So let's get going on this issue. The Bible tells us in 2 Timothy 3, some scripture is given by inspiration of God. No, that's not what it says.
It doesn't say some scripture. It says all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Now, our statement of faith here at Answers in Genesis has a statement that says this, The 66 books of the Bible are the written word of God. The Bible is divinely inspired and inerrant throughout.
Its assertions are factually true in all the original autographs. And this is what you'll find in most conservative churches around the world, that the Bible in its original writings is without error. Then it's fully inspired by the Holy Spirit.
And if that's the case, then we know that since God cannot err, he cannot make mistakes, he cannot lie, and then... if the Bible is his word, then the Bible cannot be an error. But how can that be if the Bible's full of contradictions, which is what we're told so often? Our culture tells us there's all sorts of contradictions in the Bible.
So how do we make sense of this? Well, first of all, we have to define what a contradiction is. It is a proposition, a statement, or a phrase that asserts or implies both the truth and falsity of something. In other words, in order to show that something is a contradiction in the Bible, they have to show that the Bible... says something is both true and false at the same time and in the same sense.
For example, if the Bible says David is the king of Israel and the Bible says Solomon is the king of Israel, that's not a contradiction. They were kings at different times. So there's no problem.
Now, if the Bible said Jesus is the son of God and the Bible said Jesus is not and never has been and never will be the son of God, that would be a contradiction. Now, it never says this, of course, but it does affirm that Jesus is the son of God. So first of all, let's look at what a contradiction is not.
So we're going to go through a few points that do not qualify as contradictions, and yet these are often raised. First of all, a difficulty. Just because something at first glance, you may not be able to make sense of it, it doesn't make it a contradiction. So I'm going to start you off with an easy one today, and let's see how we do.
For example, in John chapter 10, Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives his life for the sheep. And then in Romans, we read, For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
So how do we answer that? Did Christ die for the sheep or did he die for the ungodly? Well, there's a couple different ways you can answer that. Some people would say he died for both.
Some people would say that the sheep were ungodly when he died for them. Either way, that's not a contradiction at all. Actually, they fit together just fine. But I told you that would be an easier one. Let's try another one that we hear at Answers in Genesis quite a bit because we deal with the issue of creation and evolution.
And so this one comes from Genesis chapter 1. God said, let there be light, and there was light. So the evening and the morning were the first day. Then God made two. great lights so the evening and morning were the fourth day. And so people look at that and say, well, that doesn't make any sense.
How can he make the sun on day four when he already made it on day one? Well, he didn't make it on day one. He made light on day one. He made the sun on day four. There's no contradiction here.
And people say, well, what was that light on day one? The Bible doesn't tell us. It may have been God himself providing the light like he's going to be doing in Revelation 21 and 22 it talks about.
It may have been a temporary light source. The Bible just doesn't give us the answer to that, but there's no contradiction here. A contradiction is not an apparent disagreement.
This is what happens when at first glance things just don't seem to fit together at all, and then as you put them together you realize, yeah, they do actually fit quite well. For example, when the women went to that tomb on that first Easter morning, how many angels were there? Matthew says there was one angel at the tomb. Mark says there was one young man. Luke says there were two men, and John says that there were two angels.
Is that a problem? Well, first of all, as far as the numbers go, In order to have two, you also have to have one first, so that's not a problem. Maybe Matthew and Mark just focus on the one who is speaking. And by the way, John is referring to a different time later in the morning when Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb. That's when she sees the two angels there.
So that's at a different time period than when the other women saw the angels that are talked about in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But is it okay to call angels men? Well, the Bible does that several times because when they appear, often they appear in the form of men.
For example, 921. the man Gabriel came and spoke to Daniel. And in Genesis chapter 18 and 19, it talks about three men who came to Abraham. Well, we know one of those is the Lord himself.
The other two are the angels that went on to the town of Sodom to get Lot out of there. So yeah, the Bible refers to angels as men several times because of the way that they appear. A contradiction is not a verbal disagreement.
This is what's also known as equivocation, or when you're using one word in two different senses. For example, uh, thou shalt not covet, part of the Ten Commandments. But then in the New Testament we read, but covet earnestly the best gifts. How do we make sense of that? Well, because in the Ten Commandments, it's telling us you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, your neighbor's belongings, the things that don't belong to you and should not belong to you.
Those things you don't, you should not be desiring and coveting. But in the New Testament, what we read here is Paul saying to covet earnestly the gifts that are going to build up and edify the church, the things that we should want to happen, things that are going to be beneficial to the church. That's what we should desire.
So Again, no contradiction here. And number four, contradiction is not just merely the result of somebody's bias. For example, in Isaiah 7, a passage that most of us will be familiar with, at Christmas time we hear this, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. Now, for the skeptic, we've got two problems here.
Because one, virgins don't conceive and give birth. And two, this is talking about prophecy. Something's going to happen in the future from the time of Isaiah. And they'll say, well, that's impossible.
That can't happen. So we got a contradiction. Well, that's not a contradiction. It's just something that doesn't fit well with your worldview.
But if God exists and he's the one who created everything and he knows the future, there's no contradiction here. And of course, God does exist. And he knows the future as well as he knows the past, as well as he knows the present.
But then we read the fulfillment in Matthew chapter one, then Joseph took to him his wife, talking about Mary, and did not know her till she brought forth her firstborn son. And so there we have the fulfillment of that passage. So why does God allow difficulties?
Now, admittedly, the first several that we looked at were pretty simple. We'll get to some in a little bit here that'll be a little more complex, and I'll walk you through some of those. But first of all, why does he allow these?
Because they disprove collusion. You know, the critics oftentimes will talk about the four gospels, and they'll say, well, you know, some of the biblical writers, some of these early apostles, they were just kind of getting together. They were making up this story about certain things about the resurrection.
And so... They got together and said, let's make sure we get our story straight. Well, let me ask you this question. If you were on a jury and you heard four witnesses come to the stand and all four of them said the exact same thing in the same order, using the same terminology, do you think you would trust them?
Or do you think you'd have a really good reason to be skeptical? You'd have a really good reason to be skeptical. You'd assume that somebody coached them on what to say rather than they're just telling you what they saw. And that's what we see in the gospels is that you have four accounts of the same events, and oftentimes they're told from different perspectives, or they're highlighting different elements of what was going on. And when you put them together, you see that they fit together just fine.
So these difficulties disprove collusion. The authors weren't getting together and saying, let's make sure we are getting our story straight on this. They're just telling you what they experienced, what they saw, or in some cases what they heard from others.
