We’ve got mail….yeaaaaaaah. We’ve got mail, we’ve got mail, we’ve got mail…

No Apologizing now has its own email… noapologizing@gmail.com.

KB and I are gearing up for our 100th post.  It is a pretty big deal that we hit this mark.  For the 100th post we are hoping to put together a vlog.  For those of you not familiar…a vlog is like a blog but only in video format.  What we would like to do for our vlog is to be as interactive with you as possible.  This could include questions about us, questions you have on theology, or just comments in general.  That is where the e-mail comes in…

Use the e-mail to send us your questions or comments.  We will use them in the vlog to generate discussion.  If you have something you would like for us to debate….send it in.  I can tell you right now the vlog has been decided on.  If we don’t receive any e-mails Kevin will be forced to do 20 push-ups on camera…well maybe that won’t work…because I am sure people will want to see that.

On behalf of Kevin (who is probably getting upset reading this) and I, we would like to thank you for reading our posts, and we hope you get something out of it.

SEND US SOME COMMENTS!

It’s Okay… Don’t give up!!!

Today I want to put out a word of encouragement to all my friends and readers… I’ve seen some discouragement and that makes my heart heavy… DON’T GIVE UP!!!

God, Himself, encourages us to, “Not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6)

I’ve had some conversations with people who have tried to take the G90X challenge with me and/or who have committed to reading through the Bible in 2010, but have fallen behind in their goals… They were bold enough to try and start something that will help them grow in their walk with Jesus, but have not been able to completely follow through with their original goal…

And do you know what?  THAT’S OKAY!!! Seriously! We all fall short sometimes… There is nothing magic about ANY spiritual discipline in and of itself! Christianity is about a relationship with the God who created the universe, NOT about trying to work at doing better things or striving to be a good person!

Let me remind you of what Greg said in his original G90X post:

By the way, let’s not be legalistic with this. G90X is just an intensive spiritual workout to jumpstart our spiritual disciplines. Remember that those who choose to do it with me are not necessarily more spiritual than those who don’t. You can do all the disciplines in the world and if you are not controlled by the Spirit and fueled through God’s power in your motives it is all wood, hay and stubble… If you are choosing not to do it (which is totally fine) I challenge you to, at the least, amp up your spiritual disciplines.

Let me come at this from a different angle… Think about a person with whom you have a solid relationship… Got it? Okay… Now, how is it that you maintain that relationship? Love, right? And that Love is expressed by T-I-M-E… but that time isn’t spent in a ritualistic ridged manner is it? Relationships are fluid and we spend time with our friends and family in different ways… The same should be for our relationship with (worship of) God!! The point is to spend time with Him!!

Struggling reading so much of the Bible at one clip? That’s okay!!! Keep at it – Get back on the proverbial horse… but don’t beat yourself up over it… But realize also, that this isn’t the only way God wants us to spend time with Him… He wants us to pray… He wants us to sing to Him… He wants us to talk about Him to others… He wants us to spend time with other believers (at church AND other places)…

Do you get it? GOD wants to have a relationship with you!!!  But He wants a REAL relationship not something manufactured or fake. If you struggle with some aspect of spending time with God be sure that you are supplementing it with other ways… but don’t grow weary of trying to make the weaker aspects of your walk better… If you don’t get a hold of a friend on the phone, what do you do? You call back, right? If that doesn’t work you txt or you swing by their house or maybe you try to get a hold of one of their friends/family to tell them you’re looking for them. God is trying to get a hold of you… He’s not hard to reach…

Go spend some time with Him today in a variety of ways!!  You won’t regret it.

What else can be said?

Probably one of the more hotly contested topics discussed (when it comes atheist versus Christian) is that of evolution versus creation.  So many have discussed this topic, that as I was sitting thinking about  a post topic I wondered if there was anything I could add to the conversation.  Think about how hot this topic is.  School boards deny the teaching of creationism because it is based on faith.  School boards allowing evolution because it is based on “science.”  Hollywood has even taken up the banner with movies like Expelled and Religulous.  One has to wonder…why does the debate continue?  I think this is a fair question. 

