzzles hidden in Scripture. 

There are no secret codes in Scripture. It is not truth concealed; it is truth revealed. Sure, there are some things hard to understand. Sure, you’ve got to dig a little to get to those things. But Scripture is God’s revelation, not obfuscation.

The message of Scripture is clear and unambiguous, and it is not existential. You don’t create it by your own ideas or by your own intuition. None of it comes by the will of man.

2 Peter 1:20-21

“Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

Scripture is God’s truth whether it affects anybody or nobody. It is God’s truth whether you agree with it or disagree with it. It is God’s truth whether you like it or don’t like it. 

Today, you hear people say, “Well, this is what the Bible means to me.”

That’s, perhaps, one of worst possible sentiments anyone could express about Scripture. I’ll put this as elegantly as I can, “The last time I checked, you are neither the source nor the author of the Bible. You are not the determiner of its truth. So, I don’t really give a rat ass what the Bible means to you.”

Again and again, Scripture makes claims for itself, as we just read. It endures forever. It is trustworthy in every jot and tittle. 

Scripture is unchanging.

Isaiah 40:8

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God will stand forever.”

Scripture is eternal.

Matthew 24:35

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Authentic, genuine, true Christianity has always held that Scripture is an absolute, objective truth. It is true for one person. It is true for another person. It is true for all people, and it is the same truth. Our opinions, our spiritual experiences, and our feelings have no bearing on its true meaning. It is not a clay model to be shaped into any form by anyone who wants to shape it.

That is why, I will confess to you, there are lots of things that dishonor the Lord that bother me. A zeal for His house eats me up, I confess to you that. I am angered, I am saddened, I am grieved about a lot of things that are carried on in the name of Christ that I know brings dishonor to Him, but nothing is worse to me than a misrepresentation of the Truth of God.

That’s inexcusable, and it is constant, even in the name of Christianity. The truth of Scripture is not decided by your insight or mine, or your experience or mine. What it does for us or in us or to us or how it affects us has nothing to do with its actual meaning.

People are taught today that when they open the Bible, they are to listen to the voice of God and try to hear what God is saying to them through the Bible. This sort of teaching is an utter gobbledygook pseudo-profound bovine scatalogy. That’s a politically correct way of saying it’s all BS.

Let me tell you exactly what God is saying to you through the Bible. 

“Put your thick head down. Look at the words and study them.” 

That’s what God is saying to you.

Biblical truth is objective. It is true in and of itself. It is true whether you know it or don’t know it. It is true whether you understand it or don’t understand it. It is true whether it’s been experienced by you or not experienced. It is wholly true; it is entirely true.

Psalm 119:160

“The entirety of Your Word is truth and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever.”

The proof of the truthfulness of Scripture is its everlasting character. This is the very starting point and the necessary foundation for a Christian world view. You give up anything on this ground, and you’ve just given up the true Christian world view. Give up any ground on the fact that the Bible itself is the revealed truth of God, objective, external, absolute, give up any ground at that point and what you have left is not worthy to be called Christianity, even if it has vestiges of Christian lingo and symbolism.

True Christianity begins with objective truth, everything God has revealed in one book, that is the Bible. Yet, there are many today who call themselves Christians, people who are using the language of Christianity, people who have co-opted the symbolism of Christianity, but their real source of authority is something inside of them, or something inside someone else that they think is a prophet or a seer or someone in touch with God or straight from the pit of hell. 

Unfortunately, these pseudo-Christians preside over many of the contemporary Christian denominations. They are the General Overseers who drink tea with God. These are the General Superintendents who teach their followers, “You want healing, use your tongue to bring the healing. You want power, use your tongue to bring the power.” They are the bishops who believe there are elite and VIP Christians or specialists in the Church who are envoys in the world of the spirit who help to cover for us in areas of our concern. All of these folks are firstborn of Satan. They are enemies of the God of the Bible.

Next time, we’ll examine the proper way of studying, interpreting, and understanding Scripture.

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Reference & Attribution: This commentary is adapted from Pastor John MacArthur’s teaching titled, “The Authoritative Nature of Truth.”