This Video DEMOLISHES So-Called “Bible Contradictions”

so let's get going on this issue the bible tells us in second 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 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 now uh our statement of faith here at answers in genesis has a statement that says this the 66 books of the bible are the written word of god the bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs and this is what you'll find in most conservative churches around the world that the bible and its original writings is without error then it's ins it's fully inspired by the holy spirit and if that's the case then we know that since god cannot air he cannot make mistakes he cannot lie and then if the bible is his word then the bible cannot be an error 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 so what do we 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 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 what a contradiction is not so we're going to go through a few points that that do not qualify as contradictions 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 so i'm going to start you off with an easy one today let's see how we do for example in john chapter 10 jesus said i am the good shepherd the 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 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 but i told you that would be an easier one let's try another one that we hear at answers in genesis quite a bit because we deal with the issue of creation and evolution and so this one comes from genesis chapter one god said let there be light and there was light so the evening in the morning were the first day then god made two great lights so the evening and morning were the fourth day and so people look at that and say well that doesn't make any sense how can he make the sun on day four when he already made it on day one well he didn't make it on day one he made light on day one he made the sun on day four there's no contradiction here and people say what was that light on day one the bible doesn't tell us it may have been god himself providing the light like he seemed like he's going to be doing in revelation 21 and 22 it talks about uh may have been a temporary light source the bible just doesn't give us the answer to that but there's no contradiction here 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 women 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 angel that are talked about in matthew 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 9 21 that the man gabriel came and spoke to daniel and in genesis chapter 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 were the angels that went on to this the town of sodom to get lot out of there so yeah the bible refers to angels as men several times because of the way that they appear a contradiction is not a verbal disagreement this is uh 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 commandments but then in the new testament we read but covet earnestly the best gifts how do we make sense of that well because in the ten commandments it's telling us you shall not covet your your neighbor's wife your neighbor's belongings the things that don't belong to you and should not belong to you those things you don't you should not be desiring and coveting but in the new testament what we read here is paul saying to covet earnestly the the gifts that are going to build up and edify the church the things that we should want to happen things that are going to be beneficial to the church 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 if god exists and he's the one who created everything and he knows the future there's no contradiction here and of course god does exist and he knows the future as well as he knows the past as well as he knows the present but then we read the fulfillment in matthew chapter one then joseph took to him his wife talking about mary and did not know her until she brought forth her firstborn son and so there we have the fulfillment of that passage so why does god allow difficulties now admittedly the first several that we looked at were pretty simple we'll get to some in a little bit here that that'll be a little more complex and i'll walk you through some of those but first of all why do they allow these because they disprove collusion you know the critics oftentimes they'll talk about the the four gospels and they'll say well you know some of the 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 them or 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 oftentimes 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 so they these difficulties disprove collusion the authors weren't getting together and said let's make sure we are getting our stories straight on this they're just telling you what they experienced what they saw or in some cases what they heard from others 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 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 no so sometimes we read just a little part of a chapter while paul is in corinth or when he's in ephesus or when he's in a different place and then when you read those epistles that paul wrote to those places sometimes people look at it and say well i don't know that that really happened because he doesn't mention it here that's not a contradiction it's just that you're getting a short summary of what's going on there it's not giving us all the details and number four they reveal that god's ways are higher than man's ways as we'll see by the end of this presentation there's just they're 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 12 reasons why they make those mistakes 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 and 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 okay this is called aristotle's dictum you give the author the benefit of the doubt 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 chapter 13 we read about this this people group called the hit types and they're mentioned throughout the early chapters of the bible 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 