The Bible offers a fairly simplistic explanation for how the universe began, “In the beginning God created”.  Nothing extraordinary…except for the fact that God created everything.  He had his hand in everything that was created.  Now, there are many different camps inside of Christianity when it comes to the interpretation of Genesis.  Some will look at 7 days as being a flat 7 days.  Others will look at the verse in the Bible that a day to us is 1,000 to god, and suggest that each day was 1,000 years…7 days = 7,000 years.  I am not going to focus on that difference here. 

What I would like to focus on is the response one might receive when having a conversation with someone who believes in evolution as opposed to creation. 

Most Evolution supporters will make the following statement “Overwhelming evidence supports this fact”.  If that is the case why is it then a theory?  Case and point look at this link.  Notice anything?  The first sentence of the second paragraph describes evolution as a fact.  My question then is why describe it as a theory as well (in the first paragraph)? 

ALL evolution defenders will tell you about the transitional form.  This is commonly known as the missing link.  Everyone has seen the picture of the chart showing the transition from monkey to man.  The truth is that there has been no evidence found that supports the theory of transitional forms.  This is the lynch pin of evolution.  Without it evolution can never be proven.

I find the idea of a “transitional form”  fascinating.  Man evolved from monkey.  Did that evolution stop?  Think about it.  If evolution is the reason that we are here, where are the living transitional forms from monkey to man?  Unless evolution just said…”okay I’m done” once man had taken present shape.  I mean, evolution has to be ongoing.  Meaning that the evolution of the monkey would be ongoing as well.  If this was the case (evolution) where is the living missing link?  If evolution is ongoing as evolutionists would describe, then surely evolution would be continuing for monkeys (and other species) as well.  Where is it?

Another fascinating question is “how”.  It is possible to “how” the evolution theory to extinction.  How?  By simply asking “how did that happen?” If you ask this question enough one must admit at some point the ultimate conclusion that evolution is nothing more than an improbable theory, not a fact as it is portrayed by many.

The fact of the matter, both Evolution and Creationism are a matter of faith! Evolution is NOT science… In fact, Creationism is technically more scientific!  In order for something to be “science” one must be able to observe and record the phenomena and reproduce it with a differing variables… (this is the very definition of the scientific method that most of us learned about in middle school).  No scientist has observed the macro-evolutionary process happen and they certainly have not been able to recreate the generation of life, nor have they been able to cause the mutatation of any species into another! However, if one accepts the biblical principle that there is a God, then it is plausible (even probable) that He then recorded His “observations” in a record that most Christians would agree is reliable and infallible… So, again, the Christian understanding of creation is technically more scientific than the theory evolution could ever hope to be!

Yeah, I know….when compared to some of the other articles written online this seems pretty simplistic.  I don’t have to be convinced that creation is right, because I know that it is.  Atheists that tell you that creation can’t be proven because it requires faith are deluding themselves.  It requires more faith to believe in evolution than it does creation.  Evolution involves too much chance for me.

Themes in the Bible and God’s Will

With the sermon last week I got bogged down in study rather than the speed reading needed to keep up the G90X pace… Today is a catch up day…

So instead of trying to teach today, let me pose some questions (please shoot me your answers as a comment to this post)… In a previous post I said that the overarching theme for the Bible is the redemption of mankind, in other words it is about God easing the tension between His perfect love and His perfect justice…

• What other themes do you see in the Bible?
• How do they speak to you?
• AND… How are you responding to them in obedience (And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. 2 John 1:6)?
• Finally, do you trust these as God’s Will for your life (The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17)?

The Star Wars Saga and the Bible… Yeah, I’m a nerd

My lame internet at home was down and Robert had a post ready yesterday, so no G90X update then, but here it is a day late (Sorry)!  Don’t know what G90X is? Check out the original article from Greg Stier HERE.

I sympathize with Robert in his last G90X post… Speed reading has its drawbacks, but it also has its benefits… The last time I tried to read the Bible in 90 days I failed spectacularly because I was in the throes of Seminary and I just got bogged down in wanting to study everything out! I think this is kind of where Robert is coming from in his last post – His mind is churning and new ideas keep popping up and he wants to slow down and investigate them all… I TOTALLY get that… In fact, this is extremely admirable (cf. Acts 17:11) I find myself demonstrating the same tendencies… But what ARE the benefits of reading ALL of God’s word in 90 days?

