Sacred Scripture is a lamp that illumines our walk toward the Father’s House, Psalm 119:105. But when misused, it can lead us to physical and moral harm and even to eternal perdition. The Devil himself made use of this technique in a futile attempt to make Jesus fall.
The prophet Amos announced (8:11) “ That the day would come when God would send a famine upon the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but for hearing the Word of Yahweh”. Since this hunger to hear the Word of God is inherent in human nature, which desires to know its Creator, in this search we must be warned that countless erroneous doctrines invented by man have been based by their creators on the Bible badly interpreted. The apostle Peter already warned in 2 Peter 3:16 that there would be those who would twist his teaching to their own destruction.
Someone said: “from the Bible badly interpreted, one can extract even oil”
Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormons, basing himself on the divine command of Gen. 1:22 and 35:11 “ increase and multiply” … approved polygamy.
Joseph F. Rutherford, the second world leader of Jehovah’s Witnesses, supported the well-known refusal of Jehovah’s Witnesses to accept blood transfusions—which has caused so many deaths among them—on the basis of Acts 15:20, when the Primitive Church proclaimed a temporary and circumstantial mandate to abstain from blood.
The leaders of the Seventh-day Adventists, using Ex.20:8 “remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy“, oblige their followers to keep it as the Jews of the Old Testament did and reject Sunday, the “Lord’s Day”, proper to Christians.
Fundamentalist Christians—the Church of the Faith in Christ Jesus and others of the same doctrinal line—reading Acts 8:16 “…they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus”, say that Christians must be baptized only in the name of Jesus and not in that of the Three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, although the latter is Christ’s express command in Matt. 28:19.
The large number of evangelical Christian churches, citing Rom.3:28 “we conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the works of the Law“, proclaim that justification (salvation) is obtained by faith alone without works, in opposition to what James 2:26 says.
Among Pentecostals, there have been cases of people, mainly children, dying because their parents do not go to a doctor to treat their illnesses, since they believe, according to Lk.8:48, that everything is cured only by faith and prayers. By contrast, the Jews, the people of the Bible, did go to physicians, Sir. chap.39. Among the apostles there was an eminent physician: St. Luke, Col. 4:14.
In San Luis Potosí, in a community of people of this type of doctrine, some of them dropped dead after inhaling butane gas. The pastor told them that it was the action of the Holy Spirit (Heraldo de Chih., January 1, 1992).
The followers of urinotherapy (drinking one’s own urine) justify this practice with the text of Prov. 5:15 “¡drink water from your own cistern…!”
The most outrageous practices can find support in the Bible badly interpreted; to list them would be endless. To avoid becoming victims of these and other such terrible harms, let us go to Sacred Scripture always attending to the interpretation of the Magisterium of the Catholic Church, to whom Jesus gave this ministry, Lk. 10:16, and not to those who proclaim it apart from that Magisterium.
Author: José L. Fierro