Number two, they force us to study. God wants us to dive into his word and dig deeper. than just a surface-level reading. And so sometimes with these alleged contradictions, we have to dig in a little bit to see how we can make sense of them. Number three, they are the product of brevity and summary.
For example, the book of Acts covers about 30 years of early church history, and it's in 28 chapters. Do you think we're given every detail in the book of Acts of what was going on during that time? No. So sometimes we read just a little part of a chapter while Paul is in Corinth or when he's...
in Ephesus or when he's in a different place. And then when you read those epistles that Paul wrote to those places, sometimes people look at it and say, well, I don't know that that really happened because he doesn't mention it here. That's not a contradiction. It's just that you're getting a short summary of what was going on there. It's not giving us all the details.
And number four, they reveal that God's ways are higher than man's ways. As we'll see by the end of this presentation, there is just, there are going to be a few things we just don't understand, and that's okay. So Here's what I want to do.
I want to go through 12 different mistakes that the critics make when they claim that there's a contradiction, 12 reasons why they make those mistakes. And at the end, I want to give you some principles for how to deal with these supposed contradictions. Okay, number one, presuming that the Bible is guilty until proven innocent. Now, when you pick up a book, a nonfiction book, you generally give the author the benefit of the doubt. You assume that they're going to be telling you the truth unless you have a really good reason beforehand to doubt.
the author. Okay, this is called Aristotle's dictum. You give the author the benefit of the doubt.
And yet the skeptic does that with all other books, but when it comes to the Bible, they presume it is guilty until proven innocent. They treat it exactly opposite of how they would treat just about everything else. For example, in Exodus chapter 13, we read about this people group called the Hittites, and they're mentioned throughout the early chapters of the Bible. And for a long time, skeptics looked at this and they kind of mocked it and said, you know, the biblical writers, they just made this up.
There's no such thing as the people called the Hittites. And they had to stop saying that in 1906 because we found evidence of the Hittite culture. Not just a little bit.
We found the Hittite National Library, which is in modern-day Turkey, with over 30,000... clay tablets, and we found all sorts of evidence of their civilization. We know where the empire extended to.
We see some of their buildings, the remains of those. And so the critics had egg on their face because they assumed that the Bible was guilty rather than saying, okay, whoever's writing this is telling us what really happened. They weren't giving it the benefit of the doubt. So that's one reason the critic makes mistakes.
And this happens frequently when it comes to archaeology. The critics will say things like, well, David never even existed. And then we find evidence that David existed.
We find the Tel Dan Stella. Okay. And this sort of thing happens in archaeology quite a bit. Rather than assuming that the Bible is telling us the truth, they assume that it's guilty. Number two, confusing our fallible interpretations with God's infallible revelation.
For example, in the book of Revelation, chapter seven, after these things, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth. Did the Bible just teach that the earth was flat with four corners like it's a square or a rectangle? Is that what the Bible is teaching here? No, not at all. The four corners of the earth just refers to the four cardinal directions, north, south, east, and west.
It's not saying anything about the shape of the earth here. The Bible consistently teaches a round earth. For example, in Isaiah 40, 22, it talks about God sitting above the circle of the earth.
Now that doesn't have to mean sphere. It can just mean circle. And in Luke 17, Jesus... Seems to indicate that he realized the earth was round.
Of course, Jesus is the one who made the world, so he would know that the earth is round. But what does he do? Well, in this one passage, he's talking about an event that was future from his point in history. And some people think it's referring to the rapture. Some people think it's referring to the second coming.
That's not my point here is not to get into it. It's referring to one moment in time. And he talks about how two people will be, will, Be grinding at the mill, one taking the other left. Two people in a field, one taking the other left. Two people in bed, one taking the other left.
He actually describes three different periods of the day and one moment happening to all of them at the same time. One event. The only way that happens is if you have a round earth and you have the time zones.
A flat earth doesn't allow any of that. So the Bible doesn't teach this idea of a flat earth. Number three, failing to understand the context of a passage.
And this is... Really, the big one. Did you know the Bible says there is no God? In fact, it says it twice.
It says it in Psalm 14, 53. Look it up. There is no God. What's the rest of the verse?
The fool has said in his heart there is no God. And oftentimes when people point out, try to point out these contradictions, they'll pull something out of its context and they'll try to say, see, the Bible says that you're supposed to be doing this and here it says, but they're not looking in context of what's going on. Perhaps you heard about the guy who said, was, he was extremely depressed, and he thought about ending his own life, but before he went through with it, he thought, you know, my neighbor, I know that that guy's always got joy, and I know he's a Christian. Maybe it's something with that Bible that he's got.
So he pulls off this dusty Bible off the shelf, and he's like, you know what? God, if you're real, just show it to me. And so he opens it up and points to a verse, and it says, Judas went and hanged himself. I thought, well, that's not really what I wanted. Maybe it's best two out of three.
He opens it up again. Jesus said, go and do likewise. Okay, maybe best three out of five.
Jesus said, what you must do, do quickly. Okay, so if you pull things out of context, you can make it say that the Bible wants you to, Jesus is telling you to go and kill yourself. But of course, that's not at all what is being taught there.
But that's an extreme example to show the absurdity of yanking things out of their context. And yet this is what happens regularly when people claim that there are contradictions. Number four, forgetting that the Bible is a human book with human characteristics as well as a divine book with divine characteristics.
Okay, the Holy Spirit inspired the writing of Scripture, and he used human beings to write that. He allowed them to have their own perspectives and their own styles, their own vocabulary, their own emotions. If you don't think there's emotion in Scripture, you need to go read the Psalms, especially the imprecatory Psalms.
Look at Psalm 69. Pour out your indignation upon them and let your wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their dwelling place be desolate. Let no one live in their tents.
That sounds pretty harsh, doesn't it? Well, not compared to Psalm 137. O daughter of Babylon, who are to be destroyed, happy the one who repays you as you have served us. Happy the one who takes and dashes your little one against the rock.
That's very harsh. The psalmist is crying out for justice because of what Babylon had done to them and saying, God, take vengeance. on them for what they've done. There's raw emotion being portrayed in scripture, and the authors had different reasons for why they wrote. You had people from different backgrounds.
You had kings, and you had priests, and you had farmers, and you had fishermen. You had people from all sorts of different backgrounds writing. So it is both a human and a divine book, we need to remember that both of those things play a part.
Number five, assuming that a partial report is a false report. What did the sign on the cross above Jesus'head, what did that say? And here we just have an illustration from our exhibit, Christ's Cross Consummation Exhibit at the Creation Museum.