Strangely enough, the benefit of reading it all is what serious students of the Bible strive for in their study – CONTEXT… CONTEXT… CONTEXT… What I mean by this is that the Bible, taken as a whole, is essentially the story of how God has, is and will work out the problem of evil. That is, it is the story of the redemption of mankind!  We get that intellectually as we approach the Bible, but that really comes alive when we look at it as a whole! In fact it brings God’s sovereignty and what He’s done behind the scenes much more clearly into focus and actually helps us see things we perhaps wouldn’t have otherwise if we’re picking and choosing our way through the God’s word (and perhaps skipping and/or ignoring certain passages or books)…

To use an imperfect, but more modern, analogy (and yes, I know this analogy reveals the depths of just how nerdy I am): If one were only to see the original Star Wars films (episodes 4-6), then they may be convinced that the Star Wars legend is mostly about Luke Skywalker’s growing up into maturity… NOT SO!! When you look at all 6 films (plus the Clone Wars, if you’re as nerdy as me) then it becomes abundantly clear that story is actually about the rise, fall and restoration of Anakin Skywalker (a.k.a. Darth Vader)… In the same way, but probably to a lesser degree, we may have the tendency to see the Bible as just good moral stories about specific historical figures (regardless of the degree of historical reliability we ascribe to it)… Again, NOT SO! The Bible is about how God provides a solution to the tension between His love for us and His Justice and hatred toward sin.

So, let me challenge you to keep with it!! Look at the whole counsel of God within its larger framework (like Paul’s hearers in Ephesus did) … Give yourself permission to look at it from 10,000 feet – you can see a lot from up there… Next update – Gonna  talk about the effects of the G90X’s intense prayer plan.

Confused, Restless, Anxious, Hurting? Hurry Up and Wait!

In doing my G90X reading today I ran across a passage I’d heard a sermon on previously Exodus 40:36-38 “The Israelites set out whenever the cloud was taken up from the tabernacle throughout all the stages of their journey.  37 If the cloud was not taken up, they did not set out until the day it was taken up.  38 For the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and there was a fire inside the cloud by night, visible to the entire house of Israel throughout all the stages of their journey.”

There is something to be learned here about waiting on God. This is echoed throughout scripture, but especially in the Psalms… Here are a few examples:

Psalm 27:13-14 I am still confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. ¹⁴ Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD.

Psalm 33:4-7 Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart. ⁵ Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this: ⁶ He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun. ⁷ Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him…

Psalm 130:5-6 I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. ⁶ My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning…

So, what’s the point? In times of discontent, restlessness and uncertainty instead of trying to kick in doors and seize control of our futures, we ought to wait and pray and see what God will do… It’s usually much more amazing than we could ever dream… At least that’s what I’ve seen in my life… The times I’ve rushed, I’ve failed… when I took my time and gotten (and followed) wise counsel, the results have been astounding.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to stuff that we already know that we need to be obeying, like sharing our faith, giving to the church, praying, having a quiet time… etc. God has been clear in His Word on what we need to be doing in those cases and we need to MOVE – NOW… but that is a topic for another post!

The Bible… Is it Historically Reliable?

For years and years skeptics have desperately attempted to disprove the Bible. Their attempts, however, have been just that: desperate… And when a person gets desperate they start throwing out a bunch of garbage hoping that something will stick… Some examples of what they claim:  The New Testament was written hundreds of years after the death of Jesus based on corrupted oral traditions and not by any eyewitnesses of the crucifixion/resurrection, there are Discrepancies in the text…from one book to another… On and on they go, but they are far from the truth.  They have so many outlandish claims against the Word of God there is no way anyone could cover them all in just one blog… so we won’t even attempt… However, from time to time we will try to give a high level response to some of the more common “claims” against the Bible.

A while back Robert posted our first piece on this topic. In this post he briefly mentioned verses where the biblical authors affirmed the authority of and usefulness of scripture… Granted, that piece necessarily contained a large amount of what could rightly be called circular logic (using what the Bible says to claim that the Bible is accurate) – we did that on purpose – If the Bible claims to be perfect and then is proven to be false, then you can chuck the whole thing out the window and every Christian should disavow their faith.

In fact, I will go so far as to say that if the Bible is definitively proven false, I will be the first in line to bail on Christianity – I am not willing to live or die for a lie!

Before any of you skeptics get all twitterpated thinking I’m fixing to have to eat my words, rest assured that I am 100% confident that I will never have to recant my faith in Jesus or the Bible that has told me about Him.

