When William Tyndale, translated the New Testament into English in 1526, church authorities in England were less than enthusiastic. (See my devotion on William Tyndale on November 17th). In fact, even after publishing thousands of English New Testaments, Tyndale had to smuggle them into England. Sadly, church authorities bought up many of these copies and had them publicly burned because they felt only the church should be the one to interpret what the Bible said. Instead of being hailed for his great accomplishment Tyndale had to live the remaining years of his life in hiding from the church who sought to bring him to trial as a heretic.
Could it actually be true that God only intended church authorities to read the Bible and then interpret it to the masses? Or did God use men to pen the Bible written so it could be understood plainly by everyone who could read it? I think the great American politician and orator of the 19th century, Daniel Webster, gives us clarity on this issue when he shared: “I believe that the Bible is to be understood and received in the plain and obvious meaning of its passages; for I cannot persuade myself that a book intended for the instruction and conversion of the whole world should cover its true meaning in any such mystery and doubt that none but critics and philosophers can discover it.”1
The question before us is would God write a book of such incredibly good news and then intend it to only be read by a small group of so called elite church officials? I believe this is so off-base for the following reasons.
First, nowhere in Scripture does God make this claim. If God only wanted a small group of so-called church officials to read the Bible don’t you think he would have shared this in His holy Word? Instead, just the opposite is true. The Bible is just too good news to not be available to all people. As I shared in the Daniel Webster quote above most of the Bible is written in plain language and is meant to be understood by all who read it with an open heart. God would never write a book that can’t be understood except by so-called experts. I do agree that gifted men and women can share insights that can make the Bible more meaningful but the basic tenets of Scripture were meant for all who, again approach the Word with an open heart.
Second, we read in (1 John 4:1): “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” The main way we test the doctrine of others is to see if they line up with the word Of God. In order for the average believer to do this he must read the Bible to see if these so called teachers are preaching and sharing correct doctrine. If we don’t read the Bible for ourselves we can easily be fooled by smooth talking teachers of the Word.
Third, we are often told that we should be like the Bereans in Acts 17. (Acts 17:10-11) tells us: “As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.” Again, we see the need to examine the Scriptures – and this is meant for all believers.
And fourth, all believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is the one that illuminates the written word into our hearts. God would not give us the Holy Spirit and then leave it to church officials to be the ones that interpret the Scriptures for us. The Holy Spirit is God’s main way to teach us what the written word says and we therefore, are all capable to read the Bible and with the Spirit’s help understand it.
Jesus along with the Bible are the greatest gifts God has given to man. And to allow only a select few to read the Bible would make my God a very stingy God. To not make the Bible available to all would be the greatest travesty I could possibly think of. It would make the Bible a “small” book indeed.
I leave you with the words of the 18th century German philosopher, Immanuel Kant: “I believe that the existence of the Bible is the greatest benefit to the human race. Any attempt to belittle it, I believe, is a crime against humanity.”2
I love this message Curt!
Elaine