DEBUNKING Every Major “Bible Contradiction” in 26 Minutes

the Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3 some scripture is given by inspiration of God no that's not what it says it doesn't say some scripture it says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and it's profitable for Doctrine for Repro for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work now our statement of faith here it answers in Genesis says this the 66 books of the Bible are the written word of God the Bible is divinely inspired and inherent throughout its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs but how can that be if the Bible's full of contradictions which is what we're told so often our culture tells us there's all sorts of contradictions in the Bible so how do we make sense of this well first of all we have to Define what a contradiction is it is a proposition a statement or a phrase that asserts or implies both the truth and falsity of something in other words in order to show that something is a contradiction in the Bible they have to show that the Bible says something is both true and false at the same time and in the same sense for example if the Bible says David is the king of Israel and the Bible says Solomon is the king of Israel that's not a contradiction they were Kings at different times so there's no problem now if the Bible said Jesus is the son of God and the Bible said Jesus is not and never has been and never will be the Son of God that would be a contradiction now it never says this of course but it does affirm that Jesus is the son of God so first of all let's look at it what a contradiction is not so we're going to go through a few points that do not qualify as contradictions and yet these are often raised first of all a difficulty just because something at first glance you may not be able to make sense of it it doesn't make it a contradiction for example in John chap 10 Jesus said I am the Good Shepherd the good Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep and then in Romans we read for when we were still without Strength In Due Time Christ died for the ungodly so how do we answer that did Christ die for the sheep or did he die for the ungodly well there's a couple different ways you can answer that some people would say he he died for both some people would say that the Sheep were ungodly when he died for them either way that's not a contradiction at all actually they fit together just fine a contradiction is not an apparent disagreement this is what happens when at first glance things just don't seem to fit together at all and then as you put them together you realize yeah they do actually fit quite well for example when the went to that tomb on that first Easter morning how many Angels were there Matthew says there was one Angel at the tomb Mark says there was one young man Luke says there were two men and John says that there were two angels is that a problem well first of all as far as the numbers go in order to have two you also have to have one first so that's not a problem maybe Matthew and Mark just focus on the one who is speaking and by the way John is referring to a different time later in the morning when Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb that's when she sees the two angels there so that's at a different time period than when the other women saw the angels that are talked about in Mark and Luke but is it okay to call Angels men well the Bible does that several times because when they appear often they appear in the form of men for example 921 the the man Gabriel came and spoke to Daniel and in Genesis 18 and 19 it talks about three men who came to Abraham well we know one of those is the Lord himself the other two are the angels that went onto this the town of Sodom to get lot out of there a contradiction is not a verbal disagreement this is what's also known as equivocation when you're using one word in two different senses for example Thou shalt not covet part of the ten commands Commandments but then in the New Testament we read but covet earnestly the best gifts how do we make sense of that because in the Ten Commandments is telling us you shall not covet your neighbor's wife your neighbor's belongings the things that don't belong to you and should not belong to you but in the New Testament what we read here is Paul is saying to covet earnestly the the the gifts that are going to build up and edify the church the things that we should want to happen that's what we should desire so again no contradiction here and number four contradiction is not just merely the result of somebody's bias for example in Isaiah 7 a passage that most of us will be familiar with at Christmas time we hear this the Virgin shall conceive and bear a son now for the skeptic we've got two problems here because one virgins don't conceive and give birth and two this is talking about prophecy something's going to happen in the future from the time of Isaiah and they'll say well that's impossible that can't happen so we got a contradiction well that's not a contradiction it's just something that doesn't fit well with your worldview but then we read the Fulfillment in Matthew chapter 1 then Joseph took to him his wife talking about Mary and did not know her till she brought forth her firstborn son and so there there we have the Fulfillment of that passage so why does God allow difficulties why does he allow these because they disprove collusion you know the critics often times will talk about the the four gospels and they'll say well you know some of the biblical writers some of these early Apostles they were just kind of getting together they were making up this story about certain things about the resurrection and so they got together and said let's make sure