15 lies Satan tells about Scripture

“(The devil) was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.  Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar, and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

If I were the devil, I would do everything in my power to keep you from the Word of God.  I would say anything I could think of, anything I thought you would believe, anything that works, to get you to read other things.

As Paul said, “We are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).  We know how he works.  And here are some of the lies we have noticed pouring out of his factory, all geared toward destroying confidence in God’s Word.

One. “You already know it, so don’t read it.”

He’s lying to you. You do not know it. I’ve studied the Bible all my life and in no way could I say I “know” it. I know a great deal about it, but there is so much more.  For the typical church member to shun the Bible because “I’ve been there and done that” is laughable.

Two: “No one can understand it, so don’t read it.”

He’s lying.  Even a child can understand a great deal of Scripture.  Meanwhile, the Ph.D. will find plenty to challenge his thinking.  Only a book from the Almighty could touch so much at every level of their existence.

Three“It’s boring. So don’t read it.”

He’s lying.  The Bible is a lot of things, but boring is not one of them.  We’re boring, and that’s the problem.

Four: “It’s better left to the professionals. So, don’t read it.”

He’s lying, using a lie he once sold to the Catholic church during the Middle Ages.  By keeping the Holy Scriptures in the Latin (and not in the language of the people) the church could give it whatever slant they chose.  Some hardy individuals paid for the right for us to own Scriptures in our own tongue with their very lives.  We must not take lightly the privilege we have to own a copy of the very Word of God in our own language.

Five:  “You need Greek and Hebrews to know what it really means. So, don’t bother reading it.

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This guy thinks he has found a contradiction in Scripture that disproves God

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A friend wrote something  about the Bible’s authenticity on her Facebook page, causing someone else to leave a caustic reply..

After each statements the fellow left, all of them shallow and several insulting, my friend patiently responded with kindness and reason.

But nothing worked. Her “commenter” was determined to nail her to the wall.

He had found a contradiction in Scripture and knew this was the (ahem) unholy grail, the proof, the nail in the coffin of Jehovah God.

What was his “contradiction”?

“In one place the Bible says an eye for an eye and another place it says turn the other cheek.  What do you say about such a contradiction?”

I wondered if this guy was serious.  Any teenager in church could answer that.

Just so easily does this guy dismiss the living God, the Creator of the Universe.

Even if the Lord had such a fellow as that on His team, He wouldn’t have much.  HIs ignorance is shallow and doubtless his faith would be just as worthless.

Before commenting on the subject of contradictions in the Word, let me respond to that guy, just in case any reader needs to know how those two scriptures line up.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was given to Israel as a principle for assessing punishment for crimes (Leviticus 24:20). This formula was light-years more lenient and merciful than the standard used in pagan countries–and to this day, in some backward nations–that dictated a life for an eye; a limb for a tooth.

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When God’s people do not live in His Word, many things happen. All of them bad.

“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

The Lord never intended for His Word to collect dust on a table in your back bedroom.

Brave men and women of the past paid for your right to own a Bible in your own language with their very lives.

What are you doing about that?

Christians who own numerous Bibles which they rarely open are thumbing their noses at the saints of old who paid the ultimate price.

This hard-won treasure lies buried under the dust and detritus of your life.

The Lord’s plan calls for His people to live and breathe His word, to read it and receive it inwardly and to think about it regularly and practice it. He intended it to become part of the very marrow of their bones.

Digest it. Assimilate it. Live it. And meditate upon it continually.

He even told people to “Eat this book.”

Several times in Scripture, God told His faithful prophet to consume the scroll containing His words.  (Check out Jeremiah 15:16; Ezekiel 2:3; 3:1-3; Revelation 10:9)

The idea was to get His Word inside them, to digest it as surely as one takes in meat and vegetables for nourishment and sustenance, and to grow thereby.

Job said, “I have esteemed the words of His mouth more than my necessary food” (Job 23:12).  Our Lord Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God” (that’s Matthew 4:4, where He was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3).

The image of taking in food and having it become part of your being is a perfect metaphor for God’s children assimilating His Word into our lives.

Man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  Moses said it, Jesus quoted it, and no one has improved on that statement since.

Sadly, too few Christians are living that truth today.

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Does “touch not mine anointed” refer to pastors?

