Believers Armed and Dangerous

You know how a passage will stick in your mind for weeks?

A few weeks ago one of our pastors, Tim Fisk, gave a message on 2 Kings 5:1-14.  It’s the story of Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army, a leper who came to the prophet Elisha to be healed.  Elisha didn’t answer the door when Naaman knocked.  He sent his servant to tell the commander to dip himself in the  Jordan River seven times.  No money, no rituals performed, just a simple faith-building instruction — not what Naaman was expecting.  After struggling with the simplicity of Elisha’s instruction, Naaman finally dipped himself in the Jordan and was healed.

I’ve been thinking about infinity and of our infinite God lately.  Infinity is a number which is so large, it does not grow larger with the addition of any other number.  It’s so large a number if you could divide infinity in half, you would have two infinite numbers.  We have no infinite numbers in our entire universe.  The number of electrons in the Universe is an enormous number, but it is not infinite, doesn’t even make a dent.  That’s how big infinity is.

Since God is infinite, He must be infinite in all His attributes: infinitely just, infinitely merciful, infinitely powerful, and so on.  Well, if God, the One who created the universe with just a word, is the God of Elisha, then Naaman had no idea just who’s door he was knocking on.  It was the door of the earthly representative of this infinitely powerful God.

I realized in my study, that creation of our huge and complex universe by an infinitely powerful God was done with no effort at all.  No task requires effort if it is done by Someone who is infinitely powerful.

With that in mind, Naaman’s story tells us of a God for Whom incredible miracles such as healing a leper, is simple and effortless.  There was no effort involved in healing Naaman.  God just willed it, and it was done. Healing Naaman was so low on God’s “power scale,” God didn’t even send His representative, His servant, to the door when Naaman knocked.  He sent His servant’s servant.  God didn’t heal Naaman by having His servant or His servant’s servant go through rituals or rites or even with a wave of Elisha’s hand.  He just gave Naaman instructions to take a step of faith in order to be healed.  Incredible power!

James 5:17 says that Elija, Elisha’s mentor, was nothing special.  He was a human just like us…and like Elisha.  And, here’s the point: you and I aren’t special humans.  It’s the God Who dwells in us Who is Phenomenal.  Like Elisha, we’re representatives of that great and infinite God and there are Naamans out there knocking on our doors.  Let’s keep awake and look carefully for the Naamans God will bring into our lives.

As usual, an expanded version of this post with the passages sited is available on the menu. 

The quick answer is “no.”  Let’s define a couple of terms, “Contradictory” and “Contrary.”  Two things contradict if they cannot both be true.  “The Bible says, Jesus loves me,” and “The Bible does not say, Jesus loves me,” are contradictory statements.  “I was in California today,” and “I was in Arizona today,” are contrary statements, they may seem contradictory, but they can both be true.

So, when we read Mary Magdalene went to the tomb ((John 20:1) but elsewhere that more than one woman went to the tomb (Mark 16:1) there isn’t a contradiction here anymore than saying, “I saw John at the fair yesterday,” and someone else saying, “I saw John, Mary, and their kids at the fair yesterday.”  It’s the same thing with the number of possessed men.  There are two mentioned in Matthew 8:28-34 but only one mentioned in Mark 5:1-20. This seems to be contradictory but is only contrary.  Both can be true, just one of  the possessed was the important one in the story.

No contradictions appear in the passages mentioned.  There are other passages where we do see what appears to be contradictions such as Gen. 22:2 where Scripture says Abraham had only one son.  Yet, in Gen. 25:6, Scripture says he had more than one.  The answer here is similar to that of the passages above.  One son alone is of the line to the Messiah.  One son, Isaac, was the only son of Sarah.  Between Gen. 22:2 and Gen. 25:6, we are told Abraham had other children through Keturah (Gen. 25:1).  So, yes Abraham had more than one son.