Let’s take a quick look at a couple of the things that have me so securely certain of the Bible.

One of the miracles Christians point to in the confirmation of the scripture is the consistency/preservation of the message of the original texts… The Bible goes far beyond being just a theological book, it is a historical document (i.e. it is a history book)… And it is absolutely the most reliable historical document in every way that historicity of ancient documents are measured.  In other words, there is better support for the accuracy of the Bible than there is for any other ancient historical document upon which modern history books rely to inform us of antiquity.

The reliability of manuscripts are evaluated by the abundance, dating and accuracy – so let’s look at how the Bible stacks up against other ancient writings and histories!

Number of ancient manuscripts: Compare the NT and the OT manuscripts in terms of their number of surviving ancient manuscripts to other ancient works… Plato has 7, 10 copies of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, 643 copies of Homer’s works have survived… Comparatively, over 10,000 manuscripts of various OT books have been preserved… over 5,700 full ancient copies of the NT…  

Date of the manuscripts: The Dead Sea Scrolls (OT) have been dated from the 3^rd century BC to the end of the 1^st Century AD… the earliest NT manuscripts are dated at about 117 to 138 AD. These dates (especially for the NT) are VERY close to the events they have recorded – and the original texts from which these manuscripts were copied were first written between 50 A.D. and 90 A.D. at the latest. Specifically, the Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which recount the historical story of Jesus) were written within 15 to 40 years of the crucifixion.  It would be no different than a veteran of WWII writing a letter or book about his experience in the war, or of a personal friend or assistant  of Ronald Reagan writing a biography about him today…  Simply put, there is reliability because the manuscripts and the actual letters themselves were written and widely circulated within one generation of Christ – had the claims been false they would have been disproven and rejected by eyewitnesses who were still living then.

How do other ancient writings compare? Other notable documents accepted as historically reliable, in comparison to the NT, have a much wider gap between their origin and the earliest surviving manuscript (i.e. there is a 734 year gap for Tacitus; 900-1100 year gap for various copies of Josephus’ histories; 1000+ year gap for Caesar’s Gallic wars; Aristotle’s works have a 1,434 year difference between their originals and the earliest manuscripts). Again, the evidence for the accuracy of the biblical texts far exceeds that of other ancient documents which are widely accepted as accurate and reliable by scholars world-wide.

Reliability of the manuscripts: For the OT manuscripts (whose extremity of ages span over nearly 1000 years) the texts compare exactly (word for word) in 95% of the verbiage… the only changes can be accounted for as spelling errors and/or pen slips. Of all the variants between the manuscripts there were only a few changes in actual words, but absolutely no changes in meaning. For the NT there is 99.9% agreement between the various manuscripts (again, this is between the thousands of various manuscripts). By way of comparison, the Iliad and the Mahbarata each have 90-95% of agreement between their small number surviving ancient transcripts (The question of textual criticism – i.e. the so-called redactions and/or changes over time to the text will be more fully explored in a later post).

In light of the overwhelming evidence in support of the accuracy and unadulterated transmissions of the original Biblical texts, I don’t plan on abandoning or doubting the biblical record any more than I plan on rejecting the majority of information I learned in my High School and Collegiate history courses (and I had A LOT of them since my second degree was a BA in secondary ed. with an emphasis in Social Studies).

Note:  For more details on the reliability of the Biblical texts, check out Josh and Sean McDowell’s More Than a Carpenter (specifically chapter 6). For one honestly trying to find answers to their general skepticism about God another good place to look is Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God.

SHARE THIS:

Have tongues ceased? The debate…Part 1

Robert – Here are the points where I believe that gifts (or sign gifts as Kevin would call them) are still active today:

1. The gifts were given to fulfill the great commission (Acts 1:8).  The great commission is not fulfilled thus the gifts have not stopped.
2. I have a hard time limiting the ability of God to allow someone to speak in tongues or prophesize.  The whole Bible demonstrates various ways that the Holy Spirit moves.  None of them are identical.
3. Omission of the prophecy/tongues gifts from the Epistles is NOT admission they have stopped. 
4. 1 Corinthians 13 does not mean that tongues/prophecy stopped in the apostolic era.
5. The lack of historical evidence of prophecy/tongues in historical revivals does not mean that they have ceased, it only means that perhaps God had no use for it then.