we get our story straight well let me ask you this question if you were on a jury and you heard four Witnesses come to the stand and all four of them said the exact same thing in the same order using the same terminology do you think you trust cust do you think you'd have a really good reason to be skeptical you'd have a really good reason to be skeptical you'd assume that somebody coached them on what to say rather than they're just telling you what they saw and that's what we see in the gospels is that you have four accounts of the same events and often times they're told from different perspectives or they're highlighting different elements of what was going on and when you put them together you see that they fit together just fine number two they force us to study God wants us to dive into his word and dig deeper than just a surface level reading and so sometimes with the these alleged contradictions we have to dig in a little bit to see how we can make sense of them number three they are the product of brevity and summary for example the book of Acts covers about 30 years of early church history and it's in 28 chapters do you think we're given every detail in the book of Acts of what was going on during that time and number four they revealed that God's ways are higher than man's ways as we'll see uh by the end of this presentation there is just there going to be a few things we just don't understand and that's okay so here's what I want to do I want to go through 12 different mistakes that the critics make when they claim that there's a contradiction and at the end I want to give you some principles for how to deal with these supposed contradictions okay number one presuming that the Bible is guilty until proven innocent now when you pick up a book a non-fiction book you generally give the author the benefit of the doubt you assume that they're going to be telling you the truth unless you have a really good reason beforehand to to doubt the author and yet the skeptic does that with all other books but when it comes to the Bible they presume it is guilty until proven innocent they treat it exactly opposite of how they would treat just about everything else for example in Exodus 13 we read about this people group called the Hittites and for a long time Skeptics looked at this and they kind of mocked and said you know the biblical writers just they just made this up there's no such thing as that people called the Hittites and they had to stop saying that in 1906 because we found evidence of the hittite culture not just a little bit we found the hittite National Library which is in modern day turkey with over 30,000 clay tablets and we found all sorts of evidence of their civilization we know where the Empire extended to we see some of their their buildings the remains of those number two confusing our fallible interpretations with God's infallible Revelation for example in the Book of Revelation chapter 7 after these things I saw four Angels standing at the Four Corners of the earth did the Bible just teach that the Earth was flat with four corners like it's a square or a rectangle is that what the the Bible's teaching here no not at all the four corners of the earth just refers to the four cardinal directions North South East and West is not saying anything about the shape of the Earth Here number three failing to understand the context of a passage and this is really the big one did you know the Bible says there is no God in fact it says it twice says in Psalm 14:53 look it up there is no God oh what's the rest of the verse the fool has said in his heart there is no God and often times when people point out try to point out these contradictions they'll pull something out of its context and they'll try to say see the Bible says that you're supposed to be doing this and here it says you're but they're not looking in context of what's going on number four forgetting that the Bible is a human book with human characteristics as well as a Divine book with Divine characteristics the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of scripture and he used human beings to write that he allowed them to have their own perspectives and their own Styles their own vocabulary their own emotions if you don't think there's emotion in scripture you need to go read the Psalms especially the imprecatory Psalms look at Psalm 69 pour out your indignation upon them and let your wrathful anger take hold of them let your let their Dwelling Place be desolate let no one live in their tents that sounds pretty harsh doesn't it there's raw emotion being portrayed in scripture and uh the authors had different reasons for why they wrote you had people from different backgrounds you had Kings and you had priests and you had farmers and you had fishermen you had people from all sorts of different backgrounds writing number five assuming that a partial report is a false report what did the sign on the cross above Jesus's head what did that say and Matthew says this is Jesus the king of the Jews Mark says the king of the Jews Luke says this is the king of the Jews John says Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews pretty much the same thing right but but people are saying well wait a minute this is inspired by the Holy Spirit how come it doesn't why isn't it identical well remember it's written in three languages and you could be getting a translation in some of those or it could just be that they're summarizing what was said there's no contradiction at all here number six demanding that citations always be exact quotations now if you go through High School here in America or or in college if you're writing a paper and you're citing somebody if you're quoting them you need to document it you need to you need to make