When studying the Holy Bible for yourself what method(s) do you personally use to determine if a verse(s) is/are figurative/metaphorical or literal? What "guidelines" do you personally take into consideration to determine this.
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Usually, it is pretty obvious. Personally, I don't have a method or specific guidelines --common sense works pretty well. However, a good book on hermeneutics might be helpful to whoever wants to know.
There is one thing that I think, concerning God and his Word, that sets it apart from all other literature, and is involved in the fact that it IS his inspired Word: Some portions, while I grant that from our point of view they are figurative, may also be quite literal, in that we have a habit of comparing what we hear to what we know, as though our experience is the standard of fact, and all else a deviation from it; but we see it backwards, I'm convinced.
(For example, we are not the fathers by which to figure out what God is like. He is THE FATHER, and we earthly fathers are only poor copies of him. Likewise, maybe there is a REAL pearl, compared to which our pearls are silly imitations, that is put for a gate to the New Jerusalem.)
Many many places in the Bible would fit this view, I think, but it does not seem to bother God if we don't all see it from his point of view.