And in fact, if you want more information on this exhibit, tune in tomorrow night at 7 o'clock Thursday at 7 o'clock, and I'll be... doing a Facebook Live with Ken Ham as we go through and we talk about this particular sign on the crucifixion and also the resurrection. We'll focus on those two events in that exhibit.
But what did the sign above Jesus'head say on the cross? Well, in Matthew it says, this is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Mark says, the King of the Jews. Luke says, this is the King of the Jews. John says, Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.
Pretty much the same thing, right? But people are saying, well, wait a minute, this is inspired by the Holy Spirit. Why isn't it identical?
Well, Remember, it's written in three languages, and you could be getting a translation in some of those. So maybe what Matthew's telling you is here's the Hebrew or the Aramaic translation, and here's what it said, and then one of them is translating the Latin, and one of them is translating the Greek. Or it could just be that they're summarizing what was said. Or what if we were to set it up this way?
The same wording. Matthew says this is Jesus, the king of the Jews. Mark says the king of the Jews.
Luke says, this is the king of the Jews, and John says, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Now can we guess what the sign might have said? This is Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.
And each of the gospels just gives you a little bit of a partial report on what was said there. There's no contradiction at all here. Number six, demanding that citations always be exact quotations.
Now if you go through high school here in America or in college, if you're writing a paper and you're citing somebody, if you're quoting them, you need to document it, you need to make sure that you quote it word for word, so we have that standard. But you know, that wasn't necessarily the standard at the time when the scriptures were written, especially when the New Testament writers were quoting the Old Testament. It was perfectly fine for them to paraphrase, just as it would be for me to paraphrase a verse while I'm up here, as long as I'm not changing the meaning of the verse. It's okay to tell you this is what this verse says, and if I paraphrase it, that's fine.
But take a look at John chapter 19. And again, another scripture says, they shall look on him whom they pierced. Now that is quoting from Zechariah 12.10, but notice the difference. John changes the pronoun.
Then they will look on me whom they pierced. Why does he change the pronoun? And is that okay? Well, the reason he changes it, because in Zechariah, it is God speaking about what the people are going to do. They're going to look on him whom they pierced.
And in John, John is standing by the foot of the cross and he's looking up at him. whom they pierced he's recognizing the fulfillment of that that and he was seeing jesus on the cross and we have to remember sometimes the way that we got scripture in into our language so we can translate the old testament from the hebrew and from the aramaic sections and then that goes right into english sometimes we use the greek septuagint to help us understand certain things but then when we're translating from the new testament we have to understand that the new testament was originally written in Greek, and sometimes they were quoting in Aramaic, quoting things from the Old Testament. So there's already a translation and then another translation into Greek, and then we translate that into English. So sometimes there's going to be a little bit of difference in the wording. And there are some even more complicated situations than that, but that'll give you a little idea as to why sometimes the wording is slightly different.
But that's not a contradiction. That's just the nature of how things are translated. But that doesn't mean that you can't trust what you're reading. You know, the skeptic will say, well, the Bible's been translated so many times and it's been copied so many times, there's got to be errors.
But the thing is, we can go right back to the original Hebrew, the early copies that we have of that, and we can go back to the early copies of the Greek. So it's not as if it's being translated into one language, then another, then another, then another, and then we finally translate that in English. That's the impression some people get when they hear this. Number seven, assuming that divergent accounts are false reports.
So just because they don't share all the same details. That doesn't mean that they are false. For example, with Judas.
Now there's two issues here that we're going to address. It says, after he betrays Jesus, it says, Judas threw down the pieces of silver in the temple and departed and went and hanged himself. But then we read in the book of Acts, Now Judas purchased a field with the wages of iniquity.
And falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. It's a little bit disgusting, I know. But what happened with the money?
Did he throw the money down? Or did he use it to buy a field? Is that a contradiction? No, because the Bible tells us he throws the money down in the temple, but because it's blood money, they can't put that in the temple treasury. Instead, they use that to buy the pot.
potter's field, and since it really was Judas'money, you could say that he purchased that field, which, by the way, is also a fulfillment of prophecy in the book of Zechariah about the potter's field. But then what about this? How did he die?
Matthew says that he went and hanged himself, and then we read in Acts 1 that he fell headlong and then burst open. But notice, Acts does not tell us that that is how he died. It's just telling us what happened to him. So Judith goes and hangs himself.
Let's say that once somebody dies, the bacteria and other things in his stomach will start to break down different things, producing different gases. The body will bloat. Sorry, this will get a little bit disgusting. What happens if they come and cut him down a couple days later, or the branch breaks or the knot slips or something like that, and he falls and hits the ground?
Then you can have exactly what happens in Acts 1. Again, no contradiction here. These things fit together just fine. But just because you're given different details doesn't mean that they're false.
Number eight, presuming the Bible approves of all it records. This is another thing the critic does quite a bit. Well, the Bible says this.
Yeah, but the Bible doesn't necessarily say that was a good thing. For example, the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. What do we call that?
We call that a lie because God said, if you eat from this, you will surely die. And then the serpent says, no, you won't. That's a lie.
The Bible never says, hey, good job, serpent. In fact, it's telling us this isn't good. How about this one?
Solomon had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. Does the Bible ever say, good job, Solomon? No, he's already violating this command that's in the Pentateuch where Moses talks about when they go into the land and you have a king that he's not supposed to multiply wives to himself.
Well, I'm pretty sure Solomon's breaking that. But if you continue reading that passage, it tells us... some of the many problems that this created and how it led Solomon to the worship of a whole bunch of pagan gods.
The Bible's not saying, great job, Solomon. It's just telling us what happened. It's faithfully reporting what took place. It's not necessarily approving of everything that it records. And a big place where this happens is in the book of Job.
So a lot of times people will quote the book of Job, and you've got to be really careful with that because more than half of the book... is spoken by people that God says weren't saying the truth, some of Job's friends. Okay, so you got to be careful with that. Number nine, forgetting that the Bible uses non-technical everyday language.
Now this might be the number one alleged contradiction that you'll find out there on the internet. Maybe it's number two. We'll look at the other very popular one in just a little bit. But when Joshua is leading the Israelites in this battle against the Amorites, this is where he has the son stand still. Sun stands still over Gibeon and moon in the valley of Ajalon.
