Thou shalt not take out of context.
Members of my first church told the story about how some Jehovah's Witnesses came around to see them while their pastor was at the house. He listened to the way they ripped Bible passages out of context and left them with the entrails hanging, and said, ``Give me that Bible.'' He opened it and read, ``Judas went and hanged himself, Mt. 27:5 Go and do thou likewise, Lk. 10:37 And what thou doest, do quickly! -- John 13:27.''
This shows that you can prove anything by taking passages out of context. Charles H. Spurgeon, for instance, was guilty of this one: When he disapproved of the fashionable ``topknot'' hairstyle, he preached on part of Matthew 27:17: ``Topknot, come down!'' The entire verse reads, ``Let him who is on the house top not come down to take anything out of his house.'' Other classics misuse are Ps. 14:1, ``There is no God,''1 Mt. 5:43, ``Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy,''2 and Php. 2:12, ``Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.''3
It should be obvious that God does not want His words twisted in this manner. If you did it to anyone else but the Lord, you would be risking a black eye. In any case, you twist the words ``to your own destruction,'' 1 Peter 3:16.
Speaking of taking things out of context -- these hot summer nights I need about a quart of really cold vodka to sleep. Yes sir, I keep it in a hot-water bottle in the freezer and put it into my pillow. Otherwise my pillow gets soaked; it's the only way I can sleep. But how would it sound if you went around telling people, ``Pastor K. can't sleep at night without a quart of cold vodka!''?
Some religious bodies raise money by promising that the more we give to God the more He must give back, Malachi 3:8-10. Checking the nearer and wider context and the idioms of the language shows that God here promises only to make it rain and give us such great opportunities to work that we won't be able to do it all. Besides which this promise was spoken to the Jews, not to the Christian church.
Mormons add to their blasphemies the teaching that Jesus was a polygamist on the basis of John 11:5 which says that He loved Mary and Martha. The same sentence says ``and Lazarus.'' Case closed; the Mormons are false prophets.