Most of scripture was made up

[llost forevor]

I needed to find someone to talk to about this because I just lost my faith a week ago when I realized I allowed myself all these years to overlook so many things in the bible that now are sooo obviously made up because a perfect god wouldnt allow his own prophets, and servants who are responsible for writing whats in the bible to make so many mistakes, contradictions, and misinformations.

Ill begin by telling you folks I grew up with bible belt(USA) style Baptist bacround, so hardcore preaching, tought the KJV was perfect and infallible because it was Gods word from cover to cover.I dropped out and actually became mormon for 2 years when I was around 22-24yrs old. Then lost faith all together because of that bogus zeitgeist video that hit the internet several years ago. 2 years ago I started believing agian for certain reasons which I dont want to take up much time explaining, but just 5 days ago it all came to an end and for good.

I like to watch documentaries about history, science, spae, ect.. and all it took was watching several videos one night about human cities that keep being found which were about 10,000 yrs old, all in ruins but at least one of these cities were recorded in public record which has survived over the years and now we are fiding some of these cities.

So heres one problem I have now. Ive read the Bible Gen-Rev more than once, and Im familiar with the human geneology it provides between Great Charactors, and does manage to give an account for all generations of humans from adam and eve, all the way to Joseph the husband of mary, and that accounts for close to 5k years, and now being 2017 that makes a total of nearly 7k years.

OK so here is my first problem, if we are finding ruined cities that are 10,000yrs old with historical records to bak these dates up, then why did Moses write in the book of Genesis that man had been created more receant? I mean aside the dinosaur bones, and other reasons that scientists say the earth had life on it many millions of years back, but we have evidence of 10k yr old human cities that basially debunks Moses's version of how life started on this planet going back generations till were left with adam and eve in the beginning.


Soooo, even a mere 3-4k yr difference is still proving that Moses did not recieve these words from any God, because if there was a God who was around so long ago he wouldnt have misguided Moses. And not to mention, Moses made a mistake and never gave an explaination for how Cain's wife came into existance. He wrote in Genesis that adam and eve only gave birth to two sons, cain and abel, no daughters, and no other children.

It started to become obvious to me that this was becoming a problem now, because if Moses was to be revealed as a lair or a storyteller instead of a real life hero for the jews and deliverer of the law, then the one god he claimed who created everything, and laid down so many rules/laws on believers never existed.

If it werent for Moses then neither christians, muslims, or jews would have the believe that there is a single God and creator that demands our worship, and has either eternal punishment, or eternal life for those who lived and passed on earth. So ya, this is just one single thing that just now dawned on me was a fictional story made up by man, which is why errors have been revealed.

Now for those who are thinking that Moses is a true Prophet of God, and wouldnt add anything more than what God had him put there, you have to refer yourself back to your old testament in Deut 18:22, and I quote "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him"

Sounds to me like something a false prophet would say so everyone dont turn on him. But it further my point that the sriptures were written by man, and man alone.

Now on to the new testament. The NT is suppose to be our later day instrutions from the son of god, that being Jesus. He grows up amonst common man, eventually starts his ministry and begins preaching and teaching a new doctrine of salvation, not by the blood of animals, but rather believing and repenting of thier sins would justify them in front of the father. He then became the symbol of the perfect sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

Now The problem I have with the new testament is the various verses throughout both the 4 gospels, and another popular book in the NT. You see in the 4 gospels, John the baptist, Jesus, and the desciples would go around teaching that the people just needed to believe in jesus to be saved, have faith in him, or confess him with thier mouths, all these would automatically earn you a place in heaven. But, they also told the people other times that if tey didnt repent, they would in other words go to hell.

Now even if you were to say they collectively said to believe and repent, why in the heck did james come along and disagree with all of them about what one must do, or what quality he must have to earn salvation and avoid hell. This is what I mean: Ephes 2:8"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God", then james flips the script: james 2:24 "You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only".

The doctrine of salvation for us would be the most important, because we rely on it so we know how to avoid eternal destruction in hell but live with god in heaven. Now how the heck are you suppoe to know whether or not works matter when one passage says "works" matter, and one says it doesnt. James starting in 2:14 to the end of the chapter goes at it from all angles to try and explain to people that they need to get it out of thier heads that faith and believing alone does no good. Jesus says it can, but james says it cant.

I have a great answer why this contradiction exists here, and that is beause all these gospels and the rest of these scriptures didnt even start to pop up and be written untill 130 or so years after christ and the desciples were dead and gone. And another funny fact to consider, that the romans kept record of things and events even in those days and there were absolutely no public record of any event happening at the time Jesus was supposably on earth. No record of a crucifiction of a popular jew, or any records made about someone going around with supernatural power healing and raising the dead.