This is similar to the old question, “If Adam and Eve had just Cain and Able, where did Cain’s wife come from?  Geographically, it appears Cain’s wife came from the land of Nod.  But, that’s not the question.  Cain married one of his sisters (Gen. 5:3-4).  Then the question of incest comes up.  But, incest was not outlawed until the Mosaic Law (Lev. 18:6-18).  No reason is given why the change, but it’s hard to reproduce if you are forbidden to do so through family members when that is the only option.  It may also be that the gene pool was not corrupt enough to cause problems until the time of Moses.

Both the “Cain’s wife” problem and the “Abraham’s sons” problem are simple problems of ignorance.  Those who pose the problem simply haven’t read the Scriptures concerning these “contradictions.”

As usual, an expanded version of this post can be found in the menu under “Can I Trust My Bible?

Also, Alleged Descrepancies of the Bible is recommended to help answer questions like these.  A link to this book on Amazon can be found under “Recommended Books,” also in the menu.

 

While the Old Testament was passed down to us in a fairly ritualistic fashion, the New Testament, not so much.

The New Testament is a collection of 27 biographies, letters, and a book of prophecy written by about eight authors over nearly 50 years.  These documents were sent to individuals (Luke 1:1-4; Acts 1:1), to particular churches (Rom. 1:7) and to the church at large (Rev. 1:1-3).

When these letters and books arrived, some in the congregation would borrow them to make copies for themselves and friends.  This helped to spread the Gospel.  Occasionally, though, it led to discrepancies.  Let’s imagine I borrowed someone’s copy of the Gospel of Luke.  As I copied it, I might make some comments in the margin as certain passages impact me.  After all, it’s my personal copy, why not include notes?  Two problems arise, perhaps my friend who owns the manuscript I’m copying did the same thing.  I might see what he wrote and, thinking it Scripture, include it in the text as I copy it.  Then when I pass my copy on to another friend so she could copy it, she might well copy my friend’s notes and as well as mine.  Usually, the notes were recognized as such, but you can see how some manuscripts might be corrupted in this way.

In order to deal with this, we have textual critics who compare all the manuscripts with various priorities in mind (age, geographical area where it originated, etc.) in order to come to a complete text which they believe represents as precisely as possible the originals (autographs).  Because of this research, we believe we can reproduce the New Testament with better than 99% precision, and the portions in question are not doctrinal.  This is one reason why most modern translations are made from the oldest known manuscripts.  There is less time from the original writings to the known manuscript for error.

Besides this, even if we had no manuscripts of the New Testament at all (and we have over 24,000), we can reproduce nearly all of the New Testament from the writings of the early church fathers.

So, rest assured that the New Testament you hold in your hand on Sunday morning is the most accurately reproduced ancient document in history.  You can rely on it fully.

 

You can find an expanded version of this post including full text of passages cited in the menu.  This post is included under the item “Can I Trust My Bible”

Helpful books can be found under “Recommended Books” in the menu.

2Just how careful were the guys who copied the Bible up until the printing press was invented?  Does the Bible we have today compare well with the originals (the autographs)?

The copying of the Old Testament was very exact.  According to Geisler and Nix’s A General Introduction to the Bible, there were at least 17 rules that needed to be followed by the scribes when they copied the Old Testament to create a Synagogue Scroll.  Among the rules were these:  “(4) Every skin must contain a certain number of columns, equal throughout the entire codex. (7) The ink should be black, neither red, green, nor any other color, and prepared according to a definite recipe.  (9) No word or letter, not even a yod, must be written from memory, the scribe not having looked at the codex before him. (10) Between every consonant the space of a hair or thread must intervene (11) Between every book three lines….”, etc.

So, you get the idea that the scribes copying the Old Testament had to be extremely careful and reverent at their jobs.  When the scribe came upon the very name of God and needed to copy it, he was expected first to take a bath, dress in newly washed clothes, use a new pen and freshly prepared ink.  This meant when the scribe copied Ps. 4:3 or Ps. 6:2, he had to go through this ritual twice since God’s name appears twice in those verses.

