The God of the Bible

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I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars...

Page 17 (quoting Darwin):

 

David Attenborough, the atheistic naturalist, has made an identical error regarding a parasite that burrows into the eye, creating pain and blindness. This is a straw man argument, which is the distortion of an opponent’s belief in order to counter it easily. It is incredible coming from the lips of those whose belief is that living creatures have constantly and radically changed over and over again, while at the same time claiming Darwin’s Ichneumonidae and Attenborough’s parasite have always been the same! How inconsistent can you be?

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The Bible makes it very clear that God did not create creatures to live in this way. The fall of Adam cut off the vital link the whole creation had with God, with mutation and death following as a result. Creatures that previously had been vegetarian, now turned on each other for food. Boundaries of protection were now broken: for example, bacteria in the ground, essential to break down dead vegetation etc. and create fertility, if allowed entrance into the human bloodstream (e.g. through an open wound) can become a serious disease.

 

Contrary to the similar evolutionary straw man argument that creationists believe all living things have always remained the same, the Bible teaches there has been a radical change since the creation. The combination of natural selection and mutation, reacting to an environment very different from the one God created, while incapable of producing new kinds of creatures, has nevertheless resulted in massive change and huge variety within the original ‘kinds’ that God made.

 

However, the theistic evolution theory promoted by Rescuing Darwin has no answer to this criticism of Attenborough and Darwin. If God has created all things by means of evolution, then He is controlling mutation, which is the only means whereby DNA can be changed significantly; and therefore He is responsible for these abominations. God said His creation was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). If what we see now is what He created, and suffering and death is therefore ‘very good’, then why does He intend to eradicate them in future, calling death an “enemy?” (1 Corinthians 15:26; Revelation 21:4)

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Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

​Genesis 1:31 

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The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.

​1 Corinthians 15:26 

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And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."

​Revelation 21:4

 

The book continues:

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"Creationism is largely a 20th century phenomenon..."

Page 26

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"The 1920s creationist movement had been anti-Darwinian without propounding a young earth but the 1960s version went for an earth less than 10,000 years old and creation in six literal 24-hour days. Not since the 18th century had people widely held such beliefs. The new Young Earth Creationism (YEC) was, paradoxically, both anti-science and, at the same, time deeply influenced by modernism, the belief that science provides the only acceptable framework for reliable knowledge. YEC proponents started looking to the early chapters of Genesis as if they represented scientific texts, thereby discarding many centuries of Biblical interpretation."

Pages 26-27

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"Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design may be relatively recent phenomena in the US, but they are even more recent in the UK"

Page 30

 

Demonstrably untrue! Young Earth Creationism, while not necessarily going under that name, has been taught in main-stream Christian Churches for as long as they have existed! It is quite obviously the logical result of a literal reading of the Bible, and Christians have accepted the Bible as the literal revelation of God ever since the founding of the Church. See my response to Test of Faith for quotes from Christian leaders throughout the history of the Church, proving authentic Christian teaching has always been a literal interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis. This rewriting of history appears several times in Rescuing Darwin, presumably in an attempt to give Theistic Evolution some credibility.

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Even worse is the lie that Origen and Augustine both denied the literal truth of Genesis:

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"Writing in the third century, the theologian Origen was scornful of those who read the opening chapter literally. "What man of intelligence, I ask, will consider that the first and second and the third day, in which there are said to be both morning and evening, existed without sun and moon and stars, while the first day was even without a heaven? And who could be found so silly as to believe that God, after the manner of a farmer “planted trees in a paradise eastward in Eden”…I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history.""

 

"...Augustine’s famous commentary from the early fifth century, The Literal Interpretation of Genesis, was not at all literal in today’s popular understanding of that term. Indeed, Augustine was particularly hard on those who damaged the Bible’s credibility by using it ignorantly to pronounce on unrelated issues, such as “the motion and orbit of the stars…their size and relative positions…the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons…the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth."

