(Ver 1.1)  This is now “Part 6” in a significantly important Bible study series focused on the subject of modern examples of deception found in the body of Christ for Christians to avoid.  If you would like to read the series from the beginning you can go to “Part 1” first.  But please understand this lesson will stand alone to be useful and applicable for increasing our spiritual maturity.   I have never seen such an increase in the levels of deception in my lifetime.  Politics has become significantly corrupt being empowered by Satan’s deception.  The news media has been corrupt being used as instruments of propaganda for deception.  But we need to know how Satan operates to deceive us and that is the intended design of this Bible study series.   I was reading internet blogs the other day and I ran across one that particularly stood out to me.  This man had become disillusioned with God, the Bible, Christianity and Christians and he published a list of his top 20 reasons why he walked away from being a Christian.  As you read you should discover that this man was raised in country that permits Christianity to exist.  You should also notice that his parents raised him to be a Christian by taking him to church.  But, somewhere in his life he became offended at Christians that do not live up to his standards.  He became deceived and this is why we are going to read his reasons for departing from the faith.  So this is a Christian’s response to a deceived man for us to learn from so that we hopefully do not fall into the same trap presented by Satan.

This may be a very controversial subject but we must understand that there are warnings found in the Bible that inform us not to be deceived to turn away from following after Jesus.  Here is what I have learned.  I see works of deception implemented by Satan to deceive people from remaining faithful to continue in the Word of God to search for, find and believe the truth.  If a person finds or is raised in the Word of God initially but does not follow through till the end, they are like the stony soil or the thorny ground that never produced fruit for their salvation.  I believe this is what today’ Bible study is all about.  We are going to examine 20 statements that this man said were his personal reasons why he turned away from being a believing Christian (Heb 3:12).  He was raised by parents who started him on the pathway to being saved but he became spiritually deceived and this caused him to turn around to go in the wrong direction.  This is a great example for any new Christians to learn from in order to not repeat the same mistake.

INTRODUCTION

The Bible says a fool says there is no God (Ps 14:1).  In the world today a person that does not believe in God is called an atheist.  But, God gives this type of person a different title description.  I am really not sure if this man who walked away from God still believes there is a God or not.  If he does and chooses to not seek Him that sounds just as foolish as not believing that there is a God.  In Romans, God says this to people that are not seeking Him:

Rom 1:18  For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;
Rom 1:19  Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them.
Rom 1:20  For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 

God clearly says that He can literally be seen and known by observing the things that He has created.  Therefore, every human will be without excuse on judgment day.  That is a very strong warning to us all.  If someone began their life in Christ Jesus but then they turned away to not produce any fruit the eternal consequence are amazingly sad.  But the consequences are very similar to someone that has never heard the Gospel.  We learn from this that no human will be able to stand before our Supreme Judge God and give an excuse for why we were deceived or did not believe.

This man we are about to review is just an example of someone who still has a tremendous amount to learn about God and His Truth.  Hopefully he has not closed his mind to God completely.  Hopefully he will come to his senses like the Prodigal son, to come back home to hear God’s truth, and to listen to His messengers.  Let us all pray that he will run back to the Father’s house and receive God’s blessings.

WHY HE WALKED AWAY & ONE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE

So here is the list of 20 excuses of this deceived man and my response to each one individually.  Please read what I wrote and think how you might answer each one.  If you have any better responses, please share them in a comment.  Thank you in advance.  I will also mention for full disclosure this is a condensed list of his objections to being a Christian.  I could not put the entire narrative in this lesson or it would have been too long.

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1.  God is wrathful, jealous, hateful, and kills nations of people like it is a bodily function. He is certainly not just or “holy” in nature.

Please tell me which god you are talking about?  You are not seeing accurately about the real God of the Bible.  These are a confused set of assumptive judgments about a God that must have never been known or experienced. These accusations appear to be based upon great ignorance and a lack of understanding of the Bible and definitely contain deception. 

We will start with what is true.  Yes God is Jealous (Exo 34:14).  He is not pleased with people who say they serve Him but, only half heartedly.  Too many Christians go to church while simultaneously becoming focused upon other gods (Deu 11:16).  What about this is bothersome?  If you were married and your wife fooled around with other men would you not be jealous?  Jealousy is not a sin.  Let us move to hate.

There is no hatred found in God except for His hatred for evil (Prov 6:16).  God is a Holy God and He commands us to be Holy also (1 Pet 1:16).  God’s Holiness demands justice for sin.  If there are any acts of judgments upon humans it is because God’s patience has ended and His judgements are executed for cleaning up the effects of evil on the earth.  We can find this in Genesis 6:5-7, for example.  Let us move to God’s commands to kill nations next.

There are examples in the Old Testament of God commanding the people of Israel to kill every man, woman and child in the promise land.  That sounds really hateful, but this was just another act of justice and an attempt to keep the children of Israel from being deceived to follow after these nations false gods which would result in judgment against Israel (Exo 23:31-33).   These godless idol worshipping nations were under Satan’s kingdom of darkness influence.  They could not be convinced to change to know the true God so they were judged.

There existed in Bible days many godless nations in the world.  Many of these had to be judged for their sins of great evil.  Many of these had to be eliminated completely so that they would not corrupt God’s covenant people.  This is the way of a Holy God in the Old Testament.  This changed in the New Covenant because of God’s grace. 

Why would humans ignore the existence of evil and human sin to deny the requirement for divine justice and consequences for these wrong human choices?  For humans to judge God as being unjust is clearly a denial of a truthful need for justice.  If a nation allows murder to occur without consequences the increase of murderous acts would explode.  Every time a human would bet angry at someone, it would result in the loss of someone’s life.  That would be unjust and unfair, not punishing the person for committing the crime.