sure that you quote it word for word so we have that standard but you know that wasn't necessarily the standard at the time when the scriptures were written especially when the New Testament writers were quoting the Old Testament it was perfectly fine for them to paraphrase just as it would be for me to paraphrase a verse while I'm up here as long as I'm not changing the meaning of the verse and we have to remember sometimes the way that we got scripture in into our language so we can translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew and from the Aramaic sections and then that goes right into English uh sometimes we use the Greek septu agent to help us understand certain things but then When We're translating from the New Testament we have to understand the New Testament was originally written in Greek and sometimes they were quoting in Aramaic quoting things from the Old Testament so there's already a translation and then another translation into Greek and then we translate that into English so sometimes there's going to be a little bit of difference in the wording that's not a contradiction that's just the nature of how things are translated but that doesn't mean that you can't trust what you're reading you know the skeptical say well the Bible's been translated so many times and it's been copied so many times there's there's got to be errors but the thing is we can go right back to the original Hebrew the early copies that we have of that and we can go back to the early copies of the Greek so it's not as if it's being translated into one language then another then another then another and then we finally translate that into English that's the impression some people get when they hear this number seven assuming that Divergent accounts are false reports so just because they don't share all the same details that doesn't mean that they are false for example with Judas now there's two issues here that we're going to address it says after he betrays Jesus it says Judas threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself but then we read in the book of Acts now Judas purchased a field with the wages of iniquity and falling headlong he burst open in the midle middle and all his ENT Trails gushed out it's a little bit disgusting I know but um but what happened with the money did he throw the money down or did he use it to buy a field is that a contradiction no because the Bible tells us he throws the money down in the temple but because it's blood money they can't put that in the temple treasury instead they use that to buy The Potter's field and since it was really was judas's money you could say that he purchased that field which by the way is also a fulfillment of Prophecy in the book of Zechariah about the The Potter's field but then what about this how did he die Matthew says that he went and hanged himself and then we read in in Acts one that he fell headlong and then burst open but notice acts does not tell us that that is how he died it's just telling us what happened to him so Judas goes and hangs himself and let's say that you know once somebody dies the bacteria and other things in the stomach will start to break down different things producing different gases of the body will bloat and sorry this will get a little bit disgusting but what happens if they come and cut him down a couple days later or the branch breaks or the knot knot slips or something like that and he falls and hits the ground that then you can have exactly what happens in Acts one there again no contradiction here these things fit together just fine number eight presuming the Bible approves of all it records this is another thing the critic does quite a bit well the Bible says this yeah but the Bible doesn't necessarily say that was a good thing for example the serpent said to the woman you will not surely die what do we call that we call that a lie because God said if you eat from this you will surely die and then the serpent says no you won't okay that's a lie the Bible never says hey good job serpent okay in fact it's telling us this isn't this isn't good number nine forgetting that the Bible uses non-technical everyday language now this might be the number one alleged contradiction that you'll find out there on the internet maybe it's number two we'll look at the ne the other very popular one in just a little bit when Joshua is leading the Israelites in this battle against the amorites it says this is where he C he has the sun stand still so sun stands still over gibon and moon in the valley of aelon so the sun Stood Still and the moon stopped till the people had Revenge upon their enemies and people will look at that and say see the Bible is teaching that the Earth is at the center and that the Sun Goes Around It it doesn't say that at all and if that's what that's teaching if if you're going to insist that the Bible is teaching at that point well then we better fire every single meteorologist in the world today because guess what they refer to sunrise and sunset now we know the sun doesn't technically rise and it doesn't technically set it's the Earth's rotation that causes it to look like that from our point of view it's using phenomenal logical language we don't know exactly what God did in order to cause the sun to stand still that he stop the rotation of the of the earth he could have done that people say well that would cause all sorts of problems with gravity you think the God who made everything couldn't handle that did he refract light differently we're not sure exactly how he did it but a God who is all powerful this is not a problem for number 10 assuming that round numbers are false is it okay for the Bible to use round numbers in certain situations of course uh so here's one