Remember last week, I was talking about this principle that all of the scripture is profitable. And I told you a little personal testimony about how I wrestled with a doctrinal issue many years ago. And remember I used, the question I was dealing with is whether the stories in the Bible were intended to be true. And you'll remember I said, you know, when you're dealing with fables, It really doesn't matter whether there really was a boy who cried wolf. You can learn the principle from the story whether it actually happened or not. Remember that? Okay, did you read the paper this morning? Those of you who came to the 815 service almost certainly didn't. Page one of Metro. Upstate clergy show support for evolution. More than 10,000 clergy, including several in the upstate, have signed an open letter on the Internet stating that they believe Darwinism is not incompatible with the Bible. They quote Reverend Timothy Dombek, who's the director of St. James Episcopal over on Piney Mountain Road. And he says, I don't think there's a conflict between scientific discovery and what's going on in scriptures. I think we're speaking of two different things. Listen carefully. Two different kinds of truths. And one doesn't negate the other. Now, what he's not saying is that he doesn't believe the Bible is God's Word, okay? That's what he's not telling you. Dr. John Shelley, a religion professor at Furman, who's a member at St. James, will teach a class called The Believer and the Scientist, Christian Faith in the Age of Darwin. Shelley said, it's important to remember the biblical authors were writing from the perspective of their own time and place. What has he just done there? He has removed inspiration from the equation, okay, and had a very different view of science than we do. quoting him, and yet I think one can argue that these biblical writers were very much in touch with the holy, with God, and we have a lot to learn from them. See, you can learn not to shout wolf, whether the boy who cried wolf ever existed or not. And the Bible remains a major source of Christian truth, but it's not a very good source for science. The letter that they're talking about that these people have signed, says, well, virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice. It's not what they say. It's what they don't say that will get you. The overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally as they would a science textbook. Well, there's a little flaw in that sentence in that nobody reads the Bible literally. And you don't read a science textbook literally. You recognize figures of speech. And so the language is loose, it's careless. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible, here we go, ready? The creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark, convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between creator and creation, expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information, but to transform hearts. Now, that is precisely standard classic liberal theology. The Bible is a book of stories written by a bunch of well-intentioned people who were right as far as faith and practice. And we need to stop imposing our presuppositions on them and read what they wrote in the context in which it was written, which is as fable, okay? Now, I think it's very interesting that when you read liberals, they are very careful not to tell you the whole truth about what they believe. They'll tell you enough that it sounds like they're religious without getting themselves in trouble. Because if they told you the whole story, the vast majority of even nominal Christians in this country would say, well, I don't believe that. because they don't believe that Jesus is God. They're not even sure He existed. They don't believe the Bible is any different from any other book. And that's what we're talking about here in this series, at this point in the series. I just love it when I'm relevant. We're talking about this first question in the apologetics series, which is, why should I believe that the Bible is any different from any other book? What evidence is there that it's not just like the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita or the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures or any other of a host of religious writings. I said last time we would start in looking what the Bible says about itself, and I said that, of course, that isn't going to be convincing to the guy you're actually dealing with because anybody can write a book that says, God said this, right? And you got to be honest about that. But I think it's interesting that what the Bible says about itself is a little more nuanced than that. And we looked at a couple of passages last week, 2 Timothy 3.16, which says that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God. And that is, in fact, the correct translation. It's not all that is Scripture is Scripture, which would be a tautology. But all of the Scripture, all of the writings, are given by inspiration of God. And secondly, we looked at this word inspiration and what that means. And we talked about the fact that, in fact, it means outspiration, not inspiration. It means that God spoke and those breathings were captured in verbal form on the pages of the Word. Then we looked briefly right at the end of the time at the fact that Paul seems to understand, first of all, that what he is speaking is the Word of God. And we looked at 1 Thessalonians 2.13. We can start there this morning. 