the people called the hittites and they had to stop saying that 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 and so the critics had egg on their face because they assumed that the bible was guilty rather than saying okay whoever writing this is telling us what really happened they weren't giving it the benefit of the doubt so that's one reason the critic makes mistakes and this happens frequently when it comes to archaeology the critics will say things like well david never even existed and then we find evidence that david existed we find the tel dan stella okay and this sort of thing happens in in archaeology quite a bit rather than assuming that the bible's telling us the truth they assume that it's guilty number two confusing our fallible interpretations with god's infallible revelation for example in the book of revelation chapter seven 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 bible's teaching here no not at all the the four corners of the earth just refers to the four cardinal directions north south east and west it's not saying anything about the shape of the earth here uh the the bible consistently teaches a round earth for example in isaiah 40 22 it talks about god sitting about the circle of the earth now that doesn't have to mean sphere it can just mean circle and in luke 17 jesus seems to indicate that he realized the earth was around of course jesus is the one who made the world so he would know that the earth is around but what does he do well in this one passage he's talking about an event that was future from his point in history and some people think it's referring to the rapture some people think it's referring to the second coming that's not my point here is not to get into it it's referring to one moment in time and it refer he talks about how two people will be will be grinding at the middle one taking the other left two people in a field one taking the other left two people in bed one taking the other left he actually describes three different periods of the day and one woman having one moment happening to all of them at the same time one event the only way that happens is if you have a round earth and you have the time zones a flat earth doesn't allow any of that so the bible doesn't teach this idea of a flat earth 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 say the fool has said in his heart there is no god and oftentimes 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 know but they're not looking in context of what's going on perhaps you heard about the guy who was he was extremely depressed and he thought about ending his own life but before he went through with it he thought you know my neighbor i know that that guy's always got joy and i know he's a christian maybe it maybe it's something with that bible that he's got so he pulls off this dusty bible off the shelf and he's like you know what god if you're real just show it to me and so he opens it up and points to a verse and says judas went and hanged himself i thought well that's not really what i wanted uh maybe he's best two out of three he opened it up again jesus said go and do likewise okay maybe best three out of five jesus said what you must do do quickly okay so if you pull things out of context you can make it say that the bible wants you to jesus is telling you to go and kill yourself but of course that's not at all what is being taught there but that's an extreme example to show the absurdity of yanking things out of their context and yet this is what happens regularly when people claim that there are contradictions number four forgetting that the bible is a human book with human characteristics as well as a divine book with divine characteristics okay the 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 well not compared to psalm 137 oh daughter of babylon who are to be destroyed happy the one who repays you as you have served us happy the one who takes and dashes your little one against the rock that's very harsh the psalmist is crying out for justice because of what babylon had done to them and saying god take vengeance on them for what they've done there's raw emotion being portrayed in scripture and 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 so it is both a human book and a divine book we need to remember that both of those things play a part 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 here we just have an uh illustration from our exhibit christ cross consummation exhibit at the creation museum and in fact if you want more information on this exhibit tune in tomorrow night at seven o'clock thursday at seven o'clock and i'll be doing a facebook live with ken ham as we go through and we talk about this particular sign on the crucifixion and also the resurrection uh we'll focus on those two events in that exhibit but what did the sign on above jesus's head say on the cross well in 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 so maybe what matthew's telling you is here's the the hebrew or the aramaic translation and um here's here's what it said and then one of them just is translating the latin and one of them is translating the greek or it could just be that they're summarizing what was said or what if we were to set it up this way the same wording 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 and john says jesus of nazareth the king of the jews now can we guess what the sign might have said this is jesus of nazareth the king of the jews and each of the gospels just gives you a little bit of a partial report on what was said there 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 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 it's okay to tell you this is what this verse says and if i paraphrase it that's fine but take a look at john chapter 19 and again another scripture says they shall look on him whom they pierced now that is quoting from zechariah 12 10 but notice the difference john changes the pronoun then they will look on me whom they pierced why did he change the pronoun and is that okay well the reason