Worse still is someone calling God a murderer for judging righteously.  Evil sins have consequences (Gal 6:7).   Here are a few key verses to learn and understand:

1 Jn 4: 8 “God is Love and he that does not love does not know Him“
Jn 3:16 “God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life“.
Job 4:17 “Shall a mortal man be more just than God?  Shall a man be more pure than his creator?”
Zep 3:5 “The LORD is righteous within her; He will do no injustice.  Every morning He brings His justice to light; He does not fail.  But the unjust knows no shame”.

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2.  The act of throwing people into infinite torture and punishment for not believing in a Jewish guy from 2,000 years ago was God’s son, or unknowingly worshiping the wrong god, is extremely cruel and sadistic.

Why do you think that people like me spend so much time trying to get people like you to believe in this Jesus?  I mean there must be a good reason for this extraordinary effort?  I believe this effort of preaching the Gospel of Truth is extremely important and worth every second.  There are countless Christians on TV, the internet, in books and in person who try to get unsaved people to see and receive the truth!  People must think that we are all stupid for wasting our valuable time warning people about hell.  However, Jesus commanded us to go into all the world and preach the good news to every person on the earth (Mk 16:15).  Why would He do this?  It is because He wanted to warn them about hell and tell them that God is not mad at anyone (Col 1:20).   God has forgiven the sin of every human by the personal shedding of His blood once (Heb 9:26).  But while this gift of not going to hell is offered to everyone it must be received by every human on God’s terms (Rom 10:9-10).    God made it so simple to get saved and avoid hell.  All that we have to do is believe in Jesus was the virgin born Son of God who died for our sins on a cross and after 3 days He was raised from the dead and then we must confess Him to be our LORD and we are saved.  Why is this wrong?  If I told you that I was going to give everyone that came to me a million dollars but you had to do somethings to receive it, does that make me unjust or unfair? 

The real question that needs to be asked is not why a loving God would allow anyone to go to hell, but rather why would any human reject the free offer of salvation from a loving God to not die and be eternally separated from Him?  Let’s review some verses that confirm it is a human choice where they spend eternity:

Mar 16:15-16  And He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.  He who has believed and has been baptized shall be saved; but he who has disbelieved shall be condemned”.

Joh 3:16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 

Rom 10:13  For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. 

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3.  The statements, “God works in mysterious ways,” or “It will all make sense in heaven,” are little more than irrational cop outs. This God allows horrible atrocities to be committed against innocent men, women and children every day.

This is probably one of the few reasons that I agree with you on.  Christians can be as ignorant as non-Christians sometimes.  Because Christians do not know how to answer a question using the Bible truth correctly they make up a religious answer like “God Works in Mysterious Ways”.  That is totally a cop out and I would say that it is the wrong thing for them to say.  It would be far wiser for a Christian to say “I don’t know” than to give anyone an opinionated biased untruthful answer like one of these. 

But, that does not answer the real question to why God allows evil to be done to presumably “innocent” people. Ok, let us start with asking some basic questions, 1) what does it mean to be innocent, 2) who is innocent and 3) is there anyone that can be considered completely innocent? To be “innocent” is like someone pleading “Not Guilty” while being charged with murder.  But this does not necessarily mean they are innocent and not responsible in some way for the death.  They could plead “Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity”.  This would change our viewpoint dramatically.  Now we understand the person is taking responsibility but claiming they did not understand what they were doing when they did it.  That is not being “innocent”.  

I personally do not know of anyone born on earth that is truly “innocent”.  Romans 9:10 quotes a O.T. verse and says “There is none righteous, no not one”.  Then in Romans 5:12 God makes it even more plain by saying “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon ALL men for that all have sinned”.  Wow, that simply means there are no sinless people in the world and death can occur to anyone because of sin that our father Adam committed.  You see in Hebrew 7:9 God reveals to us that whatever our fathers before us did, is what we are guilty of doing because we were in their body.  Wow, that leaves none of us innocent or sinless.   But, that still does not answer why God allows bad things to happen to sinners.

I have to answer this question this way.  In Genesis  1:26 when God created humans He says “Let them have dominion over all the earth”.  This was God giving humans responsibility to rule over, manage and control His creation.  Based upon this information God must allow whatever humans allow to happen since He has delegated this task and responsibility.  Therefore, if humans allow a Hitler to kill millions of Jews on the earth, God must allow it.  God is not committing the atrocities nor does He permit them to occur unless we allow them. 

We must begin to realize the consequences for Adam’s sin and rebellion against God’s command.  In fact, the Bible informs us that the creator God is not the “god” of this current evil world system (2 Cor 4:4), God says that Satan is.  We can further confirm this truth by understanding the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4:8-9 when Satan takes Jesus up to the top of a high mountain and shows Him all the kingdoms of our world.  He then tells Jesus if you will worship me, all of these I will give to you.  Since Jesus did not dispute this claim to be a lie, we understand the rulership of kingdoms given to Adam in our current world were taken from him and transferred to Satan’s control.  What we are learning is God is not in sovereign control of what humans do.  God will let you go out and commit 150 murders tomorrow, if that is what you want to do. 

So who is doing all of the evil, humans or God?  If humans are doing the killing then humans are doing the evil and not God.  If humans become wise enough to make the right choice to accept and believe in Jesus Christ this transfers a human from Satan’s kingdom of darkness and evil to God’s Kingdom of Light.  Then God comes to live on the inside of a Christian to help them to not do evil, Praise the Lord!   Christians still must continue to be in the Word of God consistently to renew their minds in order to change old human habits of doing wrong.  God is helping me and He will help anyone else who desires to change to do the same.

