Ezekiel 22:28

Untempered mortar. Whitewash (see on ch. 13:10). There are voices in the religious world to support almost any kind of belief.

Several important rules will help men today to distinguish between that which is untempered mortar and that which is genuine.

These rules should be used to test any alleged claim to scriptural support. They serve equally as a system of guidance to direct one in original Bible research, lest unwarranted conclusions be drawn.

1. The Bible should always be studied in the setting of prayer. Only the Holy Spirit can help us to see the importance of those things easy to be understood, and keep us from wresting those truths difficult of comprehension (see GC 599, 600). Furthermore, spiritual things are spiritually discerned (see 1 Cor. 2:14), so that a man without the Spirit of God cannot understand divine things. Prayer, properly exercised, will place a man in a condition to receive heavenly truth.

2. There must be willingness to follow revealed light (John 7:17). God’s truths are not thrown about promiscuously for men to trample under their feet. God reserves an understanding of His messages for those who are willing to walk in the light that illuminates their minds. A stubborn refusal to walk in this light locks the door to further understanding of divine truth.

3. The Bible must be interpreted according to the analogy of the rest of Scripture. The Bible, correctly understood, does not contradict itself. If a conclusion drawn from a Scripture passage is contradicted in another portion of the Book, that conclusion must be labeled as false. Often a verse or passage, taken by itself, can be shown to have several possible interpretations. In such an event that exposition which is in complete harmony with the whole Bible must be adopted.

4. The Bible must be interpreted in the light of its context. The student ought to note carefully the setting of the passage under consideration to find out what the writer was talking about. The student must limit his application to the bounds set by the author. For example, when Paul said, “All things are lawful unto me” (1 Cor. 6:12), his words, taken by themselves, could be interpreted to mean that Paul was here declaring himself to be a libertine. But the context shows that he is speaking about the propriety of eating meats sacrificed to idols. One has no right to apply the “all things” to anything further than that which was in the mind of Paul when he made this statement.

5. The Bible must be permitted to be its own interpreter. Often the Holy Spirit does not immediately interpret the symbol it employs, but the same Spirit would be expected elsewhere to explain the shadowy language, if men are to grasp its meaning. This is found to be the case. One might add that when such further elucidation is absent, any attempt by men to interpret these symbols can at best be only conjecture.

In summary, the proper procedure to discover what the Bible teaches on any topic is to take all that the Bible says on that particular subject before drawing any conclusions. Seeing the picture in its entirety prevents one from going off on some unscriptural tangent of interpretation.