he changes it because in zechariah it is god speaking about what the people are going to do they're going to look on him whom they pierced and in john john is standing by the foot of the cross and he's looking up at him whom they pierced he's recognizing the fulfillment of that that and he was seeing jesus on the cross and we have to remember sometimes the way that we got scripture 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 sometimes we use the greek septuagint to help us understand certain things but then when we're translating from the new testament we have to understand that 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 and it even there are some even more complicated situations in that but that'll give you a little idea as to why sometimes the wording is slightly different but 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 skeptic will 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 uh the 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 than another than 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 middle and all his entrails 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 it's 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 1 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 judith goes and hangs himself and let's say that you know once once somebody dies the bacteria and other things in the stomach will start to break down different things producing different gases 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 not not slips or something like that and he falls and hits the ground then you can have exactly what happens in acts one there again no contradiction here these things fit together just fine but just because you're given different details doesn't mean that they're false 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 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 servant 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 uh how about this one solomon had 700 wives princesses and 300 concubines does the bible ever say good job solomon no he's already violating this command that's in the in the pentateuch where moses talks about when they go into the land and you have a king that you're he's not supposed to multiply wives to himself well i'm pretty sure solomon's breaking that but if you continue reading that passage it tells us some of the many problems that this created and how it led solomon to the worship of a whole bunch of pagan gods the bible's not saying great job solomon it's just telling us what happened it's faithfully reporting what took place it's not necessarily approving of everything that it records and a big place where this happens is in the book of job so a lot of times people will quote the book of job and you've got to be really careful with that because more than half of the book is spoken by people that god says weren't saying the truth some of job's friends okay so you got to be careful with that 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 uh maybe it's number two we'll look at the the other very popular one in just a little bit but when joshua is leading the israelites in this battle against the amorites it says this is where he kept he has the sun stand still so sun stands still over gibeon and moon in the valley of ai jalan so the sun stood still and the moon stopped until 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 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 and we know the sun doesn't technically rise and it doesn't technically set it's the earth rotation that causes it to look like that from our point of view it's using phenomenological language from the from our point of view this is what it looks like so we don't know exactly what god did in order to cause you know the earth the the sun to stand still did 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 it does not it does not imply geocentricism and by the way nasa did not find this missing day okay so if you ever get this email forwarded to you or if you're ever tempted to share this on facebook we see this come up every couple of years where nasa found joshua was missing they know they didn't and they can't okay the story is something like you know nasa was trying to figure out where the location of certain planets and things were in the sky and just certain things weren't lining up quite right they were off by a little bit by about by about half a day by about 12 hours or so and then one of the guys remembered oh yeah i remember from sunday school this whole thing about god stopping the sun and and so they plugged in the parameters for that and it's like oh we're still off by a little bit maybe about 15-20 minutes and then the guy thought back and he's like oh remember in hezekiah's time the shadow goes backwards so they plug it in for that now everything worked out just right no that didn't happen and it can't happen they'd have to know exactly where everything was in place before that time before these events occurred okay so we don't need to invent stories to try to prove the bible is true the bible is god's word it is true from beginning to end and we don't need to try to find these these stories that might make us feel good to say see now we got proof well this didn't even happen so the worst thing is to use a made-up story number 10 assuming that round numbers are false is it okay for the bible to use round numbers in certain situations of course 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 thousand i should have said here's uh 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 it says when the people arose early in the morning there were the corpses all dead i love the way the new king james puts that of course the corpses were all dead it's just a way of emphasizing yeah they were dead but does that have to be 185 000 people exactly i mean if it was 185 and 12 is that still an accurate statement yeah it's perfectly fine for them to use round numbers in that case and this brings up what is the other really popular alleged contradiction that you'll find out there and this has to