On top of that, the scribe was expected to count the letters in the newly copied page and count the number of letters in the manuscript being copied.  If the numbers matched, he was to hold a thread across the text from the top left corner to the bottom right corner.  Another thread was held from the top right corner of the text to the lower left corner.  If the letter in the center where the two threads crossed was the same as the letter in the same position on the manuscript being copied, then the copy was approved.  If not, it was destroyed.

This extremely conservative approach to copying the manuscripts  gives us the reason why, when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, they match almost precisely our modern manuscripts.

So, because today’s Old Testament matches a copy from more than two thousand years ago, we can be pretty certain the Old Testament we hold in our hands and study is an extremely reliable and authentic representation of the Old Testament autographs.  Geisler and Nix say it is more than 99% an accurate copy.  The less than 1% in question contains no doctrinal issues.

 

This post is the second in a series on the trustworthyness of the Bible.  There is a page where the posts are accumulated to create one document for your use in discussing the Bible.  The Page is called, Can I Trust My Bible?  This page can be found in the menus at the side bar or at the bottom of the page.

 

As usual, an expanded version of this post can be found in the menus under “Can I Trust My Bible?

If we’re going to live by what the Bible commands, shouldn’t we know for sure that it is what it claims to be, the very inspired Word of God?

What does it mean to be inspired?  The English Standard Version (ESV) translates “theópneustos”  in 2 Tim. 3:16 as, “breathed out by God,” and that’s exactly what it means.  2 Peter 1:20-21 tells us that the writers of the Bible were “carried along by the Holy Spirit,” the Third Person of the Trinity.  So, the Bible itself claims to be inspired by God.  If the Bible is from God, there should be a supernatural aspect to it.  Predicting things before they happen would be pretty good evidence.

The ancient city of Tyre existed in two parts, half on the coast of the Mediterranean and half on an island about a half mile off shore.  Early in the sixth century B.C., Nebuchadnezzar II laid siege to Tyre for 13 years.  Nebuchadnezzar’s forces eventually broke through the walls of Tyre but found the people had packed up and moved to the island offshore.  With no navy to reach the island, Nebuchadnezzar was forced to return home.

In 332 B.C., Alexander the Great came to Tyre demanding they surrender.  Since Alexander also had no navy, the Tyrians on the island felt safe in denying Alexander.  Over the following seven months, Alexander’s men took the rocks and debris from the old city of Tyre and built a land bridge between the mainland and the island city, even scraping the rocks and the very dust from the site of the old city.  Alexander then conquered the island city.  Today, fishermen spread their nets to dry there as there are no rocks to snag the nets.  Ezekiel predicted this very thing about 586 BC.

In 70 A.D., Titus, Roman Emperor Vespasian’s son, broke through the walls and sacked Jerusalem including setting fire and destroying the temple such that nothing is left of it today except one of the walls of the outer court, the Wailing Wall.  40 years earlier, Jesus predicted this very thing.

The Bible is filled with supernatural occurrences, prophecies, and descriptions.  These are just two that can be checked by examining secular sources for their fulfillment.  So, the Bible does, in fact, have a supernatural aspect.

 

As always, a more extensive version of this post can be found on this page through a link with the same title.

The American Bible Society estimates there are about 900 English translations and paraphrases, but only a few are widely accepted by the church.  For the sake of brevity, I’m just going to address reasons for  New Testament translations:

Families of texts

Definitions first. A “Manuscript”  is an ancient handwritten copy of the Bible, and a “Text” is someone’s compilation of a set of manuscripts attempting to give a good representation of the originals.  English translations are made from mostly two texts:

The Majority Text is translated from the majority of Greek manuscripts, and we have about 8,000.

The Westcott-Hort text-type (WH) is based on a few manuscripts, but these are older than those of the Majority Text.  The question is, “Should we depend on the oldest but the few or the newer but the largest library of manuscripts?”