1 Thessalonians 2.13 where he commends the Thessalonian believers. And he's not talking about his writings here, he's talking about his preaching. He says, For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because when ye received the word of God which ye heard from us. Now that's very exalted language. He says, You received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth the word of God. Now Paul is referring here, he doesn't use the word inspiration, but he's referring to what he preaches. It is, in fact, the Word of God. And He is aware of the fact that His words are not merely His words, okay? That's an important point. It goes to this idea of these are good people writing down their thoughts and we need not to take them out of context. If somebody thinks that he's speaking the words of God, either he is or you shouldn't be listening to him, okay? He's a nutcase. And we've all heard people around who, you know, and these are the guys who get on the subway naked, right? They're just crazy. So this idea that these were good people but mistaken is just not acceptable. They were nuts. This is incredible language. Over in 415, we looked at that briefly last time too. He says, This we say unto you by the word of the Lord. And I pointed out in passing that there are times when Paul gives advice and he says, Now, this isn't the word of the Lord here. I'm just giving you my advice. He does that in 1 Corinthians, for example. not all of 1 Corinthians, but places in 1 Corinthians. He knows the difference between when he is speaking under divine influence and when he is speaking his own words, and he is able to tell that difference. There is something qualitatively different going on there. Now, you've often seen, used in this context, Revelation 22, the last, right at the end of the Bible, the book of Revelation, John says that anybody who adds to the words of this book Anybody who takes away, his name will be taken out. Anybody who adds, what will happen to him? Curses will be added, yeah. Now, I'll just observe that clearly when John said this book, he intended the book of Revelation. He didn't see himself as writing the last book, the last chapter, if you will, in the Bible necessarily. But I also don't think it's an accident providentially. that that's where it shows up in the text, okay? So here John clearly believes that what he's writing must not be altered. Now look, I've been a published writer and some of you have too. You understand that editors edit and they change things you say. And for every writer, you remember the first time you got edited badly and what it did to you, right? Well, writers just understand that editors have a right. There's a reason that publications have editors. And editors have a right to modify things. You don't want them to change your meaning, but you understand they're going to tweak a word here and there. John wasn't willing to tolerate that. He said, you don't take away a word, you don't add a word. He clearly thinks of his own writing as qualitatively different from fables or stories or that kind of thing. So, clearly there are writers who view themselves as speaking the Word of God, as authoritative, as inspired, if we can use that word. I think it's also interesting that parts of the Bible claim inspiration for other parts of the Bible. Did you know that? This is interesting. Let's look at a couple of passages. 1 Timothy chapter 5, Paul is writing to his protege, Timothy, and he says in verse 17, 517, let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine, or teaching. For the scripture saith, you see that? He uses this word scripture, graphe, which means not just anything written, but the holy writings, the inspired writings. The scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. Anybody know where that's from? It's from Deuteronomy, okay? It's from the books of Moses, the Torah. which all Jews would recognize as the scripture. And the laborer is worthy of his reward. You know where that's from? Luke. Luke. He quotes Old Testament as scripture, and in the same breath, parallel with a Chi copulative and there, absolutely parallel, he quotes Luke. The sayings of Jesus as recorded in Luke. This saying, by the way, is recorded in Matthew as well, a slightly different wording. Is that a problem if we believe in verbal inspiration? No, because Jesus was probably speaking Aramaic, almost certainly speaking Aramaic, and the gospel writers, under inspiration, translated his words into Greek and sometimes used different words to do it. That's perfectly appropriate. He specifically quotes the gospel of Luke and calls it scripture. Now, this is before the death of Paul. This is early 60s. That is a remarkable testimony. It has been alleged by some skeptics that the Gospels are written so late as to be non-reliable. Well, here we have clearly a Gospel account that was early enough to be recognized as Scripture by someone writing in writings that were included in the New Testament. And by the way, they're not the latest writings in the New Testament by a long shot. So we've got a substantial historical record here and a claim of inspiration tied to it. You've also probably heard of 2 Peter 3.16. This is kind of a fun one. 2 Peter 3.15, Peter refers to Paul. He says, Paul has written unto you, verse 15, then verse 16, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which there are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable twist," or rest, as they do also the other scriptures. So, Peter is saying, Paul's inspired. Paul knows he's inspired. Peter agrees, okay? And especially considering the fact that this is after Peter has been rebuked by Paul in the event recorded in Galatians 2. That's significant. Peter does not hesitate to accord scriptural status to Paul's writings. Now, can we believe then that the scripture is a good book, but it isn't accurate? Very difficult to make the case that this is a good book if it lies about its own nature. If it's full of lies, it's not a good book. I have, in many ways, I have more respect for an outright rejecter of the Scripture than I do for the liberal guy who wants to get paid for pretending to believe in the Bible but doesn't really believe