do with what solomon made for the temple it's this large bronze sea it's like a giant bowl and it says it's ten cubits from one brim to the other it was completely round it's height with five cubits and a line of 30 cubits measured at circumference now those of you who have taken geometry might have might have recognized the issue here because if it's 10 cubits from one brim to the other in order to figure out the circumference well you multiply that by pi so the circumference the line measuring at circumference should have been around 31.4 cubits not 30. and people say well that's a contradiction it also tells us in both of these passages that it was a hand breadth thick which is four inches so here's what we're talking about this this molten sea that they built right by the temple and um thanks to the magic of microsoft paint we're going to take a look at this for a minute it could be that they're just using round numbers and this is the way that a lot of apologists refer to it that's perfectly acceptable maybe they're just giving it's about 30 cubits around rather than saying it was 31.4 okay they're not demanding precision in that case necessarily but what if they were being a little more precise so if you use an 18 inch qubit and it's 10 cubits from one side to the other that's 180 inches but remember to subtract 4 from both sides because that's how thick it is that would give you an interior measurement of 172 inches and then when you divide that by 18 for the number of inches within a cubit and multiply that by pi you get 30.004 cubits it could be that the bible is being very precise here and maybe it's giving you the interior measurement so you can know the volume of it and giving you the exterior so you know how big it is so if you have an opening you need to put it through or maybe it's just using a round number either way it's not a contradiction 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 says 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 in 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 okay he's using hyperbole here it's an exaggeration for the point of emphasis jesus says if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother his wife and children brothers and sisters yes in his own life also he cannot be my disciple does jesus really want us to hate our family members no of course not we're commanded to love them so why would he say this well first of all we have to understand that the word hate does not necessarily mean the opposite of love and when it's used oftentimes in scripture it's referring to love less than and that's what jesus is referring to that our love for him needs to be so great that by comparison we love others less than him how about this one from from peter on the day of pentecost knowing that god had sworn with an oath apparently he got this one from the department of redundancy department because when you swear something you're making an oath if you make an oath you're swearing something and we would look at that and say well that's that's poor grammar you don't you don't need to be redundant well they don't have that that same standard and so what you're getting here is a point of emphasis in genesis chapter four even in a passage that is historical narrative you still get figures of speech and they're really easy to pick up here's when god is speaking to cain after cain had killed his brother abel what have you done the voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground was abel's blood really crying out like it did have a mouth and was it screaming and or was it shedding tears no of course not okay it's there as a testimony what cain had done it's evidence that he had murdered abel so now you are cursed from the earth which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood did the earth really just open up a mouth and swallow no of course not okay these are figures of speech we recognize what they mean and yet we can still look at this and say yeah this is historical narrative and there are figures of speech within it 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 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 especially with the new testament now with the old testament and in the book of first samuel things get a little more difficult because we just don't have that much much textual evidence for it but let's take a look at this one in first 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 bible 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 now since 2007 with the esv and they updated their lines up now with what the king james and new king james says the one in the two years so here's my question 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 that have any bearing on the gospel message does that have any bearing on christian doctrine no you see what i'm referring to is what's known as textual criticism when you're you're looking at all the different manuscripts that we have and there there are legitimate pursuits within that realm of what's called textual criticism when you're comparing these manuscripts and you're trying to figure out what the original said that that's perfectly legitimate but then there are other areas within textual criticism what's called negative higher criticism which is very problematic these are people who come at it from a very anti-supernatural approach from an evolutionary approach they assume the bible is guilty until proven innocent they pull out all the supernatural elements and say those weren't originally parted of the bible those things were added they were embellishments that's problematic but as far as comparing and contrasting the manuscripts we have that that's perfectly legitimate do we have 100 certainty of every single text well as i showed you in first samuel 13 um i don't i don't think that we do have 100 certainty of every single one in our version today but i have complete confidence that was accurate when it was originally written and none of these things have any bearing on our doctrine and here's the point we know where those variants are and we