Once agian, these contradictions keep ocuring because idiots throughout time keep purposely writing these things then show people and they start a religious movement right there, fake prophets can get rich off of thier claim that god uses them to deliver personal messages, and are darn near worshipped themselves because they an feel free imposing new law and the people, and sadly humans are just too gullable to know these fakes are basically making themselves a king among the simple minded.


These are just some of the reasons I just lost daith for good. I had to get it all out, whether or not if anyone bothers reading al of it, but I just needed just one sensable person to read it all and tell me if im just tripping, or could I be right.

 

[Halbhh]

Earth looks (with strong evidence) to be about 4.55 billion years old (within +/- 1%). We also have extensive evidence for life on Earth being billions of years old.

How could this fit Genesis chapter 1? Time passed during verse 1 -- likely on the order of 9 billion years it appears. And, next, significant (long periods of) time passed between the days of creation, if they were literal (instead of the other reasonable guess, that they are symbolic).

The way to find God is not attending a church, but instead it's the way Christ said --

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

 

[Dave-W]

And another funny fact to consider, that the romans kept record of things and events even in those days and there were absolutely no public record of any event happening at the time Jesus was supposably on earth. No record of a crucifiction of a popular jew, or any records made about someone going around with supernatural power healing and raising the dead.

Correct. And for good reason.

When Paul was arrested, he was taken before Felix, governor of the Roman province of Judea. In Acts 24.27 Felix is replaced by Festus. Felix was taken from Judea and relocated as mayor of Pompeii. And he took the public records with him. And we know the history of that place - in 79 ad Vesuvius erupts and buries Pompeii, burning all of the records and killing everyone there including Felix.

 

[miamited]

Hi lostforever,

Well, kudos for picking your appropriate screen name. You wrote:

OK so here is my first problem, if we are finding ruined cities that are 10,000yrs old with historical records to bak these dates up

You mean that you've actually seen a document where the author wrote the date on it and it was older than the creation of man as explained in the Scriptures?

Last I checked people didn't date documents even up until Jesus came. Most accounting of 'when' an event written about may have happened is our accounting for when certain kings or rulers lived. We could be wrong.

Or perhaps someone found a stone or brick or statue with the date written on it as to when it was inscribed or erected? I find it good to ask the question: On what foundation can the age of something 3-4 thousand years ago or more, be proven? We don't have any statues or cuneiform that exist where the person who created it places a date such as this statue was erected or this tablet was written on May 6, 2004 B.C.

What we do have are timelines which we believe tell us when various civilizations existed upon the earth, but there isn't any way to prove that what we believe about these timelines is really accurate based upon the truth of the passing of time upon the earth. We find various shards of pottery or such and use what we believe to be dating methods that are correct, but we don't have any way to verify that the dating method is correct. We don't, for example, have a shard of pottery that we have dated to 10,000 years old and then the guy who made the pottery to tell us, "Yep, that's when I made that pot." All, yes all, current dating methods use some assumptive pieces to derive answers as to the age of something.

So, my question for you to ask yourself about these things that you believe to have been dated earlier than the Scriptures say that this realm has existed, is: What is the proof that verifies this age?

God bless you,
In Christ, ted

 

[Swan7]

Honestly, it's not about the Bible at all with such an issue, it's the heart. Go to God and open your heart to Him only. He will then answer you concerning all of this. The Bible is God's language (so to speak) and He can hide His own Word, just like He did with the Pharisees.

The difference is, you can go directly to God through asking Him when the Pharisees (those who did accuse Jesus, some Pharisees did come into faith in Jesus) hearts were hardened so the will of God be done.

Never forget what Jesus has done for us all.

 

[Halbhh]

From the wiki, the mainstream scholarly consensus is the Gospel of Mark was written down between 66 and 70 AD --

The Gospel of Mark is anonymous.[6]Early Christian tradition ascribes it to John Mark, a companion and interpreter of the apostle Peter.[7] Hence its author is often called Mark, even though most modern scholars are doubtful of the Markan tradition and instead regard the author as unknown.[8]

It was probably written c. AD 66–70, during Nero's persecution of the Christians in Rome or the Jewish revolt, as suggested by internal references to war in Judea and to persecution.[9]