in it. There is something inherently prostitutional about that that I find deeply depraved and disgusting, frankly. Okay, so those are the claims the Scripture makes about itself. There are a lot more. Hundreds of times the Bible says, thus saith the Lord, The Bible records that the Lord speaks to someone, Isaiah, for example, or Jeremiah, and then commands him to write down what was said, right, the Word of the Lord. And then it is later, the writings are referred to as the Word of the Lord, the Scripture. So the Bible is very clear on what it thinks about itself. And you can disbelieve it if you want, but you can't claim that it's a good book that is reliable for faith and practice if it's wrong about whether it's from God or not. That's a faith issue, a doctrinal issue. And if it's wrong about that core issue of what it is, what its significance is, then it's hard to imagine that it would be right about anything else. OK, having said that, as I've said, none of this helps you with the guy who doesn't believe, right? Because anybody can write a book that says, thus saith the Lord, and that doesn't prove anything. What evidence is there? that the scripture is unlike other books. To my mind, I think it comes down to two lines of thinking. There may be more, and I'm happy to entertain suggestions. But to my mind, it comes down to two lines of thinking. First of all, I'm going to say literary quality, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that in a moment. And the second line of analysis is fulfilled prophecy. The scripture says things before they... describes things before they happened that an ordinary book just couldn't do. I'm going to come back to this idea later, but, you know, lately, who's that medieval guy, Nostradamus? He's gotten a lot of attention. Well, the way Nostradamus appears to make prophecies is he writes phrases that are so vague that they could mean almost anything. It's kind of like reading your horoscope. Be careful with your money today, you Virgos. Well, Sagittarius ought to be careful with his money too, shouldn't he? And Capricorn. Isn't it a good idea to be careful with your money today? I mean, how much help is that? Either so obvious or so abstruse that you can make it mean virtually anything you want. By the way, there was word circulating on the Internet. There was a verse, a stanza in Nostradamus that predicted the falling of the towers in 911. That was an urban legend. The quatrain that was quoted, in fact, was not from Nostradamus. Somebody made it up. But those are the lines of argument we're going to use. First, literarily, it is unlike any book, and you can demonstrate that. Secondly, it makes prophecies accurately, specific prophecies. that an ordinary writing, an ordinary work of literature wouldn't make. Now, we're not going to finish both of those ideas today, but we'll start into that first one. I'm going to start with the idea of unity. And it seems to me that I've said this in here in years past, but it's worth saying again right here where it fits in the outline. Several years ago, for many years, I was an employee of Bob Jones University Press. And for 12 of those years, I was the supervisor of what we called secondary authors, the junior high and high school level, grades 7 through 12 authors. Had a bunch of PhDs who didn't need to be supervised, and I was their supervisor, and that was a great job. I loved it. And my job basically was just to provide them the tools they needed to get their job done, you know, things like training on the software and stuff like that. It was a great job. And as a side, a fringe benefit, I got to read all those manuscripts. And I got a better liberal arts education in that position than I could have gotten in almost any other way. I was reading the chemistry, and the physics, and the math, and the history, and the English, and all of that. So it was a great job. Great job. Well, one of the difficulties we had there was the priority of the university faculty. And here's what I mean. I would go to the person who was responsible for hiring for the university. And I would say to him, look, we really need somebody to write a chemistry book. And as you can imagine, it has always been this way. Math and science people are the hardest to find. And I don't mean to criticize the humanities because that's what I'm in, but the sciences are really hard to get qualified people to write for. There just aren't that many out there. And so I'd go to him and I'd say, look, we need somebody who can write a chemistry book. And he'd say, well, look, we've got these people and we need to cover these chemistry classes. And the fact is that the classes are going to meet whether there's a teacher or not. So my first priority has to be to provide teachers for the classroom because, you know, the students are coming, they need to take the classes. And if I get somebody extra, then you can have him. But first call goes to the classroom. I understood that. Okay. So I started trying to think creatively outside the box. You know, is there a way we can work around this problem? That we can get the books written without pulling teachers out of the classroom to do it. Win-win situation, you know. And I thought, well, you know what we could do? Summer school isn't all that large, I mean, compared to the school year. And there are a number of teachers for whom there isn't summer school teaching employment. Well, if I can get three, four, five guys or girls, not discriminatory here, who can write parts of a chemistry book, get them in here, lock them in a room with a bunch of computers for a summer and tell them, okay, write two chapters each. And when you're done, you'll have 10 chapters, right? And maybe in two summers, or maybe even in one, we could write the whole book. Brilliant idea. Pat myself on the back. So I ran that by the guy in