know that they don't influence these key issues 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 3 5 says the trust in the lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding psalm 118 said is better to put confidence in or 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 that we're opposed to thinking that that when people challenge us we just well i don't care about any of that i just believe and you know what there are some christians who that's that is how they operate it doesn't matter what challenges there are to their faith they they have no doubt that that christ died for them that he rose and they're they're just going to follow them 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 we need to be ready to defend this we need to be ready to defend that hope that is within us 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 um 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 the 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 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 if you want a great definition of faith or a great example of faith continue on in hebrews chapter 11 with abraham remember when god tells abraham take your son isaac and go out to this place and sacrifice him and abraham in genesis 22 says he's going to do it and he gets ready to it and god god stops him of course this is also a picture of what god himself would do he would be the one who would sacrifice his own son for us but abraham was willing to do it why it tells us in hebrews 11 that he reasoned that even if he killed isaac that god would have to bring him back from the dead because god said through isaac all of these promises are going to come to pass so abraham thought through it and he knew that god had to make good on his word that's faith it's not just this blind leap in the dark then kenneth hagin wrongly said this one time he said we cannot know god through our human knowledge through our mind god has only revealed a man through his spirit we don't understand the bible with our mind it is spiritually understood now there is an element in there depending on how you define certain terms we do need the holy spirit's guidance and illumination as we are reading his word to properly understand things but jesus also said the love the lord your god with all your heart with all your strength with all your soul with all your what's that other word mind okay he's given us a brain he's given us the ability to think and to reason to to to think deeply about these things and he wants us to use it we're supposed to love him with all our mind so this that statement just is not accurate 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 gonna sometimes lead to difficulties in fact god even tells isaac through isaiah says for my thoughts are not your thoughts nor are my ways nor your ways my ways says the lord for 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 how about this doctrine known in the doctrine of the trinity in matthew chapter 3 verses 16 and 17 when he had been baptized jesus came up immediately from the water and behold the heavens were opened to him and he saw the spirit of god descending like a dove and a lighting upon him and suddenly a voice came from heaven saying this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased you know what you have there in that passage you have god the son coming up out of the water you have god the holy spirit descending like a dove and you have god the father speaking from heaven you have all three members of the trinity in these two verses three persons one being and people look at and say oh that's a contradiction no it's not a country it doesn't say three gods and one god or three beings and one being it's three persons three divine persons one being or maybe you could think of it this way three who's in one what okay not a contradiction if there are three who's and one who that's a contradiction the trinity may be beyond our ability to fully comprehend again that's good because he's god okay when we can't understand everything about him but we can see that this is not a contradiction number three remember that many people want to destroy your confidence in god's word you know 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 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 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 fourth right 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 the enemy's attack has always been to go after the trustworthiness of god's word for example to eve he says has god indeed said right away getting eve to question what god had said to them number and then in the new testament during the temptations he said to jesus he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you and in their hands they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone he actually quotes the bible he quotes right from the psalms and he quotes it accurately that's word for word but he's misapplying it that wasn't the time or the place for that to be applied and jesus called him out of that 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'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 they make them feel bad it doesn't change the fact that it happened here's what the bible teaches in revelation 21 and elsewhere but the cowardly unbelieving abominable murderers sexually immortals immoral sorcerers idolaters and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death okay this this concept of eternal conscious punishment in the lake of fire there are a lot of people say i i don't like that well guess what i don't like it either we shouldn't like that we shouldn't want that for anybody but it doesn't change the fact that that's what the bible teaches think about this jesus says in matthew 25 and these will go away to everlasting punishment but the righteous to eternal life some people say well they're only going to be punished for a short time and then god will kind of snuff them out and or maybe he'll let them go into heaven after that but that's not what the bible teaches look at it it's the