Gospel of Mark - Wikipedia

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

The answers you seek do not lie within science falsely so called. They are not found in fossils, documentaries, or anything else of this world. This is a spiritual matter, and spiritual things are spiritually discerned. If you seek knowledge.... The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; but fools despise wisdom and instruction (proverbs 1:9) Your pride has led you to believe that you know it all, when that isn't the case as you yourself have pointed out. When you first "believed", the "seed" (word of God) wasn't planted in you very well. As every doctrine you could find, took you off into other places in your heart and your mind that you did not truly want to go, and since you are in fact saved, here you are again, being drawn to the Lord. But you do not seek the Lord the your spiritual self, you are seeking him with your natural eyes. And when you do that, you remain blind to who he really is. All the facts, all the whatever, are never going to be enough for you. If you have faith, works will follow. I mean if you saw someone who was hungry, you would feed them, rather than looking the other way. Things like that. You're taking James out of context. He supports faith only. What he is explaining is how to recognize true faith, and not a hollow, dead faith, which gets you nowhere. I think the big question you need to ask yourself is do you believe or not. That's the foundation for all of your questions. You don't believe it. You think yourself smarter and can attain God some other way, when there is no other way. You are looking for any and every excuse to not believe. It's our sinful nature. We're all guilty of it. It's ok. God still loves you. When you look at Scriptures from a godly perspective, it is a whole lot easier to "see facts" as you would put it. Think of it like this...Most of the Bible I have found is written in a generalized fashion so that it can be applied many different ways and in many different time periods. The Word of God never passes away. That's why it is written the way it is. For example, if you looked at the cylinder associated with Cyrus (historical artifact..archaeological find) it is written to more than just Israel. It doesn't say ONLY they should go rebuild their temple. In scriptures, it does not disagree with the artifact, but specifies Israel. Scriptures are always truth. If they are not, you're not really reading the word of God. One has to have an open mind, and take it as fact. You'll truly see that there are no lies. People tend to put God in a box of their own design. When in fact it doesn't work like that. Is it really that hard to imagine that there was no rain on earth for 1656 years..thereby giving understanding why Cain would have difficulty in growing crops? Then the first time it rained for 40 days and nights and the waters of the flood lasted for a year and 10 days. Dinosaurs were wiped out because of it. Hence the scienctific evidence of sudden death and fossilization (fossilization is not the normal way things decay). Earth was dry, arid, sudden waters would change the landscape. You can see a lot of physical evidence for this in the Grand Canyon. The science that explains millions of years and radiocarbon dating is an incomplete science based on guessing. Is it not possible to have things appear a certain way due to (in our view) accelerated aging? There are theories you can propose to how God did the things he did, or what they might "naturally" look like, but it still wouldn't change the facts present, in ways of that he actually did do them as he said he did. I need not be a scientist to discover these things. I just have to believe in the creator. He is the source for all knowledge and life, why would you seek life in the things that are dead? Mormonism was made up though. You can actually do a study on the era and see that there were many false prophets at that time. Look at it with spiritual eyes. There are truly only two "religions". The religion of Satan, or the true religion of Jesus Christ. Everything is one or the other. That is why the confusion. Jesus is straight up. No confusions.

 

[Ken Rank]

I needed to find someone to talk to about this because I just lost my faith a week ago when I realized I allowed myself all these years to overlook so many things in the bible that now are sooo obviously made up because a perfect god wouldnt allow his own prophets, and servants who are responsible for writing whats in the bible to make so many mistakes, contradictions, and misinformations.

Ill begin by telling you folks I grew up with bible belt(USA) style Baptist bacround, so hardcore preaching, tought the KJV was perfect and infallible because it was Gods word from cover to cover.I dropped out and actually became mormon for 2 years when I was around 22-24yrs old. Then lost faith all together because of that bogus zeitgeist video that hit the internet several years ago. 2 years ago I started believing agian for certain reasons which I dont want to take up much time explaining, but just 5 days ago it all came to an end and for good.

I like to watch documentaries about history, science, spae, ect.. and all it took was watching several videos one night about human cities that keep being found which were about 10,000 yrs old, all in ruins but at least one of these cities were recorded in public record which has survived over the years and now we are fiding some of these cities.

So heres one problem I have now. Ive read the Bible Gen-Rev more than once, and Im familiar with the human geneology it provides between Great Charactors, and does manage to give an account for all generations of humans from adam and eve, all the way to Joseph the husband of mary, and that accounts for close to 5k years, and now being 2017 that makes a total of nearly 7k years.

OK so here is my first problem, if we are finding ruined cities that are 10,000yrs old with historical records to bak these dates up, then why did Moses write in the book of Genesis that man had been created more receant? I mean aside the dinosaur bones, and other reasons that scientists say the earth had life on it many millions of years back, but we have evidence of 10k yr old human cities that basially debunks Moses's version of how life started on this planet going back generations till were left with adam and eve in the beginning.


Soooo, even a mere 3-4k yr difference is still proving that Moses did not recieve these words from any God, because if there was a God who was around so long ago he wouldnt have misguided Moses. And not to mention, Moses made a mistake and never gave an explaination for how Cain's wife came into existance. He wrote in Genesis that adam and eve only gave birth to two sons, cain and abel, no daughters, and no other children.

It started to become obvious to me that this was becoming a problem now, because if Moses was to be revealed as a lair or a storyteller instead of a real life hero for the jews and deliverer of the law, then the one god he claimed who created everything, and laid down so many rules/laws on believers never existed.

If it werent for Moses then neither christians, muslims, or jews would have the believe that there is a single God and creator that demands our worship, and has either eternal punishment, or eternal life for those who lived and passed on earth. So ya, this is just one single thing that just now dawned on me was a fictional story made up by man, which is why errors have been revealed.

