The Ugly Truth About Biblical Inerrancy - Shocking Revelation!

Ever grappled with the complexity of sharing your faith or pondered over the steadfastness of scripture? Our latest episode embarks on an enlightening journey through the intricacies of evangelism, inviting you to discover how a demonstration of God's love can open hearts before the topic of repentance is broached. We navigate away from the pitfalls of debating biblical inerrancy with skeptics, instead focusing on Jesus' model of fostering commonality. With insights into the unique role of the New Testament epistles, particularly Paul's letters, we illuminate their intent as specific guides for early churches, contrasting with the biographical essence of the gospels.

Venture further with us as we grapple with the weighty implications of atheism and the pursuit of meaning in a life devoid of the divine. The episode probes into the moral conundrums faced when godless values clash with the innate drive to impart ethical principles, often leading to a profound reevaluation of personal beliefs. We courageously tackle the daunting questions surrounding the justice of God, the harrowing notion of hell, and the paradoxical joy found in salvation. Throughout our discussion, the beacon of hope remains steadfast, offering an uplifting perspective on the choice of faith and a God whose desire is for redemption rather than ruin. Join us for a conversation that promises not just to challenge but to inspire.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Faith and Failure's podcast. I have several pre-submitted questions. I'm just going to bring one right now. Our scripture is 100% valid. We have a complex answer we give people. We'd love to hear. If you have a simple and short answer, our scripture is 100% valid.

Speaker 2: 0:18

Well, the short answer would be yes, do you have a medium-length? Let me say this about that I don't argue with a non-believer about biblical inspiration and inerrancy.

Speaker 3: 0:34

Yeah, my goal is Because there will not be any progress. Okay, because they have a pre-subposition of what is true, what is not true, what is their truth and all that other stuff, and so you, presenting them with something that is immediately attacking to the core of their unbelief, you will lose them. That being said, if you think about Jesus coming from a believer's perspective, think about Jesus. He did not talk God or repentance, usually until after he healed them, and then he said go, repent, sin no more. He showed the love of God, first met them on a common space. They had undeniable evidence that God existed, god loved them and God desired for them to repent and then told them to repent. There was a common ground first, and then there was repentance.

Speaker 2: 1:32

An evangelist is to set the bar as low as possible to get him into the kingdom. I want to put as few obstacles in his way.

Speaker 3: 1:43

Now listen to this. It makes a whole lot of sense. We want to come in with all of our biblical knowledge and just hammer them with everything we've learned and known. Some of us have been serving God for a long time, some maybe just a couple of years, some maybe last month. But when you're getting, especially when you're fired up about it and you're passionate about it, it could be wrapped up and the wrong presentation will make the person you're trying to present to not want anything to do with the gospel. And it's not the gospel's fault, it's yours. It's not because we're delivering it in such a way. Because we get passionate, we get really motivated to go out and we're going to win souls for Jesus. And what we do is we end up beating them over the head with all the things we've learned when they're not even there yet. So, setting the bar low, just telling them the simple truth, the simple, honest, showing love and just talking with them, and that right there We'll make somebody want to step over that bar into salvation.

Speaker 2: 2:47

In order to get him saved. And so I don't try to convince the unbeliever of biblical inerrancy or 100 percent reliability. I'm quite willing to say these documents could be erroneous in many respects, there could be inconsistencies and contradictions, but nevertheless they are historically reliable with respect to, for example, the four facts that I shared last night, which are sufficient for belief in the resurrection of Jesus. And if that's right, then you should become a Christian. And then the question of biblical inerrancy, scriptural reliability that becomes an in-house question among believers. So I would really encourage you, at least in doing evangelism, don't try to set the bar so high that in order to be saved, the unbeliever has to come to believe in biblical inspiration and inerrancy. That's simply not necessary in order for him to become a Christian.

Speaker 4: 3:54

An atheist, was given a New Testament and I'm the one who gave it to him. He read the New Testament and, being a scholar himself, he said there's something that is about the New Testament that confuses me. He said Matthew, Mark, Luke and John quote Jesus Christ, and then the epistles and the other letters do not quote their follower. Why is it that the epistles and the other letters of the New Testament do not quote and say Jesus said this Right, okay.

Speaker 2: 4:21

So the question was why is it that when you read the epistles of the New Testament, for example the letters of Paul, you don't have Paul quoting Jesus of Nazareth all the time, but first of all, the four gospels is kind of the autobiography of Jesus.

