East End

2-24-08

One thing many Christians here when they talk about the Bible is that it was written by men, men decided what books to include in the Bible, and the Bible has contradictions. How are you to respond to this? The first thing to always do when defending your faith is to go to the Bible. You can do two things with a person who says something like this. First of all hand them a Bible and tell them to show you where a contradiction is. Many people have heard about apparent contradictions but very few of them can ever point them out. You are not being confrontational here you are simply giving them a tool that they can prove their point. The next thing you need to do is to turn to 2 Timothy 3:16, 17 which says, “All Scripture is given by the 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.” Notice the first phrase, “ALL Scripture is given by the INSPIRATION of GOD” (capitalized for emphasis). While there were human writers writing from their perspectives every word they wrote was inspired by God. Each book contains specific nuances specific to their writer, but make no doubts about it, God told these men what to write. Put in another way, God told them what to write, but He allowed them to write it in their own style. That doesn’t diminish the God inspired aspect of the Bible at all. So what about the fact that men decided what books made it into the final Bible and which books did not. That is a true statement. However they didn’t go book by book and say this one is in and this one is out. They put each book through a stringent process which would take too much time to describe. The point is this, if a book contradicted any other book that was shown to be inspired, that book that contradicted was not included. There are only 15 known books that were not included into the canonization of Scripture by the church fathers. The apocrypha much like our Bible can be divided into two sections, Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament apocrypha books were written during a time of turmoil in Israel’s history. The New Testament apocrypha books were actually written in the second and third century which is 100-200 years after the apostles and other eyewitnesses died. This is important because many of these books claimed to have been written by eyewitnesses during Jesus’ life. The early church fathers took great care in making sure what was included in the Bible was inspired by God and good for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. The bottom line on this issue is that you must believe that if God took time and the initiative to have men write His words down to be preserved for all of time, then He would have also taken the time and initiative to tell the early church fathers which books were to be included in the Bible. And to say that something shouldn’t be in there or that something else should be in the Bible is to call God and liar and that is dangerous territory. Many times when people want to engage in these arguments they are trying to appease their conscience about what is in the Bible. When someone wants to attack your faith “always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15) and remember they are not attacking you but rather the God who is living in you. Be prayed up, studied up, and depend upon the Holy Spirit and you will have an awesome chance be a witness to someone!