Alright, so in the last article, we laid it out — if you’re going to read prophecy, or any part of the Bible, you’re already interpreting. You might not realize it. You might not mean to, but you are.
So, let’s talk about that. Let’s stop and just ask the thing nobody ever asks: “How do you even interpret a thing?”
Seriously. Step back from the Bible for a second and just think about your everyday life. You get a letter in the mail — how do you know what it means? You look at who sent it. You look at what kind of thing it is. Is it a bill? A birthday card? A legal notice? You read the words, sure — but you also read the context. The formatting. The tone. The history between you and the sender. You interpret it.
Or think about this — you get a text from your spouse that just says, “Fine.” That’s it. One word. Now you know good and well that doesn’t just mean “Fine.” You know there’s tone in there. Maybe some sarcasm. Maybe a little heat. Maybe she’s fine, but she’s also mad you didn’t ask first. You don’t just read the word — you read everything around it. The time it came in. The last conversation. The look on her face before you left the house. That’s interpretation. You do it all day, every day.
So why do we act like the Bible is the only thing we read where none of that applies?
The Bible’s not just a flat document. It’s not one long memo. It’s a book made of books. Different authors. Different eras. Different styles. It has different genres — and that matters. You don’t read a poem like you read a legal contract. You don’t read a vision the same way you read a war report.
There’s narrative — the stories.
There’s law — the commands.
There’s poetry — the psalms and the heartbreaks.
There’s prophecy — both near and far.
There’s wisdom literature — like Proverbs and Ecclesiastes.
There are letters. There are apocalyptic visions.
Each of those speaks differently. And you already know this. You wouldn’t read a Mother’s Day card the same way you’d read a court summons. And yet, we crack open the Bible, skip the genre, skip the context and just say, “What does this mean to me?”
That’s how we get sideways.
And part of the reason we don’t stop to think about interpretation is because of this slow, quiet shift that happened over the last hundred years. Back in the early 1900s, there was a philosophical movement — mostly in the academic world — that said meaning doesn’t come from the writer. It comes from the reader. In other words, whoever receives the message decides what it means.
That idea filtered down — from the university halls to the church pews. And we didn’t even know it. We started reading the Bible more like, “Well, here’s what it means to me,” instead of, “What did God mean when He said it?” It became about what I feel when I read it. What hits me. What I think the takeaway is for my situation. Sounds spiritual, right? But it puts the power in the wrong hands.
That’s where that whole “objective vs. subjective truth” battle came from in the 1990s and 2000s. Everyone started arguing about “your truth” vs. “my truth.” And that’s not just a cultural shift — it came straight from the argument in those ivory towers. Does the author own the meaning? Or does the reader?
The church absorbed that thinking without even realizing it. And now, when it comes to something like prophecy — which already stretches us — we bring in all our instincts, our feelings, our backgrounds and start guessing.
And the wild thing is, nobody stops to ask: How do I know what this means?
Let me say it again. You interpret. Every day. All the time. And you already know how to interpret.
You get an email. You know who wrote it. You know if it’s a joke, a request or a passive-aggressive note from your boss. You know whether to take it literally or read between the lines. You don’t just read words — you read genre, tone, purpose, context. You know if it’s a birthday invite or a breakup email. You read accordingly.
The same thing goes with the Bible. But for some reason, when we open the Word, we forget all of that. We forget to ask what kind of thing we’re reading. We forget to ask what the author meant. We just dive in and hope for the best.
So, here’s the reset. Start asking the right questions.
And even if you’re someone who believes you’re already handling Scripture the right way — slow, careful, verse-by-verse — the question still stands: Have you gone far enough back? Have you asked what the Bible itself says about how it should be interpreted?
What kind of thing am I reading?
Is this poetry? A parable? A prophecy? A command? A promise?
Did the writer intend this to be taken literally? Figuratively? Did he use a symbol?
Is there a cue in the text that tells me?
Does the Bible explain this somewhere else?
Because sometimes it does. Daniel explains Daniel. Revelation interprets its own symbols. Jesus explains His parables. Scripture often gives you the framework — you just have to slow down enough to let it.
And here’s what happens when you do — when you stop rushing to “What does this mean to me?” and instead ask “What did God mean when He said it?” — the ground under your feet firms up. You stop guessing. You stop chasing headlines. You stop needing someone else to explain every wild passage for you. You begin to hear Scripture speak for itself.
Prophecy becomes less like decoding a riddle and more like reading a map. You don’t have to understand every detail to know where it’s pointing. But you do have to start at the right place.
And that place is interpretation. Not your feelings. Not your tradition. Not your favorite chart. But the basic, simple, almost sarcastically obvious question: “How do I know what this means?”
If we can ask that — really ask it — and be honest about the answer, we’ll stop misreading God. We’ll stop twisting verses into shapes that fit our mood. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll find the clarity that was sitting in the text the whole time.