it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000 I should have said here's a verse to look at I shouldn't have said this is a round number because I don't know if it is or not but uh it says when the people arose early in the morning there were the corpses all dead does that have to be 185,000 people exactly I mean if it was 185,000 12 is that still an accurate statement yeah it's perfectly fine for them to use round numbers in that case number 11 neglecting to note that the Bible uses different literary devices it uses figurative language okay we use figurative language all the time I just did when I said all the time we don't really use it all the time but you know what I meant by that how about this one Paul say the gospel which you heard which was preached to every creature under Heaven of which I Paul became a minister was the Gospel really preached to every creature under heaven like the lobsters and in the water were they hearing the gospel that's not what he's referring to he's just talking about how the gospel went out number 12 forgetting that only the original text not every copy is without error and I should add and the copies in so far as they accurately reflect the original text and this is one that a lot of people will will struggle with but we need to be careful with this is this one because there are places in our modern Bibles that we can look at and in English Bibles that we've got we can find little places where certain things don't line up and part of that is because of the process of the the different manuscripts that we've got and some of the copies certain errors would creep in from time to time but we have so many thousands of manuscripts that we can go back and compare and contrast and figure out where those were where they crept in and we can figure out in almost every single case what the original should have been let's take a look at this one in 1 Samuel 13 in the king James the new King James it says Saul reigned one year and when he had reigned two years but now look at the same verse in The New American Standard some other BBL that'll say something like this Saul was 30 years old when he began to Reign and he reigned 42 years over Israel now if you have an older version of the ESV before 2007 before their update there or if you have like the new revised Standard Version you'll read something like this Saul was dot dot dot years old and he began to Reign and he reigned dot dot dot in two years over Israel what's going on here well in the Hebrew manuscript that we have the bottom one actually pretty accurately reflects what's there because we don't those two numbers have dropped out and so translators are trying to estimate what was being said there was it the one and the two or was it the 30 and the 42 do we know with Beyond any shadow of a doubt what the original said there I'm not confident to say that I do but that's okay I'm confident that when it was originally written it was accurate it was without error and does this affect any sort of Christian doctrine at all whether Saul was one year and then two years or 30 years and 42 years does it have any bearing on the gospel message does it have any bearing on Christian doctrine no so let's move on to some principles for dealing with these supposed contradictions first have complete confidence in the author as I mentioned before the holy spirit is the one who inspired the writing of scripture since God is the author then it must be true Proverbs 35 says to trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding Psalm 188 said it's better to put trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man that doesn't mean to just check your brain at the door you know some people think that's what Christians do is that we're opposed to thinking that that when people ches we just well I don't care about any of that I just believe and and you know what there are some Christians who that is how they operate have no doubt that that Christ died for them that he rose and they're they're just going to follow him they're going to believe and God bless them for that there are other people who you know what the Bible tells us to be ready to give a defense to give an answer to anyone who asks us the reason for the hope that is within us and we follow that and we say you know what we need to be ready to defend this uh some people say well just believe in Jesus and again this is not to diminish that belief in Jesus at all absolutely that is primary that is first and foremost we need to be believing in Christ but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be ready to defend the faith and somebody said to me one time well if you prove everything then why would you have faith well I think they have a very poor misunderstanding of what faith is and how the Bible defines it you know how the Bible defines Faith Hebrews 11:1 now Faith is a substance of things hoped for the what's that word right there the evidence of Things Not Seen how can the word evidence be part of the definition of faith if if faith is just supposed to be this blind leap in the dark where we hope we get the right one or people will say today well faith is when you believe something without any evidence that is not what faith means faith is believing in the one believing in God and we have really good reasons for believing in him because he's shown himself to be faithful and true Time and Time and Time and Time Again number two realize you won't understand every part of the Bible when we take the infinite mind of God and we bring that down to the finite mind of man it's going to sometimes lead to difficulties in fact God even tells Isa through Isaiah says for my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are your ways my ways says the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the Earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts again there's going to be some things that we just don't fully comprehend and God enjoys hiding some things from us think about it if we could understand everything who would we be we'd be God and we're not number three remember that many people want to destroy your confidence in God's word you know what it seems like there are a lot of people out there and it seems like especially professors in colleges think that this is their job and why they're here on Earth is to destroy the faith of young people but they're not the only ones there are a lot of people who want to destroy your confidence in God's word so if somebody is challenging you on an issue related to scripture and they just keep attacking or they keep asking these questions find out their motives for why they're bringing them up you know if somebody comes up to you and they they they have a sincere question you know I really don't understand this can you help me explain well you know by all means take the time to explain it to them but if you have somebody who's just attacking attacking attacking and you answer and it doesn't they it's like they don't even care about the answer they just jump right to the next one you you answer they don't even care about they jump to the next one just ask them is there anything I can show you to demonstrate that the Bible is true and a lot of times I'll just be right for and say no okay well you're wasting your time with somebody like that because they don't want to believe it's right it's a heart issue for them at that point it's not anything to do with that they have mental objections to it they don't want to believe so they're looking for reasons to not believe number four something that is hard to accept is not necessarily untrue this is a difficult one for people in our culture today there are so many people who think that truth is determined by how you feel about something we've taught generations of people today to believe that hey if it makes you feel good well then it must be right if it makes you feel bad well then it can't be true okay but that that's nonsensical you know we know that that murders occur in our world and those things make me feel bad they make the family members of somebody who's they make them feel bad it doesn't change the fact that it happened when you're coming up against things that are difficult in scripture you know when when you can't quite make sense of something you know what there's a great thing we can we can do we can compare scripture with scripture okay for example if you're trying to find out more about you know our future Resurrection you know the bodily resurrection that that will endure go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 you have 58 verses talking about Christ's Resurrection the evidence for that the importance of that and then the last half of the chapter is all about our future bodily Resurrection so compare any passage with that okay you don't take one obscure verse one verse where maybe it's just thrown in a little tiny bit and then try to use that to reinterpret everything else use the very clear passages to make sense of those that maybe aren't quite clear and also just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean that one isn't available number five go on the offensive but don't be offensive what do I mean by that well you don't always have to be the one to try to prove your difficulties you can try to disprove your beliefs try to disprove the resurrection you won't be able to and actually what that will do that'll strengthen your faith you don't always have to try to defend your faith let somebody else prove their assertions for example if if somebody you know who is a molecules demand evolutionist if they're challenging you on what scripture says just say this can you give me one example where a mutation is Gen added new genetic information you know that question was asked of Richard Dawkins one time on camera several years ago you know what what his answer was this is the like one of the leading atheistic evolutionary biologists you think if anybody got an answer he would right here was his response there he is giving the right answer right now can you hear it that is the right answer there's no example 13 seconds of dead air and then he rambl on about something that had nothing to do with the question they can't give an answer because there isn't one how about the agnostic the person who says well we can't really know enough about reality to know anything for sure about reality or we can't really know anything certain about God to to to say something you know certain about God well you've just told us something about reality when you say that it's unknowable you've told us something that you know about it same thing with God when you say that you can't know anything about God you're just telling us something about God so the whole system collapses on itself how about the relativist the person who says well there's no such thing as truth capital T we all just have our own truth or they'll say is everything everything is relative well that statement everything is relative is that absolute or is it relative cuz if it's absolute it's false if it's relative we don't have to listen to you how about the people who say well you have to be so tolerant and stop being in inant well why are you being intolerant of my intolerance I've actually had somebody say well it's okay for me to be intolerant of intolerant people well then they have to be intolerant of themselves because they're being intolerant how about this one this is like the favorite verse of people today you know Matthew 7:1 judge not lest you be judged I know the Bible says not says that