Now for those who are thinking that Moses is a true Prophet of God, and wouldnt add anything more than what God had him put there, you have to refer yourself back to your old testament in Deut 18:22, and I quote "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him"

Sounds to me like something a false prophet would say so everyone dont turn on him. But it further my point that the sriptures were written by man, and man alone.

Now on to the new testament. The NT is suppose to be our later day instrutions from the son of god, that being Jesus. He grows up amonst common man, eventually starts his ministry and begins preaching and teaching a new doctrine of salvation, not by the blood of animals, but rather believing and repenting of thier sins would justify them in front of the father. He then became the symbol of the perfect sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

Now The problem I have with the new testament is the various verses throughout both the 4 gospels, and another popular book in the NT. You see in the 4 gospels, John the baptist, Jesus, and the desciples would go around teaching that the people just needed to believe in jesus to be saved, have faith in him, or confess him with thier mouths, all these would automatically earn you a place in heaven. But, they also told the people other times that if tey didnt repent, they would in other words go to hell.

Now even if you were to say they collectively said to believe and repent, why in the heck did james come along and disagree with all of them about what one must do, or what quality he must have to earn salvation and avoid hell. This is what I mean: Ephes 2:8"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God", then james flips the script: james 2:24 "You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only".

The doctrine of salvation for us would be the most important, because we rely on it so we know how to avoid eternal destruction in hell but live with god in heaven. Now how the heck are you suppoe to know whether or not works matter when one passage says "works" matter, and one says it doesnt. James starting in 2:14 to the end of the chapter goes at it from all angles to try and explain to people that they need to get it out of thier heads that faith and believing alone does no good. Jesus says it can, but james says it cant.

I have a great answer why this contradiction exists here, and that is beause all these gospels and the rest of these scriptures didnt even start to pop up and be written untill 130 or so years after christ and the desciples were dead and gone. And another funny fact to consider, that the romans kept record of things and events even in those days and there were absolutely no public record of any event happening at the time Jesus was supposably on earth. No record of a crucifiction of a popular jew, or any records made about someone going around with supernatural power healing and raising the dead.

Once agian, these contradictions keep ocuring because idiots throughout time keep purposely writing these things then show people and they start a religious movement right there, fake prophets can get rich off of thier claim that god uses them to deliver personal messages, and are darn near worshipped themselves because they an feel free imposing new law and the people, and sadly humans are just too gullable to know these fakes are basically making themselves a king among the simple minded.


These are just some of the reasons I just lost daith for good. I had to get it all out, whether or not if anyone bothers reading al of it, but I just needed just one sensable person to read it all and tell me if im just tripping, or could I be right.

When God made Adam He didn't make a baby in need of the nipple, He made a man. Therefore, Adam looked much older than he really was. The trees bearing fruit were "bearing fruit" and also looked much older than they appeared. The Earth was built ready to occupy, which cuts out the time difference (for the most part) we are talking about here.

The lack of records about a crucified Jew means only that Rome couldn't care less because he didn't represent their pagan gods and they crucified thousands of people. And the Jews didn't record it because the records we have from the Jews are from what we might now call the Orthodox... a people who never viewed him as messiah to begin with and so, like the many false prophets who also died in a similar manner, this one wasn't any different to them.

The ones who were involved wrote meticulous accounts of his life and death and we have them preserved in what is called the NT.

As far as any Scriptural contradictions... there are none. That isn't to say you can't show me where something is meant to have X amount of people in one place and when another book speaks of the same gathering it has a different number. A perfect God inspired imperfect men to write down what He desired for us to write. But to think that the human factor was not involved when you know you were capable of error when a Christian is a unrealistic expectation.

 

[llost forevor]

Earth looks (with strong evidence) to be about 4.55 billion years old (within +/- 1%). We also have extensive evidence for life on Earth being billions of years old.

How could this fit Genesis chapter 1? Time passed during verse 1 -- likely on the order of 9 billion years it appears. And, next, significant (long periods of) time passed between the days of creation, if they were literal (instead of the other reasonable guess, that they are symbolic).

The way to find God is not attending a church, but instead it's the way Christ said --

7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

9 “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11 If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! 12 So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

I want you to know that any of my responses are not for the sake of arguing, im just telling you what goes through my mind as I read the responses.

Anywaysm if I remember right, moses wrote the book of Genesis. Moses was a man, and it was a man who said it took 6 days for god to have both the earth, animals and human created. Then rested the 7th. Your theory would imply that adam aged a few billion years while god rested, not so sure about that either.

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

When God made Adam He didn't make a baby in need of the nipple, He made a man. Therefore, Adam looked much older than he really was. The trees bearing fruit were "bearing fruit" and also looked much older than they appeared. The Earth was built ready to occupy, which cuts out the time difference (for the most part) we are talking about here.