But, if other people love evil more than a desire for knowing God and doing good they have that right of choice.  A few terrorists went and killed over 2000 people on 9/11, it was their wrong choices that committed the evil and NOT GOD!  God is sovereign!  Yes!  But, God is NOT a Grand Puppet Master pulling everyone’s strings controlling them by force to do what He wants them to do. Humans were created with a “freewill” and given the right to make up their own minds to do right or wrong.  When we blame God, we are shifting the human responsibility given to Adam for stopping the evil off of our choices and that is what Satan wants us to believe.

God wrote us the Law in the O.T.  In this are found 10 key commandments.  These are laws like “thou shalt not lie”, “thou shalt not commit murder”, “thou shalt not commit adultery”, etc.  Yet God cannot force anyone to follow them and obey.   It works exactly like this in our world.  There are laws for people to not steal, commit murder, etc. and yet people ignore these everyday also.  So who is to blame?  It is NOT GOD!

Will forcing people to do no evil in the world fix those who are evil in their heart or mind who want to commit these atrocities?  What would you suggest that God do with all of these evil people to stop them?  Are you saying that God should kill them?  I think that was your reason #1 complaint that you thought that God kills people for no good reason.  But, I have proved that God has plenty of valid reasons to execute justice.

No the only solution for eliminating evil is to change the human heart and mind of every evil human and get them saved to know the LOVE of GOD!  That is exactly what I am trying to do.  Therefore, I’m not blaming God for evil people, I’m just telling them how they can change to live a life that is so much better than committing any evil following after Satan’s plan.

1Jn 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us. 

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4.  Bloody animal and human sacrifices are illogical demands by a divine god as payment for petty wrong human doings. These actions are no different than the rituals of archaic pagan religions. Not to mention the bizarre ritual of symbolically drinking human blood and eating human flesh.

You speak of “petty wrong human doings” in this reason and God allowing horrible “atrocities” in your previous reason.  You obviously accuse God of allowing these horrible atrocities and men of doing only petty minor offenses.  That is another example of shifting blame where the blame is not truthful.  We have already seen that God says there are no righteous people without Jesus and that we have all sinned.  Now combine this with James 2:10 that says “whoever keeps the whole law but offends in one point, is guilty of breaking every law”.   Wow, that is not exactly  good.  That means if you don’t commit murder but yet tell one lie you are technically guilty of murder in the first degree.  Therefore, there are NO PETTY SINS!

Let us examine your issue with blood, animals and sacrifice.  God never performed, commanded or allowed human sacrifices.  If anyone was killed it was for a just legal judgment based upon their own evil behavior.  The need for the bloody sacrifice of animals in the Old Testament was to teach people the consequences for committing sins. God lays out the requirement for blood to cleanse human sin in Hebrews 9:22.  In this verse God says “Almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without the shedding of blood is no remission of sin”.  In the O.T. the high priest would take a pure and spotless animal like a lamb and kill it.  The innocent blood would make a temporary atonement for human sin. But, this was required every year since people kept sinning continuously.  God was trying to teach humans that another final greater payment for sin was required.

This teaches us why Jesus had to die on a cross.  His personal choice to come to the earth to be our sacrifice by shedding His innocent blood once and for all, was what was needed.  This was God’s greatest payment for human reconciliation and redemption and it alone satisfied His pure and Holy justice requirement to save us from hell.  Only the blood of God Himself could pay the price that was necessary.  Now, no other blood ever needs to be shed either animal, human or divine.  Blood sacrifices have ended and this is now a mute point and a wrong reason not be a Christian.  Thank you Jesus! 

As far as your references to the saying of Jesus to “eat my flesh and drink my blood”, you are missing the point that was being made.  Jesus was speaking figurative and not literally.  People do this all the time.  We say “it is raining cats and dogs”.  That does not mean it is literally happening.  This is why people are so easily deceived or offended at the Words of the Bible.  They take many words out of context, misapply them, misunderstand them or just misinterpret them and this leads to deception.  I will not attempt to explain fully what Jesus was talking about in this reply.  But, in order to understand it, we must understand that His flesh was the Word of God.  We know this by reading John 1:1-14.  Jesus was trying to tell people in order to have eternal spirit life they had to have the Word of God in their spirit.  

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5.  If God loves us and wants us to know and believe in him, why be so completely invisible? What is the purpose of being so illusive to those who believe and worship him?

This is actually a great question.  But, I do not believe that you understand the God that I know.  I believe God talks to me and converses in personal conversations with me to lead me, guide me and help me become more like Him.  I believe He teaches me new things every day and I talk to Him and say thank you a lot.  This is called a relationship.  Real Christianity is NOT  RELIGION.  If someone does not experience this God that I am describing, then God appears silent.  God is an extreme Gentleman.  He does not force Himself upon anyone.  He chooses to not speak normally unless you focus on Him first in silence.  Notice how I described my relationship.  I believed in Him.  I believed He was leading and guiding my footsteps and helping me daily.  I also believe that I hear and know His voice and that He speaks to me personally because He loves and cares for me individually.  How does that compare to your beliefs?

Psa 102:2  Hide not thy face from me in the day when I am in trouble; incline thine ear unto me: in the day when I call answer me speedily. 

The Bible does claim that God hides from humans at time.  I believe He does this to help us.  I also believe that God chooses to be invisible to those who do not believe in Him.  Then I have learned that God normally speaks to those who want to hear from Him and are listening.  Hebrews 11:6 says “But without faith it is impossible to please God, for he that comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him”.  God just laid out conditions for His fellowship and relationship with a human.  We must have faith to believe that He exists even if we never see Him or hear Him.  If we could see Him easily there is no requirement for faith to believe in Him.  This removes faith completely and replaces it with personal experience and knowledge.  We can experience God but we must normally come to Him first by faith alone.  We are required to believe that if we diligently seek  Him that He will see our faith and reward us with a personal relationship producing experience.  Uh Oh.  It sounds like our human ignorance of God’s requirements could be limiting us from learning the truth.  Could these choices that we are making be the reason why we are not hearing from God?

