What is Truth

TITLE: What is Truth
DATE:  September 4, 2019
TEXT: 2 Peter 3:16 – ESV - As he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

Not more than a month ago, a prominent young Christian pastor, and songwriter, confessed he is losing his faith. He listed some of the causes... problems he says the church avoids addressing. Feeling there are others who share his opinions, this week the Daily Devos are addressing those stumbling blocks. Today we are addressing his question.....

• Why is the Bible full of contradictions? OR.....
• Y iz thuh Bi-bull full ov kontradickshuns?

Now I wonder, were you able to read both of those sentences? Most people could. Indeed, most people were able to figure out those two sentences were saying the same thing. They were able to figure it out even though only one word, the word full, was spelled the same in both sentences.

Now what you are looking at is an example of the greatest number of “contradictions” in the Bible. Fact is they aren’t contradictions at all. They are disagreements, differences, disparities, deviations and copyist-errors. Now these disagreements came into existence during the first 1500 years of the New Testament’s existence.... you know,  when the Bible was being copied by hand.
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Now these copyists were good, and they were faithful, but even so, they occasionally made a mistake. Then, when their copy of the Bible was being copied by another generation’s copyist, his mistakes were copied IN as, you should excuse me for saying so, as the Gospel truth.  And to his errors, the next generation’s copyist added one or two mistakes of his own.
Now I don’t know if those are the “contradictions” that he says are all through the Bible. If so, he can relax. He can take it easy because no major doctrine has ever been changed by a copyist’s error. It  may be these are the kind of things our doubting pastor included on his list of Biblical contradictions. 

Of course he may be talking about passages like: And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven. —Lk 12:10 and “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Ro 10:13

Some say this is a contradiction.

On the one hand if you curse the Holy Spirit you can’t be saved... but whoever calls on the Lord’s Name will be saved. Critics say it is a contradiction. You can’t have it both ways.

We say, if you have committed the sin against the Holy Spirit, you can’t call upon the Lord’s Name. There is no contradiction.

Sadly, without a specific example from the Biblical contradictions of our doubting pastor I don’t know what more I can say...other than: in the original text of Scripture the Holy Spirit inspired the very words which tell salvation’s story.
In them there is no contradiction...and God’ Word is truth.

THE PRAYER: Dear Lord, keep us steadfast in Your Word. Restrain those who would by force or falsehood try to place doubt in our heart. Instead, let us be Your faithful, believing people In Jesus’ Name I ask it. Amen.

The devotion for today was inspired by various recent news articles. For further reading you may wish to go to this address: https://www.christianheadlines