Originally posted by trying2understand:
Sorry to take the wind out of your sails..
but you preach merely your interpretation.
The final authority is whatever verses you pick and choose to support your beliefs.
The Bible only has one interpretation. It interprets itself. Peter warned about false teachers:
2Pet.3:15 And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;
16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.
There are many (Catholics and others) who when the encounter Scriptures "hard to be understood...wrest, as they do also the other scriptures unto their own destruction." If you don't know the interpretation, wrest the interpretation out of its context and make it mean something it wasn't intended to mean.
I don't preach my interpretation at all. I preach the Bible. The Bible interprets itself. Nowhere are we commanded to interpret the Bible. So I don't interpret the Bible. That's where you have it all wrong.
2Tim.2:15 Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
--This is the command that God has given us. We are to rightly divide the word of truth. This phrase is found only here in the New Testament, and it means handling right or correctly. Cutting with exactness or accuracy. That is then, to present the truth clearly and without blunders. I preach God's Word, not man's tradition. I proclaim the truth of God, not the Church Tradition. My authority is the Word of God, not the magesterium.
1Cor.2:12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
The Holy Spirit bears witness with my spirit that I am a child of God. I know that if I were to die right now I would go to Heaven as surely as if I had already been there a thousand years. I have the witness of the Holy Spirit bearing witness with my spirit. (Romans 8:16).
Because I have received that Spirit, and He dwells within me, I am able to "know the things that are freely given to us of God" (1Cor.2:12). What is that? It is the Word of God, as Paul goes on to explain in verse 13, "which things also we speak."
However, if you do not have that witness in you, if you do not have the Holy Spirit residing in you; if there has been no real change in your life as a result of being regenerated by the Holy Spirit (not water), then there is no possible way you could understand any of what I would be trying to say to you, and Paul says as much in verse 14 of 1Cor.2:
1Cor.2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
Perhaps the Word of God is foolishness to you; perhaps you would rather stick to church traditions and church interpretations. You may be a natural (unsaved) man.
As for me, I proclaim the Word that God has given me. I don't interpret it, just rightly divide it.
DHK