Then there is another potential problem, in that you may not know how God speaks so you do not recognize when He speaks.  You might be expecting God to speak to you like your parents did.  Maybe in a loud audible voice calling you by your full name?   However, God does not speak normally in audible voices that everyone can hear with their physical ears.  Nor does God normally appear visibly and prove His existence to anyone.  However, this does not mean that God did not leave us enough evidence of His existence, if we wanted to find them.  This also doesn’t mean that God does not speak in our heart with a still small voice that may appear as an inner thought.  There could come a thought into our mind that we say “Where did that come from?”  We weren’t thinking anything and suddenly we think about something unexpectedly.  That is either God or Satan.  If we don’t know the Bible we may not be able to know who it was that was speaking to us.

If God proved to everyone that He was real and existed, we would have no further choices by faith to make in life in regards to God.  Also, salvation would no longer be voluntary, it would become compulsory.  God will never overrule our right to be wrong or rebel.  Either we learn to speak and hear God on His terms or we should learn to expect God will appear silent.  Here are just a couple of Bible verses to think about on this subject:

Jer 23:23  “Am I a God who is near”, declares the LORD, “And not a God far off?

Psa 14:2  The LORD has looked down from heaven upon the sons of men To see if there are any who understand, Who seek after God.

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6.  God never manifests himself or performs miracles as he regularly did for the Israelites in Old Testament stories.

This is another narrow minded perspective based upon a lack of understanding and a vast assumption based upon human ignorance.  Who says God does no miracles today?  This type of attitude can only logically exist in a person that believes they are equivalent to God, who is everywhere and knows everything that is happening at the same moment.  The Bible claims God is omniscient (Heb 4:13).  The Bible says God is everywhere at once in the world (Prov 15:3)?  Do you have cameras in every corner of the world?  Do you know every human being?  Have you interviewed every human being to see if God has done anything miraculous, great and spectacular for them?  If not this is a very deceived and ignorant reason to abandon a God who is.  Since no human can prove or disprove that God has done nothing miraculous today, it is not even close to being a relevant reason not to be a Christian.

But, I will tell you that God has done many, many miraculous things for me.  The first and most important is that He saved me from my pathway that I was walking that would result with me going to hell.  That is the greatest miracle that I know of.  Since being saved He continues to do miraculous things in my life.  He filled me with His Holy Spirit and that is more than an amazing miracle of everything that He did in the Old Testament.  He has led me by His Spirit to change me from being a former very sinful evil man.  He is transforming me into a person that closer matches the example that He set in Jesus every day.  That is another great miracle.  These are just a few of the great miracles He has done for me personally.   I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.  Perhaps you are searching for the spectacular and missing the most amazing supernatural things that God does today.  Please find out what He will do for you by seeking Him with your whole heart.  He will answer and you will find Him.

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7.  Prayers are never answered. Certainly not in the way Jesus described. Prayer has absolutely no affect on the world around us.

Here we go again.  This is another example of extreme ignorance.  God deals with a similar man in the book of Job. In Job 38:2 God asks Job “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”.  God goes on to ask Job “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth, tell me if you have understanding”.  Wow, this is how almost every human is.  We all think we know so much when in truth we know almost nothing about anything.  

I assume you are again reasoning based upon your own personal experiences.  Could it be possible that you are just praying the wrong way.  Could it be possible that you did not understand how Jesus taught us to pray.  Jesus teaches us prayer several times and we should learn them all.  Also, God says very clearly in the Bible that there are a lot of reasons why prayers are not answered.   These can include human sin and iniquity as two of the main reasons why God will not answer a prayer:

Isa 59:2 But your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, And your sins have hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.

I can hear your next question.  What sin do I do?  Unfortunately sin is so much more than we know.  Sin does not have to always be just the commission of an evil act like murder.  For example in Romans 14:23, God teaches us that whatever we do that is not of faith is a sin.  Right now, when people do not walk in faith believing God is worthy of our respect, honor, trust and love, we are in sin. Not acting in faith alone makes almost everyone a sinner at sometime or the other.   But that is not the only type of sin we can be guilty of.  There are sins of omission also.  That occurs when we are able to do something that is right, honest and good but we make the choice to go out of our way not to do it.

What other things stop prayers from being answered?  James 4:3 teaches us that people do not receive answered prayers because they are asking for things to satisfy their lustful desires.  We can pray for a new mansion to live in or a new luxury car while not being thankful and a good steward of taking care of the one that we have.  I heard of a lady once that prayed and asked God to give her someone else’s husband.  Hopefully we can understand this was not a Biblical prayer that could be answered.  Oh, well that is enough of this subject. 

There are many other reasons why God does not answer human prayers but I will leave you with this one.  God says in Mark 11:24 “whatsoever things you desire when you pray, believe you received them, and you will have them”.  This is one of the most important prayer verses that I know of.  God informs us that we must believe and have faith that we have the answer to our prayer request immediately after our prayer has ended.  This can be potentially a long time before we see the answer.  This means we can stop the answer from arriving by our doubts and unbelief or simply if we choose to stop believing before the answer comes.  This is how Jesus taught us to pray.  Did you know this before now?  Were you doing it this way?  We can confirm this prayer, faith and believing principle in relationship with answered prayer delays by reading Daniel 9.  Daniel prayed and the answer was sent immediately but did not arrive for 21 days later.  So while waiting Daniel continued his praying and fasting until the answer came.  The angel that brought Daniel the answer informed him that he was being held up by a spiritual being that resisted the answer from arriving.  That is another amazing reason why prayers can not be answered.  Christians must realize we are in an unseen spiritual battle with demonic powers.  Ok, let us move on.

