The reliability of the Bible

Here is another video from the Understanding the Gospel website.

Imagine...

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

John Lennon (1971)

John Lennon invites us to imagine what it would be like if there were no heaven or hell. Let’s do just that.

"That's just...my interpretation!"

I had a great chat yesterday with a man who was very friendly and willing to talk about the gospel and the evidence for it.

The Trinity and the reality of love

I was speaking to a ‘Jehovah’s Witness’ and he told me that from eternity past God had been entirely on His own and was completely happy and content. Now, please think carefully about this. 

The Bible was written by men! Exactly!

A couple of friends and I were speaking to a lady today who took great exception to the notion of hell. When we told her that the Bible clearly declared it and Christ graphically described it she said, "But the Bible was written by men!"

Inspired or conspired?

A couple of months ago an old sceptic said to a colleague and me that the Bible "appears to be united" but when you examine it it falls apart. My experience is precisely the opposite. On a surface reading it appears there are stories disconnected from the overall story, random things thrown in, but when you examine them closely and carefully you see how they all link together in an amazing way that defies human ingenuity. All the stories tell one great story.

Can I trust the Bible?

Here is an article I was asked to write on this subject. Hope you find it helpful, whatever your answer was to the question.

Prove It - Get it

I told you about my new book coming out. It is available to order here and now and it is at a reduced price up until the end of the month. I hope you will get it.

Forthcoming book

Hail! Incarnate deity!

It has been called The Greatest Story Ever Told, and so it is. That God would enter into His creation to save those that had strayed from Him, and suffer for those who had sinned against Him, eclipses every other love story.

The Bible is God's Word - Fact!

I want to draw your attention to a book that is available on kindle for only £2.30.

An asset not a liability

I believe God's way is always the best way, but sometimes it sure doesn't seem like it. I have often thought that the way God revealed Himself in scripture, i.e. various writers over many centuries, recorded in thousands of manuscripts and fragments etc. seems a bit...I dunno...messy. I don't think that way anymore, and I want to tell you why.

Don't speak too soon!

I'm reading through Daniel these mornings and have been quite taken with the structure of the book, (any atheists / unbelievers reading - please stick with this article, it's for you!)

Further correspondence with the atheist

In my last post I showed you a letter I wrote to an atheist I had a conversation with a few weeks ago. He responded by totally ignoring what I said, and instead he sent me a list of "atrocities" and "contradictions" in the Bible. I will go through all that he sent in a subsequent post, but I'm going to let you see what I sent to him in response.

You couldn't make it up

I was speaking to someone last week who mentioned that there were books that the early Christians threw out of the Bible.  It is a common charge - the Christians cherry picked and edited the books that suited their agenda and threw out the rest.  It's a common charge but that doesn't make it a good one...

Making up your mind about changing your mind

Make up your mind, Samuel! Does God repent or not?  In one chapter (1Samuel 15) we read that God tells Samuel He has repented (v11), and then Samuel says that God will not repent (v29), so which is it?

Now before answering the problem directly I think we need to say something about how to proceed with a challenge of this kind.  Any fair-minded person will acknowledge that the writer of 1Samuel was not an idiot, and we can't conceive that the writer wrote verse 29 forgetting that he was contradicting what he wrote in v11.  It is therefore evident that the writer saw no contradiction, and so, if we see a contradiction, it's obvious that we are not getting the intent of the author and we are misunderstanding his meaning.

This statement is false...!

It is symptomatic of the simplistic statements that pass for thoughtful arguments - here it is:

The Bible was written by men, men are imperfect, therefore the Bible is imperfect.

Now what is the problem here?  There are two statements to the argument, followed by the conclusion.  The two statements are undeniably true - the Bible was written by men, and men certainly aren't perfect, but the problem is that the conclusion doesn't follow.  It is not the case that everything that men write or say is untrue or imperfect.  Indeed, if you meet this challenge you can ask the challenger what is wrong with the statement he has made.  Presumably the challenger believes his statement to be true, but if men are imperfect then on the logic of the challenge the statement must be imperfect too!  Or you could respond by asking him what is wrong with the following statement, 2 + 2 = 4.

The challenger may then refine the challenge to say that a collection of 66 books like the Bible is bound to contain some errors.  Firstly, even from a purely human standpoint the challenge is only likely to be true, but not necessarily true.  If someone has knowledge of what they are writing about then they can write without a mistake.  However, the main weakness of the argument is that is assumes what it sets out to prove, that the Bible is not inspired by God.  The mistakes need to be shown, not assumed.