Questions and Answers: Can You Believe The Bible Literally?

Obey your flesh and descend into darkness

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

Evolutionists and Old-Earthers claim that the days of Genesis 1 were not literal. Those who want to commit various sins and don't want to obey God will try to discredit parts of the Bible. Many hate those things that God says concerning marriage and those things that are part of marriage and are not be used outside of marriage. They want to use what God created for marriage in a way that is contrary to the will of God. Some people don't like the parts of the Bible that tell about the orders, ministries, gifts, and offices of the Church. They want to do Church according to their own ways, usually for money, power, or prestige. Some people don't want the parts of the Bible that tell about the power of God that is in His people through Christ. They prefer a powerless Church or they don't believe that God's power can be in them. Is there any foundation for these claims or are these just examples of wishful thinking on the part of those who are not hearing God's voice?

In fact, this is just wishful thinking and it is error. There is no material or spiritual evidence that effectively supports such a notion. Science does not support it, nor does the Bible. For those who are walking in the Holy Spirit of God, they know by direct revelation that the Bible is without error. Statements that deny the validity of any part of the Bible are in conflict with science, the Bible, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit within believers.

There is something wrong with the question, "Can you believe the Bible literally." What is meant by the word, literally, when someone claims that the Bible cannot be taken literally. The term needs to be defined. God often speaks in types and shadows. Some might call this poetic, but it is more than that. Grass, for instance, is a type of pride. Gold is a type of deity. Silver is a type of redemption. Precious stones are the saints of God. So, when precious stones are mentioned, they are not necessarily just precious stones. They may actually be a reference to the believers. Other parts of the Bible, for instance, Genesis 1, are historical and not poetic or speaking in types.

Is every part of the Bible true? Yes. Can the Scripture be broken or shown to be unreliable? No. Many have tried, but the Scripture has broken them rather than them breaking the Scripture. Many people, spending millions if not billions of dollars (often tax dollars) over thousands of years, have frustrated themselves trying to find some error or inconsistency in the Bible. The Bible is the most reliable ancient text in existence. There are over 10,000 copies of the text known as the Textus Receptus. Given that there are so many hand-copied manuscripts, one would expect many errors that would make the various copies inconsistent with each other, but that is not the case. Instead, we find spelling errors and inconsequential errors. The Scripture cannot be broken.

Given the miraculous nature of the consistency of the many documents that are known as the Textus Receptus, it would seem that the teachers in the colleges and universities throughout the world would be knowledgeable about this. Yet, they are ignorant in this area. They continually educate their students into ignorance by spouting nonsense about errors in the Bible. The truth is that they do not want God to rule over them so they are willingly ignorant of the truth. If they were willing to have God rule over them and were submissive to Him, then He would reveal the same things to them that He has revealed to all of His followers.

Questions and Answers: Can You Believe The Bible Literally?

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