The lack of records about a crucified Jew means only that Rome couldn't care less because he didn't represent their pagan gods and they crucified thousands of people. And the Jews didn't record it because the records we have from the Jews are from what we might now call the Orthodox... a people who never viewed him as messiah to begin with and so, like the many false prophets who also died in a similar manner, this one wasn't any different to them.

The ones who were involved wrote meticulous accounts of his life and death and we have them preserved in what is called the NT.

As far as any Scriptural contradictions... there are none. That isn't to say you can't show me where something is meant to have X amount of people in one place and when another book speaks of the same gathering it has a different number. A perfect God inspired imperfect men to write down what He desired for us to write. But to think that the human factor was not involved when you know you were capable of error when a Christian is a unrealistic expectation.

Poor choice of words. While I agree that the Word of God is without contradiction, and is truly his word...numbers do vary from book to book. I would not choose to use that analogy as it simply states as you are aware in Ezra 2:13, the sons of Adonikam to be 666. While in Nehemiah 7:18 the sons of Adonikam are listed as 667. You have to do some calculations to determine the numbers (maybe someone was out of town?), or at the very least, assume they were counted at different times (maybe someone died). It isn't wrong. Just a bad choice of words. Don't use questionable genealogies to support yourself, as we are advised not to do as it creates more questions and stuff. I got your point though. It would be less controversial to show the things Jesus said in the New Testament, compared with the passages in the Old Testament which are nearly identical.

 

[Ken Rank]

Poor choice of words. While I agree that the Word of God is without contradiction, and is truly his word...numbers do vary from book to book. I would not choose to use that analogy as it simply states as you are aware in Ezra 2:13, the sons of Adonikam to be 666. While in Nehemiah 7:18 the sons of Adonikam are listed as 667. You have to do some calculations to determine the numbers (maybe someone was out of town?), or at the very least, assume they were counted at different times (maybe someone died). It isn't wrong. Just a bad choice of words. Don't use questionable genealogies to support yourself, as we are advised not to do as it creates more questions and stuff. I got your point though. It would be less controversial to show the things Jesus said in the New Testament, compared with the passages in the Old Testament which are nearly identical.

Did you read my post? I said sometimes numbers aren't the same... the age of a king 3 and then 13, an army of 16,000 and then 160,000... letters dropped in the translation process, authors recalling events as they remember and that can be inspired without them always agreeing. That doesn't mean there are contradictions... it means there is reason to study further and wait on God for answers.

For 20 years, I have been studying textual criticism on and off. I have found a number of times when a letter was dropped, but never a contradiction in facts. I have been challenged 100 times over... and not once has there been an apparent contradiction that doesn't have an answer. It might take time to find, I have spent up to 2 YEARS on one problem... but it always works out because it is "God's" word.

 

[MyGivenNameIsKeith]

Did you read my post? I said sometimes numbers aren't the same... the age of a king 3 and then 13, an army of 16,000 and then 160,000... letters dropped in the translation process, authors recalling events as they remember and that can be inspired without them always agreeing. That doesn't mean there are contradictions... it means there is reason to study further and wait on God for answers.

For 20 years, I have been studying textual criticism on and off. I have found a number of times when a letter was dropped, but never a contradiction in facts. I have been challenged 100 times over... and not once has there been an apparent contradiction that doesn't have an answer. It might take time to find, I have spent up to 2 YEARS on one problem... but it always works out because it is "God's" word.

Yes I did, and yet you still chose to ignore mine. I agreed with you. You seemed to have missed that.

 

[Ken Rank]

Yes I did, and yet you still chose to ignore mine. I agreed with you. You seemed to have missed that.

I didn't ignore you... we apparently do not speak the same language. That's fine... be blessed.

 

[~Anastasia~]

Welcome to CF!

Lord have mercy. It is good, I think, that you reach out an seek explanations. (I'll put in a request for your thread to be moved, btw, since this area is formal debate proposals and I think right now you are looking for answers.)

Many things could be said. It's best to take your time and work through it - the consequences are eternal, so it's worth investing time.

First, I may offend some folks by saying so, but this is a danger when people put their faith in what they consider to be the infallibility of Scripture. Scripture IS true, every bit of it, but how it is true, and how we are to interpret it, needs to be understood.

Here's one example of what I mean. The Gospels give slightly variant accounts of the events of Christ's last week. If carefully compared, they exhibit clear "mistakes". But the people who gave us the canon of Scripture were not idiots. Far from it if you read their writings - intellectual giants were among them. Now, if they were trying to pull off a hoax, don't you think they'd have the sense to at least make sure their days lined up? But the purpose of the Gospels are not to reveal everyone's personal calendar to us many centuries later. They are to record important events which happened during a pivotal time in human history. Two thousand years later, it doesn't matter if some minor supporting event happened on a Wednesday or a Thursday. I remember clearly the week my husband and I met, what we did, what we talked about, and the significance of it all. But was the afternoon we met for tea on a Thursday or a Friday? I might even remember it wrong, and that was less than a decade ago now. But the significance of everything remains clear to me. The Church was comfortable enough with the overall Truth presented that she didn't try to clean it up and "fix errors". And yet knowing all of this, people were willing to die for the truths they saw working out in their lives.

