What responsibility does the Teaching place on people who listen to Bible teachers?

This Teaching uses Yahovah’s question to Adam in Genesis 3:11 – ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ – as a framework for examining where believers get their doctrines, traditions, interpretations, and standards of holiness. The Teaching argues that inference becomes dangerous when it is elevated to doctrine and imposed on others as though Yahovah explicitly commanded it. Adam’s physical condition did not change after the fall; the Teaching emphasizes that his perception and source of authority changed. From there it compares competing sources of truth – feelings, experience, teachers, tradition, pride, perceived blessing, and personal reasoning – with the written Word. The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes are used as historical examples of communities that, in different ways, departed from what was written. The repeated challenge is to ask, ‘Where is it written?’ and to distinguish personal conviction or commentary from commandments that can rightly be required of others.