So the sun stood still and the moon stopped till the people had revenge upon their enemies. And people will look at that and say, see, the Bible is teaching that the earth is at the center and that the sun goes around it. It doesn't say that at all. And if that's what that's teaching, if you're going to insist that the Bible is teaching at that point, well, then we better fire every single meteorologist in the world today because guess what they refer to? Sunrise and sunset.
Now we know the sun doesn't technically rise and doesn't technically set. It's the earth's rotation that causes it to look like that from our point of view. It's using phenomenological language.
From our point of view, this is what it looks like. So we don't know exactly what God did in order to cause, you know, the earth, the sun to stand still. Did he stop the rotation of the earth? He could have done that.
People say, well, that would cause all sorts of problems with the gravity. You think the God who made everything couldn't handle that? Did he refract light differently?
We're not sure exactly how he did it. But a God who is all-powerful, this is not a problem for. It does not imply geocentricism. And by the way, NASA did not find this missing day. Okay, so if you ever get this email forwarded to you or if you're ever tempted to share this on Facebook, we see this come up every couple of years where NASA found Joshua's missing day.
No, they didn't. And they can't. Okay, the story is something like, you know, NASA was trying to figure out where... the location of certain planets and things were in the sky, and just certain things weren't lining up quite right.
They were off by a little bit, by about a half a day, by about 12 hours or so. And then one of the guys remembered, oh yeah, I remember from Sunday school this whole thing about God stopping the sun. And so they plugged in the parameters for that, and it's like, oh, we're still off by a little bit, maybe about 15, 20 minutes.
And then the guy thought back, and he's like, oh, remember in Hezekiah's time, the shadow goes backwards, so they plug it in for that. Now everything worked out just right. No, that didn't happen, and it can't happen.
They'd have to know exactly where everything was in place before that time, before these events occurred. So we don't need to invent. stories to try to prove the Bible is true. The Bible is God's word. It is true from beginning to end.
And we don't need to try to find these stories that might make us feel good and say, see, now we got proof. Well, this didn't even happen. So the worst thing is to use a made-up story. Number 10, assuming that round numbers are false. Is it okay for the Bible to use round numbers in certain situations?
Of course. So here's one. It came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the Lord went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians 185,000. I should have said, here's a verse to look at.
I shouldn't have said this is a round number because I don't know if it is or not. But it says, when the people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses all dead. I love the way the New King James puts that. Of course, the corpses were all dead. It's just a way of emphasizing, yeah, they were dead.
But does that have to be 185,000 people exactly? I mean, if it was 185,012, is that still an accurate statement? Yeah. It's perfectly fine for them to use round numbers in that case. And this brings up what is the other really popular alleged contradiction that you'll find out there.
And this has to do with what Solomon made for the temple. It's this large bronze sea. It's like a giant bowl.
And it says it's 10 cubits from one brim to the other. It was completely round. Its height was 5 cubits and a line of 30 cubits measured its circumference. Now, those of you who have taken... Geometry might have recognized the issue here, because if it's 10 cubits from one brim to the other, in order to figure out the circumference, well, you multiply that by pi, so the line measuring its circumference should have been around 31.4 cubits, not 30. And people say, well, that's a contradiction.
It also tells us in both of these passages that it was a hand-breadth thick, which is 4 inches. So here's what we're talking about, this molten sea that they... built right by the temple. And thanks to the magic of Microsoft Paint, we're going to take a look at this for a minute.
It could be that they're just using round numbers, and this is the way that a lot of apologists refer to it. That's perfectly acceptable. Maybe they're just giving it about 30 cubits around rather than saying it was 31.4. They're not demanding precision in that case necessarily.
But what if they were being a little more precise? So if you use an 18-inch cubit, and it's 10 cubits from one side to the other, that's 180 inches. But remember to subtract 4 from both sides because that's how thick it is.
That would give you an interior measurement of 172 inches. And then when you divide that by 18 for the number of inches within a cubit and multiply that by pi, you get 30.004 cubits. It could be that the Bible is being very precise here. And maybe it's giving you the interior measurement so you can know the volume of it and giving you the exterior so you know how big it is.
So if you have an opening, you need to put it through. Or maybe it's just using a round number. Either way, it's not a contradiction. Number 11, neglecting to note that the Bible uses different literary devices.
It uses figurative language, okay? We use figurative language all the time. I just did when I said all the time.
We don't really use it all the time, but you know what I meant by that. How about this one? Paul said, the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. Was the gospel really preached to every creature under heaven, like the lobsters?
in the water? Were they hearing the gospel? That's not what he's referring to.
He's just talking about how the gospel went out, okay? He's using hyperbole here. It's an exaggeration for the point of emphasis.
Jesus says, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. Does Jesus really want us to hate our family members? No, of course not.
We're commanded to love them. So why would he say this? Well, first of all, we have to understand that the word hate does not necessarily mean the opposite of love. And when it's used, oftentimes in Scripture, it's referring to love less than. And that's what Jesus is referring to, that our love for him needs to be so great that by comparison, we love others less than him.
How about this one from Peter on the day of Pentecost? Knowing that God had sworn with an oath, apparently he got this one from the Department of Redundancy department. Because when you swear something, you're making an oath. If you make an oath, you're swearing something.
And we would look at that and say, well, that's poor grammar. You don't need to be redundant. Well, they don't have that same standard. And so what you're getting here is a point of emphasis.
In Genesis chapter 4, even in a passage that is historical narrative, you still get figures of speech, and they're really easy to pick up. Here's when God is speaking to Cain after Cain had killed his brother Abel. What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.
Was Abel's blood really crying out like it did have a mouth and was it screaming or was it shedding tears? No, of course not. Okay, it's there as a testimony what Cain had done. It's evidence that he had murdered Abel. So now you are cursed from the earth.
which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood. Did the earth really just open up a mouth and swallow it? No, of course not. Okay, these are figures of speech. We recognize what they mean, and yet we can still look at this and say, yeah, this is historical narrative, and there are figures of speech within it.
Number 12, forgetting that only the original text, not every copy, is without error. And I should add, and the copies insofar as they accurately reflect the original text. And this is one that...
a lot of people will struggle with. But we need to be careful with this one because there are places in our modern Bibles that we can look at. And in English Bibles that we've got, we can find little places where certain things don't line up. And part of that is because of the process of the different manuscripts that we've got and some of the copies. Certain errors would creep in from time to time.
But we have so many thousands of manuscripts that we can go back and compare and contrast and figure out where those were. where they crept in, and we can figure out in almost every single case what the original should have been, especially with the New Testament. Now, with the Old Testament and in the book of 1 Samuel, things get a little more difficult because we just don't have that much textual evidence for it.