Speaker 3: 4:36

Paul's job was not for that, that was to get the gospel to them, not to quote Jesus and to say historical facts of what Jesus said.

Speaker 2: 4:46

The time, whereas you do have this in the gospels. Well, I think the answer to that is that the gospels are biographies of Jesus and so naturally they tell the story of Jesus life and his teachings, so naturally they quote him. By contrast, the epistles are what we call occasional letters, that is to say, they were written on specific occasions to address specific issues that were burning in those churches. For example, the premier example of this would be the letter of Philemon, where Paul is writing to his friend to let Onesimus, this runaway slave, go, and it's a very personal letter. There is it's clearly just an occasional letter between Paul and this other person about this specific concern. And even in place like Corinth, paul addresses issues like meat offered to idols people were getting drunk at the communion table, how do you use spiritual gifts and corporate worship? Paul is addressing all of these very specific concerns in these letters and not trying to give a sort of biographical account of Jesus. But in fact, if you do read the letters of Paul, you will find he does quote Jesus on several occasions, and even more than that.

Speaker 2: 6:11

There are lots of allusions to Jesus' teachings in Paul's letters where he's paraphrasing Jesus.

Speaker 2: 6:18

A great example of this is where Paul says now, concerning the married, he says I have no command from the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who, by the Lord's grace, is trustworthy. Now he's not saying there I have not been inspired by the Lord to give this comment. I don't have any sort of inspiration from God and so I'm just giving my view. He's saying I don't have any tradition from the historical Jesus to share about this. I don't have something I can quote from Jesus about this. But as an apostle commissioned by him, I'm going to give you my authoritative view as an apostle of Christ. And that's a perfect example, I think, of where Paul is in touch with the Jesus tradition. But in this case he said I don't have anything from the Lord about this, and so I'm going to give my view. By contrast, when he addresses in 1 Corinthians 11, the problems at the communion table, there he does say on the night that he was betrayed, jesus took bread and broken and said this is my body which is for you. He quote.

Speaker 3: 7:37

No, we're gonna skip ahead just for a second I feel like a good bit of the people. I have conversation with are just simply not interested spiritually. Yeah, what kind of that's a big one People that you try to talk to and try to relate to, or maybe people in your family that just like, yeah, okay, maybe there's a guy, maybe there's not Honestly, don't carry the way, okay. So how do you approach them? Let's watch this Conversations would you have with them to?

Speaker 4: 7:59

generate spiritual interest.

Speaker 2: 8:01

This is a huge problem, isn't it? The biggest problem that we face today is not opposition, it's apathy, and some people even talk about apotheism as one of the problems that we face. There's theism, there's atheism, but then there's just apotheism, which is you don't care if God exists. Yeah Well, my best shot at trying to jar people out of their apathy is what I call the absurdity of life without God, and what I try to do is draw upon the insights of atheistic, existentialist writers themselves to show that if God does not exist, then life is ultimately absurd, and I analyze that in terms of life having no ultimate meaning, no ultimate value and no ultimate purpose.

Speaker 2: 8:57

And this leads to a very, very grim view of life. It leads to despair. In fact, I think it is a view that is so filled with despair that it's impossible, I argue, to live consistently and happily within the framework of such an atheistic worldview. If the atheist lives consistently, he would be profoundly unhappy, in despair, deeply depressed. If he manages to live happily, as most do, it's only because they do not carry out their worldview to its logical conclusion, but live as though their lives were meaningful, valuable and purposeful, even though they have no basis for it. And then I'll say to the nonbeliever given the unlivability of atheism, shouldn't you go back to square one and say, well, maybe atheism isn't right after all, maybe there really is a God, and if that's true, that means that life does have value, meaning and purpose and you can live consistently and happily within the framework of such a worldview. So that's my best shot.

Speaker 3: 10:17

Do you see what he does Every single time he's asked a question like what would you do in the situation? Do you hear how he ends up asking the person that you would be engaging with questions about themselves. And so what you're doing is you are building a bridge in conversation with someone who does not believe, and I think this has become lost on the church is that we want church people. We don't want the people who you have to work at. We don't want no issues. We don't want no dirt on our hands. We want the clean fish that have been cleaned, deboned and ready to eat. That's what the church wants. So there's been a lost art of communicating with people who do not believe and, in this case, don't want to believe or don't care to believe or not believe.

