If you’ve ever opened your Bible up a random and stuck your finger on the page hoping to find the answer to a pressing question then you are well acquainted with the practice of Bibliomancy. Fundies are often not content to merely apply the principles as laid out in the Scriptures but often read the Bible looking for some special application of a verse to their specific situation. The more obscure corners of the Old Testament is a particularly rich feeding ground for this sort of divination.
The applications derived from Bibliomancy can range from amusing to downright scary. Verses ripped from their context can be seen as Divine endorsement for everything from switching jobs to whom to marry, or what to have for dinner. In that last case, one can only hope that the verse consulted was not Ezekiel 4:12.
Perhaps not only verses but even the chapter divisions may be consulted for direction as in the case of the old joke about a man who found himself in financial trouble and opened his Bible at random to find the words “Chapter 11” emblazoned before him. As a last resort, maybe even the full color maps displaying the Journeys of Paul can be pressed into prophetic service.
Every word may be perfectly preserved in the King James Bible but evidently what those words mean depends greatly on what a person needs them to say at the moment.
Someone once said that most heresy is started by one man sitting alone in a room with a Bible. That person was not a fundamentalist. In fact, a staple of many fundamentalist sermons is this line: “I was reading this passage this week and I found something there that I’d never seen before…” What’s even more striking is that nobody else in orthodox Christianity has ever seen it there before either.
What follows next could be just about anything from facts about Jesus not having belly button to suggestions that anti-depression medications may cause a mild case of demon possession. Whatever the case it will be highly entertaining and elicit a lot of amens from the preacher boys who will then and there determine that they too will someday uncover such scintillating jewels of truth.
It is important to note that not everybody gets these same discovery privileges. If a woman should happen to discover from the Scripture something as strange as the office of a deaconess she will be informed that only people with an extra helping of the Holy Spirit get to find new things in the Bible and that she’d be better off quietly re-reading Proverbs 31 a few more times.
“You won’t hear this preached anywhere else!” That’s for sure.
Fundamentalist tend to assume that since all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, all Scripture can be handled in the exact same way. Want to defend your evangelism techniques from Proverbs? Go ahead! Want to base part of your soteriology on an obscure passage from Psalms? Help yourself!
Poetry, parable, prose, prophecy — those are just labels given to texts by liberal professors who want to confuse people. Just read a verse and let the Spirit move. Everything from the most trivial details from parables to the strangest acts of minor prophets is up for grabs when the fundamentalist needs a proof text to support some preconceived notion.
In fact the only time that genre comes into play at all is when something comes up that makes a fundy preacher uncomfortable. For example, take all that sex talk in Song of Solomon. To fundamentalists this is obviously a deeply shrouded poetic picture of Christ and the Church. To prove it all you have to do is cross-reference a few verses from Malachi and 3rd John…
“Are you one of those religious folks?,” asked the man’s co-worker casually. “I see you carrying that Bible to work every day and praying over your meals…out loud.”
“No sir!,” said the fundamentalist stiffly, “What I’ve got is not religion. No indeed, what I’ve got is a belief in the Bible about the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, and a relationship with God through daily devotions and church attendance and times of remembrance during the Lord’s supper and last but not least the keeping a strict code of moral law as laid out in Scripture.”
“Oh.” said the co-worker. “Sounds like a religion to me…”
Independent Baptist proudly stand against charismatics and all their happy-clappy hand-raising praise-and-worship mumbo jumbo. They also firmly state that the time of God’s direct revelation through sign gifts is at an end and that God only talks to us now through the Scriptures as illumined by the Holy Spirit.
The exceptions to this rule would be those times when He reveals to a fundamentalist that they should take an alternate route home to avoid a car crash or that they should marry a specific person or perhaps that they should give their last ten dollars in the offering since there’s a yet undiscovered envelope of cash in small unmarked bills waiting in their mailbox at home.
These revelations are excused as being non-verbal ‘urgings’, ‘leadings’, and the like but NOT actual words or voices like those crazy Pentecostals. How one can get specific driving direction from a non-specific urging is a bit fuzzy.
God no longer gives us extra-Biblical revelation — but he does tell fundies things that are specifically about their situation that are strangely missing from the pages of Scripture.
A silly blog dedicated to Independent Fundamental Baptists, their standards, their beliefs, and their craziness.
If you’ve ever opened your Bible up a random and stuck your finger on the page hoping to find the answer to a pressing question then you are well acquainted with the practice of Bibliomancy. Fundies are often not content to merely apply the principles as laid out in the Scriptures but often read the Bible looking for some special application of a verse to their specific situation. The more obscure corners of the Old Testament is a particularly rich feeding ground for this sort of divination.
Someone once said that most heresy is started by one man sitting alone in a room with a Bible. That person was not a fundamentalist. In fact, a staple of many fundamentalist sermons is this line: “I was reading this passage this week and I found something there that I’d never seen before…” What’s even more striking is that nobody else in orthodox Christianity has ever seen it there before either.
Fundamentalist tend to assume that since all Scripture is profitable for doctrine, all Scripture can be handled in the exact same way. Want to defend your evangelism techniques from Proverbs? Go ahead! Want to base part of your soteriology on an obscure passage from Psalms? Help yourself! 
Independent Baptist proudly stand against charismatics and all their happy-clappy hand-raising praise-and-worship mumbo jumbo. They also firmly state that the time of God’s direct revelation through sign gifts is at an end and that God only talks to us now through the Scriptures as illumined by the Holy Spirit.