But let's take a look at this one. In 1 Samuel 13, in the King James, the New King James, it says Saul reigned one year, and when he had reigned two years, But now look at the same verse in the New American Standard. Some other Bibles, it'll say something like this.
Saul was 30 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 42 years over Israel. Now, if you have an older version of the ESV before 2007, before their update there, or if you have like the New Revised Standard version, you'll read something like this. Saul was dot, dot, dot years old when he began to reign, and he reigned dot, dot, dot in two years over Israel. What's going on here? Well, in the Hebrew manuscript that we have, The bottom one actually pretty accurately reflects what's there because those two numbers have dropped out.
And so translators are trying to estimate what was being said there. Was it the 1 and the 2 or was it the 30 and the 42? Now, since 2007 with the ESV and they updated it, theirs lines up now with what the King James and New King James says, the 1 and the 2 years.
So here's my question. Do we know beyond any shadow of a doubt what the original said there? I'm not confident to say that I do.
But that's okay. I'm confident that when it was originally written, it was accurate, it was without error. And does this affect any sort of Christian doctrine at all? Whether Saul was one year and then two years, or 30 years and 42 years, does that have any bearing on the gospel message? Does that have any bearing on Christian doctrine?
No. You see, what I'm referring to is what's known as textual criticism. When you're looking at all the different manuscripts that we have, and they're... There are legitimate pursuits within that realm of what's called textual criticism.
When you're comparing these manuscripts and you're trying to figure out what the original said, that's perfectly legitimate. But then there are other areas within textual criticism, what's called negative higher criticism, which is very problematic. These are people who come at it from a very anti-supernatural approach, from an evolutionary approach. They assume the Bible is guilty until proven innocent. They pull out all the supernatural elements and say, those weren't originally part of the Bible.
Those things were added. They were embellishments. That's problematic.
But as far as comparing and contrasting the manuscripts we have, that's perfectly legitimate. Do we have 100% certainty of every single text? Well, as I showed you in 1 Samuel 13, I don't think that we do have 100% certainty of every single one in our version today.
But I have complete confidence that it was accurate when it was originally written, and none of these things have any bearing on our doctrine. And here's the point. We know where those variants are.
And we know that they don't influence these key issues. So let's move on to some principles for dealing with these supposed contradictions. First, have complete confidence in the author.
As I mentioned before, the Holy Spirit is the one who inspired the writing of Scripture. Since God is the author, then it must be true. Proverbs 3, 5 says, The trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Psalm 118, 8 said, It is better to put confidence in the Lord than to put confidence in the Lord.
or better to put trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. That doesn't mean to just check your brain at the door. Some people think that's what Christians do, or we're opposed to thinking that when people challenge us, we just, well, I don't care about any of that, I just believe. And you know what? There are some Christians who, that is how they operate.
It doesn't matter what challenges there are to their faith. They have no doubt that Christ died for them, that he rose, and they're just going to follow him. They're going to believe in him.
God bless them for that. There are other people who, you know what, the Bible tells us to be ready to give a defense, to give an answer to anyone who asks us the reason for the hope that is within us, and we follow that and we say, you know what, we need to be ready to defend this. We need to be ready to defend that hope that is within us.
Some people will say, well, just believe in Jesus. And again, this is not to diminish that belief in Jesus at all. Absolutely, that is primary. That is first and foremost, we need to be believing in Christ.
But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be ready to defend the faith. And somebody said to me one time, well, if you prove everything, then why would you have faith? Well, I think they have a very... Poor misunderstanding of what faith is and how the Bible defines it.
You know how the Bible defines faith? Hebrews 11.1. Now faith is a substance of things hoped for the, what's that word right there? The evidence of things not seen.
How can the word evidence be part of the definition of faith? If faith is just supposed to be this blind leap in the dark where we hope we get the right one? Or people will say today, well faith is when you believe something without any evidence. That is not what faith means. Faith is believing in the one, believing in God.
And we have really good reasons for believing in him because he's shown himself to be faithful and true time and time and time and time again. If you want a great definition of faith or a great example of faith, continue on in Hebrews chapter 11 with Abraham. Remember when God tells Abraham, take your son Isaac and go out to this place and sacrifice him.
And Abraham in Genesis 22 says he's going to do it. And he gets ready to it and God stops him. Of course, this is also a picture of what God himself would do.
He would be the one who would sacrifice his own son for us. But Abraham was willing to do it. Why? It tells us in Hebrews 11 that he reasoned that even if he killed Isaac, that God would have to bring him back from the dead because God said through Isaac, all of these promises are going to come to pass. So Abraham thought through it and he knew that God had to make good on his word.
That's faith. It's not just this blind leap in the dark. Then Kenneth Hagin wrongly said this one time. He said, we cannot know God through our human knowledge, through our mind.
God has only revealed a man through his spirit. We don't understand the Bible with our mind. It is spiritually understood.
Now there is an element in there, depending on how you define certain terms. We do need the Holy Spirit's guidance and illumination as we are reading his word to properly understand things. But Jesus also said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your strength, with all your soul, with all your, what's that other word? Mind.
Okay, he's given us a brain. He's given us the ability to think and to reason, to think deeply about these things, and he wants us to use it. We're supposed to love him with all our mind.
So that statement just is not accurate. Number two, realize you won't understand every part of the Bible. When we take the infinite mind of God and we bring that down to the finite mind of man, it's going to sometimes lead to difficulties.
In fact, God even tells Isaiah, through Isaiah, says, Again, there's going to be some things that we just don't fully comprehend. And God enjoys hiding some things from us. Think about it.
If we could understand everything, who would we be? We'd be God, and we're not. How about this doctrine known as the doctrine of the Trinity in Matthew chapter 3? verses 16 and 17. When he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon him.
And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. You know what you have there in that passage? You have God the Son coming up out of the water.
You have God the Holy Spirit descending like a dove and you have God the Father speaking from heaven. You have all three members of the Trinity in these two verses, three persons, one being. And people look at it and say, oh, that's a contradiction.
No, it's not a contradiction. It doesn't say three gods and one God, or three beings and one being. It's three persons, three divine persons and one being. Or maybe you could think of it this way, three who's and one what. Okay, not a contradiction.
If there are three who's and one who, that's a contradiction. The Trinity may be beyond our ability to fully comprehend. Again, that's good because he's God, okay, and we can't understand everything about him. But we can see that this is not a contradiction. Number three, remember that many people want to destroy your confidence in God's word.