 

”Augustine wrote that: It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics… [such] reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion."

Page 47

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In contrast, Origen wrote:

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"…the Mosaic account of the creation, which teaches that the world is not yet ten thousand years old…"

(Origen, Contra Celsum. Quoted in the Genesis Account by Jonathan Sarfati, page 131)

 

So whatever else he said, he accepted the days of Genesis one to be literal, which destroys any possibility of evolution. And Augustine was even more forthright:

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"Chapter 21.-Of Paradise, that It Can Be Understood in a Spiritual Sense Without Sacrificing the Historical Truth of the Narrative Regarding The Real Place.

“On this account some allegorise all that concerns Paradise itself, where the first men, the parents of the human race, are, according to the truth of holy Scripture, recorded to have been; and they understand all its trees and fruit-bearing plants as virtues and habits of life, as if they had no existence in the external world, but were only spoken of or related for the sake of spiritual meanings. As if there could not be a real terrestrial Paradise!"

 

(He then lists a number of other historical events in the Old Testament that can be allegorised)

 

"…These and similar allegorical interpretations may be suitably put upon Paradise without giving offence to any one, while yet we believe the strict truth of the history, confirmed by its circumstantial narrative of facts.”

City of God. (Augustine, De Civitate Dei (The City of God) available here. Emphasis mine.)

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I have a lot of quotes from Augustine in my page, Test of Faith and it is very clear that while he used a figurative approach to Genesis for teaching Bible truths, at the same time he very strongly believed it was historical fact. City of God was amongst the last of his writings, so this must be considered his final thoughts on the matter.

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Rescuing Darwin continues the theme: and it is 

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"…the view of Young Earth Creationists who take the early chapters of Genesis to be a literal and scientifically-accurate account of creation, but is thoroughly dismissed by serious theologians and philosophers. It is “a kind of category mistake” as Rowan Williams has called it, treating the Bible [as if it] were a theory like other theories. It’s not as if the writer of Genesis… sat down and said well, how am I going to explain all this… I know “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”"

Page 37 (Quote from Rowans Williams interview)

 

This is a typical evolutionary tactic: cast doubt on the intelligence and knowledge of the opposition. It does, however, bring us to the key question: what is Christian teaching? The answer must surely be obvious: it is that which Jesus Christ taught. What did He teach? Since He did not leave any writings of His own, the only way to know is to read the writings of His followers, who were taught by their Master. Since the entire New Testament was written by those taught by Jesus Christ it is clear that only teaching in line with what is found there can be called ‘Christian’. This includes Paul, who was taught by Jesus (Galatians 1:11, 12), born ‘out of due time’ (1 Corinthians 15:8) and validated by the other apostles (Galatians 2:2,9; 2 Peter 3:15); and his teaching was the word of God (1 Thessalonians 2:13). As we shall see later, they all taught a literal interpretation of Genesis.

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But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Galatians 1:11, 12

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Then last of all He (Jesus) was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.

1 Corinthians 15:8

 

And I went up by revelation, and communicated to them that gospel which I preach among the Gentiles, but privately to those who were of reputation, lest by any means I might run, or had run, in vain... and when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.

Galatians 2:2, 9

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...and consider that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation—as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, has written to you,

​2 Peter 3:15

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For this reason we also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.

​1 Thessalonians 2:13  

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Preferring the theories of writers living centuries, or millennia, after the books of the New Testament were written is obvious nonsense. How can those living 100s or 1000s of years after Jesus Christ know better what He taught than those who accompanied Him during His ministry? Contrary to earlier claims that parts of the New Testament were written decades, or even centuries, after the death of the apostles, all the books are now proven beyond dispute to have been written within their lifetime.

 

Rescuing Darwin quotes various notable Church leaders of the past in an attempt to give the appearance that young-Earth creationism is both recent and a minority Christian belief. In fact the reverse is the case, as can be seen from the many quotes I give in Test of Faith, and typified by the work of Bishop Usher, whose dating of the creation week as being 4004 BC is still quoted in many Bibles.

