According to you, what is the most abused text?

How about

"Remove not the ancient landmarks which they fathers have set..."

or

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."

 

John 3:16

 

swaijm stole mine! How about "...and with his stripes we are healed." A lady in our church uses this to make a case against seeing doctors.
"Ask and you shall receive"

 

That's got to be the most abused single verse.

As far as a whole passage, I've heard the Abraham-Lazaras passage three times in the last month, and none of them agreed as to what the main point was.

 

"God inhabits the praises of His people...." probably taken from But thou art holy, O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel. (Psa 22:3 KJV)

Usually abused in miscellaneous screamed exhortations by song leaders in alphabet soup (aog, clc, etc) Churches to get the people in frenzy when they are not "worshipping" hard enough....

Pete

 

Second prize goes to 1 Chronicles 4:9-10

Pete

 

Galatians 3:28 ("There is neither...male nor female") has certainly been misused in recent decades.

 

"I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me." Hey, I like that one. I have a missionary friend, the wife, who claimed this verse when her husband was called to mission field of Russia... I think it's appropriate for circumstances in which a person feels might be beyond their abilty to do on their own.

 

For an already-published resource, see Exegetical Fallacies by D.A. Carson. It's an excellent catalog of common errors in interpretation. Be ready to have a couple of your best sermons blown out of the water, though.

 

I don't think I have heard a single sermon using a verse with the "power" in the translation that I am not reminded that we get our dynamite from it.

 

2 Corinthians 5:8  We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.

When Paul is so often quoted here, people leave the word "rather" out to make their point.

 

Yes, but that's reverse exegesis. We're taking a word of today and projecting a meaning onto the Biblical word. Instead, we should let the meaning of the Biblical word speak to us today.

 

Totally agreed. When I said I get "reminded" I meant to say I am reminded by the pastor. It really gets annoying after awhile.

 

I don't get it. Can you elabortate on both positions.

 

okay crazycat, i'll byte. How is this an abused verse?

 

Sure Pete. My position is that your soul and yourself are one and the same (Gen. 2:7). I don't believe when you die that your soul immediately goes to heaven or hell.

People use Paul's statement to say the soul does go immediately to heaven. For clarity, you must be absent from the body to eventually be present with the LORD (unless you are alive at the second coming) and that is what Paul is saying.

Most folks quite matter-of-factly say this, "Paul said to be absent from the body is to be present with the LORD" (leaving out "rather"). Paul was saying he would rather be, not he would be.

If you're going to be with the Lord it won't be before ressurection day (my opinion based on what the Bible actually says in many, many places).

I hope I'm clear to you on that but if you disagree, let's not get off the intended subject of this thread - we can start another. I was just answering your question here.

 

Be ye angry and sin not.