Scripture Twisting: 20 ways the cults misread the Bible

When James W. Sire read Archie Matson’s book, Afterlife: Reports from the Threshold of Death, he became motivated to write the book under review, and he first listed the ways Matson misunderstood the Bible. Sire listed that Matson:

1. Set-up straw men, like the literal view of interpreting Scripture
2. Used innuendo
3. Argued in a circle
4. Failed to take into account other relevant biblical texts
5. Engaged in name calling
6. Misrepresented Biblical data
7. Charged that contradictions were in the Bible that clearly
8. Draw wild and speculative conclusions

From this list Sire began to research the question, “How do people in various religious movements, especially those involved with the occult or cults, interpret Scripture? What he noticed was that many cults twist Scripture to fit their teaching, yet they claim the Bible as their own source of authority. The way this twisting was done, he found, was through the violation of the principles of sound literary interpretation, which then caused a misreading of the Biblical text. Keep reading

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Scripture Twisting Methods of the Cults