exact same greek word that's used there it's ionian for everlasting and also the same word for eternal however long the life is going to be which is eternal it's the same amount of time that the punishment is going to be look we don't have to like that but we don't have the right to change what god said about it so just because something is unpalatable it doesn't make it untrue 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 our future resurrection you know the bodily resurrection that will endure uh go to first 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 you use the very clear passages to make sense of those that maybe aren't quite clear and one place where this has been had caused a problem not for christianity but within uh the latter day saints mormonism what they've done is taken one verse out of first corinthians chapter 15 which talked about baptism for the dead and it's not saying this is a good practice or it's not endorsing it just mentions this thing it's a it's a confusing verse for a lot of people but they built an entire doctrine out of that that they call baptism by proxy where they've baptized people who are already dead i mean by they're baptizing somebody else saying it's for grandma or and every u.s president that's why they have the largest genealogical database in the world because they do that for so many people they think that that's going to assist them in their afterlife but that's not at all what the bible's talking about so you don't use an obscure verse and then build a big doctrine after that you use the clear verses to interpret those that 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 you know one thing i do and again if you're watching this on a wednesday or maybe thursday you can watch on sunday afternoon on easter sunday you can watch at noon eastern i'll be giving my talk on the resurrection the evidence is for the resurrection and then all of the alternative theories that people have proposed for the last 2000 years to try to explain it away well try to disprove the resurrection you won't be able to and actually what that will do that'll cause you it'll strengthen your faith you don't always have to try to defend your faith let somebody else prove their assertions for example if somebody you know who is a molecule's demand evolutionist that they're challenging you on what scripture says just say this can you give me one example where a mutation added new genetic information you know that question was asked of richard dawkins one time on camera several years ago you know what his answer was this is like one of the leading uh atheistic evolutionary biologists you think if anybody got an answer he would right here was his response 13 seconds of dead air and then you ramble on about something that had nothing to do with the question okay 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 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 said 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 because if it's absolute it's false if it's relative we don't have to listen to you you can't live these philosophies out consistently and yet these are the ideas that are capturing the minds of young people all around this country and all around the world and their the philosophies collapse in on themselves at their very core how about the people who say well you have to be so tolerant and stop being intolerant 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 they have to be intolerant of themselves because they're being intolerant you can't live this out by the way intolerant doesn't mean that you hate that person okay our society has shifted the meaning of that as well tolerance doesn't mean okay i accept everything you do and it's just equally valid no tolerance means that you're willing to put up with that person you can respect that human being even if you strongly disagree with their views 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 it says that well here's what i ask why are you judging me you know as soon as somebody says that you judge not unless you they're judging you they're saying what you said was wrong so just turn around 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 and of course this one that you've probably heard before there are no absolutes so the response to that is are you absolutely sure because they've just made an absolute now keep this in mind as you go through these things second 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 know 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 dangerous that are leading people away from the truth and leading them to a christless eternity we do go after the arguments but the people they're worth going they're worth rescuing they're people who are made in the image of god and that christ died for on the cross they're worth pursuing 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 inerrancy will help you in with some of the difficulties that you might struggle to reconcile in fact there might be times where you're not gonna where maybe you never are able to make sense of it but that's okay focus on the things that you can be confident focus on the things that you are sure of okay uh for example with with bible prophecy there's no other holy book there's no other book out 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 because god is demonstrating as he says in isaiah 40 through 46 repeatedly he says that i'm going to show you the end from the beginning i'll show you that i'm the one true god i'm going to tell you the future and he tells it accurately he does that time and time and time again in that passage he mentions king cyrus he would be the one who would send the people back 150 years before cyrus was born don't follow the skeptics in spending more time on these difficulties than on the truth remember the bible is innocent until proven guilty number seven difficulty rapidly disappeared through careful and prayerful study the more we pray and truly study the fewer difficulties we will find james tells us this now be careful this is what i call a dangerous