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A thorough reading of the New Testament makes it very obvious that both Jesus and His followers considered the Old Testament writings the authoritative revelation of God’s word. Indeed, throughout the New Testament the Old Testament is quoted as being literal truth and there is no example anywhere of its validity being doubted. For example, we are told it was the Holy Spirit speaking through the mouth of David in his Psalms:

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"Men and brethren, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas…"

Acts 1:16

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…"Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, who by the mouth of Your servant David have said: 'Why did the nations rage, and the people plot vain things?..."

Acts 4:24–25

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This tells us three things:

 

1. David's writing quoted here was the words of the Holy Spirit.
    

2. Since it is impossible that David could have worked out for himself what was going to happen in the future, his words must have come from God.
    

3. The Psalms of David were not merely poetry but also included prophecy.

 

Therefore the notion that the Old Testament is a mixture of truth and man-made theories is quite clearly shown to be false. These statements were by people who, when writing the books of the New Testament, were:

 

1. Themselves speaking by the Holy Spirit.
    

2. Repeating what Jesus had told them.

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God spoke to the fathers by the prophets (Hebrews 1:1). Paul believed everything written in the law and the prophets (Acts 24.14). Moses is mentioned 80 times in the New Testament; and in the teaching of both Jesus (e.g. Mark 12:26) and the apostles (e.g. Acts 3:22) it is clear they accepted his writing as authoritative and God’s word.

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"God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets,"

Hebrews 1:1

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"But this I confess to you, that according to the Way which they call a sect, so I worship the God of my fathers, believing all things which are written in the Law and in the Prophets."

​Acts 24:14

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"But concerning the dead, that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the burning bush passage, how God spoke to him, saying, 'I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB' ?"

​Mark 12:26

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"​For Moses truly said to the fathers, 'THE LORD YOUR GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN. HIM YOU SHALL HEAR IN ALL THINGS, WHATEVER HE SAYS TO YOU."

Acts 3:22

 

Intellectuals may dispute the authorship of Genesis, but it is clear that the New Testament writers accepted Moses as responsible, and in any case there can be no dispute regarding who was responsible for the law, there being 72 references to it. See my study on God's Word for a complete list. As we shall see later, a literal six-day creation is included in Moses’ law. In Numbers 12:6–8 Moses reports God saying that He spoke to him plainly, not in ‘dark sayings’. Therefore His words in the early chapters of Genesis and Exodus 20:9–11; 31:17, for example, are intended to be taken at face value.

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"Then He said, "Hear now My words: If there is a prophet among you, I, the LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; He is faithful in all My house. I speak with him face to face, Even plainly, and not in dark sayings; And he sees the form of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak against My servant Moses?""

Numbers 12:6-8

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 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

​Exodus 20:9-11

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"It is a sign between Me and the children of Israel forever; for in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.' ""

​Exodus 31:17  (Emphasis mine)

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Adam is mentioned seven times in the New Testament as the literal first ancestor of the entire human race (Luke 3:38; Romans 5:14; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; 1 Timothy 2:13, 14; Jude 1:14). Death is the result of Adam’s sin (Romans 5:12): impossible if millions of years of evolution and death preceded the human race! The whole of creation groans under the weight of suffering as a result of Adam’s fall, longing for the restoration which is to come (Romans 8:22).

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the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

Luke 3:38

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Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses,

Romans 5:14

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For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

​1 Corinthians 15:22

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And so it is written, "THE FIRST MAN ADAM BECAME A LIVING BEING." The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

​1 Corinthians 15:45

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For Adam was formed first, then Eve.

​1 Timothy 2:13

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And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression.

​1 Timothy 2:14

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Now Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men also,

Jude 1:14

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Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin...