charge of hiring. He said, yeah, we could do that. We could give you the guys for the summer. OK, great. So we did. It was a nightmare. Nothing wrong with the writers, OK? Highly qualified people. Nothing wrong with that at all. But what happens? Well, first of all, you have to decide ahead of time on a scope and sequence. What's Chapter 1 going to be about? What's Chapter 2 going to be about? And so on. Then they have to coordinate to make sure that what they think ought to go in Chapter 1, somebody else hasn't also put in Chapter 4, right? And vice versa. Sometimes they contradict each other. Not because they don't know what they're talking about, but because in many cases these guys know way more than they ought to. And some of these issues in chemistry, or in the sciences, get really complicated. And how do you describe it, you know? What kind of language are you going to use? What model are you going to lay out? And so they'd have to agree on how they were going to handle this specific approach. And then there's the style problem. Here's one person who writes chapters 1 and 2. Here's another person who writes chapters 3 and 4. If you're paying attention, you go from chapter 2 to chapter 3, and it's like a whole different guy is writing. How about that? And that's exactly what's going on. Right. So now you've got to pay an editor to go in and fix the style so it sounds like it's all from the same pen. But the editor doesn't know chemistry. So he goes in and smooths some things out, and the writers go, no, you can't say that. It's not right anymore. Well, now they're back in the classroom. They don't have time to... It was a nightmare. What I was trying to do was basically write a textbook using anthology method, okay? Everybody writes a chapter. Here we had half a dozen people involved. At the same time, and in some cases in the same place, do you think we could get a unified book out of that crew? No, we couldn't. And it's not their fault. I'm not criticizing. It is the nature of an activity like that. Oh, yeah, they wanted it to sound like one book. They were absolutely on board with me as to the vision for the book. It's just you can't do it. You just can't. There are going to be evidences that this thing was patched together. Now, the Bible. We don't know exactly how many authors were involved because some, particularly Old Testament books, we're not sure who wrote them. We're not sure who wrote Ruth, for example. We don't know how many people were involved from the sons of Korah in writing some of the Psalms. So coming up with a precise number is difficult. But pretty much everybody agrees it's somewhere around 40, about 40 different authors. That's way more than I was dealing with. On top of that, Moses, who wrote the earliest books, if you don't count Job, because we don't know when that was written. It doesn't mention the law or Israel, so we suspect it's very early, written sometime during the history described in Genesis. But Moses is the earliest writing we can date with any certainty. He's 1400 or 1450 B.C. John, we routinely say, is close to A.D. 100, might be earlier than that. There are conservatives who would put him in the 60s or 70s. But I think he's in the 90s. So that gives you 1,500, 1,550 years. Most of the authors of scripture never met each other, right? And sure, the ones who came later might have had access to the earlier writings. But believe me, my anthology work tells me that that isn't necessarily that much of a help. 40 authors or thereabouts over 1,500 or more years Is there literary structural unity to this book? Again, I've used this illustration with you before, but it fits here and I want to make the point. The Jews divided the Old Testament into three sections. We have, what, five? We do law, history, poetry, major prophets, minor prophets, right? That's how we teach it in Sunday school. The Jews had just three sections. The law, which they called the Torah, All right? And the prophets, which would include some of the history and some of what we call the major and minor prophets. And then they had the writings, which included some of the history and some of the poetry and so on. It was a little different division. Now, the words in Hebrew for law, prophets, and writings are Torah, Nevi'im, and Kethuvim. And they took the first letter of each of those words. And today, Jews will refer to the scripture as the Tanakh. Torah, Nevi'im, Kethuvim. It's an acrostic. Tanakh is an acrostic for those three sections. And so it's important that when you're talking to a Jew, you know the difference between the Torah and the Tanakh, right? The Torah is part of the Tanakh, what we would call the Old Testament. So they had three sections. And Jesus would refer in his teaching to the law and the prophets and the writings. Those were the standard divisions. Now, let's talk about the structure of that. What do you find in the law? You find God calling out a people to demonstrate how He wants life to be lived and nations to be ruled. Genesis is the story of His selecting the people, grooming them, bringing them through captivity, into captivity so that they could be delivered in this great picture of the death of Christ in the New Testament. And then in Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy, you have some history, but the history is basically the background in which God gives the law. And so we call it the Torah, the law. And the law is all about rules, all kinds of rules. And underlying all the rules is this sacrificial system. You've got the daily sacrifices, morning and evening. You've got sin offering. You've got thank offering. You've got praise offering. You've got wave offerings and heave offerings. Sometimes it's birds, and sometimes it's sheep, and sometimes it's goats, and sometimes it's oxen, and sometimes it's flour and oil, and bird offerings. Did