prayer okay it's like the person says lord i'll go anywhere but please don't send me to africa well guess where you're gonna go okay not necessarily but that's kind of the joke that i like to say but how about this one if any lord lord give me patience well god's probably going to give you an opportunity to acquire patience to practice patience so maybe you'll get a traffic jam on the way home james one 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 acquired 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 and 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 number eight the easy answer may not be the best answer for example when did jesus cleanse the temple if you read matthew mark and luke they placed it at the near the end of christ's ministry uh he comes into jerusalem on on during the triumphal entry and then mark tells us he goes in the temple looks around goes back out of town and the next day he came back in and cleanses he cleanses the temple but when you read john it's at the beginning of christ's ministry in john chapter 2 and there he makes this whip and he has this debate with some of the people there and they talk about how it's taken 46 years to build this temple you're gonna you're gonna raise it up in three days there's this whole discussion that never is mentioned at all in matthew mark and luke now some people will look at that and say well it happened at the end and john is just writing his gospel thematically and john can do that if he wants to but there's no indication that that's what he's doing here in fact there's a strong argument that he's not doing that but if he wanted to write it that way he could that's the easiest answer well john's just not writing it chronologically he's writing thematically therefore it really happened at the end but he puts it at the beginning for uh for theological reasons i don't think that's the right answer even though that might be the easiest one why don't i think it's the right answer well as i mentioned before john mentions different details about the whip and the debate that takes place the 46 years by the way the 46 years doesn't line up with the end of christ's ministry it lines up perfectly with the beginning of his ministry so there's an issue john states after these things john the baptist testified about christ what things well the the events that were taking place in the temple when jesus drove people out and had that debate and then when nicodemus came to him at night in john chapter 3 john says after these things the temple cleansing and nicodemus john the baptist testified about jesus why would that be a problem at the end of christ's ministry because john the baptist was already dead by that point so it makes much more sense that christ cleansed the temple twice is that really hard to believe no not at all in fact he had he was zealous for purity of worship and to get rid of all of this nonsense that was going on in the temple and it helped us understand why many of the religious leaders hated him from an early time because he was wrecking their racket that they had going on they're making all this money and he called them out on early on then he did it again later on so it makes much more sense to see that he did that twice rather than just once and number nine finally think biblically we need to learn to start our thinking on the bible otherwise it will lead us to some of these issues 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 said well i know it talks about the tigers in the euphrates river so it must be at that point in the world 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 and 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 well 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 what it's buried underneath probably hundreds of feet of sediment it's destroyed by the flood when i was in bible college i had a professor say that well hindu has been around since 3000 bc and right away i raised my hand i said so um are you saying that noah took hinduism on board the ark and professor didn't really know what i was talking about well because the bible puts the flood you know sometime after 3000 bc so they're saying well this must have been um so if you're saying hinduism has been around since then then somebody had to bring it through on the ark and i don't believe that that happened so because the professor was not starting from a biblical world view professor made the mistake now thankfully she was just misreading what our textbook said it said that hinduism's been around since the third millennium bc that's anywhere from 2001 bc back to 3000 bc if it's around 2000 2100 i got no problem with that it is an ancient belief system and if it comes sometime shortly after babel that's fine but we need to learn to start from the word of god all scripture is given by inspiration of god and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in 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 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 three 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 we have several resources for you you can sign up for our answers newsletter this goes out every single month and it's free there is no cost at all to you go to answers insider.com if you don't get this already sign up for it there and you'll get a free download as well but um this will give you news about the the ministry every single month uh some of the latest resources and all sorts of of information that you'll you'll value we also have our answers magazine that comes out six times a year now actually because of the coronavirus and everything it is on hold right now but you can look that up on our web store and actually have all of the back issues that you can purchase if you haven't seen those before but it's really like two magazines in one there's a kids pullout section they get they get to learn about some of the same things that mom and dad learn about but more of a level they can understand something's more interactive during this time this shutdown we've been doing facebook live programs every