The fact is that these errors in Bible study are very commonplace, and very damaging. While understanding the Bible in its’ fullness and richness can take quite a bit of time and hard work, but the results of such study are very well worth the effort.
I will leave you with this example of a horrendous false teaching that comes out of committing all three of these errors at one time. Let’s look at Deuteronomy 6:10a&c-11a, which is a favorite (out of context) segment of Preachers of the Health, Wealth, and Prosperity movement and says, “And the Lord God…” will “…give you… great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill…” [ESV] They like to use this to say that God wants to give us all of this today, but they have taken it out of context in all three ways, first, they have picked and chosen snippets out of a much larger passage so that they could twist them to fit their intentions, second, they say them as if they were written to people living today, instead of the Children of Israel who they actually were written to, and they were promises under the old (Mosaic) covenant, and not the new covenant (I know that gets complicated, and I don’t want to delve into it right now). By twisting this all up they ignore the true meaning of the text and claim that if you will just send them some money, then this text (ripped out of context as it is) will become true in your life, which of course, it will not.
It is critical that we take the time to get this right.
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