I don't want to get into the OT historical dating, but there is plenty of information out there on that. For one thing, as mentioned, some of the scientific methods are not as accurate as put forth, especially the further back you go. For another, there was historically a normal process of writing genealogies differently than we might do them today.

I would say that attempting to take apart and disprove Scripture is a poor means of validating faith. But your main premise - that it's all made up - would be much MORE supportable if we DIDN'T find discrepancies and things hard to make proofs by. If it was all made up, surely care would have been taken not to risk such problems, or else what would be the point of writing it at all?

If you're really struggling, I think it's best to consider bit by bit. But I would not take the track you are taking. If you can't help but approach it that way, I would suggest reading books that address this particular kind of thinking. While I don't agree with everything in the them, books like "The Case for Christ" and "Letters to a Skeptic" might help answer some questions and address the focus you seem to have.

You might find it more edifying to read about Saints and Martyrs.

 

[llost forevor]

Welcome to CF!

Lord have mercy. It is good, I think, that you reach out an seek explanations. (I'll put in a request for your thread to be moved, btw, since this area is formal debate proposals and I think right now you are looking for answers.)

Many things could be said. It's best to take your time and work through it - the consequences are eternal, so it's worth investing time.

First, I may offend some folks by saying so, but this is a danger when people put their faith in what they consider to be the infallibility of Scripture. Scripture IS true, every bit of it, but how it is true, and how we are to interpret it, needs to be understood.

Here's one example of what I mean. The Gospels give slightly variant accounts of the events of Christ's last week. If carefully compared, they exhibit clear "mistakes". But the people who gave us the canon of Scripture were not idiots. Far from it if you read their writings - intellectual giants were among them. Now, if they were trying to pull off a hoax, don't you think they'd have the sense to at least make sure their days lined up? But the purpose of the Gospels are not to reveal everyone's personal calendar to us many centuries later. They are to record important events which happened during a pivotal time in human history. Two thousand years later, it doesn't matter if some minor supporting event happened on a Wednesday or a Thursday. I remember clearly the week my husband and I met, what we did, what we talked about, and the significance of it all. But was the afternoon we met for tea on a Thursday or a Friday? I might even remember it wrong, and that was less than a decade ago now. But the significance of everything remains clear to me. The Church was comfortable enough with the overall Truth presented that she didn't try to clean it up and "fix errors". And yet knowing all of this, people were willing to die for the truths they saw working out in their lives.

I don't want to get into the OT historical dating, but there is plenty of information out there on that. For one thing, as mentioned, some of the scientific methods are not as accurate as put forth, especially the further back you go. For another, there was historically a normal process of writing genealogies differently than we might do them today.

I would say that attempting to take apart and disprove Scripture is a poor means of validating faith. But your main premise - that it's all made up - would be much MORE supportable if we DIDN'T find discrepancies and things hard to make proofs by. If it was all made up, surely care would have been taken not to risk such problems, or else what would be the point of writing it at all?

If you're really struggling, I think it's best to consider bit by bit. But I would not take the track you are taking. If you can't help but approach it that way, I would suggest reading books that address this particular kind of thinking. While I don't agree with everything in the them, books like "The Case for Christ" and "Letters to a Skeptic" might help answer some questions and address the focus you seem to have.

You might find it more edifying to read about Saints and Martyrs.

well Im pretty sure its not all made up. I do believe moses existed, and even possibly led the jews to thier promise land. I no longer believe that they heard gods voice coming from the sky speaking the commandments, or gods voice from a burning bush. I think moses intentions were for the best, and thought if he told them god was supporting them that they would gain confidence and stand up to the egyptians and leave, and it worked. But I no longer believe any of his writings in genesis about the creation and ancestory starting with adam and eve. that was for sure made up. and you have to admit thats possible he did, deut 18:22 says god's prophets are capable of making things up.

 

[klutedavid]

I needed to find someone to talk to about this because I just lost my faith a week ago when I realized I allowed myself all these years to overlook so many things in the bible that now are sooo obviously made up because a perfect god wouldnt allow his own prophets, and servants who are responsible for writing whats in the bible to make so many mistakes, contradictions, and misinformations.

Ill begin by telling you folks I grew up with bible belt(USA) style Baptist bacround, so hardcore preaching, tought the KJV was perfect and infallible because it was Gods word from cover to cover.I dropped out and actually became mormon for 2 years when I was around 22-24yrs old. Then lost faith all together because of that bogus zeitgeist video that hit the internet several years ago. 2 years ago I started believing agian for certain reasons which I dont want to take up much time explaining, but just 5 days ago it all came to an end and for good.