You know, it seems like there are a lot of people out there, and it seems like especially professors in colleges think that this is their job, and why they're here on earth is to destroy the faith of young people. But they're not the only ones. There are a lot of people who want to destroy your confidence in God's word.
So if somebody is challenging you on an issue related to scripture, And they just keep attacking, they keep asking these questions. Find out their motives for why they're bringing them up. You know, if somebody comes up to you and they have a sincere question, you know, I really don't understand this, can you help me explain?
Well, you know, by all means, Take the time to explain it to them. But if you have somebody who's just attacking, attacking, attacking, and you answer and it's like they don't even care about the answer, they just jump right to the next one. You answer, they don't even care about it, they jump to the next one. Just ask them, is there anything I can show you to demonstrate that the Bible is true? And a lot of times they'll just be forthright and say no.
Okay, well, you're wasting your time with somebody like that because they don't want to believe it's right. It's a heart issue for them at that point. It's not anything to do with that they have mental objections to it. They don't want to believe, so they're looking for reasons to not believe.
The enemy's attack has always been to go after the trustworthiness of God's word. For example, to Eve, he says, has God indeed said? Right away, getting Eve to question what God had said to them. And then in the New Testament, during the temptations, he says to Jesus, he shall give his angels charge over you to keep you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. He actually quotes the Bible.
He quotes right from the Psalms and he quotes it accurately. That's word for word. But he's misapplying it.
That wasn't the time or the place for that to be applied. And Jesus called him out of that. Number four, something that is hard to accept is not necessarily untrue.
This is a difficult one for people in our culture today. There are so many people who think that truth is determined by how you feel about something. We've taught...
Generations of people today to believe that, hey, if it makes you feel good, well, then it must be right. If it makes you feel bad, well, then it can't be true. But that's nonsensical.
We know that murders occur in our world, and those things make me feel bad, and they make the family members of somebody, they make them feel bad. It doesn't change the fact that it happened. Here's what the Bible teaches in Revelation 21 and elsewhere. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Okay, this concept of eternal conscious punishment in the lake of fire.
There are a lot of people who say, I don't like that. Well, guess what? I don't like it either. We shouldn't like that. We shouldn't want that for anybody.
But it doesn't change the fact that that's what the Bible teaches. Think about this. Jesus says in Matthew 25, and these will go away to everlasting punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.
Some people say, well, they're only going to be punished for a short time and then God will kind of snuff them out. Or maybe he'll let them go into heaven after that. But that's not what the Bible teaches.
Look at it. It's the exact same Greek word that's used there. It's Ionian for everlasting and also the same word for eternal. However long the life is going to be, which is eternal, it's the same amount of time that the punishment is going to be.
Look, we don't have to like that, but we don't have the right to change what God said about it. So just because something is unpalatable, it doesn't make it untrue. When you're coming up against things that are difficult in Scripture, you know, when you can't quite make sense of something, you know what, there's a great thing we can do. We can compare Scripture with Scripture. Okay, for example, if you're trying to find out more about our future resurrection, the bodily resurrection that will endure.
Go to 1 Corinthians 15. You have 58 verses talking about Christ's resurrection, the evidence for that, the importance of that, and then the last half of the chapter is all about our future bodily resurrection. So compare any passage with that. You don't take one obscure verse, one verse where maybe it's just thrown in a little tiny bit, and then try to use that to reinterpret everything else.
Use the very clear passages to make sense of those that maybe aren't quite clear. And one place where this has caused a problem, not for Christianity, but within the Latter-day Saints, Mormonism, what they have done is taken one verse out of 1 Corinthians 15, which talks about baptism for the dead. And it's not saying this is a good practice or anything.
It's not endorsing it. It just mentions this thing. And it's a confusing verse for a lot of people. But they've built an entire doctrine out of that. they call baptism by proxy, where they've baptized people who are already dead.
I mean, they're baptizing somebody else saying it's for grandma or in every U.S. president. That's why they have the largest genealogical database in the world, because they do that for so many people. They think that that's going to assist them in their afterlife. But that's not at all what the Bible is talking about. So you don't use an obscure verse and then build a big doctrine off of that.
You use the clear verses to interpret those that aren't quite clear. And also, just because you don't know the answer doesn't mean that one isn't available. Number five, go on the offensive, but don't be offensive.
What do I mean by that? Well, you don't always have to be the one to try to prove your difficulties. You can try to disprove your beliefs.
You know, one thing I do, and again, If you're watching this on Wednesday or maybe Thursday, you can watch on Sunday afternoon, on Easter Sunday, you can watch at noon Eastern. I'll be giving my talk on the resurrection, the evidences for the resurrection, and then all of the alternative theories that people have proposed for the last 2,000 years to try to explain it away. Well, try to disprove the resurrection. You won't be able to, and actually what that will do is that it'll strengthen your faith.
You don't always have to try to defend your faith. Let somebody else prove their assertions. For example, if somebody, you know, who is a molecules demand evolutionist, if they're challenging you on what scripture says, just say this, can you give me one example where a mutation has added new genetic information?
You know, that question was asked of Richard Dawkins one time on camera several years ago. You know what his answer was? This is like one of the leading atheistic evolutionary biologists. You think if anybody got an answer, he would, right?
Here was his response. 13 seconds of dead air, and then you ramble on about something that had nothing to do with the question. Okay, they can't give an answer because there isn't one.
How about the agnostic, the person who says, well, we can't really know enough about reality to know anything for sure about reality, or we can't really know anything certain about God to say something, you know, certain about God. Well, you've just told us something about reality. When you say that it's unknowable, you've told us something that you know about it. Same thing with God. When you said that you can't know anything about God, you're just telling us something about God.
So the whole... system collapses on itself. How about the relativist, the person who says, well, there's no such thing as truth, capital T. We all just have our own truth. Or they'll say, everything is relative.
Well, that statement, everything is relative, is that absolute or is it relative? Because if it's absolute, it's false. If it's relative, we don't have to listen to you.
You can't live these philosophies out consistently, and yet these are the ideas that are capturing the minds. young people all around this country and all around the world. And the philosophies collapse in on themselves at their very core.
How about the people who say, well, you have to be so tolerant and stop being intolerant. Well, why are you being intolerant of my intolerance? I've actually had somebody say, well, it's okay for me to be intolerant of intolerant people. Well, they have to be intolerant of themselves because they're being intolerant.
You can't live this out. By the way, intolerant doesn't mean that you hate that person. Okay, our society has shifted the meaning of that as well. Tolerance doesn't mean, okay, I accept everything you do and it's just equally valid. No, tolerance means that you're willing to put up with that person.