Kevin – Let me clarify… I have never said that Spiritual Gifts are not active today. They absolutely ARE. I do believe, however, certain Spiritual Gifts (a.k.a. “sign gifts”) have served their purpose and, according to Paul’s prophecy in 1 Corinthians 13:8-10, have ceased.

Robert – First let me begin by saying that these points were not chosen randomly.  They are the most common points argued for and against the use of tongues and prophecy.  I hardly think that we will be breaking new ground here but at the very least these arguments will be our own.  So the first point…

The gifts were given to fulfill the great commission (Acts 1:8).  The great commission is not fulfilled thus the gifts have not stopped.

Robert – Acts 1:8 provides a pretty clear connection to the commission (Matthew 28:16-20).  The Holy Spirit delivers these powers for the witness.  As the great commission has not been fulfilled… the gifts of the Holy Spirit are continuing to be delivered.

Kevin – Again, we are not talking about ALL gifts here… However, the premise that spiritual GIFTS were given to fulfill the Great Commission is based on a flawed hermeneutic – Robert here is confusing a function/role of the Spirit (Empowerment – which is general and thus universally belongs to all believers to carry out the Great Commission), with specific gifts of the Spirit (of which there are many and assigned individually to believers at salvation – i.e. no believer has every spiritual gift.)

When studying the Holy Spirit one should look at Him from every angle: His Role, His Work, His Fruit… We don’t have time and space to chase all that down here, but suffice it to say that empowering people to live the Christian life and imparting Spiritual Gifts to believers are two different aspects of the Holy Spirit’s work that should not be confused.

• So, why are they given? Spiritual Gifts ARE given to build up the body (1 Corinthians 12-13, especially 12:7) and to confirm the validity of authoritative teaching of the apostles (cf. Hebrews 2:3-4)

The context here points to the surrounding passage as talking to believers in how they are to function together within the context of the church. Spiritual gifts (especially the ones listed in 1 Corinthians) are, then, more for the building up of the Church rather than evangelism. An integral part of building up the early church was confirming what teaching should be considered authoritative and what should be disregarded as heretical. God used spiritual gifts to confirm which teachings were false and which were true (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3)

Robert – Kevin, you talk about how the gifts were to be used.  I am confused.  Weren’t ALL gifts given to build the church?  If the body of Christ is the Church then don’t all gifts support the body of Christ?  I understand that not every believer has every spiritual gift, and I make no assertion of that kind.  You say that I am confusing the function and role of the Holy Spirit with the specific gifts, but I make no mention of former.  I think you are unnecessarily bringing in the function and role of the Holy Spirit.  You call it bad hermeneutics, but I call it plain reading…

Acts 1:8 – “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Emphasis on and you will be my witnesses. 

For  some reason you are wanting to isolate two specific gifts (tongues and prophecy) from the list.  Do these two gifts not build up the body of Christ as well?  According to Paul they do if done correctly (1 Corinthains 14).  If tongues and prophecy were not intended to be a gift, why did Paul list them?  Kevin…you have the last word.

Kevin: When I say your interpretation of Acts 1:8 is a case of bad hermeneutics it is because Acts 1:8 doesn’t specifically talk about spiritual gifts, yet you are tying it to spiritual gifts – forcing scripture to say something it doesn’t isn’t plain reading it’s bad logic. Acts 1:8 says that “you will receive power”. Without getting overly technical the original Greek word here is not the same word as is used for spiritual gifts… Therefore, to say that God is talking about spiritual gifts here is mistaken. I draw the distinction between different roles of the Holy Spirit because there is no link between Acts 1:8 and spiritual gifts. The word for “power” used in Acts 1:8 does not refer to specific talents, skills, or spiritual gifts, but rather the general strength to complete the task God has assigned – One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to empower us to obey God (in general) and to embolden us to fulfill the Great Commission.

Robert, before linking spiritual gifts to Acts 1:8 you should take a hard look at 1 Corinthians 14:20-25. This passage clearly states that not all spiritual gifts are for evangelism, therefore, they should not be linked to the Great Commission, which is a command to evanglize.

The Bible…Good moral stories?

