Sometimes people ask me about whether or not they can trust the Bible to be the truth. When I first became a Christian, I learned that the Bible was the Word of God, and I just accepted it and believed it and trusted that I could rely on the Word of God to give me the truth and tell me what was right or wrong.
I’ve been studying the Bible now for 45 years, and I’ve learned that you can trust the Bible. Yes, there are some places that are hard to understand. There are so-called contradictions, but those so-called contradictions are very few.
For example, as you read the Gospels, the story about Jesus, specifically, Jesus’ last week on earth before he’s crucified, and you try to mesh and blend and fit together all the pieces of the story, you realize that there are details that don’t fit together easily. When you try to fit all the parts of Jesus last week on earth, his earthly ministry before he’s crucified, some of it gets a little complicated. For example, when we read the Gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke, we see that Jesus celebrates the Passover on the night before he is crucified. Jesus celebrates the Passover with his disciples, his twelve apostles, and then later that night, Jesus is arrested, and the next day put on trial and crucified.
When we come to the Gospel of John, however, we find that Jesus is arrested but the Jewish priests are in the day of preparation for the Passover. And so in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we have Jesus celebrating the Passover with his Apostles, and then his arrest. But in the Gospel of John, we have Jesus arrested, and the Jewish priests have not yet celebrated the Passover. So, it becomes a little complicated. Now, there is an explanation. For example, it could be that these two groups of people, Jesus and his apostles, celebrated the Passover a day earlier. Then the priests celebrated the Passover on a different day. Now, we weren’t there, so we don’t know exactly why these two groups of Jews might have celebrated the Passover on different days, but that’s one possible explanation.
But some people will say, no, you can’t trust the Bible. Look, Matthew, Mark, and Luke have the Passover on one day, and then the Gospel of John has the Passover on a completely different day. So you can’t trust it.
Well, personally, I don’t believe there are contradictions in the Bible. I believe that the Bible is God’s Word. I believe that it’s the truth. And, of course, if you have these contradictions, that means you have part of the story saying one thing and another part of the story saying something completely different, and there’s no way to reconcile them. That’s, what a contradiction is. And I don’t believe there are contradictions in the Bible. There are apparent contradictions, places in the Bible that are hard to reconcile, hard to explain, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an explanation.
I think we must begin with the fact that there is a God. And that this God is truthful. This God is honest. The God of the Bible, the God of the Scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures, and the New Testament Bible, are honest and truthful and cannot lie. The Bible says that God cannot lie. And so, if we have these contradictions, they don’t come from God, and they don’t come from his Word, they come simply from our inability to understand the Scriptures in the appropriate way, in the right way.
God himself cannot lie. God’s word comes from God—from God’s heart and mind. God and his word are inseparable. God’s word issues forth, springs forth from God. The Bible says that the word of God is God-breathed, meaning it issues forth from God. Its source is God, and since God is truth, and God is truthful, his word must also be true and truthful. Therefore, I don’t believe there are contradictions in the Bible.
When we think we’ve found a contradiction in the Bible, its just our perception, our inability to understand parts of the Bible. In other words, some of these apparent contradictions, occur because of historical distance. For example, some of the Old Testament was written at least 3, 000 years ago. That’s an enormous amount of time. And things change over time. The way people perceive life. The way people perceive nature. The way people perceive the cosmos, and the way they understand life. Those things change over time.
Another problem is differences in languages. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, a very ancient language. Then you have the New Testament, which was written 2, 000 years ago. These languages need to be translated in order for us to understand them, and something is always lost in translation. And then, of course, after you have the translation, then you have interpretation, the meaning of the words. What do the words mean? And words have different meanings depending on the context. Different words can have more than one meaning.
So, over time, differences in language and then the interpretation of the words in context. All these can make a tremendous difference in how we understand the Bible. So, it’s not the Bible that has the problem. It’s us as the reader. All these different books in the Bible were written during a specific time in history. And in those historical times, there were wars going on. There were various kingdoms and rulers. There were all different kinds of historical issues that changed over time. And if you were living in that time, you could understand what people were talking about. Now today, thousands of years later, we read it but don’t understand it…That’s because you had to be in that place at that time to be able to understand what was actually being talked about. And so you have the historical context.
Then you have the purpose of the writer. What is the writer trying to communicate? What’s his purpose? What’s his aim? And very often, the the purpose and the reason for writing was different from one author to another author. The prophets and apostles, the authors of the Bible, each had their own purpose in writing. And their purpose shaped their message and the meaning of their message.
So, as you’re trying to interpret, as you’re reading, if you can understand what the purpose of the author is, it helps your understanding. It helps your interpretation. So you have the historical context, what’s happening, the political landscape, who are the major players? Has there been a famine. Has there been an earthquake? Is there a war going on? Who are the rival factions? What are the dangers that people faced at that particular time?
And then the writer has an audience who have their own situation and circumstances. Their needs might be much different than my needs or your needs. But his message was written to a specific time and place to people who are going through problems in their own lives. Maybe these are problems that we don’t face today, that we really can’t understand. So you need to be able to try to understand the historical context. And when you understand the historical context, and what life was like for the people who are receiving the message, you can better interpret the meaning. And so these are various factors that you, as a reader of the Bible, need to take into account.
Can you trust the Bible? Absolutely. You can trust it 100%. It’s the Word of God written for you, written for your edification, written for your salvation, written so that you can grow in your faith. That’s the only way. Faith comes by hearing, the Bible says. Faith comes by hearing by receiving the message of the truth. And the Bible is the only source of food for your faith. And it’s the truth. You can trust it. You can believe it. You can rely on it. It will help you have a relationship with God.
It will help you understand the problems that you face in your life such as sin. And what’s the remedy of sin? The Bible says if you confess your sin, God is faithful and just to forgive you of your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Where can you hear that message? How do you deal with sin and guilt? The only way to be free of sin and guilt is through confession. If you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. This message, the message of forgiveness is found only in the Bible. And it comes from God’s heart. It’s God’s message. It’s God’s word for you. It comes from God’s heart. He spoke to you to meet your needs. To help you to find Jesus as your Savior. And to help you to know the importance of being in a church, a fellowship of other believers, people who are on a spiritual path, people who are on a spiritual journey, just like you.
We all struggle, and we need each other. And so the Bible tells us, “Do not forsake the assembling together of yourselves, as some are in the habit of doing. But, meet together and encourage one another, and all the more so as you see the day approaching (Hebrews 10:25).” What day is that? That’s Judgment Day. We know that someday God is going to come and judge the earth. And so he says, get together and encourage each other more, not less. More often, not less frequently. We get together more often to encourage each other because we know that there’s a day coming when God will return. Jesus will come back to the earth. And so, we need to be ready. As Jesus says, be ready, be alert.
You don’t know when I’m coming back. How can we know these truths? How are we going to know that, that there is a God? How are we going to know that Jesus is coming back? Only from the Bible. You’re not going to learn these truths anywhere else. And so, read the Bible, study the Bible, trust the Bible. It was written for you, so that you can know Jesus as your Savior, and that you can find the truth for your life.
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