As a result, we have two “families of Bibles” produced.  The King James Version (KJV) and New King James Version (NKJV) are translated from the Majority Text.  Almost all other modern translations are translated from the Westcort-Hort text.  All are well accepted.  There is really no doctrinal difference.

Philosophy

There are different philosophies of translations, too.  There are the “word-for-word” translations where each Greek word in the text is directly translated into English.  Examples would be the KJV, New American Standard Bible (NASB) and the English Standard Version (ESV).  The benefit is we are less likely go see the translator’s bias in the translation.

Then there are idiomatic translations.  These translate meaning as well as actual language.  In Spanish, “You are pulling my hair” is similar to the English, “You are pulling my leg.”  Idiomatic translations such as the New Living Translation and New International Version would translate it “You are pulling my leg,” while the NASB would translate it exactly as stated.

Both of these types of translations are occasionally revised and improved when new understanding of the language or better understanding of a particular portion of text occur.

And, there are paraphrases like the old Living Bible and the Philips Paraphrase.  These are not translations at all but just a paraphrase of what the author thought the biblical text was saying.

Lastly, there are biased “translations” like the Watchtower’s New World Translation (NWT) which is not a  translation but is presented as such to the readers.  The Watchtower has changed portions of the Bible to support their own doctrines and convince the reader the Watchtower is correct in their teaching.

As usual, an estended version of this post is available at the menu item of the same name.

Sometimes we discuss God and how He created everything: the universe, the atmosphere, humans, etc. with someone who is a bit critical of the Christian witness.  We will often get a comeback that sounds something like this: “Well, if God made everything, who made God?”

Sounds like a reasonable question doesn’t it? Let me give you a quick answer to the question.  We’re always looking for a quick response aren’t we.  The response can be something like this: “Let’s suppose someone did make God.  It doesn’t really matter who made Him.  He made you, and we are answerable to the God who made us and not to the person who made Him. What have you done with the commands He’s given you?”

The longer and more philosophical answer is a problem in logic.  The question presupposes a God who must have been created.  If we’re talking about the God of the Bible, we’re not talking about Someone who has been created but Who has always existed and always will (Ps. 9:7, 90:2).  So, there is a definition problem here.  The God we’re talking about is an infinite Being.  Infinite beings do not have a beginning, a creation.

As usual, a longer version of this post can be found in the side bar or at the bottom of the page.

If you have questions you would like to be addressed about witnessing, answering skeptics, or just Bible questions, please write me at thebaadblog@gmail.com, and I’ll do my best to answer those.

This is a copy of an answer I gave to a FaceBook critic.  His question was if Christianity is true, why are there so many different beliefs within it and why are there so many interpretations of the Bible?  Here is what I wrote, and I think it is important to post here as well:

 

Reading the Bible, in a way, is like reading the newspaper. When my local paper says the sun will rise at 5:30 and set at 7:30, I don’t immediately think the weather guy doesn’t understand that the earth rotates. When it says someone is a “giant of industry” I don’t understand them to be saying something about the person’s physical stature. In the same way, the Bible contains idioms, metaphors, and other figures of speech. Not everything is literal.
. Christians don’t claim the actual Bibles we hold in our hands in church on Sunday are inspired. We claim the original copies, the autographs, were inspired. We no longer have those, but we are very confident the Greek and Hebrew texts we have today are better than 98% identical to the originals. And, none of the disputed portions are doctrinal in nature.
. Many of the “errors” pointed to by Bible critics are actually scribal errors which come from personal copies being made prior to the printing press. If I wanted a copy of Paul’s letter to Titus, I borrowed someone’s copy and copied it myself including any errors his copy had and unwittingly, perhaps, a few of my own. We have textual critics in the church whose job is to search all the manuscripts (we have over 24,000 handwritten copies of the New Testament alone) and discover the most accurate reading based on a number of factors including the manuscript’s closeness in age to the originals and the number of manuscripts which agree with one another on that passage.
. We are also dealing with translations from the original languages. With translation comes loss of some meaning.
. While the central message that Jesus is God, died for your sins in your place, and faith in Him as your Lord and Savior brings forgiveness and salvation is clear, many other points are open for interpretation. Some of those would be mode of baptism, type of church government, which day of the week to worship, and so on. We can all disagree on those and other points but still be Christians.
. Then there are those who do not accept the Bible as inspired or even valid. There are those who deny the central message and call themselves Christians. They’re not. Just as there are physical characteristics that identify us as humans, there are beliefs which need to be held in order for us to be identified as Christians. At a minimum, those beliefs are what I laid out as the Bible’s central message.

