When in Doubt Pull Up

You ever get stuck in a passage?  Can’t really figure out what is going on?  I have.  Sometimes when that happens I really dig in go deep in the passage, look up words, parse verbs, check the original languages.  In the Air Force we called that target fixation.  It was often fatal.  Often times the most help is to gain altitude, pull up out of the weeds.

Prof told us that most of the questions he was asked by people about the Bible at Bible conferences could be answered by simply reading the passage before the verse and, or the passage after the verse in question.  The term for that is context.  Pretty much all of the questions we have can be answered if we pay attention to the context.  Pretty much all of the errors that people make in understanding the Bible have their source in ignoring the context.

So if you get stuck on a verse do not fix on your target, pull up, gain altitude, read the surrounding passages, more often than not you will find that will help.