I like to watch documentaries about history, science, spae, ect.. and all it took was watching several videos one night about human cities that keep being found which were about 10,000 yrs old, all in ruins but at least one of these cities were recorded in public record which has survived over the years and now we are fiding some of these cities.

So heres one problem I have now. Ive read the Bible Gen-Rev more than once, and Im familiar with the human geneology it provides between Great Charactors, and does manage to give an account for all generations of humans from adam and eve, all the way to Joseph the husband of mary, and that accounts for close to 5k years, and now being 2017 that makes a total of nearly 7k years.

OK so here is my first problem, if we are finding ruined cities that are 10,000yrs old with historical records to bak these dates up, then why did Moses write in the book of Genesis that man had been created more receant? I mean aside the dinosaur bones, and other reasons that scientists say the earth had life on it many millions of years back, but we have evidence of 10k yr old human cities that basially debunks Moses's version of how life started on this planet going back generations till were left with adam and eve in the beginning.


Soooo, even a mere 3-4k yr difference is still proving that Moses did not recieve these words from any God, because if there was a God who was around so long ago he wouldnt have misguided Moses. And not to mention, Moses made a mistake and never gave an explaination for how Cain's wife came into existance. He wrote in Genesis that adam and eve only gave birth to two sons, cain and abel, no daughters, and no other children.

It started to become obvious to me that this was becoming a problem now, because if Moses was to be revealed as a lair or a storyteller instead of a real life hero for the jews and deliverer of the law, then the one god he claimed who created everything, and laid down so many rules/laws on believers never existed.

If it werent for Moses then neither christians, muslims, or jews would have the believe that there is a single God and creator that demands our worship, and has either eternal punishment, or eternal life for those who lived and passed on earth. So ya, this is just one single thing that just now dawned on me was a fictional story made up by man, which is why errors have been revealed.

Now for those who are thinking that Moses is a true Prophet of God, and wouldnt add anything more than what God had him put there, you have to refer yourself back to your old testament in Deut 18:22, and I quote "When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him"

Sounds to me like something a false prophet would say so everyone dont turn on him. But it further my point that the sriptures were written by man, and man alone.

Now on to the new testament. The NT is suppose to be our later day instrutions from the son of god, that being Jesus. He grows up amonst common man, eventually starts his ministry and begins preaching and teaching a new doctrine of salvation, not by the blood of animals, but rather believing and repenting of thier sins would justify them in front of the father. He then became the symbol of the perfect sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

Now The problem I have with the new testament is the various verses throughout both the 4 gospels, and another popular book in the NT. You see in the 4 gospels, John the baptist, Jesus, and the desciples would go around teaching that the people just needed to believe in jesus to be saved, have faith in him, or confess him with thier mouths, all these would automatically earn you a place in heaven. But, they also told the people other times that if tey didnt repent, they would in other words go to hell.

Now even if you were to say they collectively said to believe and repent, why in the heck did james come along and disagree with all of them about what one must do, or what quality he must have to earn salvation and avoid hell. This is what I mean: Ephes 2:8"For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God", then james flips the script: james 2:24 "You see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only".

The doctrine of salvation for us would be the most important, because we rely on it so we know how to avoid eternal destruction in hell but live with god in heaven. Now how the heck are you suppoe to know whether or not works matter when one passage says "works" matter, and one says it doesnt. James starting in 2:14 to the end of the chapter goes at it from all angles to try and explain to people that they need to get it out of thier heads that faith and believing alone does no good. Jesus says it can, but james says it cant.

I have a great answer why this contradiction exists here, and that is beause all these gospels and the rest of these scriptures didnt even start to pop up and be written untill 130 or so years after christ and the desciples were dead and gone. And another funny fact to consider, that the romans kept record of things and events even in those days and there were absolutely no public record of any event happening at the time Jesus was supposably on earth. No record of a crucifiction of a popular jew, or any records made about someone going around with supernatural power healing and raising the dead.

Once agian, these contradictions keep ocuring because idiots throughout time keep purposely writing these things then show people and they start a religious movement right there, fake prophets can get rich off of thier claim that god uses them to deliver personal messages, and are darn near worshipped themselves because they an feel free imposing new law and the people, and sadly humans are just too gullable to know these fakes are basically making themselves a king among the simple minded.


These are just some of the reasons I just lost daith for good. I had to get it all out, whether or not if anyone bothers reading al of it, but I just needed just one sensable person to read it all and tell me if im just tripping, or could I be right.

Hello llost forvor.

You made some sound points about the scripture, I do not disagree with what you have stated. I assume that you were taught that all scripture was inspired by God, and is free of error. If so, does that then mean that all the books and letters within the Bible were written by God?