Do not touch My anointed ones, and do My prophets no harm.  –I Chronicles 16:22. (Psalm 105:15) 

A pastor who wants a free hand to come and go as he pleases chafes when told he is accountable to the membership or must report to a committee of members. The very idea!  He pulls out Psalm 105:15 and I Chronicles 16:22 and uses these as a battering ram on his people.

He bellows, “God’s Word says, ‘Touch not Mine anointed!’  It says, ‘Do My prophets no harm.’”

Then, he gives his twisted interpretation to his misconstrued favorite passage.

“This means no one in the church and no group is allowed to criticize the pastor.  God’s messengers answer only to God!”

The only problem with that is it just isn’t so.

No one is above criticism or accountability.  No one has a free hand to do with the people of God as he pleases.

Scriptures call the church by many names: “the Bride of Christ” (Ephesians 5:25-27; Revelation 19:7-9; 21:1-2), “the household of God, the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth” (I Timothy 3:15), and “the Body of Christ” (I Corinthians 12:27 and Ephesians 4:12).  But nowhere is it the toy of the pastor, the playground or proving ground of preachers, the personal possession of ministers.

Here is what the Apostle Peter said to preachers:

Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly; not for dishonest gain but eagerly;  nor as being lords over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that fades not away.  (I Peter 5:2-4)

The pastor is not the lord of the congregation.  As the overseer, he is an example for God’s people, the role model.  The people are entrusted to the minister and he will give account for each of them before God (Hebrews 13:17).

Instead of announcing his sovereignty and proclaiming his independence, a faithful pastor will concentrate on showing God’s people how to love and serve, how to humble themselves and bless one another.

I worry about pastors who play the headship card.  He tells the church, “As God has made the husband the head of the home and of the wife, He made the pastor the head of the church.”

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Two questions about Jesus’ amazing teachings

Here’s an interesting little assignment:  Go through the four Gospels and note every time people who heard our Lord Jesus teaching were amazed.  Or astonished.

I did that.  It looks like this…

Matthew 8:27-29; 9:8; 9:33; 12:23; 13:54; 15:31; 22:22,33.

Mark 1:22,27; 2:12; 5:20,42; 6:51; 7:37; 11:18

Luke 4:32,36; 5:9,26; 8:25,56; 9:43; 13:17; 18:43; 20:26.

John 7:15,46.  Apparently John chose to say whether the people believed in Jesus after hearing Him speak, rather than that they were amazed.

Just so you will know, I did not use a concordance or other help, but read through the four gospels with a high-lighter in hand. Twice, in fact.  But it is possible I may have missed one or two references.

Now, I have two questions about this.

One:  Why were the people amazed when they heard Jesus?

Two: Why aren’t we?

Why are we not as amazed and astonished as those who heard Jesus in the first century? In truth, we’re often bored with Scripture’s teachings! Why?

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What we wish for the people of your church as they open God’s Word

Open my eyes that I may behold wondrous things from Thy law.  (Psalm 119:18)

If I could do one thing for members of your congregation, I would give them fresh eyes to see the Word of God as though for the first time.

I would give them a new appreciation, a deeper enjoyment, a delight in the Law of the Lord (Psalm 1:2).

We sometimes envy those who have come late to the Kingdom and are reading God’s word for the first time.  They are enchanted by its stories, excited by its champions, enthralled by its riches, thrilled by its insights, and elated by its promises.

No doubt you have noticed that when Jesus taught, people were amazed and astonished.  Scripture tells us that in so many places.  Check out Matthew 7:29; 9:33; 12:23; 13:54; Mark 1:22,27; 2:12; 5:20,42; 6:2,51; 7:37; 10:26; 11:18; and Luke 4:32,36; 5:9,26; 8:25; 9:43; 11:14; 13:17; 20:26. In John, the wonderful statement of 7:46 (“Never man spake like this man!”) seems to be the closest thing to this.

I have two questions concerning this:

(1) Why were the people amazed at Jesus’ teaching?

(2) And, why aren’t we?

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The best kind of learning is do-it-yourself

From time to time, as I’m sketching at a church or school, the question arises: “So, have you had training for this?” Or, maybe, “Are you self-taught?”

I don’t answer what I’m thinking.