Romans 5:12

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For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Romans 8:22

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Both Jesus and Peter taught that there was a literal world-wide flood, from which only Noah and his family escaped (Matthew 24:38–39; 1 Peter 3:20; 2 Peter 2:5; 3:6). The flood and its aftermath were responsible for the fossil record, the geology we see around us and the ice age (which lasted hundreds, not millions of years).

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For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.

Matthew 24:38-39

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who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water.

​1 Peter 3:20

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and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly;

​2 Peter 2:5

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by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

2 Peter 3:6

 

What Rowan Williams said in the quote used by Rescuing Darwin is quite true that the Bible is

 

“not a theory like other theories”

 

for the simple reason that the writer of Genesis did not say

 

“how am I going to explain all this…”

 

because God told him what to put! Indeed, a Jewish tradition going back thousands of years is that God did not merely tell Moses what to write, but dictated it to him letter by letter.

 

Therefore anything conflicting with the clear teaching of the whole Bible, while it may certainly be religious, is not Christian in the true sense of the word, since it contradicts the teaching of Christ.

 

This is not to say that therefore anyone accepting the theory of evolution is not a Christian, of course. Both Jesus and Peter said a Christian was someone who had been born again (John 3:3, 7; 1 Peter 1:23), while on the day of Pentecost Peter said the requirement was repentance and baptism (Acts 2:38). Paul said it was confessing Jesus with the mouth and believing His resurrection in the heart (Romans 10:9). When Paul and Silas said if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you will be saved (Acts 16:31) they made the only requirement for being a Christian clear. However, how a person can square the circle of calling Jesus “Lord,” while denying some of His teaching, is something I leave to the ‘Christian evolutionist’ to explain!

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Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." ...Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You must be born again.'

John 3:3, 7 

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having been born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever,

1 Peter 1:23

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Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Acts 2:38

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that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

​Romans 10:9

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So they said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household."

​Acts 16:31

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It is immediately apparent that Rescuing Darwin, while no doubt satisfying to intellectuals who prefer a pick-and-mix ‘designer religion’ to satisfy their own preconceived ideas, fundamentally opposes key New Testament teachings. There are many ways of viewing the Bible, but probably the three keys ones are:

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• It is irrelevant: just one religious book among many giving conflicting accounts of the unscientific and unprovable existence of the supernatural.

• It is a collection of books giving the opinions of people who had some experience of God, which therefore may or may not be accurate.

• It is the inspired, reliable revelation of truth given by God to men.

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Of these, the first was believed by Darwin, the second is clearly believed by the authors of Rescuing Darwin, but the third has been accepted by the Christian Church for the whole of its existence. So for centuries, every week Christians have said,

 

“He has spoken through the prophets”

 

as a part of their creed: meaningless if the prophets’ words are a mixture of truth and error and therefore impossible for ‘the common man’ to know which is which! Amongst the 39 articles we read:

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I. Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.
Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church.

(Emphasis mine)

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Is the Creator God so powerless as to be unable to transmit accurately His word to His creation? Is the God who has chosen the ‘foolish things of the world’ to confound the wise (1 Corinthians 1:27) going to give them His revelation in a format that only ‘the wise’ can accurately understand?

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But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;

1 Corinthians 1:27  

 

 In fact God makes clear His derision for human intelligence that thinks it knows better than He:

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And so the Lord says, “These people say they are Mine. They honour Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. And their worship of Me is nothing but man-made rules learned by rote. Because of this, I will once again astound these hypocrites with amazing wonders. The wisdom of the wise will pass away, and the intelligence of the intelligent will disappear.”

Isaiah 29:13–14 (NLT)

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To take a pick-and-mix attitude to the Bible, the sole definitive source of the Christian faith, including the Old Testament that Jesus Christ clearly considered to be Divine revelation, on the basis of mere human intellect (Isaiah 55:8–9), is illogical and self-contradictory. Either God exists or He does not; either He has revealed His truth to us or He has not. So be consistent: either accept it or reject it!

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"For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.

​Isaiah 55:8-9

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INDEX

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