You can't prove anything by the Bible!

"Let not anyone rise to repeat the old wheeze, "Oh, you can prove anything by the Bible!" To say such a thing is to be guilty of the most arrant nonsense.  It is the equivalent of saying that you can prove anything by the dictionary.  Well you can prove anything by the dictionary if you violate the principles of the dictionary.  Let me take Webster and turn to the second letter of the alphabet.  There I find b-l-a-c-k, "black."  I repeat the process on the word "is" and again on the word w-h-i-t-e, "white."  Then I put them together: Black is white.  I have the authority of the dictionary; I found it there.  But you cry out that I have outrageously violated the method and the principles that underly dictionaries.  They are to be used only within the limits of their purpose; it is not permissible to make a mockery of the dictionary by distorting its usage and violating its principles.  So it is with the Word of God.  It is not possible to prove just anything by the Bible.  Prove to me that God loves sin.  Prove from the Bible that the unbeliever has even the slimmest chance of escaping the judgment of God.  You cannot prove such things from the Word of God, which is the story of man's complete ruin in sin and God's perfect remedy in Christ."

Donald G. Barnhouse, Romans, Vol. 1, section 2, page 37, Eerdmans, 1953

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