Anselm of Canterbury gave this definition of God: “Now we believe that You [God] are something than which nothing greater can be thought.”  I’ve always liked that definition.  It says however grand our thoughts of God might be, He’s much more.

He is personal because a personal God is greater than an impersonal one.  He is all powerful, all knowing, ever present, unchanging, all good, infinite in His nature, eternal past and present all because those attributes are greater than their alternatives.

Interesting enough, the Bible supports these ideas: He is all-knowing (1 John 3:20), He is all powerful and greater than the universe itself – infinite (Gen. 1:1), He is omnipresent (Ps. 139:7-10), He is unchanging (Jam. 1:17), He is personal (Ex. 3:14), He is all good (Luke 18:19), He is eternal past and future (Ps. 90:2).

If God is infinite in nature, then His attributes should be infinite as well.  We serve a God who is more merciful than we can ever imagine, more gracious, more forgiving, more just, more loving, our God, the God of the Bible, is greater in all ways than could ever be imagined.

A few weeks ago Pastor Tim talked about Namaan the leper (2 Kings 5:1-14).  Namaan came to Elisha’s home with gifts and all sorts of expectations of what Elisha should do to heal him of leprosy.  Instead, Elisha didn’t even come to the door but sent his servant.  The servant told Namaan Elisha’s instructions were to dip seven times in the Jordan river.

Thinking about this later, I realized Namaan didn’t understand whose door he was knocking on.  It was the door of  the personal representative of the perfect and infinite God.  Namaan expected rituals and sacrifice.  What he got was a commonplace request: “go bathe.”

To the God we love Who is greater than we can ever imagine, healing leprosy requires no effort at all.  In fact, Genesis 1:1 required no effort at all for an infinitely powerful God.  How can we doubt Him as Namaan did.  Is there truly anything this God cannot do in our lives?

 

As usual, an expanded version of this blog containing the Scriptures cited can be found in the menu either on the right side bar or at the bottom of the page.

Among the qualifications for a bishop listed in 1 Timothy 3, is the ability to teach (vs 2).  Often, we leave this to the church leadership thinking that is their duty and not ours.  But, is that true?

As servants of God, we are instructed to be able to teach (2 Tim 2:24).  The Greek word for “teach” here, “DidaKtikos,” doesn’t necessarily mean we should hold positions as teachers, but we should be able to teach the basic beliefs of the church to those who are young in the Lord (Col. 3:16).

We who are older in the faith should be able to contend for the faith  and be able to spot false teachers within the body (Jude 1:3-4), we need to examine ourselves to see if our beliefs line up with the Bible (2 Cor. 13:5), we are to be able to answer the questions of those who challenge our faith (1 Pet. 3:15), older (in the Lord) women are expected to teach the younger women (Titus 2:3).  This takes more study and commitment than the average Christian is willing to take on.

Ours is a reasonable faith, a faith founded on fact, not a blind faith.  We have reasons to believe what we do, and this blog is here to help you find ways to deepen your faith and to share your faith more effectively with others.

Ours should be a quest to lead people out of the darkness and share the Light of the world, Jesus.

The resources to help us do this are plentiful and readily available.  If you can’t find them, drop me a note so I can help.  Let’s build an army of Believers Armed and Dangerous to reach out to even the hard to reach.

 

As usual, an extended version of this can be found on the “Apt to Teach” page found either on the right sidebar or at the bottom of the page.