Hebrews 1
Q. Who was the greatest financier in the Bible? A. Noah–he was floating his stock while everyone else was in liquidation.
That was a joke; it was not serious. If I were serious, it would not have been a laughing matter; it would have been an abuse of scripture. There are many ways to abuse scripture. We abuse scripture when we take it out of context, or apply a meaning to a word that was not the original intent. It is also an abuse to take figurative language and apply it with a literal translation. Some preachers and religions abuse the scriptures on a regular basis. Research “the 144,000”, “blood transfusions” and “handling poisonous snakes” to discover some extreme examples.

In chapter 1, did the writer of Hebrews abuse scripture? To answer this question we must first review the Hebrew understanding of the Old Testament prophets. They use the word prophet much as we use the word preacher. Prophesying was preaching. The Old Testament is full of the preaching of God’s preachers. The prophet intended the people hearing his word to understand and heed his prophesying at the time he preached. They did not view the prophet as a fortuneteller, and they did not view preaching the same as predicting.

When Christ came to earth as a baby, lived, died and arose again God inspired righteous men to write the New Testament. With the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, the writers of the New Testament took Old Testament preaching and filled it full of new meaning. The writer of Hebrews inspired by the Holy Spirit took scripture from eight different passages in the Old Testament and poured revelations about Christ into them. He filled them with understanding that until the coming of Christ would not have been comprehendible. He was not abusing scripture, he was writing scripture.

We are not New Testament writers, and the Holy Spirit is not inspiring us to infuse God’s word with new revelations. As Christians, God tell us to use scriptures to rescue the perishing. We are to use God’s word, not abuse it.