You can respect that human being even if you strongly disagree with their views. How about this one? This is like the favorite verse of people today, you know, Matthew 7. Judge not lest you be judged.
I know the Bible says not. It says that. Well, here's what I ask. Why are you judging me?
You know, as soon as somebody says that to you, judge not lest you be judged, they're judging you. They're saying what you said was wrong. So just turn around and why is it okay for you to be judgmental of my judgmentalism? They can't live it consistently. Now, we are not supposed to be self-righteous in our judgment, of course not.
And if you continue reading on in Matthew 7, it actually talks about how we're supposed to be making judgments. And of course, this one that you've probably heard before, there are no absolutes. So the response to that is, are you absolutely sure? Because they've just made an absolute.
Now, keep this in mind as you go through these things. 2 Corinthians 10 says, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, they're not fleshly, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down, what's that word? People?
No. Individuals? No. Casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.
We don't attack the people, but we do go after those ideas that are so dangerous, that are leading people away from the truth and leading them to a Christless eternity. We do go after the arguments, but the people, they're worth going, they're worth rescuing. They're people who are made in the image of God and that Christ died for on the cross. They're worth pursuing and we're commanded to love them.
Number six, the difficulties are minimal compared to the evidences that are consistent with scripture. That many evidences that we have of biblical inerrancy will help you in... with some of the difficulties that you might struggle to reconcile. In fact, there might be times where maybe you never are able to make sense of it.
But that's okay. Focus on the things that you can be confident of. Focus on the things that you are sure of. For example, with Bible prophecy, there's no other holy book, there's no other book out there that has detailed prophecy listed hundreds of years in advance, and then these things come to pass. The Bible does that so much.
In fact, over a quarter of the Bible was prophetic at the time that it was written. Because God is demonstrating, as he says in Isaiah 40 through 40, 36, repeatedly, he says that I'm going to show you the end from the beginning. I'll show you that I'm the one true God. I'm going to tell you the future.
And he tells it accurately. He does that time and time and time again. In that passage, he mentions King Cyrus. He would be the one who would send the people back 150 years before Cyrus was born.
Don't follow the skeptics in spending more time on these difficulties than on the truth. Remember, the Bible is innocent until proven guilty. Number seven, difficulties rapidly disappear through careful and prayerful study.
The more we pray and truly study, the fewer difficulties we will find. James tells us this, and I'll be careful with this, is what I call a dangerous prayer. It's like the person says, Lord, I'll go anywhere, but please don't send me to Africa. Well, guess where you're going to go? Not necessarily, but that's kind of the joke that I like to say.
But how about this one? Lord, give me patience. Well, God's probably going to give you an opportunity to acquire patience, to practice patience.
So maybe you'll get a traffic jam on the way home. James 1 says, if anyone lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. I said that that's a dangerous prayer. Why?
Because a lot of times God doesn't just zap you with the wisdom like he did with Solomon. A lot of times he puts you in situations where you acquired that wisdom, and those can be difficult circumstances, but they are worth it. He does want us to be wise. Our difficulties are often caused by our biased opinions rather than what scripture says.
And by the way, if somebody is challenging you on something, if you don't know the answer, as I talked about a little bit ago, sometimes we don't, that's okay. Learn how to say a few really difficult words for a lot of people. Three very easy words to say, but very difficult for a lot of people to admit it.
I don't know. It's okay. Don't bluff your way through it.
Don't give them a bad answer just because you want to appear like you have an answer. It's best to just say, you know, that's a great question. I don't know the answer, but let me go try to find it for you. In fact, why don't we go together and try to find it?
Because I bet there's one out there. Wouldn't that be a better approach than what a lot of people do? Number eight, the easy answer may not be the best answer. For example, when did Jesus cleanse the temple? If you read Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they place it at the near the end of Christ's ministry.
comes into Jerusalem during the triumphal entry, and then Mark tells us he goes in the temple, looks around, goes back out of town, and then the next day he came back in and cleanses the temple. But when you read John, it's at the beginning of Christ's ministry in John chapter 2, and there he makes this whip, and he has this debate with some of the people there, and they talk about how it's taken 46 years to build this temple. You're going to raise it up in three days? There's this whole discussion that never is mentioned at all.
in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Now, some people will look at that and say, well, it happened at the end, and John is just writing his gospel thematically. And John can do that if he wants to, but there's no indication that that's what he's doing here.
In fact, there's a strong argument that he's not doing that. But if he wanted to write it that way, he could. That's the easiest answer.
Well, John's just not writing it chronologically. He's writing thematically. Therefore, it really happened at the end, but he puts it at the beginning for theological reasons.
I don't think that's the right answer, even though that might be the easiest one. Why don't I think it's the right answer? Well, as I mentioned before, John mentions different details about the whip and the debate that takes place, the 46 years. By the way, the 46 years doesn't line up with the end of Christ's ministry. It lines up perfectly with the beginning of his ministry.
So there's an issue. John states, after these things, John the Baptist testified about Christ. What things? Well, the events that were taking place in the temple when Jesus drove people out and had that debate, and then when Nicodemus came to him at night in John chapter 3. John says, after these things, the temple cleansing and Nicodemus...
John the Baptist testified about Jesus. Why would that be a problem at the end of Christ's ministry? Because John the Baptist was already dead by that point. So it makes much more sense that Christ cleansed the temple twice.
Is that really hard to believe? No, not at all. In fact, he was zealous for purity of worship and to get rid of all of this nonsense that was going on in the temple.
And it helps us understand why many of the religious leaders hated him from an early time because he was wrecking their racket that they had going on. They're making all this money. And he called them out on it early on, and then he did it again later on.
So it makes much more sense to see that he did that twice rather than just once. And number nine, finally, think biblically. We need to learn to start our thinking on the Bible.
Otherwise, it will lead us to some of these issues. For example, maybe you've heard this from some people in our ministry before. Where was or is the Garden of Eden? You know, a lot of people will try to answer that question.
They say, well, I know it talks about the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, so it must be at that point in the world. So somewhere in the Middle East between the Tigris and Euphrates. Actually, what the Bible describes in Genesis chapter 2 is that there was one river that went up out of the land and it split.
and became four rivers. The Tigris and Euphrates we know today are two different rivers that meet and form one and then enter, then exit into the, empty out into the Persian Gulf. Two rivers becoming one is not the same as one becoming four. Remember, this is describing the world before the worldwide flood, which would have completely changed the earth.