Speaker 2: 11:12

And if that doesn't jar them or budge them, then I think there's probably nothing left but prayer, just to pray for that person that God will awaken him. I think that for single people, when they get married and start to have children, this is when reality hits, because you're faced with the question what am I going to teach my children about moral values? Are there really moral values? There really is everything permitted, there really is no right and wrong, good and evil, and that's pretty tough to raise kids with that sort of nihilistic view. So this may come home to ruthless.

Speaker 3: 11:56

So if you exclude God from your life, that's kind of the only option left, which is pretty sad. I wouldn't want to live like that.

Speaker 2: 12:04

Ate a rawn, give time for the seed to be watered and to sprout. Yeah, no ultimate meaning. That is to say there's no ultimate significance to life, no ultimate value. There is no ultimate right or wrong, good or evil. Everything's relative. And then the third was no ultimate purpose. There's no goal of life for which you exist. Everything just ends in death for every individual and in the heat death of the universe for mankind as a whole. This is laid out in my book's On Guard, which is a kind of beginner book for those wanting to get into apologetics for the first time, and then also in the book Reasonable Faith, which is a more advanced book, a more intermediate level book.

Speaker 3: 12:56

Yes, I was gonna refer back to the question on the validity of scripture. You stated I appreciated your comment on how it's really not necessary for salvation, but for the new believer or for any believer. How would you answer that question? All right, good question. Here's one that's being given.

Speaker 5: 13:12

Hi. So one question I have had faced to me is if I believe that God sends people to hell for not, you know, for not believing in him, kind of two parts. How does a good God do that? And then also, how do I find joy in salvation If that's my belief, if I have friends and relatives that I know have died, who have rejected?

Speaker 3: 13:37

Yes, very, very fair question.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Both of these are again very agonizing questions. I've addressed these on my website at some length. If you look at reasonablefaithorg, there are articles precisely on this question of Christian particularism. How is it that salvation can only be through Christ and those who are separated from Christ go into an eternity separated from God? I think that the first question is answered by saying that hell is an expression of the holiness and the justice of God, that this is in fact what we deserve by separating ourselves from him. I don't think it's God's will that anybody goes to hell. The Bible says God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance, which means that he's.

Speaker 3: 14:35

I believe at one point in time in everyone's life there has been some choice, option or revelation of God to receive him. I don't know. I don't have a scripture that is that backs that up or is facts, but I just believe our God is so good that he would go through the trouble to do that for every creature and the only reason that God's will is not done is because people freely and irrevocably separate themselves from God forever.

Speaker 2: 15:08

They are like the drowning man who pushes away the lifesaver again and again that is thrown to him to rescue him from drowning. And this is the penalty, or the, the desserts of sin that is justly administered by God. Notice that nobody ever asks a question, the parallel question how could a just God send people to heaven? Now, as a purely intellectual problem, that's every bit as difficult as how a good God could send people to hell. How can a God who is perfectly just Send anybody to heaven, given their sin that they have committed, the guilt they have? Well, the answer, of course, is to be found in Jesus. In Jesus, the love and the justice of God Meet. We see the love of God as he dies in our place to reconcile us to him, but we see the justice of God as God's wrath and just punishment for sin is poured out upon Jesus himself. And so the Reconciliation of God's love and justice, I think, is found in the person of Christ, and anyone who Gives his life to Christ as His Lord and his Savior then benefits from Christ's death. But those who separate themselves from Christ by rejecting him, fall back under God's justice, and we know what you deserve there. So I see hell as an expression of the holiness and the justice of God, which people sadly Choose for themselves rather than trusting in the provision that God has made in Christ.

Speaker 2: 17:08

Now the second question was how can we rejoice in knowing that family members or loved ones are In hell, separated from God forever? Well, we don't know the answer to that, but here's, here's, a possibility. It may be that, when we go to be with Christ, that the experience of being in the very presence of Christ, without the alloy of sin or the the veil of Sin that separates us from him now, will be so beautiful, so overwhelming, that it will just preoccupy Our minds, so that there would be no consciousness of those who are lost and Are in hell. Think, for some example, of someone who is undergoing, say during the Civil War, a leg amputation. The pain is so overwhelming that he's not thinking of, say, the multiplication table which he knows. He knows the, the facts of multiplication, but he's not thinking of them at that moment because the experience of pain just overwhelms him.

