http://www.godstruth.org

20

The Nasty Objections

In Russia today the Bible is strictly banned. The real reason for this is obvious. The Communists would like to see the Christian faith gradually disappear. So they suppress the Book that feeds it.

But they like to sound more liberal than they are. So officially they give another reason for the ban: “The Bible is pornography.”

Pornography? If it were not such a serious matter, it would be laughable. The Bible pornography! What a joke. If this is so, why (dont the dirty bookshops sell it? Why dont foul-minded people flock to read it? And why do so many decent people read it with delight, instead of putting it down in disgust?

This ridiculous accusation shows how far some people will go in their attacks on the Bible. In the West we have not yet reached quite such depths of absurdity. But there is a common tendency to suggest that the Bible is not really a “nice” book.

In this chapter we must examine some of the most usual accusations of this kind. This is not going to make very pleasant reading. It is so much easier to throw mud than to clean it up.

But it is a job that must be done. Many people have a vague idea that the Bible is cruel, bloodthirsty and indecent in places. We need to look at the facts, and see just how much truth there is in this idea.

To begin with here is a rather extreme example. A horrid little pamphlet called The Faults and Failings of Jesus Christ was published in London some years ago. In the whole pamphlet there was not one criticism of Jesus that would stand examination.

The author attacked Jesus savagely over the incident of the barren fig tree.1 The Gospel describes how Jesus was hungry and went to a fig tree, looking for fruit. He found none, and promptly cursed the fig tree, which then withered away.

“There!” cries the cynic. “The action of a stupid, petulant, spoilt boy!”

Unfortunately he has missed the whole point of the story. The account of His forty days fasting in the wilderness2 shows that Jesus was not a man to be bothered about food. What He did to the fig tree was done for an excellent reason: to teach the Jews a vital lesson.

To them the fig tree had always been symbol of the Jewish nation.3

Earlier in His ministry Jesus took up this figure of speech, and built a parable around it.4

“ Israel is like a barren fig tree,” Jesus had explained. “The Good Gardener is going to manure it and nurse it for one more year, to see if He can at last coax some fruit out of it. If that last effort fails, the tree must be cut down.”

Now that year had gone by. Jesus had made His last great effort to convert the Jews, but without success. Already they were arranging to crucify Him.

So Jesus delivered His second parable about the fig tree, to tell the Jewish nation it had thrown away its last chance. But this time, to give His message more power, He acted the parable before their eyes.

Marriage in the Bible

The things people say about the Bibles teaching on marriage are enough to make your hair stand on end.

“ In the Old Testament God encouraged his favourites to have as many wives as they liked. Solomon had a whole harem full-hundreds of them. Then in the New Testament the pendulum swung the other way. Jesus and Paul said people had better not get married at all.”

That is the accusation. Now what are the facts?

Fact Number One is that God never “encouraged” anybody to have more than one wife. In the very beginning of the Old Testament the ideal of marriage is clearly set out: one man and one woman, joined together as one.5 Jesus confirmed this age-old principle, and pointed out that God had always intended the marriage union to be lifelong.6

Later in the Old Testament God relaxed the rules a little. This was not because He had abandoned the ideal, but because men were showing themselves unable to keep to it. As Jesus explained, what God did was to make a temporary concession to human weakness.7

The kings of Israel were expressly forbidden to take many wives.8 Solomon disobeyed God in building up his great collection of women, and we are told that this led to his downfall.9 There are two great love stories in the historical books of the Old Testament: the story of Isaac and Rebekah10 and the story of Boaz and Ruth.11 In both these stories there is no suggestion that any other wife was involved.

So it is quite untrue to say that the Old Testament encouraged polygamy. It permitted it, that is all. What it encouraged was monogamy, the union of one man with one wife.

It is equally untrue to say that Jesus discouraged marriage. What He discouraged was adultery12 and divorce.13 He recognised that only exceptional people could do as He had done, and forego marriage in order to serve God more freely.14

As for Paul, no man in history has ever been misrepresented worse than he. People ignorant of his writings sometimes call him a woman hater. Yet he wrote:

“ I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, who is a servant of the church that is at Cenchrea, that ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business she hath need of you. For she hath been a succourer of many, and of mine own self.”15

This is no isolated instance. Throughout Pauls epistles we can see his affection for all his Christian associates, both men and women alike.

