Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
Isaiah 40:1–2 ESV
“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God,” the prophet Isaiah recorded. Let those words soak into your soul. God doesn’t say, “scold, scold.” Not “shame, shame.” Not “punish, punish.” “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.”
Problem: The word “fear” appears in the New King James Version of the Bible 367 times. In some of these occurrences, the text is expounding upon “the fear of the Lord” and its relationship to wisdom (cf. Job 28:28; Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7). In numerous other passages of Scripture, one can read where God commands that His creation fear Him (Leviticus 25:17; Deuteronomy 6:13; Matthew 10:28; et al.). It is widely known that one of the repeated truths in the Bible is that God’s “mercy is on those who fear Him” (Luke 1:50). It also is well known, however, that in the New Testament Paul informed Timothy that “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). The apostle John went even further, saying, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment” (1 John 4:18).
Two angels walk into Sodom. Lot urges them off the street and to seek shelter. Night falls, and the men of the city surround the house—not whispering, not negotiating, not politely requesting dialogue. But demanding.
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If Christians are to be kind and loving to everyone (Luke 10:29-37), some question why 2 John 10-11 teaches, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine (‘the doctrine of Christ’—vs. 9), do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds.”1 Also, why did Paul instruct Timothy to “shun profane and idle babblings” (2 Timothy 2:16; 1 Timothy 6:20-21)? Are Christians to shun those with whom we disagree, and even go so far as not to greet them or allow them into our homes?
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Genesis chapter 1 opens the Bible with one of the most profound declarations in all of Scripture: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). These ten words establish the foundation of our faith. Before time, space, or matter existed, there was God—eternal, sovereign, and all-powerful. Unlike ancient creation myths that depict gods battling chaos or emerging from it, the biblical account presents one true God who speaks order into existence from nothing. This ex nihilo creation reveals His unmatched authority and sets Him apart as the sole Creator.
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Problem: In the February 12, 2009 Butt/Barker Debate on the existence of the God of the Bible, atheist Dan Barker spent nearly two-thirds of his opening 15-minute speech alleging that the Bible’s portrayal of God is contradictory. Barker alleged several discrepancies (most all of which we have answered elsewhere on our website), including that God cannot logically dwell in light and darkness. Twelve minutes and five seconds into his first speech, Dan Barker asserted:
Have you ever been in a cave? If you have, perhaps someone has told you that the rock formations hanging from the ceiling—called stalactites—are thousands or even tens of thousands of years old. Scientists tell us that stalactites take 100 years, on average, to grow one inch. But just how accurate is this figure?
Stalactites grow where water seeps through limestone rock, dissolving limestone in the process. When this water containing dissolved limestone emerges from the roof of a cave, it hangs for a moment. In a current of air, some of it evaporates, causing the limestone to deposit. Finally, the remaining water drops to the floor of the cave and continues to evaporate and deposit. The deposit on the floor is called a stalagmite.
Problem: The Bible repeatedly testifies to the fact that this life is not all there is. For the faithful, the best is yet to come (Luke 16:22; 23:43; 2 Timothy 4:8). For the unfaithful, the worst is yet to come (Luke 16:23-24). The unrighteous “will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46, emp. added; cf. Lyons and Butt, 2005). At death, “the dust will return to the earth as it was,” but “the spirit will return to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:7; cf. Genesis 2:7). Jesus taught: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die” (John 11:25-26, emp. added). In short, the soul of man is immortal (Romans 2:7; 2 Timothy 1:10; 1 Corinthians 15:53-54).
Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They did not know the Lord.
(1 Samuel 2:12 ESV)
A permissive father says, “Whatever you want!” An abusive father says, “Whatever I want!” The passive father simply says, “Whatever.” He is not really engaged or connected. He watches his children hurt themselves and self-destruct, and he doesn’t even raise a voice of restraint. Almighty God put a whole story in the Bible so that we know what He thinks of passive dads, because those father wounds run very deep.
Problem: Paul writes that God “alone possesses immortality” (1 Tim. 6:16). Annihilationists argue that this supports the notion that those in hell are not conjoined to an eternal soul. Instead, they are annihilated at death. Is this the case?
Did you know that the actual dust on the surface of the moon is thousands of times less than expected by those who think the earth is billions of years old?
Problem: Have you ever heard of the phrase, “Money is the root of all evil”? This expression is derived from a passage of Scripture, but is it accurate?
However, the Bible includes other statements that seem to contradict this one, such as the following:
…but money answers everything. (Ecclesiastes 10:19)
How can money be evil and yet be the answer to everything?
The evangelical philosophy is often stated by the dictum, “IN ESSENTIALS UNITY; IN NON-ESSENTIALS LIBERTY; IN ALL THINGS CHARITY.”
Though commonly attributed to Augustine, it was apparently first stated by the 17th-century Lutheran Rupertus Meldenius (a.k.a. Peter Meiderlin).
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Problem: Thousands of years prior to the establishment of the Lord’s Church, and long before Paul addressed the conduct of Christian slaves in the first century, various forms of slavery were commonplace. In fact, virtually every ancient civilization used slaves.1 Slavery was prevalent enough in Babylon in the 18th century B.C. to be mentioned numerous times in the Code of Hammurabi.2 The Egyptians enslaved hundreds of thousands of Israelites in the 16th century B.C. (Exodus 1; cf. Numbers 1:46). Historians estimate that, by the time Paul wrote his New Testament epistles in the first century A.D., five to eight million slaves resided within the Roman Empire,3 including 15-25% of the total population of Italy.4
If you give a design problem to ten different engineers to solve, chances are you will not get ten different solutions. In fact, you are likely to end up with ten solutions that look very much alike.