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Joseph
Francis Alward
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Most Christians believe that
the Bible is the "word of God," and that it is a perfect book
containing the perfect message of salvation from an all-powerful, all-knowing
god, but the vast majority of these faithful believers have never taken a close
look at what the Bible really teaches.
If they had ever examined the Bible closely, they would be astonished to
find that the Bible contradicts itself on the matter of salvation. Since an all-powerful god obviously would
have had the ability to prevent the writers of "God's word" from
contradicting themselves when conveying God's most important message to
mankind, we must conclude that the Bible is not the word of God.
The proof that the Bible writers contradict themselves on the matter of salvation is given below.
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Mark |
Luke |
Paul |
Believe in Jesus and Be Baptized
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Obey Commandments and Give
All Money to the Poor
You know the commandments:
Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false
testimony, honor your father and mother…Sell everything you have and give to
the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." |
Nothing you do will change
your fate. God deliberately made men
who would not be saved, no matter what they did For
the Scripture says to Pharaoh: "I raised you up for this very purpose,
that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in
all the earth." Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy,
and he hardens whom he wants to harden. One
of you will say to me: "Then why does God still blame us? For who
resists his will?" But who are you, O man, to talk back to God?
"Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me
like this?' " Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same
lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? |
Note that these three Bible writers totally contradict one
another.
1. Mark said that if you believed
in Jesus and were baptized, you would be saved. There's no mention of obeying commandments or giving up your
money.
2. Luke said that if you obeyed the commandments and gave up your
riches to the poor, you would be saved.
There's no mention of believing Jesus or being baptized.
If God really did want us to
believe that we could be saved by believing in Jesus, being baptized, obeying
the commandments, and giving up our money to the poor, why didn't he use his
infinite powers to make sure that Mark and Luke each gave us the same
message? The answer appears to be that
the two writers had different backgrounds and different beliefs about what the
"word of God" was.
The problem is much worse
than this, however, as can be seen in the third column in the table above.
3. Paul says that no matter what man does, he cannot alter God's
plan for him. God predestined each man
either to be cast into the fiery pits, or else to live evermore in his kingdom
of heaven. Nothing man can do can
change his fate. Sincere faith and
all the good works in the world will not save the man who's been predestined by
God to be one of the "pots" for common use, who will be cast
aside. Likewise, nothing man does can
prevent himself from being saved, for he was created a "noble" pot,
and his fate was sealed long before, at the time of creation!
Why did God deliberately
make flawed men whom he would cast aside, while making "noble" ones
who would enter heaven, no matter what they did? Well, according to Paul, God does this for the same reason he
made the Pharaoh flawed: so that God
could rain plagues down on him to show off for the people his great power. For that same reason, Paul said, God makes
men flawed who will not be saved, no matter what might be their "desire or
effort," all for the purpose of having an excuse to cast them into the
pits of hell to show off to the people how powerful he is.
What a preposterous,
childish notion Paul had about his god!
Why should a being who is infinitely powerful have to put on a display
of his powers? If he wanted mankind to
behave in a certain way, why could he not have just made it happen with his
infinite powers? If putting fear of God
into the minds of mankind really were the intention of this god, why could not
this infinitely powerful being have just embedded into the DNA of all humans at
conception an innate and instinctive awareness of the great power of God, and
an instinctive understanding of God's messages? The all-powerful god described in the Bible would have had the
power to do that, wouldn't he?
Thus, Luke contradicts Mark,
and Paul contradicts both Mark and Luke, with a ridiculous teaching about God's
need to display his power. Mark and Luke teach that man can be saved by faith,
baptism (Mark), or by obeying the commandments and giving up wealth
(Luke). In other words, Mark and Luke
teach that man's desire and efforts could lead them to salvation, but Paul says
that man's fate was sealed at the time of creation, and that their salvation
does NOT depend on "man's desire or effort."
Summary
The fact that these three
authors so blatantly contradict each other in the matter of salvation shows
clearly that they could not have been recording the message of an all-powerful,
all-knowing god, for such a god obviously would have had the power to prevent
the writers from presenting to two millennia of Bible readers such a muddled,
contradictory message.
If we cannot trust that the
teachings of Mark, Luke, and Paul, come from God, why should anyone believe ANY
part of the Bible comes from God?
There will apologists who
argue, of course, that mere mortals cannot know the mind of God, so when the
mortal man sees what he thinks are contradictory teachings in the Bible, it is
only because his mind is finite and incapable of reasoning on the level of the
infinitely wise god. This is the type
of apologetic argument that could be used to justify absolutely ANY religious
teaching whatsoever, no matter how preposterous it may seem, for the apologist
will always be able to escape criticism by alleging that his god's ways are not
for us to understand. Only when we get
to heaven will it all be explained to us, they would argue.