Pauls teaching about the physical side of marriage is the most frank advice on this topic in the whole Bible.16 (You will need to read it in a modern translation to get its message. Older translations rather prudishly obscure its meaning.) Pauls words in this passage are so helpful to married couples that they are quoted in a booklet distributed by the marriage guidance council in one Commonwealth country.

It is very clear from this that Paul was in no way against marriage. He personally found it useful in his preaching work to be unmarried, and hence free from family responsibilities. So he suggested that some-not all, but some-other Christians might benefit from being single, too.17 He also advised postponement of marriage on one occasion in what he called “the present distress”18-persecution, probably. Who could reasonably quarrel with that?

Another man who is unjustly criticised concerning marriage is Ezra. When he discovered that many Jewish men had married idolatrous wives, he made them divorce them.19 This seems very harsh to many people.

It puzzled me a little, too, until one of my first trips to Africa. I had to attend an Elders Meeting of a newly established church. One item discussed was the position of a man who wished to join the church. Like a great many Africans this man had two wives and two sets of children.

There was only one other European present. We both thought that perhaps the man should be told, “If you had only one wife when you were converted, you would not be allowed to take a second. But what is done cannot be undone. As a concession, you may join the church and keep your two wives, but you must not marry a third.”

But every one of the African elders was up in arms against us. “That would never do! We know our own people better than you do. To make that concession would open the door to all sorts of immorality. We want to maintain high moral standards, and consequently a polygamist must be compelled to put away his second wife before he can be baptized.”

At the time this seemed ruthless. But now I know Africa better, and I realise that those African elders were right, and I was wrong. They were acting in accordance with the highest principles of Christian love. My own views had been based on ill-informed sentimentality.

If we knew all the circumstances surrounding Ezra, we should no doubt agree that he also was right. He was fighting against idolatry, fighting for the very survival of the true worship of God. Doubtless his action, though stern, was necessary.

Bloodthirstiness in the Old Testament

Half a century ago a Cambridge University professor of English literature gave three lectures entitled, “On Reading the Bible”.20 A better name for them might have been, “How Not to Read the Bible”.

The professor insisted that “the bloodthirsty jealous Jehovah of the Book of Joshua” is not the Christian God. He was certainly expressing a popular sentiment. But was he doing justice to the Old Testament?

The God that Jesus preached was the God of the Old Testament. Jesus did not criticise Him, or regard Him as bloodthirsty. What are the facts of the case?

The first fact is that the God of both Testaments has two sides to His character. He is loving and merciful to those who try to serve Him; He is stern and just towards those who persist in wickedness.

Here are a number of verses describing God. Those on the left come from the Old Testament, those on the right from the New.

These verses are not exceptional, they are reasonably typical. The character of the God revealed in both Testaments is exactly the same.

There is, however, one important difference between the two Testaments.

In the Old Testament, Gods judgments upon the wicked were meted out upon the spot. Sometimes they took the form of what appeared to be a natural disaster (as at Sodom), or a plague. Sometimes the instrument of Gods judgments was the sword.

In the New Testament it was exceptional for God to judge wicked men at the time.27 The general principle was that judgment would be reserved until the great Day of Judgment.28 But when it fell, it would be just as severe as anything that happened to the wicked in Old Testament times.

Thus Joshua had to execute Gods judgments on the wicked nations of Canaan in the past; Jesus will have to do it to the wicked of this world in the future. The principle-that the wicked must be destroyed-is the same in both Testaments. The only differences are (1) in the timing, and (2) in the methods used.

Why should God use the sword as an instrument of His judgments in the Old Testament? It would be interesting to know His reason. But He has not chosen to tell us what it is.

Even so, the Old Testament has revealed one important fact: that the sword of judgment was only a necessary evil, and only a temporary one at that. Although he was essentially a very good man King David was not allowed to build Gods Temple, because he had been a man of war and had shed blood.29 Moreover, many of the prophets looked forward to the day when God would change the hearts of men, and so bring permanent peace to the whole earth.30

This leads to another problem. David, the man of war, wrote some rather bloodthirsty psalms where he cursed his enemies. Can we regard those as inspired by God?

Yes, we have no alternative. Some of them are quoted in the New Testament as inspired prophecies of Gods judgment on Judas, the traitor who betrayed Christ.