Have you ever been in a conversation about the Bible and hear a believer say “Some of the things in the Bible are good moral stories”.  How about a conversation with a non-believer that usually ends with “you believe that everything in the Bible is absolutely true?”  I certainly have.  What these people are usually implying is that some of the stories in the Bible are a little too fantastic to believe.  Nine times out of ten they are usually referring to Jonah, Noah or maybe even creation. 

The people described above are indirectly calling into question the inerrancy of the Bible.  If you are like me, you had never heard the word inerrancy and the Bible in the same sentence, let alone as truth.  In fact, up until a couple of years ago I would have been the person described above.  I used to look at the story of Noah, and the story of Jonah and say “wow, Really!?”  It was hard for me to accept the fact that a man would sit alive in the belly of a fish or that the world was flooded and Noah’s family was the only group that survived. 

If this is the first time that you are hearing the word inerrancy, the definition is simple.  According to the dictionary inerrancy means without error.  So what does inerrancy mean in the context of the Bible?  Well, if inerrancy means without error that means that in order for the Bible to be inerrant it has to be true.  The Bible has to be true.  Say it one more time and really let it soak in.  The Bible has to be true.  This includes all of the “stories” that are in the Bible. 

God is truth.  This is a pretty simple statement.  How do we know that God is truth?  He describes Himself as truth (Deuter. 32:4, Psalm 33:4, John 17:17). Meaning that truth is a characteristic/attribute of God.   What is the consequence of being truth?  That God cannot lie (Titus 1:2).  This provides the biblical foundation that God, and by extension God’s Word, is truth.  Pretty easy right?  God is truth, therefore God cannot contradict himself, and cannot lie.

Most people don’t hang their hats on this point when arguing against the inerrancy of the Bible.  What you will more traditionally hear from atheists primarily is something along these lines…”Your own Bible says that man will make mistakes.  Men wrote the Bible, so how can you say that the Bible is inerrant?”   If you have heard this statement before (I am sure many of you have) you should know that the premise of the question is incorrect.  This is a reflection of how half-truths can shape an opinion.  Man did not write the Bible alone.  The proof? 

2 Peter 1:21:

21 For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:21, NIV)

Need more proof?

1 Corinthians 2:13

13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. (1 Corinthians 2:13, NIV).

NEED MORE PROOF? 

2 Timothy 3:16

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16, NIV).

The message behind these verses, while man put pen to paper so to speak, they were not writing, the Holy Spirit and God were writing.   So lets back up a second and recap.  We have God saying that he is truth and incapable of lying (Deuter. 32:4, Psalm 33:4, John 17:17, Titus 1:2), we have multiple verses saying that man alone did not write the Bible.  We have this written explicitly in 2 Timothy 3:16 that God BREATHED the scripture.  What is the conclusion to be drawn?  That scripture is truth.  No discussion, no qualifiers, no distinction on moral stories, or things of this nature.  SCRIPTURE IS TRUTH, according to the word breathed by God.  This tells us that the Bible is inerrant. 

The argument posed in this blog is a simplistic basic argument for the inerrancy of the bible using God’s word.  Skeptics will challenge truths in the Bible because they appear to be contradictory to other statements in the Bible.  In future blogs we can address some of these “discrepancies” (emphasis on quotes). 

As Christians, we run the danger of showing others that the Bible is errant.  Statements like “good moral story” and “a little too fantastic” will do nothing but demonstrate your own lack of faith in the holy word of God to those you are testifying to.  Ultimately the question that has to be posed is this, if the book of Jonah is not true, what else isn’t?  Go back to the word of God.  If Jonah is not true then God is not truth.  Which means that possibly other parts of the Bible are errant.  Which ones?  Who knows, but what we do know is that this thought process brings error to the word of God, which destroys the entire bible.  Seem fatalistic?  Think about it.  The life of Christ, true or false?  You are probably screaming true, right?  But what is more fantastic, a man living in the belly of a fish, or a divine pregnancy where God sent his son, who was of God to die, where he was crucified, raised from the dead, and ascended to heaven?  Get the point?  The next time you feel your mind thinking that creation, or Jonah, or Noah or ANY of the “fantastic stories” of the Bible are just that, remember 2 Timothy 3:16, and know that God is truth, you are not.

PLEASE NOTE:  For a more evidential and less philosophical argument that doesn’t rely upon the interpretation of any Bible verses/passages, check out Kevin’s post on manuscript evidence.

SHARE THIS: