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Podcast 28 - Does the Bible contradict itself?
0 Playsin 6 hours
Join us as we discuss a major criticism coming from those that oppose the Bible.
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Transcript
Introduction and Topic Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Hey, welcome back to Grove Hill and our podcast. It's great delight to have you with us today. I want to jump right into what we're doing today because this is a good subject, a heavy subject, but one that I think is incredibly important we talk about and talk openly and transparently about because it's the probably one of the number one oppositions from cynics of the faith. and one of the number one stumbling blocks for people who try to follow after Jesus Christ. And it's this question of, does the Bible have contradictions in it?
00:00:38
Speaker
Are there places where Scripture cannot align itself? You hear people make statements like, the Bible's been changed so many times, surely there's problems with it, that the gospel stories themselves contradict each other. that God commands violence in the Old Testament, love and compassion in the New Testament, so it's contradicting God's personality.
00:01:02
Speaker
The truth is, let's be let's throw it out there right out front, there are hard passages in the Scriptures.
Contradictions vs. Tensions in the Bible
00:01:07
Speaker
yes There are passages where a cursory reading of them did not allow you to understand and to process and to really fully take in what the meaning is. But But there's a big difference between contradictions, which people claim, and tension, which is, i think, an entirely different thing. And so very quickly, let me let me kind of lay those out there for our listeners.
00:01:32
Speaker
A contradiction is two statements that cannot possibly be true. There's there's no way you can reconcile the differences between them. um That might be like, a it's freezing outside, it's 70 degrees outside. That can't possibly be true. We know that fact.
00:01:48
Speaker
attention is kind of like an apparent discrepancy, something that looks like it might be conflicting, but when you dig in and dive in a little bit deeper, there's a good explanation for it. So let's jump right into those kinds of things, because if we truly believe that Scripture is God-breathed, God-inspired, it's here for our use, then we as followers of Jesus Christ should never panic when somebody says there's a problem with the Bible. right yeah Because what' our what should be our fallback assumption?
00:02:17
Speaker
there's some kind of explanation for what you're looking at. Okay?
Understanding Historical and Language Contexts
00:02:20
Speaker
um The Bible was written, for those of you who don't know this, the Bible was written over a period of about 1,500 years. It was written by about 40 different authors that we know for sure, and it was written in three different languages. The Hebrew language being the primary of the Old Testament, and then the Aramaic, which was kind of um a spoken, localized language there. The Aramaic and the Greek make up the New Testament. So those things in themselves might explain some of the problems.
00:02:52
Speaker
um Like, for instance, the Greek language and the Hebrew, I would argue, are both much more scientific languages, beautiful languages. They're much more descriptive than the American language. And the the illustration we all like to use is the one about love, right? In English we say we love our pizza, we love our dog, we love our wives. And that's a problem, yes right? Yes, very much so. um In the Greek, um there's at least four different words for love. They have different connotations, different meanings. And so when you read the word love in an English translation, the next question is, okay, what kind of love are we talking about in this particular
Critical Exploration of Faith
00:03:31
Speaker
instance? Mm-hmm. So um let's let's talk ah from a student perspective, from a young adult perspective, from adults who are diving in as new believers.
00:03:41
Speaker
um what what is your What is your experience with this? What do what do they say to you typically? Yeah, ah if any time a concern is brought up, it's typically something that I'm familiar with or used to the conversation around. Just like Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, which says, For by grace are we saved through faith, and it's not of works. and yet in James we read that faith without works is dead, right? And so at first glance you say, wait this passage says only faith and then this one says, no, it takes work too, you know? um But you have to look at the whole of scripture and what those men were talking about and it's true.
00:04:20
Speaker
Our salvation is through faith alone, but if it's a true salvation, that produces works, right? And so walking a student through um both sides of the the conversation, and I actually encourage those types of conversations, because helping a student identify that the Bible is not talking against each other, but it actually ah builds a stronger foundation for what they're following, um I invite those conversations and to walk them through it. so Yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
yeah You work a lot with people who are new believers in our congregation, trying to get them plugged into small groups and get them on that discipleship journey. um You do a lot of work, of course, with young adults. That's a generation that's genuinely kicking the tires on the faith. Let's ask the hard questions. What are your experiences? I like to look at this from a a lens of you know what lenses are you using? What spectacles do you have on? Do you have the lenses of ah this, I call it a presupposition where It's what my mom and dad taught me. you know That's why I believe it. yeah Well, that's not good enough. Because mom and dad can be wrong. Mom and dad can say a lie. joing yeah yeah So we've got to put the right lenses on. We've got to look at this complicated, fancy word that some you know theology you know look at, you know seminaries will use, is hermeneutics. yeah ah How do you look at scripture? What spectacles are you putting it on? And first of all, we have to have the spirit, first and foremost. yeah But...
00:05:45
Speaker
I say that to young adults. I say that to new believers. We have to look at it outside of the lens of just our experience. And we have to pull it back and to say, okay, how is God speaking through his word to all of humanity? So we have to put on the right glasses first before we ever look at a passage and just kind of, you know, just look at the one text and say, oh, whoa, they murdered somebody. Or wow, he had lots of wives. You know, maybe we we should do that. No, don't do that. Look with the right lens. You mentioned something that brings up a great subject. You've got a new believer regardless of their age and you say to them, be careful when you read the Scriptures to let the Spirit interpret it. Well they haven't had a relationship with Jesus for very long, they're like, okay what does this Spirit thing look like? Does there a chant I have to bring him into the room? How do we do that? So how would you explain that to a newer believer? What does it mean to let the Spirit guide your interpretation of Scripture?
Role of Relationship and Prayer in Interpretation
00:06:41
Speaker
2 Peter 3, 15-16 is a good passage that there are some things that the Scripture reveals, but to the how, um God knows this, and that only happens through relationship with God. The the things that we talk about, and they're so sometimes you you may even be thinking, okay, what is he going to say, prayer again?
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah. Prayer. and and the way that you look at that is you give yourself investment of time with God's word and through prayer. And that's how God begins to work and show you the things ah that are right and wrong. um God only didn't only just give us his word. He gave us the spirit. So whenever we encounter life circumstances, we're able to go and say,
00:07:26
Speaker
I used to look at this circumstance this one way, and now I look at it differently because of the Spirit's leading. ah We used to maybe enjoy this season of sin, yeah whereas we don't. And I think if you look at not just the circumstances, but you look at God's Word in that way, wow, God revealed something in a different way. It's not just academic.
00:07:46
Speaker
it life-changing in the way that I interact and encounter with it. So I would say interaction with the Spirit starts with relationship and prayer as we read through God's Word. Because it is. Things come alive. You've been a believer for over 40 years, 50 years. And yeah I've been a believer for over, you know,
00:08:06
Speaker
25 years and it's one of those things that i've read god's word but there are passages yeah that still come to life in different way yeah think think of it uh as this podcast if you're listening to it on spotify and you don't have the visual uh video of it uh you know who's speaking right now if you know me yeah right you know that that was just john speaking you know when ridley speaks why because you've spent time with us and you've learned our voices and it's the same thing um A new believer gets the full portion of the Holy Spirit, but they're not not always in tune with what that looks like or sounds like. And so what John's saying is perfect. It's like the more time you spend in God's Word, the more time you spend listening to His voice, that's how you know the voice of the Holy Spirit of God to lead you through those
Unity and Divine Inspiration of the Bible
00:08:47
Speaker
things. no And so it takes time.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, and I i think it's it's important you understand we do believe that Scripture is God-breathed, and when that word God-breathed is in there, it's actually using the word for the Holy Spirit, pneuma, the breath of God.
00:09:01
Speaker
If the Holy Spirit's the writer of it, then who better to interpret it? correctp It would be like saying, you know, i'm reading the Constitution and having some hard times with it. Well, maybe if you know Thomas Jefferson came and sat down next to you and had a conversation with you, yeah you know James Monroe, or any of those guys who were part of that whole constitutional thing, they could say, well, yeah, this is what we intended here. This is what we meant here. though You want him as part of the conversation. Right, and you see that in situations like, I think it's Lee Strobel, right? Yeah. Who went to prove the Bible wrong, and he started researching Scripture, and in the end, the Holy Spirit got his heart, and he was converted to follower of Christ, you know? And so, um yeah.
00:09:36
Speaker
So here's a great statement that you need to underline for all of your Bible reading and Scripture Text without context leads to pretext. Nice. Text without context leads to pretext. Okay, so I can take the scriptures, and I won't say anything, but just about anything you want to believe, I can pull it out of the scriptures and make it work. Sure.
00:09:57
Speaker
There's a place for everything. The problem is, or maybe better, the solution, the the proof that this doesn't happen, is that we believe that regardless of whether you're reading the beginnings in Genesis all the way through to Revelations, Scripture never contradicts itself because it's the story of one author, God Himself, right telling His story about humanity and creation what's going to happen. um I want to throw a book in here real quick. like And then what I want to do is work through some specific examples of contradictions and how we work those out as as we dig in. it All right. that all right with y'all? Yeah. Sounds good. The book is called Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes. Really great book, pretty easy read. Two guys, Richardson O'Brien wrote it. it it
00:10:43
Speaker
It helps you to understand that many times what we don't understand is because we are not from a Middle Eastern context. And things that were pretty normal, pretty standard for them, just don't make sense to us. Just like if they were fast-forward 2,000 years into our culture, they'd go, ooh, that doesn't make sense. Okay? um So here here's some categories. Let's talk about the first one. Translation issues.
00:11:05
Speaker
Translation issues. We're working from three different languages. We're bringing things forward. We have extremely reliable manuscripts that we work off this day and age.
Translation Issues and Approaches
00:11:16
Speaker
But I think what confuses some people is we have the ESV, the NIV, MSG, that you know all these different translations. They're all out there. um How do you explain that to somebody who's searching the scriptures? Which one is right? I think that's the word they might use versus which ones are wrong. And that's a minefield that you step into as a thing. So do you have a word on that? Yeah, I've got an opinion on that. I do feel as if the English text that we have, and since we speak the same language, and one of the, I would say, the most heavily spoke languages throughout the world. You have such a variety of freedoms that some translators will take. You mentioned the message for one.
00:12:05
Speaker
There's more freedom in that translation than say the ESV, which is very in line with more of a word for word yes kind of translation as you look at like something like the KJV or whatever. But all this to go back and say,
00:12:20
Speaker
when When we're looking at how you can trust Scripture for what it is and the validity of it, you're not going and doing the whole telephone game. It's not, hey, what did they say 100 years ago? Did the person then say, what did they say 200 years ago?
00:12:35
Speaker
Sometimes people that will come back, they don't have the context of that. And they'll say, well, how do you know that it's true? Because they just got it from the next person or they just copied off the Bible they have. No, we have one of the biggest collection of historical documents. um People call them, whether you call them manuscripts, some call them autographs. Yes. But...
00:12:55
Speaker
Thousands. Yes. Yeah. Not just a few. Thousands. Thousands. And put that up against some of your secular works like Beowulf, like Socrates. you i mean, you go down the list and things that you put up in comparison to secular works and people want to give so much credence and credit to them. But yet they don't look at the the historical efficiency of scripture and effectiveness.
00:13:22
Speaker
we have all those that look to as every one of these translations in English yeah that I know of. Obviously, if they are not going that route and they're not going back to the direct Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew, there's a problem. But I would say most of the ones that we know of in evangelical circles in America that go back to those texts. It's an interesting phenomenon because if you go to the Middle East or you read what's happening in the Middle East as archaeological digs are done and there's findings from history, Um,
00:13:53
Speaker
you might be tempted to go, hey, they found something new. Now we can see you know how how reliable it was. Well, what's happened is over the years, it's gone to prove we were getting it right from the very beginning. yeah There have been very few changes to Scripture, and most of those variants, if you want to use that word, have been things like spelling. The word was misspelled. Or we found out that it was a common thing in the Middle East that most people had three or four different variations of their name. right um And so we weren't talking about two different guys. We were talking about two guys with the same name. um or one guy with two two different names. And so, ah yeah, ah the more we dig into these things, the the modern translations of scriptures, to help you out a little bit, is the biggest way to know what you're looking for or what you need in ah in a translation is the goal of the translation itself. yeah
00:14:40
Speaker
You mentioned the message. The message's goal is to communicate thoughts, like big ideas in passages. So they'll take a section of scripture and they'll word it into a very modern easy to read format, not so worried about the word-to-word translation, reliability, those kinds of things. And so what you get is the thought, but you don't get much of the actual translation there. the The other category is something like the New Living Translation, some of those others, where the whole idea is to do a thought-by-thought translation. It's narrowing it down a little bit more and saying phrase-by-phrase, how do we do this, and put it in a way where people can read it and make it easily understandable. Then you get into translations like the King James, which was incredibly reliable. You know, the ESV, some of the more modern translations, the CSB, those are a little bit more word for word translation. Their goal is to stick as close to the text as possible to preserve.
00:15:37
Speaker
um the the integrity of what they've translated. And in doing so, it comes out sounding like they're different, but in reality, this one's just saying more specifically what this one is saying in generality. So, you know, don't get hung up on that. I will go back. we made I made a statement a minute ago. i want to be real clear about it. Are there some translations are wrong? Yes. Mm-hmm.
00:15:59
Speaker
I think people can take too much liberality, that's the word, liberty, liberty that's the word, liberty can take too many liberties in in translating and can get a little carried away with the what they do and yeah then the doctrine and theology gets too loose. That's something you have to fight for.
00:16:15
Speaker
I heard of this translation once it said Jesus was walking with his homies. and so yeah you know like yeah I don't really go for that. yeah When I was in college there actually was a version called the cotton patch version of the gospel. You ever heard that? The cotton patch version of the gospel. it was a guy down in Georgia who wrote it and basically what he did is he took it and set the whole story of the Mideast. He brought it to the setting of Georgia.
00:16:37
Speaker
whoa And so Atlanta was Jerusalem. And everything that was close by were these little cities there. Oh, my goodness. And it talked that That's a lot of Columbus get mentioned? Jesus his homeboys were walking down the road. No, that's a little irreverent for me. Second issue of contradiction, I want Kyle to throw this one to you.
00:16:57
Speaker
Different perspectives. Now, here's the example. I want you just kind of address this
Gospel Accounts and Perspective Differences
00:17:02
Speaker
for us. The example in the Gospels of the resurrection accounts where one says an angel spoke to them, the next one says two angels spoke to them. Sure. Who's lying?
00:17:11
Speaker
ah Neither, probably. If you if I look look look at it in the sense of law enforcement, right? Show up on scene, a crime had just committed. and I have three different witnesses, each witness is going to have their perspective. right Some of them weren't wrong, right? Some of them left out the detail that it was a blue shirt, but they both identified white shoes.
00:17:33
Speaker
In general, with the eyewitnesses accounts, you get the story of of what happened, right? a doctor is going to notice things in a different way than a a cop, right? And there's different perspectives on things. So when things are stated that aren't necessarily contradictory to each other, but are different, yeah um a lot of people jump to the conclusion that, oh,
00:17:58
Speaker
Two different stories, false, right? Contradiction. When in reality, there's just a different perspective on the situation. Yeah. um I remember coming home from a trip in high school. Two of my friends were tragically killed in a car accident. I didn't know about it until I got home from a trip and ran to some friends. And as I ran to different groups of friends, they were telling the same story of the accident that killed three guys from our high school.
00:18:22
Speaker
One of them said, yeah, they were killed drinking and driving. Another one said they were killed because he was going 100 miles an hour and left the road. Both of them were telling him the truth. sure Neither one of them was lying. It was just a different perspective, which one they wanted to emphasize. To say that there was one angel it was true, and that person was probably highlighting that to say, there's an angel that spoke to them. I'm excited about that. Next guy comes along and says, there's two angels. Well, if there's...
00:18:45
Speaker
One angel, two angels. We just want to highlight that. So that's difference of perspectives. What's the goal of telling the story? Am I wanting to highlight, for instance, miracles and that or more the teachings of Jesus, those kinds of things. And that's why I threw that one to you being a cop. I figured you would. Absolutely. yeah I saw
Cultural Context and Genre Recognition
00:19:04
Speaker
that. ah contextual misreadings. This goes back to that statement, the text without the context is pretext. In other words, we come to the Scripture with biases and presupposed ideas.
