How Do You Understand the Bible?

A question for listeners of Family Radio

by Rev. Jim McCune

Dear Friend,

If you’re a Family Radio listener, you know that Mr. Harold Camping, president of Family Radio, has made some astounding claims. Back in 1992 he published a book called 1994? In that book Mr. Camping declared his expectation, on the basis of his study of the Bible, that Jesus would return in 1994. More recently, Mr. Camping, again claiming his conclusions are based on the teachings of the Bible, has declared that the age of the church is over—that God has taken his Holy Spirit from the visible, "corporate church" and will no longer bring sinners to salvation through its agency. As a consequence of this belief, he has urged true believers to "depart out" of their congregations, even if those congregations seem faithful in preaching the true gospel. He advises those who listen to him to form "fellowships of like-minded believers"—people who also listen to Family Radio and have come to believe that what Camping says about the end of the church age is true. True believers, according to Mr. Camping, are to no longer have pastors or elders or deacons. They are not to celebrate the Lord’s Supper or to practice baptism. These teachings have caused no small stir among many Christians—both among those who agree with Mr. Camping and among those who disagree.

There are many things that can be said about these teachings, but an important question that underlies the entire discussion is, "How do you understand the Bible?" What a person believes about the Bible and what he or she believes about interpreting the Bible can determine whether you walk in the truth or fall into error. Fortunately for the person who wishes to understand Mr. Camping’s interpretive principles, they are quite readily available in a booklet he published called First Principles of Bible Study (1986, 1993).

There are many principles that Mr. Camping holds to about interpreting the Bible that are quite sound. That "the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God" goes without question if you are a Bible-believing Christian. But there is a door Mr. Camping opens with his interpretive principles and it lets in a host of misinterpretations. That door is his belief that as he entitles chapter 3 in the booklet already mentioned "The Bible has more than One Level of Meaning."

If you’ve ever heard Mr. Camping on the Open Forum call-in radio show, you’ll know that he is constantly speaking of "the deeper, spiritual meaning" of the text. It is clear that Mr. Camping regards the Bible to have meaning on more than one level. He is also fond of quoting the expression that comes from the Protestant Reformation, "Scripture interprets Scripture." Mr. Camping uses this maxim to justify taking a word or a phrase from one context where it has a particular meaning and plugging it into another context where similar or the same words are used. Sometimes he uses the expression "Scripture is its own best interpreter" as an equivalent phrase to "Scripture interprets Scripture" to support the above-mentioned practice.

What’s interesting is that this principle of interpretation is found stated in the Westminster Confession I, 9 where it says:

"The infallible rule of interpretation of scripture is the scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of scripture, (which is not manifold, but one,) it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly."

The Westminster Confession in this article captures the historic protestant understanding of the principle "scripture interprets scripture." Simply put, you can use the clearer places of Scripture to help illuminate those places that are less clear. But what Mr. Camping often does is just the opposite. He goes against the plain teachings of Scripture in search of a "deeper, spiritual meaning" by turning time and again to the more unclear places in the Bible. He’s constantly going to the Book of Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, and to passages like the Olivet discourse of Matthew 24. That is not "scripture interprets scripture" in the historic sense of the phrase. It’s just the opposite. It’s darkening what is plain by appealing to the more difficult passages in the Bible and it leads to false and erroneous conclusions.

It’s interesting that there’s a little parenthetical statement in that quote from the Westminster Confession. It says that the "sense of scripture is not manifold, but one." In other words, scripture does not have many senses or meanings. It has only one sense and that is the plain, grammatical sense. Mr. Camping, although he likes to use the phrase "scripture interprets scripture" has departed from the historic understanding of what that statement means. He’s reverted to a pre-Reformation way of interpreting the Bible. It was during the Middle Ages that the church taught that there was a four-fold way of interpreting Scripture. The Reformers uniformly rejected the idea stating that the sense of Scripture is one. What Scripture says, it says in the plain grammatical understood sense.

In the 2^nd century when the church was young there was a heresy that hit the church known as Gnosticism. One of the characteristics of Gnosticism was its claim that in order to understand the Bible, you had to have a kind of secret knowledge that only an elite few had. The meaning of the Bible, said the Gnostics, could not be grasped by a plain reading of the text. The Gnostics were experts in seeking a "deeper spiritual meaning" in the text of Scripture. And, of course, that led them into error. The same thing is true, I’m afraid of Mr. Camping’s method of understanding the Bible. There is a flaw in it that will surely lead to error.

Friend, it’s important to understand the Bible correctly. If you’ve been listening to Family Radio and have heard Mr. Camping encouraging you to read the Bible in this way—seeking out a "deeper spiritual meaning" in the text and not being content with the plain meaning—I have to warn you—you are reading the Bible in a way that will bring danger to your soul. When a person teaches, as Mr. Camping does, that the Bible has many different levels of meaning, it’s only saying that the interpreter, given enough creativity, can make the Bible mean whatever he wishes to make it mean. But if we do that, we no longer respect the Bible as God’s Word to us. We’ve made it a tool that we can manipulate and use as we like.

Dear friend, read the Bible. Read it often. Ask for the Spirit of God’s help in understanding it. Seek out it’s plain meaning and do not seek the esoteric. It’s in the plain meaning of the Bible that there is life.

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