So when you say prayers are not answered you are not speaking for me.  I know God hears and answers my prayers.  There have been too many examples.  God’s goodness never ceases to amaze me.  Thank you Jesus!  Here is a verse that we should memorize:

Mar 11:24  Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. 

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8.  Jesus did not fulfill major Old Testament prophesies or even fulfill his own promises and predictions.

Wow, you obviously have not read and studied the Bible.  Jesus fulfilled over 100 very specific named prophecies found in the O.T. by coming to the earth in the flesh. The mathematical odds of probability for this happening to one person is way beyond the odds of accidental or random chance.   Just fulfilling 8 of these prophecies would be like some one taking one silver dollar and placing an “X” on it and then mixing it with enough silver dollars to cover  the entire state of Texas in many layers 2 feet deep.  Then this someone that hid the silver dollar asking you to go and pick just one of them randomly blindfolded to see if it is has the “X”.  What are the odds that you could find that one?  Well Jesus fulfilling all of these 8 prophecies was like Him finding the one silver dollar by walking directly to it and picking it up while being blindfolded. 

There are so many books and references on this subject, if you are interested in learning the truth.  People need to try to do some real research and study before making any such false claims.  This is another example of God saying “Who is this that darkens counsel with words without knowledge”.  Please go into your Bible and read it.  Find the prophecies.  They occur beginning in Genesis and continue to the last book of the O.T. called Malachi.  Prove to me and the many  other Christians that we are not right, if you can!  Give us the Bible verses that Jesus did not fulfill.  I know that you cannot do it!

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9.  The authors of much of the Bible are unknown. And of these unknown authors, the men who wrote the gospels likely never even met Jesus considering they were written 40-70 years after his death. A far cry from reliable testimony.

This is just another example of tremendous human ignorance and speaking words without any knowledge in the subject of Bible study.  The Bible is so well documented and verified that it is foolish to even compare it with any other book from history.  There are more ancient copies of this book to verify its accuracy than any other book, by far.  This is exactly one reason why the Bible is the most popular best selling book in human history.  The news papers have ignored this book as the best seller to diminish its significance.   But, not reporting the truth does not eliminate the truth.

I will also tell you that every author of practically every book of the Bible is well known.   The only book that I know of that has no direct mention of the author is the Book of Hebrews.  But even this book has distinguishing qualities that point us to Paul as being the writer.  Every other N.T. book is well identified to be written by the eye witnesses to the literal events and accounts.  There are only two books that have been researched and written about from the accounts of eye witnesses and these were the books of Luke and Acts both written by Luke.  Matthew, Mark, John, Peter, James, John and Jude were all personal eye witnesses that knew Jesus personally.  Please do some serious study before spreading untruthful gossip that you have heard.

God knows who wrote every book of the Bible.  The Old Testament Hebrew words are frequently quoted in the New Testament writings.  Many times the O.T. author’s name was confirmed with the quotation.  For example, Jesus quoted the O.T. to inform us that Moses wrote the books of Genesis through Deuteronomy in Mark 10:4-9.  According to Jesus who was God, He was asked about the law of divorce written by Moses and Jesus responded by quoting another law written by Moses in Genesis 2.  Wow, that proves the author beyond any reasonable doubt.  What we just learned from reading Mark 10 is that Jesus claims the ultimate author of every Book of the Bible was God!  You obviously are looking for any false excuse to try to justify your decision.  Here is another Bible verse to learn and memorize.  This verse contains the word “inspiration” that means “God breathed”:

2Ti 3:16  All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 

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10.  The Bible is repeatedly contradictory with itself, reality, and the laws of morality. Couldn’t God inspire a less poorly written book?

The response of natural young children to any advanced subject is normally the same as people who do not understand the Bible.  If we gave a 6 year child a textbook on Advanced Calculus or Quantum Physics and asked them to share their opinion on what it meant, they would probably say it was a stupid, and a silly written book.  They would ask where is all the pretty pictures?  Where is the real story of the bunny rabbit and the bear?  Because someone does not understand what is written, they can easily believe it has a lot of errors and contradictions. 

God who is the most intelligent individual we will ever attempt to understand is so far above our level of intelligence that anyone can be deceived to think that we should just be able to read the Bible for the first time and understand it all.  But, things in this world don’t perform like this for our children, so why expect God’s word to be automatically understood by any of His spiritual babies?  Also notice what 1 Cor 1:27 says about how God chooses specifically foolish things of our world to confound those people who think they are wise.  

I was a computer software engineer in the information technology industry for most of my business career.  I worked on very large scale complex computer systems  These designed software projects were so large that understanding the entire system was a major undertaking.  For example they all contained a large data design layer, large sets of business logic, contained with layers of rules and complex divisions of user information and while also containing input, more processing rules and presentation layers.  All of these layers had complex sub-components with individually designed objects and modules that had to fit together and work cooperatively based upon guidelines to produce the understood desired and anticipated end result.  Why is this important?

From my years of computer experience, I have discovered that the Bible is by far a much more complex set of designed components than any human software design.  In the Bible, every single letter, word, sentence, verse, paragraph, section, chapter and book was specifically placed to work together in an integrally designed method of cooperation and collaboration, and design that is not easily replicated without very advanced computer assistance.  Since none of these modern computing devices existed at the time the books were written it is impossible for them to have been written without a very major God participation and control. 