Speaker 2: 18:29

Now, in exactly the same way, the vision of Christ, I think is possibly so beautiful, so overwhelming, that it will simply Drive from consciousness any knowledge that one might have that there are loved ones that are separated from him and and lost forever. That knowledge Would be privileged to God alone, and it would be God alone who would bear that heavy burden in his heart of Knowing that there are people that he loves who have rejected him and are separated from him forever. But it may well be the case that we will not have to bear that burden ourselves now that's fair.

Speaker 3: 19:12

I mean that's. That's a tough one, especially when you, when you feel that you have, when you feel you've lived a life, you're now in heaven and the people you love, loved, are Not as tough. But that's why we, we are called as Believers to do something like there's no retirement plan. There's no. You know, we are called to be the hands and feet of Jesus, like, empowered by the spirit, led by the spirit, and this is why I teach spiritual maturity to my congregation all the time, because I feel that the church has gotten so lazy in being engaging with those who do not know God. And it's very, very easy to gravitate towards wanting people to come to your church that understand church, that know church, that know the process, they know how to behave. They, the kids, they've been raised in church. They're not, they're not a bunch of heathens, you know all this other stuff. You know that makes life a lot easier when you're doing church. It's a lot cleaner. But Jesus wasn't about clean, jesus wasn't about, he wasn't about going, and he even said this. He said I did not come for those who are well, I came for those who are sick. So I wanna challenge you before we wrap up the live stream today.

Speaker 3: 20:44

Before we wrap up this video, I wanna challenge you like have you become so complacent and comfortable in your Christian walk that you probably can't even remember the last time you had a conversation outside of your church, outside of people who knew God, that you were willing to step outside of your comfort zone? You know where miracles happen. You know where spiritual gifts happen not in the comfort zone. It's when you step outside of that and allow yourself to be used by God, allow yourself to get out of where you are. We like to call it comfortable, but a lot of times it's just complacent. So I wanna challenge you or have you allowed your Christian walk, if you are a believer, have you allowed your Bible study, your church, whatever, to be some sort of badge on your chest to where you've arrived? You've done it like I don't need to talk to those sinners. You know, and that is not what Jesus did. That was not the life of Jesus. That was not supposed to be the legacy of Jesus.

Speaker 3: 21:54

He wanted us to go and preach the gospel, not just pastors, but the people in the church. To preach the gospel, to share the gospel with those who do not believe that it is true. That means we have to talk to people who claim to be atheists. We have to talk to people who claim to maybe be on the fence I don't know if God is even real, this or that. We have to be willing. We have to be well enough versed and on purpose with our Christian walk and engaging those who do not know God because, I guarantee you, you go up to them with all your Bible, you can study the word and know it backwards and forwards. You can have all kinds of degrees and be well known in the area of church people. You can go up to a person who does not know God and not make any headway with them because you're so stuck on what you know instead of knowing who you're talking to. And if you pay attention to the life of Jesus, that's what he did. He understood the person he was talking to. He understood the person.

Speaker 3: 23:07

Like I've talked to some people about deliverance ministries like demon possession and being addicted and all these other things, chains being broken and breaking free. A lot of times we'll pray for things, we'll anoint them with oil, we'll speak to the demon, we'll do all these things and we forget that the deliverance is not so that we can say we've wrestled with a demon. The deliverance is for the person who is under this influence under and involved in this issue. Deliverance is for the person to point back to God. Salvation is for the person, not so that you can say, look how we filled up a church or look what we've done that's good today. Salvation is so that we can grow heaven, but we have to do the work here on earth to make that a possibility.

Speaker 3: 23:58

So thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you, if you have not yet, please, as a favor to me, go over to the YouTube channel and it really helps get the videos to other people. When you like the videos, when you share the videos, when you leave a comment, if you ever have a question, you can always leave a comment, but you can also email me and, if you ever want, I also do interviews on this show. They're sporadic, but I got some coming up the next month or so. If you ever want to be interviewed and you want to tell your story of what God has done in your life, you can email me at faithandfailures at gmailcom, or you can comment on a video, dm me on Instagram or Facebook and I will respond and get back with you as soon as possible. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.

Speaker 1: 24:51

Faith and Failures podcast.