single day at 10 in the morning at noon at 3 p.m and 7 p.m so check ken ham's facebook page or answers in genesis facebook page for details on those you can tune in live or you can watch it after afterward you can interact with the people who are there as i mentioned before i'll be doing one tomorrow night with ken ham going through the the crucifixion and resurrection in our uh our new exhibit the christ cross consummation exhibit so that's tomorrow night at 7 eastern this weekend we have the answers easter event on from the 10th through the 12th that's good friday through easter sunday and if you're in a position or if you would like to help donate to the ministry at this time obviously with the ark and the museum being shut down because coronavirus we're not having the same sort of revenue coming in as we are that we would normally have and uh thankfully some of us are still able to be working each day and it's because of generosity of people who are are willing to give during this time so if you are able to give in any amount we would greatly appreciate that during this time actually this is good through tomorrow only you can get 20 off any of the items in the answers in genesis.org store except for those that are already discounted using the promo code matthew six so that is good just today and tomorrow uh there's a book actually a couple of books that are on the topic that we just covered in this talk demolishing supposed bible contradictions as the first volume and here's the second volume i'm a little bit biased i like the second one better because that's the one that i wrote several chapters in and was one of the general editors but both of them are great resources so you can look those up in our store if you're wondering more about answers in genesis and the issues that that we face regularly that the challenges that people ask us about creation evolution the age of the earth was there ever really a worldwide flood what about dinosaurs in the bible and carbon dating all these types of things we have four books called the new answers book volumes one two and three and four and i'd highly recommend that you get those each of them cover about 25 to 35 of the most commonly asked questions that that we get as a ministry it's a great resource and reference tool you don't have to read through the entire book to get your answer just if you want to learn about carbon dating turn to the one chapter that deals with that and you get 15 pages or so in non-technical language explaining it in a way that most of us can understand with resurrection sunday coming up i was able to a few years back work on a dvd curriculum small group study with my friend eric hovind called rhythm without a doubt it takes you from the triumphal entry through the arrest through the trials through the crucifixion and all the way up through the resurrection and go through the many a lot of the evidence for the resurrection and really digs in 12 different sessions over six dvds with the study guide and everything so you can check that out on our website and i've also written a book on the resurrection called in defensive easter answering critical challenges to the resurrection of jesus as well as a single dvd presentation that i've given called he has risen going through all of the those evidences for the resurrection and also countering the alternative theories people propose and one of the things i wanted to do is take this information from even from the presentation today information on the resurrection information that we teach throughout the ministry in the creation museum at the ark encounter i want to put that into an action adventure series for young people for middle school junior high age you know if you're at home right now looking for something to read if you're a younger reader you may really enjoy the truth chronicles series as an action adventure series with time travel dinosaurs it's illustrated with this manga style and parents are like this there is a study guide that will walk them through 15 of the issues in much more detail so it's sort of like taking the answers book and putting them into a fun story for the young people so don't forget our answers easter event beginning on friday april 10th through 12th thanks for tuning in today let me close in prayer our heavenly father thank you for this day you've given us thank you for your word which is true from the very beginning to the very end the lord thank you for being so good to us you didn't have to give us your word we've rebelled against you we don't deserve your grace your mercy your forgiveness your love but you give those things anyways father we are so grateful that you are you are good and holy and just and pure father we think at this time of year we especially we emphasize the crucifixion and resurrection of jesus christ because of what that accomplished it's our salvation and that means we can live eternally with you but it's not just our redemption lord the the bible speaks of the renewing of all things this whole creation is longing for redemption because of what man has done man has rebelled against you and destroyed what you have made but lord through the crucifixion and resurrection of jesus christ lord all things will be made new and we long for that day we look forward to that but until that happens lord help us to faithfully serve you help us to share the good news of jesus christ and his death burial and resurrection with so many people who desperately need to hear it our father guide our steps and may we do everything we do out of gratitude for what you've done we pray these things in the name of the risen savior jesus christ amen thank you for your time today god bless you

Channel: Answers in Genesis

Views: 246,469

Keywords: Biblical authority, Answers News, Creation Museum, Answers in Genesis, truth, Babel, Tower of Babel, Nations, Table of Nations, origin of people groups, racism, Bible Contradictions, Demolished, Biblical, Christianity, Truth

Id: _IkE7yhlmqQ

Length: 64min 9sec (3849 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 08 2020