I say bird offerings? They've got all these different kinds of offerings. And when you break any of the rules, you have to do an offering, right? And the kind of offering depends on which rule you broke, and who broke it, and when, and how many times, and all that kind of stuff. Very complicated. And you remember me saying before that if you really took the law seriously, after the temple was built in Jerusalem, God had said, you may sacrifice only in the place where I place my name, Jerusalem. And that means that every time you sinned, you had to go to Jerusalem and offer a sacrifice. Well, from parts of Palestine in the first century or earlier, it's a two-day trip. How often have you gone two days without sinning? So if you really took the law seriously, you were always going to Jerusalem. You lived on the road to Jerusalem. You might as well move to Jerusalem because you were going to be there pretty much every day. And you realize that for the average Jew outside of Jerusalem it was impossible. Now God had said that the shedding of blood would make atonement for their sins. But it only works once. Yesterday's sacrifice doesn't work for today. So you've got to keep going back and keep going back. And you come out of the Torah, the books of Moses, looking at those priests who every day multiple times a day are slicing the throats of the lambs and Sacrificing them and burning them and eating them and all these things and you wish that you could find a priest Who could priest who could do the job right do it once and be done with it because this is a never-ending thing This is an unbearable burden Okay, the next section is the prophets please Understand that when I say what I'm about to say, I say it with full reverence and understanding that the scripture is the word of God. The prophets are very difficult to understand. Come on, you admit it. There are parts of Ezekiel you go, what now? And it's not just that you don't know the historical background. It's that the prophets wrote in ways that were designed to be hard to understand. God said that. That's the nature of prophecy. That's why we don't separate over eschatological trivia, because we all recognize that prophecy is just hard. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1 that the prophets, in some cases, didn't understand what they were writing. And we have an example of that in Daniel 12. The angel says, here, write down this prophecy. And Daniel writes it down. And the first thing he says is, so what's that mean? Now, I'm not trying to make light. God can be clear when He wants to. And the Scripture, the Catholic Church, among others, has taught that the Scripture is so obscure and so abstruse that nobody can understand it. So just trust us. We'll tell you what it means. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying for prophecy, for the prophetic passages, they tend to be obscure. And that is by design. It's on purpose. God says, I don't want these things to be perfectly clear until the time of fulfillment. Okay? That's the nature of it. Now, you come out of the prophets. And you find yourself wishing for a prophet who could say it plainly and clearly and unambiguously so you could understand what on earth he's talking about. Okay, what's the third section of the Hebrew Scriptures? The writings, the writings. And that's where we find most of the historical books and a good portion of the poetry as well. Well, what are those sections of the Scripture all about? Well, that's where you learn that under the judges, it was chaotic. Every man did what was right in his own eyes. And pretty soon, the people want a king because they need order. And God, in fact, has in mind for them to have a king, right? That's part of his plan. But they pick a king because he's tall. Let that be a lesson to you. Of course, he's the wrong guy. And eventually, they get the king God wanted to have in the first place. He's a man after God's own heart. it's going to be okay. And David sins with Bathsheba and he loses his family and there's fighting for his throne and there's people sleeping with people and it's a mess. And David is profoundly disappointing. And so we say, well, maybe the next one. And David appoints Solomon. He is not the firstborn. But David appoints him. And Solomon God comes to Solomon in a dream right at the beginning of his reign and he says, Ask me anything you want and I'll give it to you. And Solomon says, I'm a child. I don't know how to lead this people. Give me wisdom. And we're told that Solomon as a result of that request was the wisest man who ever lived. And if there was ever a king who knew how to king, it would be Solomon. And this is the guy who writes, Don't multiply wives unto yourselves because they'll steal your heart from God. And then he turns right around and does it. And there are some conservatives who think, that Solomon went to hell. I don't know that. We'll leave that up to God. But Solomon certainly gives every evidence of apostasy. Well, that's disappointing. Wisest king who ever lived, wisest person who ever lived. Well, maybe Rehoboam. Well, he's an idiot from day one. He listens to his friends, splits the kingdom right down the middle, and it's never the same again. And eventually, the northern kingdom goes into oblivion, ends up intermarrying with the with peoples brought in from other parts of the Assyrian Empire. And so now we have the Samaritans, and they've got their own religion going up north because the local kings don't want their people going down to Jerusalem in the south to worship because they're afraid they might lose them. And eventually, as I say, the northern kingdom goes into oblivion, both racially and politically. And then the south, well, you know, that's Jerusalem, that's Benjamin, that's Judah, scepter won't depart. Maybe that's the answer. And God puts the lie to