This has taught me that the Bible was designed and produced by a far greater superior intellect than any human could possibly imagine.  The Bible was so well designed that it contains a self correcting set of rules to counter an enemies attempt at destroying or corrupting it.  The Bible also contains multiple recorded predictions of things that would happen in the future.  These were recorded many hundreds of years before they happened.  This proves the book’s origin came from outside of the dimension of time.

If you search the Bible you will find that there are codes and encryptions not easily possible using modern human computers.  These hidden codes were designed and placed intelligently under layers of plain Hebrew words that all had real meaning that can be understood. Many times these hidden codes confirm what was written in the plain text that they were hidden in.  Wow!   I hope you understood this complex claim.

Then there are parables where God uses created items to describe hidden spiritual realities in great detail.  This teaches us that whoever designed and created these natural items like “seeds”, “trees” & “fruit” to name only 3 also wrote the Bible.  There are also real historical recorded events that are implemented using allegory that teach the same types of hidden spiritual information using literal verifiable human events.  Also in the Bible, there is typology, there are patterns, there are symbols, and there are other hidden messages, and concealed information that can be revealed by the author at His will.  This is called “encryption”, “concealment” that can be read later by design of the author using “revelation” or the “uncovering” of the hidden divine truth. 

This book of 66 book divisions, written by 40 individual writers over the course of around 1600 years is so well planned, designed, organized and implemented, that it anticipates every question that anyone can raise and it resolves them all with an answer somewhere in the book.  It contains solutions for every human challenge conceivable.  God placed such unlimited information in this book that studying it everyday for 12 hours a day for 100 years, we would not come close to understanding everything that He wanted to teach us from it.

Please approach the Bible with a different attitude along with embracing some humility and you should be able to begin to understand that God’s intelligence is infinitely beyond your capacity to grasp everything that He says right now.  God will come down to our two year old child level of understanding Him, if we are sincere and we want to learn.  However, God also expects us to grow up and mature spiritually during the process. 

1Co 2:14  But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. 

God says that a natural human is like a two year old child that will never understand the complex spiritual things of the Spirit of God.  Because people do not understand the Bible, only proves how natural minded they are.  God wrote a complex book of intelligent complex spiritual information, wisdom and knowledge that is impossible for non-spiritual or spiritual babies to understand.  But, God wrote the book in this manner to allow people to have their own free thinking choices and make their own individual decisions.  

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11.  The Bible is open to interpretation. Everyone interprets it in the way that suits them best or serves their purposes.

You know here is another area that I have to agree with you on.  Many unsaved people and Christians’ attempt to understanding the Bible is just wrong.  Too many are looking for confirming words and teachers to approve their life style choices and their sins as to being acceptable to God.  People often read the Bible with a wrong lensed point of view or motive.  We could call it reading the Bible with a pair of rose colored glasses that causes our viewpoint to be shifted or out of focus with God’s way of seeing the intentions and the meanings.

However, much of what people call science is also open to interpretation.  Do you discredit and reject all of science, because every scientist does not agree about any or every subject?  You can find just as many opinions and theories of how the universe began, and quantum mechanics operates, etc. as you do with any church doctrinal differences.  If you gathered 100 people in a room and discussed any subject, how many could you get to agree about anything?  So your argument is baseless and without facts and is just erroneous. 

We do not throw out the Bible or Christianity just because we cannot get everyone to agree.  We are the only one that needs to agree with what God shows us in the Bibles.  I am responsible to God to learn what He wants me to know.  You are responsible to know and understand what God wants you to know. If you don’t agree with that which I believe He has shown me in the Word of God that is really not going to change my belief. 

Please pick up your Bible and ask God to reveal to you what He wants you to know and then start reading slowly and carefully.  If a word stands out or raises a question look it up and study it.  Find out what it means and how it is used in other verses in the Bible.  Find out and learn God’s definition for the word.  There is so much to learn.  For example this verse answers your concern:

2Pe 1:20  Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. 

Even God agrees with you.  God says we should not place our own human interpretation upon any of His Words.  God makes the claim that He explains every word somewhere in the Bible.  Every word, every phrase is explained somewhere but we are given the responsibility to search and find what He means.  My basic rule of interpreting the Bible, is based upon one main rule that we just read in 2 Peter 1:20 “THE BIBLE INTERPRETS ITSELF”.  Let’s use the Bible to understand the Bible, OK?

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12.  Throughout history, Christians have justified horrific actions by the Bible and its teaching.

Another poor excuse without any real knowledge to confirm the concern.  Maybe you are talking about the crusades or something else, I do not know.  The errors and mistakes of humans who called themselves Christians, do not discount or invalidate God or the Bible.  If you are looking for Christians to be perfect you will be sadly disappointed.  If you are looking for Muslims to be perfect, you will be sadly disappointed also.  If you are looking for Buddhist to be perfect you will be sadly disappointed.   There are no perfect people in the world, we all make mistakes. Please remember that Jesus is the only human to live on earth that is recorded to have never sinned (Heb 4:15).  

Just because someone says they are a Christian, that does not make them a real Christian.  Jesus tells a story of people who will say “Lord, Lord didn’t we do many things in your name”  and Jesus says “Sorry depart from me, I don’t know you” (Mat 7:23).  These people thought they knew Jesus and thought they were saved Christians, they thought they were doing the right things, but they were not.  So while you compare yourself with others you make yourself to look superior.  Just please read the Bible and compare yourself with the perfection of Jesus and His example to live our life and this should cause you to want to change to be like Him and not me or any other human. 

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13.  The Bible promotes hate and persecution against women, homosexuals and those who worship other gods or no god at all.