well here's what I ask why are you judging me you as soon as somebody says that you judge notless you they're judging you they're saying what you said was wrong so just turn around and why is it okay for you to be judgmental of my judgmentalism they can't live it consistently now we are not supposed to be self righteous in our Judgment of course not and if you continue reading on in Matthew 7 it actually talks about how we're supposed to be making judgments keep this in mind as you go through these things 2 Corinthians 10 says for the weapons of our Warfare are not carnal they're not fleshly but Mighty in God for pulling down strongholds casting down what's that word people no individuals no casting down arguments and every High thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God bringing every thought into captivity to The Obedience of Christ we don't attack the people but we do go after those ideas that are so dangers that are leading people away from the truth and leading them to a christless eternity the people they're worth rescuing they're people who are made in the image of God and that Christ died for on the cross and we're commanded to love them number six the difficulties are minimal compared to the evidences that are consistent with scripture that many evidences that we have of biblical inherency will help you in with some of the difficulties that you might struggle to reconcile in fact there might be time to maybe you never are able to make sense of it but that's okay focus on the things that you can be confident of focus on the things that you are sure of uh for example with with Bible prophecy there's no other holy book there's no other book out there that has detailed prophecy listed hundreds of years in advance and then these things come to pass the Bible does that so much in fact over a quarter of the Bible was prophetic when at the time that it was written don't follow the Skeptics in spending more time on these difficulties than on the truths remember the Bible is innocent until proven guilty number seven difficulties rapidly disappear through careful and prayerful study the more we pray and truly study the fewer difficulties we will find James tells tells us this now be careful with this this is what I call a dangerous prayer James 1 says if anyone lacks wisdom let him ask of God who gives to all liberally and without reproach and it will be given to him I said that that's a dangerous prayer why because a lot of times God doesn't just zap you with the wisdom like he did with Solomon a lot of times he puts you in situations where you acquire that wisdom and those can be difficult circumstances but they are worth it he does want us to be wise our difficulties are often caused by our biased opinions rather than what scripture says by the way if somebody is challenging you on on something if you don't know the answer as I talked about a little bit ago sometimes we don't that's okay learn how to say a few really difficult words for a lot of people three very easy words to say but very difficult for a lot of people to admit it I don't know it's okay don't Bluff your way through it don't give them a bad answer just because you want to appear like you have an answer it's best to just say you know that's a great question I don't know the answer but let me go try to find it for you in fact why don't we go together and try to find it because I bet there's one out there wouldn't that be a better approach than what a lot of people do we need to learn to start our thinking on the Bible otherwise it will lead us to some of these issues uh for example maybe you've heard this from some people in our ministry before where was or is the Garden of Eden you know a lot of people will try to answer that question they say well I know it talks about the Tigers in the Euphrates rivers so it must be at that point in the world so somewhere in the Middle East between the Tigers and Euphrates actually what the Bible describes in Genesis chapter 2 is that there was one river that went up out of the land and it split and became Four Rivers the Tigers and Euphrates we know today are two different rivers that meet in form one and then enter Then exit into the empty out into the Persian Gulf Two Rivers becoming one is not the same as one becoming four remember this is describing the world before the the worldwide flood which would have completely changed the Earth so you can't just look at the world today and say oh that's where it was before the flood it doesn't work that way so we don't know where the Garden of Eden is or was it's buried underneath probably hundreds of feet of sediment all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for Doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete thoroughly equipped for every good work God's word is true from the very beginning to the very end and we can stand on it we can trust it because it comes from the one who cannot lie who has always been and he's the one who told us what he did at the beginning and he also told us what happened uh during the time of Christ here and when Christ came and became one of us and lived a sinless life and went to the cross and died in our place and then 3 days later God raised him from the dead he told us about those events so that we would know how to be forgiven that we would know what is required of us and how we're supposed to live our lives in a way that would glorify and honor him

Channel: Answers in Genesis

Views: 177,579

Keywords: answers in genesis, bible con, bible contradictions, contradictions in the bible, evidence for the bible, bible contradictions explained, bible contradictions debunked, bible contradictions refuted, dr. tim chaffey

Id: AsRti0nQqmg

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024