But this does not mean that God approved of the anger in Davids heart when he wrote those curses. As we saw in Chapter 14, the writers own style and character still shows through, even when he is writing under inspiration. God could even use a murderer like Caiaphas to utter inspired prophecy.31 But this did not justify Caiaphas wickedness. And neither did the inspiration of Davids prophetic curses justify the aggressive spirit of this “man of war”.

Was Jehovah Merely a Tribal God?

In the ancient world every nation liked to have its own national god. There seems to be a relic of this ancient custom in the present-day superstition of having patron saints: St. George of Merrie England, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. David of Wales, and St. Patrick of Ireland.

Among Israels neighbours the Philistines regarded Dagon as their pet god, the Canaanites had Baal, and the Moabites had Chemosh. To this list some people would like to make one addition: the Israelites had Jehovah (or Yahweh, as the name was originally pronounced).

Was this really how the children of Israel regarded the Lord? Was He just one god among many? Or did they regard Jehovah as Jesus did-as the one and only true God?

From beginning to end the Old Testament supplies the answer. Jehovah was not just the tribal god of Israel. He was the one Supreme Being, the Creator of heaven and earth.

The only period in Old Testament history where there is no mention of idols at all is the very early period, as described in the beginning of Genesis. The one God created the world. The one God punished man when he sinned. The one God brought the flood. Even the wicked men of those days were not accused of idolatry. It almost seems as if idols had not yet been invented.

When idolatry did appear, the whole Bible condemned it. The Law of Moses, the Psalms, the Prophets-wherever you look you find condemnations of idolatry. Isaiahs statement, “I am the Lord and there is none else”32 sums up the teaching of them all. Plenty of Israelites descended to idolatry. But they were always condemned for it.

Occasionally we meet a verse that creates a slight problem. When Israels ruler, Jephthah, was about to fight with the king of Ammon he said:

“ Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the Lord our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess.”33

To an English reader it does almost seem as if Jephthah believed in Chemosh. It is as if he is saying, “Chemosh will fight for you, and Jehovah for us-and may the best side win.”

Once more, we need to remember that the Bible was not written by modern Englishmen. If it had been, Jephthah might have been reported as starting his speech like this:

“ Now let us, for the sake of argument, suppose that your god, Chemosh, really exists . .

But the Israelites did not bother with such niceties of expression. They could speak of stones listening,34 trees talking35 and corpses carrying on a conversation.36 As Hebrews they understood one another, and we shall understand them, too, provided that we dont take their vivid figures of speech too literally.

Pharaoh and Judas

According to some people, Pharaoh, King of Egypt, and Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus, have one thing in common: God punished them both for something they could not help.

They complain that God hardened Pharaohs heart, and then brought a succession of plagues upon him for being hard-hearted. God decided in advance that Judas would betray Jesus, and then led him to a horrible death as a punishment-with a promise of worse to come on the Judgment Day. All of which, says the objector, was very unfair of God.

Very well. What really did happen?

Taking Pharaoh first, it certainly is true that God was said to harden his heart. Paul says:

“ For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, For this very purpose did I raise thee up, that I might show in thee My power, and that My name might be published abroad in all the earth. So then He hath mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He hardeneth.”37

Was it fair to harden a mans heart like this? If Pharaoh had started off as a good man, then it certainly would have been very unfair. But this was not so. God never makes a good man behave badly. Pharaoh started off as a bad lot. He was already oppressing Israel cruelly before God said anything about hardening his heart.38

Also, we have here another example of Hebrew idiom. God sometimes says, “I will do such-and-such”, when He really means, I have foreseen that such-and-such will happen, and I shall permit it to happen”.

You can see that this is so from Isaiah chapter 29. In verse 3, God says to Jerusalem. “I will camp against thee round about, and will lay siege against thee.”

But of course God Himself did not camp around Jerusalem and besiege it. The Assyrian army did. And the Assyrians were acting under their own free will. (Isaiah 10: 5-7 proves that.) So when God said, “I will camp...”, He obviously meant, “I will allow the enemy army to camp...

There is a second example of this idiom in Isaiah 29. Verse 10 says, “The Lord hath poured out upon you the spirit of deep sleep and (He) hath closed your eyes.”

Verse 13 explains what this really means. God did not blind the eyes of people who were trying to see. He never does. The literal truth, as expressed in verse 13 was this:

“ This people draw near Me with their mouth, and with their lips do honour Me, but (they) have removed their heart far from Me.”

If they “removed their heart far from God”, this means that they wilfully shut their own eyes. God realised that they had done so. That is obviously what He meant when He said that He had closed their eyes.