You are obviously not going to the right churches!  True Christianity is a church that Loves others and does not promote hate!  Just because someone stands up with a sign that says “God Hates Homosexuals” is just their worthless opinion.  There is really no difference between their worthless opinion, your worthless opinion or mine.   If God hated Gays He would not have died for them to help them get saved (Jn 3:16).  The wrong words and actions of people who say they are Christians, could lead you to go to another church if that is God’s will. 
Pray for these people that are not being led by the Spirit of God.  But do not give up on God and the Bible.  There are many good churches who do not promote evil, hatred and bigotry.  But, I am also saying that these good churches should not tolerate sin either.  Sin is still sin.  God loves the sinner, but He hates the sin that they do (Prov 6:16).   There is a major difference between hating sin and hating people.  We can all change and repent of our sin.  God can change our heart so that we do not want to sin anymore.  Just don’t get offended at someone to walk away from the only hope you have of not going to hell.

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14.  According to the Bible, nearly 70% percent of the people in the world will burn in hell because they don’t believe Jesus was the son of God.

I do not know where you get your figures, I guess you pulled it out of the air and made it up.  However, if you know that is what the Bible says and still want to go to hell you are deceived.  However, you are also probably very close to knowing the truth.  Matthew 7 13 is where you are referring to.  This verse is Jesus recommending that we go through the straight and narrow gate rather than taking the easy way of the wide gate that will permit many to be deceived to enter into it.  Please notice in the Bible who it is that is working to deceive people to take this wide way by embracing Atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism, Jehovah Witnesses, and the thousands of other choices that lead to human destruction.  Satan is called the master deceiver in Revelation 12:9 who we are told will deceive the entire world.  Without Jesus on the inside of us to help us not be deceived and reading our Bible to learn the truth, we are certainly on the wide path to hell. 

However, if we reject His loving offer for salvation and still go to hell by being deceived by Satan that was still our choice.  People make a lot of stupid choices.  That is not God’s fault.  That is a human’s choice.  Please don’t follow the majority to hell.  Follow Jesus and run to Him.  He will not let you go to hell.

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15.  The only reason I was a Christian was because I was indoctrinated into the religion as a child as a result of the culture and region of the world in which I was born.

So what would your chance of salvation be, if you were indoctrinated as a Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim?  Would it be better or worse?  Do you think that the truth is found somewhere else?  Where is your internal and eternal peace found?  Rather than being deceived into believing that the truth is somewhere else, why not be thankful that your parents were pointing you in the right direction for you to have the opportunity to see the truth?  Say thank you Jesus for allowing you to be born where you were.  Say thank you Jesus for giving you the opportunity to be born in a Christian family who took you to church.  Be thankful and not deceived.

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16.  Christianity has no more rational or factual foundation than any other religion on earth that I openly reject.

Your ignorance of God and the truth of the Bible is overwhelming me. The evidence and facts found in the Bible are amazingly different than any other religion.  Plus I already told you that true Christianity is not a religion, but rather a personal relationship with the real creator God.  A religion is just man’s attempt to please a God that they do not know.  We all must choose this day who we will serve (Jos 24:14).

Not choosing to follow Jesus to make Him our LORD and Savior is a default choice to choose Satan as lord.  There are only two spiritual choices one of the LIGHT and DAY with Jesus ruling and the other as DARKNESS and NIGHT with Satan as ruler.  It is a binary choice and no choice is a choice.  I pray that you will make the right selection.

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17.  The Christian church is disjointed and can’t even agree with one another.

So are the Muslims all in agreement?  Are the Hindus all in agreement? Are the Atheist all in agreement?  Isn’t Islam divided into the Sunni and the Shia?  Don’t they fight and kill each other regularly?  Your argument for the rejection of Christianity is sad.  As I said before, if you get 100 people together, you will probably see that 50% of them will believe one way and the other half another way.  It is extremely challenging to get everyone to agree on anything.  Have you ever tried to listen to eye witness testimonies at a trial?  The questioning prosecutor, usually can’t get two eye witnesses to agree on everything that they think they saw perfectly.  This is just human nature and part of the inequality of human knowledge, education, life experiences, points of views, prejudices, etc. that make everyone unique individuals.  We all have different gifts and abilities.  Some see things logically, some do not.  Some see things emotionally and others do not.  Does that make all of them wrong?  Just because my perspective and viewpoint of a verse is different than another teacher does not mean either of us is 100% right or 100% wrong.   I love the quotation of Will Rogers who says “We are all ignorant, just about different things!”  Therefore,  each of us in our varying states of ignorance on any subject, should become more tolerable for each other.  because “Only Gods is All Knowing”!  

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18.  Christians are not at all ethically or morally different from non-Christians.

You obviously do not know any real Christians or you are not going to the right church.   You should try hanging around the right people and quit judging others.  We already know that there are no perfect people in the world (Rom 3:23).   Even Christians will make a mistake.  You are only responsible for your behavior.  I am only responsible for my behavior.  You can’t change me and I can’t change you.  Only God can change anyone to make them more like Christ and that is if only they want to cooperate.  So when we see a Christian that is not doing what is right, let us show a little compassion and pray for them (1 Jn 5:16).  Let us avoid being a hypocrite that does not see the plank/beam in our own eye while trying to remove the speck in his brother’s eye (Mat 7:3-5).

Rom 14:13  Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. 

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19.  Today, powerful church leaders steal, lie and molest young children. The church repeatedly attempts to cover up these atrocities, only to reluctantly apologize as a last resort.

So you are still looking for a perfect Christian to prove to you that God is real.  Men and women could always let us down.  Therefore if we are looking to humans to help save us we may be looking in the wrong places to find God.  I do not defend the mistakes of priests, preachers or church leaders that should know better than to do some of the things that they have done.  But, they are not my God and I do not reject God because some have failed.  My eyes are not on a human.  My eyes are focused upon Jesus and I will pray for anyone that has done anything wrong.  I only look to Jesus the author and finisher of my faith (Heb 12:2) and I refuse to let what others do affect me.