I do not accept the letter of James as being written by an apostle, I reject this letter as authentic scripture. The Gospels were written by men, the Gospels do not state that God was the author. The Gospels are four separate accounts of the life of Jesus and differ on some aspects in the life of Jesus. Which is in fact, more powerful evidence for the reality of the death and resurrection of the Christ. We see the scripture from different view points.

The only scripture defined as written by the hand of God, is when God is doing the talking. For example, when reading the prophets of the O.T. you will see when God is talking, that is error free.

If God is speaking directly in the scripture that is authentic scripture.

If men are speaking in the scripture that is not authentic scripture.

An example of authentic scripture.

Daniel 10
5 I lifted my eyes and looked, and behold, there was a certain man dressed in linen, whose waist was girded with a belt of pure gold of Uphaz. 6 His body also was like beryl, his face had the appearance of lightning, his eyes were like flaming torches, his arms and feet like the gleam of polished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a tumult.

The man described above loves you very much and He gave up His life for you.

 

[christianforumsuser]

The Word is God. Logos
They created the world and man. The Father, Spirit, and Son had a plan even as Satan would deceive.

 

[~Anastasia~]

well Im pretty sure its not all made up. I do believe moses existed, and even possibly led the jews to thier promise land. I no longer believe that they heard gods voice coming from the sky speaking the commandments, or gods voice from a burning bush. I think moses intentions were for the best, and thought if he told them god was supporting them that they would gain confidence and stand up to the egyptians and leave, and it worked. But I no longer believe any of his writings in genesis about the creation and ancestory starting with adam and eve. that was for sure made up. and you have to admit thats possible he did, deut 18:22 says god's prophets are capable of making things up.

I should also point out that what you are describing is not Christianity. We of course believe in the Old Testament, but all of that was just preparation for Christ coming. Our hope is in Christ, not Moses.

Unless I'm forgetting something major, no, they never heard God's voice giving the Ten Commandments from the sky.

The burning bush was a form of revelation to Moses. Was there an audible voice? I don't know. Maybe not. It was a moment of calling for Moses. It's not the basis of our faith either.

The creation account especially has caused more people to flounder in their faith than probably anything else. Rather than spend decades hashing that out (some people spend their whole lives), I would encourage you that this is not exactly our Christian faith either ... at least as far as days and creating events. What IS important is that God intended mankind to be in His image and likeness, but we refused (whether by rebellion, ignorance, or whatever), and in a sense we bought a disease upon ourselves because we refused to remain in communion with God. And because God loves us, He desires to restore us and all of creation along with us, and He opens the way through Christ Jesus. That's the important part. How long birds preceded mammals can be set aside until much more important issues are dealt with.


I would strongly suggest reading the New Testament instead, focusing on the Gospels. Everything in the Old Testament must be understood through Christ, Who is God revealed directly to us. Everything in the OT was just preparation, and is like looking darkly through a veil. Taken by itself, it has great potential to confuse us, even about things as important as the very nature of God toward us.

 

[christianforumsuser]

The New Testament is very important. People need to understand about the high priests and sacrificial animal. Thus people need to see the Old Testament and realize we're not under the Law anymore.
But it's not enough just to say that.
Nor just to say "I'll be good..the CHrist did....a thing...idk"

 

[paul1149]

I grew up with bible belt(USA) style Baptist bacround, so hardcore preaching, tought the KJV was perfect and infallible because it was Gods word from cover to cover.

Just a couple of general observations. It seems to me that you had a fundamentalist and superficial faith. For instance, Creation was 7 literal days, period. And Paul and James are at odds with each other regarding faith and works.

There are other ways to read these scriptures. For instance, there is a "gap" theory regarding Genesis 1, which says that the earth was formed beforehand, and most of the Genesis account is about it being prepared for habitation. Satan's rebellion occurred before this preparation, and that accounts for the state of "chaos" the earth was in. Also consider, that the great flood radically affected the water canopy over the earth, and that would throw carbon dating way off.

Just a word of caution. Not all religion is found among the religious. "Scientists" too have been known to engage in faith-based assertions, and they do it in the name of pure science. Many thereby have been fooled.

Secondly, Paul and James are not at odds regarding faith and works. Paul stresses that our works cannot save us, only faith in Christ's work can. James does not counter this, he instead is saying that real faith does have works, otherwise it is mere intellectual assent and cannot save. There is an obedience of faith, whereby we have to follow the dictates of Holy Spirit and conscience, otherwise we simply are not serious about our salvation. And if we're not, chances are that "salvation" isn't worth much.

You seem to have done a bit of bouncing around, theologically. That's ok, I'm not criticizing or trying to put you down. But I would say that before you throw the Lord away, make sure you're dealing with who He really is, and not a straw man. And when it comes to secondary issues like the details of creation or the timing of the rapture, etc, not only get other points of view, but realize that Christianity does not stand or fall on whether we understand secondary issues 100%. It's essentially about God's answer to man's greatest need - forgiveness of sin and reconciliation back to Him.