00:19:15
Speaker
um It's hard from the Old Testament and New Testament to reconcile statements like in Exodus where God says to the people, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But then over in the Gospels, Jesus says, turn the other cheek and forgive your brother 70 times 7. So is God schizophrenic? Does He have bipolar issues? Does He not know know who He is as a God? What's what's the what's the explanation there? why I'll start back on this this premise of we have to understand the entirety of where God was working at the time, and it was in the Middle East. ah we you know To the gentleman that was ah placing...
00:19:56
Speaker
a biblical mindset in the the state of Georgia. um Bad intention? No. But is it the right place? Yeah. ah You know, I think we've got to look at it in light of what happened at that time in the Middle East. So therefore, you get some of those things that translate as Jesus expounded upon it. The things that Paul mentioned whenever he goes back and talks about circumcision. Yeah. there You don't understand circumcision.
00:20:25
Speaker
in the way that was intended until you understand the Old Testament, until you understand the way that the Hebrew people, that they were setting themselves apart. So all those things, it was an expounding upon what had already been started as God revealed himself. So we've got to have not just the ah context of who the writer was, you know, like style differences, ah because I think God gave freedom in that, you know, Luke looks different than Matthew and so on and so forth. But you have to have all those key pieces of the context, historical, geographical, you name it, to start putting the puzzle puzzle pieces together and creating a clearer picture. It's good. It's good. um
00:21:08
Speaker
Yeah, I i mean, we we actually have become better at understanding the culture there by reading extra-biblical sources too. yes You know, his histories like Josephus' writings, it helped us understand, okay, why do people act that way back then? Well, then this is what the Bible was doing to unravel those things, to to put it all in proper perspective. A fourth one, this one's fairly obvious I think to some of us, but explain this one a little bit, Kyle.
00:21:35
Speaker
Genre confusion. When we fall into the trap of reading the Psalms just like we read the Proverbs, like we read the Revelation. Sure. So, um
00:21:46
Speaker
what's the word I'm looking for? I do not know. Read my mind. And try. Potatoes. i had a Literal and figurative. Figurative. There go that's okay thank you go.
00:21:58
Speaker
I just had to say the first one to match the second one. um So there are things in Scripture where ah they're speaking in, however you want to say it, a figurative sense, right? And then there's times where it's speaking literal. And you have to know the difference in the two. You have to know, like what you said, the genre with it, this is poetry, right? And it's not actually a fawn leaping through the field or whatever, yeah um if you know what I mean. But some some in a poetic sense, and then some in ah a literal sense. And so ah knowing the genre of scripture you're in gives clarity to what is being written. And so, yeah, the difference in Genres where you have the narrative stories of the gospel, where they're actually seeing what's happening, isn't a figurative account. you know Now, knowing that Jesus is speaking in a parable is not saying this truthful thing that happened, but he's telling a story of something that, you know, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. And so just knowing where you're at in Scripture um provides a lot of clarity to what you're reading. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:00
Speaker
And there's a lot of different genres in the 66 books. You have historical books, which are literally trying to tell the narrative, tell the story. They want to get the facts right. You have poetry that Kyle just mentioned, David and Song of Solomon, things like that. You can take that and run away with it and get really reckless and run into problems. yeah One of the problems you run into a lot of people is reading Proverbs.
00:23:24
Speaker
Proverbs cannot be read to be ironclad promises. sure They are general encouragement of wisdom. yes That's why you can't go train up a child in the way he will go and he will not depart from it and think your child's going to turn out perfect. yeah
Progressive Revelation and Scriptural Consistency
00:23:37
Speaker
Okay? um So sometimes we create our own contradictions by not reading a particular genre the right way. um So we have to be very careful with that one. Lastly, and and we kind of touched on it and just with all of these a little bit, but the cultural and historical distance from where the stories take place to where we are today. Yeah. um
00:23:59
Speaker
I'll kick this one off a little bit and just say that one of the biggest problems we have is understanding the goal of progressive revelation. That's a phrase that's really important, progressive revelation.
00:24:10
Speaker
If God in all of His holiness had shown up in the book of Genesis and suddenly implemented everything that He desired, humanity would have crushed under the weight of what He was trying to do. People go, why did He put it into slavery in the Old Testament? Well,
00:24:26
Speaker
because he was starting that process. When Jesus comes along, he continues the process. Paul comes along, and even even more so, it took a long time for men to unravel that. People go, well, God must have hated women because look at the way they treated them back then. No, that was men who treated women that way. And the biggest proponent for equal rights for women was Jesus himself. yeah The fact that he even talked to women, hung out with women, gave them credibility when they spoke to him.