that in 586 and 596 and 606 BC when on three different occasions Nebuchadnezzar just destroys that kingdom. And so we find the people of Israel sitting under a tree in Babylon and weeping and wishing they could go back and do it right. And we come out of the Old Testament, the Tanakh, wishing that there was a king who could do it right. And then you turn the page. Matthew chapter 1 verse 1, the generations of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham, prophet, priest, and king. One author couldn't have executed a work of literature that tightly wrapped. Hands it to you with a big pretty bow on top and says, here's the story. Here's everything you need to know. a brilliant piece of literary work demonstrating unity across 1,500 years and 40 or so different authors. You're not going to find another book like that. It's just not going to happen. It's not like other books. Now, another element of this line of thinking is the question of contradictions. Part of literary unity is not contradicting yourself. And the Bible is free from contradictions. Now, we're going to have to spend some time on this one. I'm going to, Lord willing, next week spend a whole hour at least, or a whole session at least, on this question of contradictions. Skeptics often charge that the Bible is filled with contradictions. And those people fall into two groups nowadays. There are the atheists. and there are the Muslims. And the Muslims have a vested interest in charging that the Bible is filled with contradictions because it's part of Islamic theology that God updates His revelations over time. And so the Bible, Moses and Abraham and Jesus were all prophets of God and worthy of great respect. But see, over time, what they said goes out of date and God has to update His Word And Muhammad as the last prophet is obviously the most superior because he's the latest. So Islam has a vested interest in saying that even though the Bible is a prophecy from God, it's full of contradictions. And you'll find a number of Islamic websites that list 101 contradictions in the Bible and that sort of thing. I'm going to focus on the material from the atheists. Because these are the people who are arguing that the Bible is simply an ordinary book. And that's the question we're dealing with here. So is the Bible filled with contradictions or not? One skeptic said, well, look, you've heard it said among Christians that the Bible doesn't contradict itself. That makes a great sermon in the pulpit, but it is demonstrably untrue. There are hundreds of places where the Bible does, in fact, contradict itself. And what I want to do next time, Lord willing, is kind of categorize for you We're not going to have time to go through 101 or 200 or 500 charges of contradiction. But I want to kind of categorize for you the kinds of charges that there are and then point you to some resources where you can find thorough discussions of all of these questions that have been raised. You don't have to reach very far for the answers. You really don't. And I've said this before. Typically, when you approach a skeptic with a problem in a biblical passage, typically there are maybe four or five possibilities. Four of them would explain the verse in a way that is consistent with inspiration. And one would be, well, it's a mistake. The skeptic will reliably go for this one every time, every time. He ignores the others. Now that tells you something about His objectivity, or to put it in other terms, His scientific approach. He isn't really a scientist. He is out to prove what He wants to prove. Let me give you just a couple of examples in the time we have left here, and I want to show you the kinds of things we're dealing with. One of the Ten Commandments is, Thou shalt not kill. So the Bible says it's wrong to kill. Yet in other places, God tells His people to kill people. What kind of a God is that? Well, let me ask you this. If you were reading any kind of literary work and you found that sort of a divergence, would you assume that the author is an idiot and wasn't paying attention to what he just said? Or would there be more to it than that? Well, language is rich and round. Words have multiple meanings. And we understand that when the scripture says, thou shalt not kill, what is the precise synonym we would use for kill in that verse? Murder. Clearly, God does not say it's always wrong to kill. In fact, he says there are times when you must kill. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And it's interesting to me that liberals seem to think it's a great contradiction that you kill somebody who kills somebody. They seem to think that's a contradictory statement. Well, it's the only appropriate response to murder, isn't it? Capital punishment, sure. That's the only appropriate penalty. In that case, if they would just examine the context a little more carefully, clearly the commandment in the list of Ten Commandments is in a context of murder, and it makes it clear in the ways that is applied throughout the Mosaic Law. There is a verse where God says, I create evil. I create evil. Is that a tough one? Well, once again, to an unbiased observer, it's not tough at all. There are multiple words in Hebrew for evil, and one of them means disaster, not moral evil, but disaster. God says, I send disasters, earthquakes, tornadoes, not a problem. Okay, we're going to pick up here next time, and I'm going to try to give you a good overview, Lord willing, the arguments about biblical contradiction. Okay, let's have a word of prayer and we'll be dismissed. Thank you, Father, for the privilege we have of studying your word. We pray that you would indwell us by your spirit as you have promised to do and illuminate us so that we might understand it rightly and so that we might share it correctly with those who are in need of it. For we pray in Jesus' name, amen.