What I say is usually a variation of, “I’ve had some formal training. But mostly, I’ve just worked at it. And I’m still trying to figure out how to draw better.”

But what I think is, “So, you think my stuff looks so amateurish I could not possibly have learned this from anyone?”

Can you imagine someone saying to Picasso, another artist of some renown (!), “Did you take training for this?” Or to Pavarotti or to Frank Lloyd Wright?

When my friend Mary Baronowski Smith was young, she made herself learn to sight-read a hymnal so she could play anything she wished on the piano. Even though she was taking lessons, this skill was self-taught.

She says, “My brother Lenny grew tired of my playing the same tunes over and over. To this day, he does not like the piano because he had to endure all those lessons my sister Myra and I were learning by playing them endlessly.”

“Anyway, one day Lenny came in and handed me a piece of sheet music. ‘Play this for me.’ I said, ‘How does it go? Hum it for me.’”

“He said this would never do, that I needed to learn how to sight read. So I got the Baptist hymnal down and decided I would teach myself.”

“I turned to page one–‘Holy, Holy, Holy’–and started in learning how to play it. It was hard. But gradually I got the hang of it. Then I went to the second one, “Love Divine, All Loves Excelling.” Eventually, I was able to play everything in the hymnal.”

She was 9 or 10 years old.

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The Bible: in a class by itself

“For we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses….”  “For prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:16,21).

I’ve been reading books again.

That explains a lot of things.  It explains where my mind is these days, what’s been bugging me, and where I’ve been searching the Word.

I’ve been reading “The Story of Ain’t.”  This is mostly about what goes into dictionaries, particularly Webster’s Third Edition.  Author David Skinner brings us into the inner offices of G. and C. Merriam Company to show how decisions are made concerning the English language.  If you like that, you’d love watching sausage being made.  (It’s a difficult book to read and only the wordsmiths among us should “rush out and buy this book.”)

I’ve been reading “The Refiner’s Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844.”  Author John L. Brooke takes us back into the context of the birth of this American-made religion to show that almost all its doctrines and revelations were the product, not from Heaven, but of ideas floating around when Joseph Smith was a young man.

I’ve been reading the Bible.

The contrast in these three is enlightening.  Reflecting on them resulted in the following observations….

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This fellow found a contradiction in Scripture and thinks he can now disprove God

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds…” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was reading comments on a friend’s Facebook page below something she had written about the Bible’s authenticity.

I suppose her critic was a friend, because after each of his statements, each one shallow and several insulting, she patiently responded with kindness and reason.

But nothing worked.

When one is determined not to believe, no amount of truth or reason or logic can penetrate the protective armor of alibis, arguments, excuses, and slander in which he clothes himself.

What was his “contradiction”?

He said, “In one place the Bible says an eye for an eye and another place it says turn the other cheek.  What do you say about such a contradiction?”

I found myself wondering if this guy was serious.  Any 10-year-old could answer that.

Just so easily does this guy dismiss the living God, the Creator of the Universe.

Even if the Lord had such a fellow on His team, He wouldn’t have much.  HIs ignorance is shallow and whatever faith he could muster would be as worthless.

Before commenting on the subject of contradictions in the Word, let me respond to that guy, just in case any reader needs to know how those two scriptures line up.

“An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was given to Israel as a principle for assessing punishment for crimes (Leviticus 24:20). This formula was a hundred times more compassionate than the standard used in pagan countries–and to this day, in some backward nations–that went like this: a life for an eye; a limb for a tooth.

Continue reading

When God’s people do not live in the Word, bad things happen

“But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law doth he meditate day and night” (Psalm 1:2).

The Lord never intended for His Word to collect dust on a table in your back bedroom.

Courageous people paid for your right to own a Bible in your own language with their very lives.

What are you doing about that?

Christians who own numerous Bibles which they rarely open are thumbing their noses at the saints of old who paid the ultimate price.

This hard-won treasure lies buried under the dust and detritus of your life.

The Lord’s plan calls for His people to live and breathe His word, to read it and receive it inwardly and to think about it regularly and practice it. He intended it to become part of the very marrow of their bones.

Digest it. Assimilate it. Live it. And meditate upon it continually.

He even told people to “Eat this book.”

Continue reading