00:24:52
Speaker
um So that there's a lot of places where we begin to understand and see this unfolding redemptive act going on through Scripture and as we go through we we understand it better and it's a little bit more helpful for us. So the danger is you can't you can't read from Genesis through Revelation in a flat kind of understanding. It's more of this arc of what's going on in Scripture and as God continues to reveal Himself more and more and more of us So, bottom line, are there really any contradictions in Scripture?
00:25:27
Speaker
I would say no. Not one? I would say not one. Do you agree? Not one jot or tittle. Not one jot. Look at you. Bring it in the jot and tittle. There can be in the sense of conjunctions, like little bitty things in a textual makeup of ah the translation translation between Greek and English.
00:25:49
Speaker
There may be a difference in some of those things, but I would say when we're talking about the wholeness of every ah story, every bit of biblical wisdom that we are trying to understand, ah We believe in infallibility, inerrancy. So I would say there is no ah major discrepancies whatsoever. And I say major discrepancies. I think, again, as you look at the translations, there may be one or two little things that we see as like a, you know, and, but, you know, that those are the little... The Yes. The Bible has been examined more than any other book in human history, primarily by its enemies. The ones who've tried to destroy it and undermine it, those kinds of things. And yet again and again we keep coming back to it's been proven true by the millions of lives who have surrendered and submitted themselves to it. It's been proven true by the history outside of the Bible that confirms the stories of Jesus and others who are part of that. It has been confirmed by eyewitnesses who wrote and gave their own testimony and then gave their lives defending that testimony. And then finally it's been proved again by the archaeology of our day.
00:27:03
Speaker
One of the greatest archaeological finds, I would argue, in human history was the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls. And in that one particular finding of of the scrolls there in that cave, that little boy uncovered a lot of confirmation and affirmation of what we had done in the work of transcription and translation and those kinds of things. um i believe I believe that...
00:27:30
Speaker
The biggest question of contradiction really doesn't come down to the fact that we really don't believe the Bible true. it's that we really don't want to believe it's true yeah because of what it will do to our lives. I would say that's probably the buzz behind people saying that the Bible has contradictions is because if I can say, um if I can discredit the truth, yep then I don't have to live by it. And so if they can say, oh, look, this doesn't match up with that. That's why I don't follow that. It's a way out.
Addressing Skepticism and Embracing Doubt
00:27:55
Speaker
It's a way out for them to not look at their sin, a way out for the need of a savior and those things. and Like you said, so many people over the years have examined, examined, examined.
00:28:05
Speaker
Those who examine it truly typically are converted. um they They follow it. Yes. um and there's no there's not a lot of scholars right now standing saying this thing is a huge contradiction because they know it's not, right? When you have so many offer authors over so many years writing a book that compiles this clean ah is undeniably it's controlled by something other than man. Yeah.
00:28:30
Speaker
I would tend to liken it to a child who's been scolded maybe for using a bad word, and they look at mom and dad and go but you said it. If the child can prove that mom and dad are not perfect, then it undermines their ability and authority to give them direction. So for the skeptic, the atheist, the cynic, the one who just refuses to believe, it's not that they don't believe there's truth there. It's more of, if I can get God's credibility torn down, then he no longer has authority to speak into my life. Yeah.
00:28:59
Speaker
And I think that's what we find with a lot of people who who ask all these questions. Now, if you're ah a follower of Christ out there and you're going, well, I still have certain doubts and stuff like that. That is not sin. Right. no that ah that in itself is not bad.