In the same way, when a Hebrew read the words, “I will harden Pharaohs heart”, he would take it as a prophecy that the wicked Pharaoh would harden his own heart.

This is exactly what did happen. In the Exodus story it says fifteen times that Pharaohs heart was hardened. Three times it says Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Seven times it says God did the hardening. Five times it states that Pharaohs heart grew harder, without saying who hardened it.

Clearly, God did not make a good man bad. He merely took hold of a very bad man, and made use of his badness.

This is equally true of Judas Iscariot. Jesus did not want him to turn out badly. He wanted him to be a successful apostle, like the other eleven.39 But of his own free will, Judas chose to go the wrong way.

I have twice used the expression, “free will”. The Bible tells us, in many different ways, that God has given us freedom to choose between good and evil.40 “Free will” is a useful expression to describe our freedom of choice.

God foresaw how Judas would use his free will. God even caused prophecies about Judas to be included in the Old Testament. This raises another question: if God foresaw, and foretold, how Judas would act, did Judas really have any freedom of choice?

People have argued about this as long as anyone can remember. The final answer is inescapable: yes, Judas must have had free will, because the Bible says we all have it. But with our present knowledge we cannot fully reconcile mans free will with Gods knowledge of the future. Our minds just arent big enough.

But we can go part way towards it. This little illustration may help. It is very difficult to predict how adults will behave in a given situation. Little children are simpler; you can quite often predict how they will react. Animals are simpler still; nine times out of ten I can say what my dog is going to do next.

Yet they all have free will. It just happens that it is very hard for us to predict the behaviour of creatures on our own level (adults), but easier to predict the behaviour of creatures far beneath us (dogs).

The gap between dogs and ourselves is great. But the gap between ourselves and the Almighty is far greater. It is quite reasonable to suppose that He can give us free will, and still be able to predict with certainty how we shall use it.

Does God Ever Break His Promises?

A very interesting book was published in the year 1900: a Bible Handbook for the use of unbelievers.41

It is an astonishing document. It contains nearly two hundred pages of Bible quotations, arranged by two atheists to provide ammunition for other atheists to shoot at Christians. So-called contradictions, absurdities, indecencies, atrocities-they are all there.

Nearly all of them can be answered quite successfully. I use the book to give my senior Sunday School scholars something to cut their teeth on. What concerns me at this moment is the thirty-four pages of “unfulfilled prophecies and broken promises”.

This is an accusation to be taken very seriously. If true, it would undermine the Bible-believers foundations. If the Bible is full-as that book alleges-of promises that have been broken, how can we trust it? How can it be inspired? And if it contains lots of unfulfilled prophecies, what then? The force of the arguments in Part One based on fulfilled prophecy would be greatly weakened.

Relax. There is nothing to worry about.

In their preface the atheist writers said that, to ensure accuracy, they cut all their quotations out of printed Bibles with a penknife. Unfortunately, this is not the way to treat the Bible. Bible verses only make sense if you study them in their context, that is, their setting. You need to read the verses on either side of the verse in question. As I have pointed out on several occasions, you also need to make allowance for Hebrew idiom.

These authors have done neither. They have treated each verse as an isolated statement of literal English. In consequence the interpretations they put on many passages are quite ridiculous. For example, they quote the words of Jesus, which were obviously meant to be symbolic:

“ Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life.”42

Alongside this they print the absurd comment: “Cannibalism to secure eternal life.”

But many of their “unfulfilled prophecies” really are unfulfilled. They are prophecies-dozens of them-relating to the Second Coming of Christ. Of course they are unfulfilled-as yet.

My purpose in quoting this book is not just to decry it. I want to put on record that in all this collection there is only one “unfulfilled prophecy” that causes me any difficulty.

This is a prophecy in Ezekiel about Egypt which apparently has never come to pass.43 Perhaps it is to be fulfilled in the future-although this seems rather unlikely. Perhaps the language is intended to be figurative-although this does not look very likely, either. Perhaps we shall have to wait a while for the real solution of the problem.

Think of what this implies. Two good brains wrestled for years, trying to prove the Bible full of unfulfilled prophecies and broken promises. And the result? Only one solitary passage that presents a real problem.

Since so many other problems have been solved in course of time, there is little doubt that this one also will be solved one day.

To the question, “Does God ever break His promises?” only one logical answer is possible.

As far as we are able to tell-no!