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The Bible is its Own Expositor, April 11
Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be
ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
2 Timothy 2:15
.
The Bible is its own expositor. Scripture is to be compared with scripture. The
student should learn to view the Word as a whole and to see the relation of its parts.
He should gain a knowledge of its grand central theme—of God’s original purpose
for the world, of the rise of the great controversy, and of the work of redemption.
He should understand the nature of the two principles that are contending for the
supremacy, and should learn to trace their working through the records of history
and prophecy, to the great consummation. He should see how this controversy enters
into every phase of human experience; how in every act of life he himself reveals
the one or the other of the two antagonistic motives; and how, whether he will or
not, he is even now deciding upon which side of the controversy he will be found.
Every part of the Bible is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable. The
Old Testament, no less than the New, should receive attention. As we study the
Old Testament, we shall find living springs bubbling up where the careless reader
discerns only a desert.
The Old Testament sheds light upon the New, and the New upon the Old. Each
is a revelation of the glory of God in Christ. Christ as manifested to the patriarchs,
as symbolized in the sacrificial service, as portrayed in the law, and as revealed by
the prophets is the riches of the Old Testament. Christ in His life, His death, and
His resurrection; Christ as He is manifested by the Holy Spirit, is the treasure of the
New. Both Old and New present truths that will continually reveal new depths of
meaning to the earnest seeker (
Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 462,
463
).
Christ reproached His disciples with their slowness of comprehension.... After
His resurrection, as He was walking to Emmaus with two of the disciples, He opened
their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures, so explaining the
Old Testament to them that they saw in its teachings a meaning that the writers
themselves had not seen.
Christ’s words are the bread of life. As the disciples ate the words of Christ, their
understanding was quickened. They understood better the value of the Saviour’s
teachings. In their comprehension of these teachings they stepped from the obscurity
of dawn to the radiance of noonday. So will it be with us as we study God’s Word
(
The Signs of the Times, April 4, 1906
).
The work of explaining the Bible by the Bible itself is the work that should be
done by all our ministers who are fully awake to the times in which we live (
Letter
376, 1906
).
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