00:29:12
Speaker
What is bad is to pursue that thought instead of allowing doubt to drive you deeper into the scripture. Right. And that's where I would encourage you if you, if you need to reach out to one of the staff members here and say, hey, can you explain this passage to me? Had one guy the other day just randomly out of the blue, I didn't you know he was reading the Bible, i said, hey, can you explain Romans 5, 8 to me? I'm like, yes, home run. That's what you want. That's what we love. We love those kinds of encounters, those kinds of things. um Word of caution and and absolutely danger, danger, danger. Do not Google answers to these questions. Because for every believer there's out there, there's probably a hundred skeptics who have their YouTube channels those kinds of things. Something I would recommend when it comes to if you have this idea that there's a contradiction or something's not making sense in your head is to not just read the two verses that are in so-called contradiction to each other, but read the chapter and the book around those two verses. Yes, um A lot of times a contradiction or a contradiction with quotations um when researched will lead to more clarity on the subject. Just like the faith for salvation and faith without works is dead. Once you really understand what those two are talking about, it gives you more clarity for your life of what your life is supposed to look like after you come to the knowledge of Christ. And so um it's actually a benefit to get the context of that verse and um kind of gain clarity on this subject.
00:30:38
Speaker
Other thoughts you want add before we close today? um Man, eat up every bit of the word you can. Kyle, you mentioned it. But I would say this. Do the things that we've talked about. Don't uh many times those people that have accepted christ it's because they kept digging in when you've come face to face with the the holy spirit intersecting by use of god's word um man it's something sweet and it's something to be seen and i would say continue to dig in whenever you question
00:31:11
Speaker
now y'all mentioned this a couple times skeptics who eventually became followers of christ because they dug in you got guys like lee strobel who you mentioned c.s lewis was a skeptic before he did it martin luther actually questioned the scriptures before he led the reformation so it's a big swing big turnaround for him i want you to think about this if the three of us with our brilliant minds at this table decided we wanted to come up with a fake piece of propaganda to start a religion We would probably, be in as human as we are, we would sit down and write 66 books that absolutely aligned perfectly.
Authenticity, Complexity, and Divine Inspiration
00:31:45
Speaker
No story would ever even give the appearance of contradiction. We would want to make sure there was no way anybody could question it.
00:31:51
Speaker
The fact that the Bible doesn't do that... proves its genuineness. yeah It proves that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not sit down and go, okay guys, let's figure out how we're going write these stories and make them align.
00:32:04
Speaker
It proves, just like it would in court a court of law, as you mentioned, four different guys from four different perspectives telling their stories of one true event that has been proven over and over again. yeah so um It's a book with real people, real trials, real struggles.
00:32:22
Speaker
um Sometimes the Old Testament, you read stories. It's not God saying, that's that's good, that's acceptable. It's just God being real and saying, this is what people were like. yep And that's why Jesus had to come in the first place. and And if I was trying to run a religion or start a religion, I would leave those hard things out. yes Like I would say, oh man, this this happened between this ah dad and this daughter. yeah I'd be like, nah, I don't even want that in my book. right right um But leaving it in there It shows the validity of of not trying to hide anything. now like This is how bad men were, and this proves that we need a Savior.
00:32:55
Speaker
Two other things I would say, and in this one echoes your point. You go back to one of the most well-recognized people in Scripture, someone who was described as being after God's own heart, a guy by the name of David. And yet the Bible is so all raw and genuine and honest enough, it tells us that he failed and he failed and he failed. And he had to come get repentance from God. And and again, if we were writing the story of American history and we wanted to make sure America always looked good, we would make sure that George Washington never told a lie. That's right. We would make sure that every general was honest and ethical and those kinds of things. But the
00:33:28
Speaker
the validity is proven by the fact that they tell the real truth. yeah um And if you want the best evidence that's possibly out there, if you believe in Jesus, and and I've heard people say this, I believe in Jesus, I just don't know that the Bible is
Conclusion and Invitation for Further Exploration
00:33:42
Speaker
true. Jesus himself taught the Bible. yeah he He over and over and over again affirmed the teachings of the Old Testament, The New Testament, again, Jesus' story told from real perspectives. And then his teachings affirmed by Peter and James and Paul and other guys who came along and just said, man, this is life-changing stuff. ah Thanks for listening today. Hope this has been helpful. Again, it's a question that comes up a lot of times. If we left some gaps in the story, it's because we didn't have much time. In fact, I think we went pretty long today. reach out to us. We'd love to sit down and have a cup of coffee with you and just talk a little more about how Jesus can change your life. And this word that we're talking about is part of how he wants to do that. Click, like, share.
00:34:26
Speaker
Feel free to join us back next week. We'll have some exciting topic. Can't tell you what it is because we usually figure it out about 10 minutes. That's right. Have a great week. Bye.