Finally, I will say that leaders in the Christian faith are often more heavily attack by devil than are other Christians that are under them.  If a devil can help one preacher fail as an example of true Christianity this defeat trickles down to cause many others to be easily deceived.  Therefore, we are instructed to pray for our spiritual leaders.  This is the opposite of speaking evil about them and spreading rumors.

Heb 13:18  Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly. 

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20.  It is absolutely irrational to continue to believe archaic teaching with the amount of knowledge we’ve gained through science and technology. The Bible reads like a book of primitive folklore, not divinely inspired insight into our true reason for existence.

So again you are so wrong.  You have made yourself wise in your own eyes and as a result you demonstrate to real Christians how easy it is to be deceived.  You have placed too much value in the words of human science and technology and not enough in the Bible that contains the words of Creator that made the science.  Let me ask two very simple questions.  How often has science changed its message in the last 200 years?  My answer to that is constantly.  How long has it been since the Bible’s message changed?  I’ll answer that question and say “NEVER”.  Yet the Bible is still the most widely purchased best selling book in human history.  If so many people can see the importance of the words on the page then maybe you should ask God why can’t I see it?

Not long ago scientist believed the universe was an infinite dimension of space that contained a fixed and static number of stars and planets.  Some even claimed the Milky Way Galaxy was the only galaxy.  Some even believed our sun was the center of the entire universe.  Now science has radically shifted to believe the universe as a whole is finite, and had a set beginning point that originated with a big bang.  They have discovered this truth because of the expansion of the universe at an amazing rate of speed.  Yes, we have learned a lot through science. But did you know that almost everything that science is discovering was already written about by God in the Bible in hidden forms using non-technical descriptions.   You see God created everything we are discovering and He said in the Bible I make known the end from the beginning.  Since God can know the end before the beginning we understand that God exists outside of the dimension of time and must have been the creator.  Genesis 1:1 clearly teaches us that our universe including the dimensions of space and time all had a beginning.  Wow, I wonder how Moses would have known about this over 2500 years ago?  

We already can see that scientific knowledge changes day by day.  Whereas the Bible never changes.  Therefore, since God knows the end has already informed us about what is coming very soon, the Words of God written in the Bible are extremely relevant, consistent and applicable for us all today.  There is no revised edition of the Bible with corrections, it still has the same words that were true 2000-3000 years ago.   There is still more that science does not know, than what science does know.  The textbooks cannot keep up with the revisions and changes, they are happening too fast.  You are placing all of your faith in a moving target and God says He never changes (Mal 3:6).  God’s Word will never change either (Luk 21:33)  Jesus is the same today as He was 2000 years ago (Heb 13:8).  That is consistency that we can count on. 

You place a lot of value on unproveable human theories.  Almost every science lecture that I have observed mentions the word “Evolution” as a way of brainwashing humans into believing something that is fictional.  After all the years of archeological research, no valid missing links have been or can be found.  I wonder why?  Then there is false concept that a universe could violently explode and expand while originating complexly designed living creatures.  The complex digital information contained within the Human DNA alone proves an external designer and maker.  No complex designed order is originated by disordered confusion.  The belief that this can occur over billions of years violates the second law of thermodynamics.  This law states everything of ordered design is consistently moving downward into a state of disorder.

Nobody can make us see the truth and it is not my responsibility to force anyone to believe anything.  We all have to make our own personal choices and God says in Gal 6:7 that He will not be mocked because a man will reap whatever choices that we make.  Please make an effort to not be deceived into believing a false reality that someone has invented in their own mind with the help of hidden spirits tricking them into believing.  We have not talked a lot about negative spiritual influences that occur in our world.  But there are literally millions of unseen beings that influence people into thinking such false realities.  I pray that your spiritual eyes would be opened and that you would be able to see God and to know Him and the reality of His truth. 

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CONCLUSION

I pray that someone has seen something new to think about.  I also pray that others will be able to learn from how one man was deceived to walk away from Christianity because of a lack of understanding of what the Bible really says.  This is one of Satan’s greatest advantages over humans.  Satan has existed on our earth for at least 6000 years and most of us have been here for less than 100 years.  He has been deceiving people far longer than you have learned to resist the deception.  The only thing that will give us an advantage over being deceived is by us learning what the Bible says with God’s help.  We are told that we have the advantage if we are born again and saved because “God the greater one comes to live on the inside of us to help us overcome him” (1 Jn 4:4).  His presence will help us if we learn to cooperate with Him, listen to His voice, to learn what we need to do and obey to not be deceived.  I would recommend that we pray and ask God for this help.

PERSONAL APPLICATION

Lord God I come boldly to the throne of grace that I might obtain your mercy.  Help me to know how to resist the devil’s deceptions that are found all around me.  Help me to discern between truth and lies on the television news networks.  Help me to avoid deception from my school teachers and college professor.  Help me to not embrace any false scientific theory denying your existence and your work in creating our world.  Reveal to me Bible verses that explain science from your perspective.  Help me to not be deceived by the empty words of politicians.  Open my eyes to see and know your Word because your Word is truth.  I give you first place in my heart and mind to allow the Holy Spirit of Truth who lives on the inside of me to overrule any deception that enters my thoughts.  I give you complete control and permission to bring to my mind the Bible verse that will defeat any deception.  Thank you for loving me so very much that you came to live inside of me.  You are my Good Shepherd and I am one of your favorite and blessed sheep.  Thank you for leading me into all truth.  In Jesus name I pray, Amen.

If you would like to continue reading and studying in this Bible series, please continue by going to “Part 7” now.