So you can't just look at the world today and say, well, that's where it was before the flood. It doesn't work that way. So we don't know where the Garden of Eden is. is or was, it's buried underneath probably hundreds of feet of sediment.
It's destroyed by the flood. When I was in Bible college, I had a professor say that, well, Hinduism has been around since 3000 BC. And right away I raised my hand. I said, so are you saying that Noah took Hinduism on board the ark?
And the professor didn't really know what I was talking about because the Bible puts the flood, you know, sometime after 3000 BC. So they're saying, well, this must've been... So if you're saying Hinduism has been around since then, then somebody had to bring it through on the ark, and I don't believe that that happened. So because the professor was not starting from a biblical worldview, the professor made the mistake.
Now, thankfully, she was just misreading what our textbook said. It said that Hinduism has been around since the 3rd millennium B.C. That's anywhere from 2001 B.C.
back to 3000 B.C. If it's around 2000, 2100, I've got no problem with that. It is an ancient belief system, and if it comes sometime shortly after Babel, that's fine. But we need to learn to start from the Word of God. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
God's Word is true from the very beginning to the very end, and we can stand on it, we can trust it, because it comes from the one who cannot lie, who has always been, and he's the one who told us what he did at the beginning, and he also told us what happened during... the time of Christ here, and when Christ came and became one of us, and lived a sinless life, and went to the cross, and died in our place, and then three days later, God raised him from the dead. He told us about those events so that we would know how to be forgiven, that we would know what is required of us, and how we're supposed to live our lives in a way that would glorify and honor him. We have several resources for you. You can sign up for our answers.
Newsletter, this goes out every single month and it's free. There's no cost at all. You go to AnswersInsider.com. If you don't get this already, sign up for it there and you'll get a free download as well.
But this will give you news about the ministry every single month, some of the latest resources and all sorts of information that you'll value. We also have our Answers Magazine that comes out six times a year now. Actually, because of the coronavirus and everything, it is on hold right now. But you can look that up on... our web store and actually have all the back issues that you can purchase if you haven't seen those before but it's really like two magazines in one there's a kids pull-out section they get to learn about some of the same things that mom and dad learn about but at more of a level they can understand something that's more interactive during this time the shutdown we've been doing Facebook live programs every single day at 10 in the morning at noon at 3 p.m.
and 7 p.m. so check Ken Ham's Facebook page or Answers in Genesis Facebook page for details on those. You can tune in live or you can watch it afterward. You can interact with the people who are there. As I mentioned before, I'll be doing one tomorrow night with Ken Ham going through the crucifixion and resurrection in our new exhibit, the Christ Cross Consummation exhibit.
So that's tomorrow night at 7 Eastern. This weekend we have the Answers Easter event from the 10th through the 12th. That's Good Friday through Easter Sunday.
And if you're in a position or if you would like to help donate to the ministry at this time, obviously with the ARC and the museum being shut down because coronavirus, we're not having the same sort of revenue coming in as we are, that we would normally have. And thankfully some of us are still able to be working each day and it's because of generosity of people who are willing to give during this time. So if you are able to give in any amount, we would greatly appreciate that. During this time, actually this is good through tomorrow only, you can get 20% off any of the items in... the answersingenesis.org store, except for those that are already discounted, using the promo code MATTHEW6.
So that is good just today and tomorrow. There's a book, actually a couple of books, that are on the topic that we just covered in this talk, Demolishing Supposed Bible Contradictions. There's the first volume, and here's the second volume. I'm a little bit biased.
I like the second one better because that's the one that I wrote several chapters in and was one of the general editors. But both of them are great resources, so you can look those up in our store. If you're wondering more about Answers in Genesis and the issues that we face regularly, Challenges that people ask us about creation, evolution, the age of the earth, was there ever really a worldwide flood? What about dinosaurs in the Bible and carbon dating?
All these types of things. We have four books called the New Answers books, volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4. And I'd highly recommend that you get those. Each of them cover about 25 to 35 of the most commonly asked questions that we get as a ministry.
It's a great resource and reference tool. You don't have to read through the entire book to get your answer. Just if you want to learn about carbon dating. Turn to the one chapter that deals with that, and you get 15 pages or so in non-technical language explaining it in a way that most of us can understand. With Resurrection Sunday coming up, I was able to, a few years back, work on a DVD curriculum, small group study, with my friend Eric Hovind called Risen Without a Doubt.
It takes you from the triumphal entry through the arrest, through the trials, through the crucifixion, and all the way up through the resurrection, and goes through the many... a lot of the evidence for the resurrection and really digs in 12 different sessions over six DVDs with a study guide and everything. So you can check that out on our website.
And I've also written a book on the resurrection called In Defense of Easter, Answering Critical Challenges to the Resurrection of Jesus, as well as a single DVD presentation that I've given called He Has Risen, going through all of those evidences for the resurrection and also countering the alternative theories people propose. And one of the things I wanted to do is take this information from, even from the presentation today, information on the resurrection, information that we teach throughout the ministry in the Creation Museum at the Ark Encounter, and I wanted to put that into an action-adventure series for young people, for middle school, junior high age. If you're at home right now looking for something to read, if you're a younger reader, you may really enjoy the Truth Chronicles series. It's an action-adventure series with time travel, dinosaurs, it's illustrated with this manga style, and... Parents feel like this.
There is a study guide that will walk them through 15 of the issues in much more detail. So it's sort of like taking the answers books and putting them into a fun story for the young people. So don't forget our Answers Easter event beginning on Friday, April 10th through 12th.
Thanks for tuning in today. Let me close in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, thank you for this day you've given us. Thank you for your word, which is true from the very beginning to the very end.
Lord, thank you for being so good to us. You didn't have to give us your word. We've rebelled against you. We don't deserve...
your grace, your mercy, your forgiveness, your love, but you give those things anyways. Father, we are so grateful that you are good and holy and just and pure. Father, we think at this time of year, especially, we emphasize the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ because of what that accomplished. It's our salvation, and that means we can live eternally with you.
But it's not just our redemption, Lord. The Bible speaks of the renewing of all things. This whole creation is longing for redemption because of what man has done.
Man has rebelled against you and destroyed what you have made. But Lord, through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, Lord, all things will be made new. And we long for that day.
We look forward to that. But until that happens, Lord, help us to faithfully serve you. Help us to share the good news of Jesus Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection with so many people who desperately need to hear it.
Father, guide our steps. And may we do everything we do out of gratitude for what you've done. We pray these things in the name of the risen Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen. Thank you for your time today. God bless.