The Bible
by Steve Bastin
It is amazing, to me, the amount
of time, effort and attention that is given to discrediting the Bible.
Why are so many people so angry that the Bible exists?
Why are so many people concentrating so much energy on attempts to prove
that the Bible should not be considered in any way?
If someone chooses not to believe
that the Bible is the Word of God, why do they not simply ignore it and go their
merry way. Why do they feel
compelled to argue with Bible believers?
Perhaps, someone would reply, “I
have to because Bible believers are always trying to push their views off on
others!”
So what!
Just ignore them and let them rant and rave among themselves.
If a dog barks at you do you feel compelled to yell back at the dog?
Just let it go on barking and go your way.
But people want to try and prove
that the Bible is wrong. They do not
want other people to believe the Bible. They
do not want other people to practice what is taught in the Bible.
They just want to “bark back.”
Among those who do not believe the
Bible is the Word of God, there are some really strange responses.
“It can’t be the Word of God because it was written by men?”
Well, who did you expect to write it?
Did you expect it to be written by fairies or angels or barking dogs?
Somehow or other “just written
by men” is supposed to explain why it cannot be true?
Now that is really weird! Men
write things that are true and men write things that are lies.
Investigation is used to discriminate between the two.
If the Bible is not true, then simply point out what it is in the Bible
that is not true. Of course to do
that, one would have to read the Bible and it is a lot easier to just call it
untrue than to actually read it and find things that are not true.
Why not admit you just do not like what it says instead of resorting to
some lame excuse like, “It was just written by men?”
Someone else retorts, “The Bible
is full of contradictions.” That
sounds like an exaggeration. What
exactly do you mean by “full of.” Are
there contradictions on every page, in every chapter, in every book?
Or do you mean that someone told you it was full of contradictions and it
sounded good to you. You ought to
read it to see for yourself what is true.
Out of all the people who have
told me, “The Bible is full of contradictions” I have yet to be told by any
of them what the contradictions are to which they are referring.
Yes, I know that books have been written apparently detailing supposed
contradictions in the Bible. Most of
these contradictions evaporate under the scrutiny of anyone who is unbiased.
Some present some problems that have no certain conclusion.
None of them affect in any material way the message of the Bible.
Others object to the Bible because “it has
been copied so many times, there is no way that it can still contain the
original message.” The Bible that
I use is not a copy at all. It is
the work of translators who worked from the available Greek and Hebrew
manuscripts to put their words into English.
They carefully compared the thousands of available manuscripts to be
certain that they were writing what was the
If you do not trust the
translators then go to school, learn Hebrew and Greek and make your own
translations. I am confident that
you will not be able to find a “new message” by such an approach.
You will still be stuck with the same plan of salvation and the same
moral stance as you read before you expended all your labors.
You might acquire a better understanding, but you will not discover a new
gospel. Things that were wrong will
still be found to be wrong and things that were right will still be found to be
right.
The Bible is a book unlike any
other book. It was written over a
period of about 1500 years by about 40 different people.
It speaks to every situation of life with moral precepts and principles
that are urged upon those who want to live godly lives.
It is filled with stories of
people in all walks of life. It
records the “good, the bad and the ugly.”
It tells of heroes and it tells of the failures of those same heroes.
Above all, it tells us about the God in whom they believed (or
disbelieved as the case may be).
The Bible tells of angelic visits
and visions and dreams in which God speaks to people, sometimes men, sometimes
women. It contains verdicts
concerning past conduct and speaks of future events, both the good and the bad
that lie in store for future generations.
Jesus and his apostles often
quoted from the Old Testament. They
regarded the things written before as the inspired word of God.
For them there was no appeal from what God had spoken through the
prophets whom He had chosen. Their
word was the “Word of God.”
It was common in the church of the
first two centuries to continue the practice of quoting the Old Testament.
In addition, they quoted the writings of Jesus’ apostles and
representatives as of equal authority. They
recognized that in Jesus, God had given His final revelation, the new covenant.
As time passed, men began to
assert their authority in the church. Over
time, their authority was seen as exceeding that of the words found in the
Bible. The Bible slipped into the
background as the writings and authority of church leaders came into play.
Soon it was a matter of “What do the church Fathers say?” instead of
, “What do the Scriptures say?”
In the century leading up to the
Protestant Reformation, men began again to understand the importance of the
Bible. Pleas were made to return to
the Scriptures for authority in church practices and morals.
It was amid such appeals that the Reformation broke in Europe as men
clamored for the Word of God to be made available to the common people.
Men such as Wycliffe and Tyndale
in England, Huss in Bohemia, Erasmus, the Dutchman and many more paved the way
for a return to the Bible as God’s authority for the world.
The Bible began to be translated into the common languages of the people.
The invention of the printing press in Germany opened the way for the
mass production of the Bible and the reformation of people’s lives was well
underway.
Down through the dark ages while
the Bible lay in obscurity there were those who carefully preserved and copied
the text of the Bible so that it was available when men turned back to the
Light. Today there is no excuse for
a person not knowing what God has said. There
is no excuse for remaining ignorant of God’s plan for your life.
The Bible is God’s Word. May
it triumph in your life as well.