Book of Mormon, Cults, Mormonism

The Mean Man Who Does (Not?) Bow Down

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Post Author: Darrell

In my last post, I discussed one of the areas where Joseph Smith plagiarized and changed verses from The Bible.  Let’s take a look at another example.  Chapter 12 of 2 Nephi in The Book of Mormon is taken directly from Isaiah chapter 2.  However, there are a few areas where Smith made changes.  Verses 8 & 9 in Isaiah read as follows:

 8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: 9 And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. 

Isaiah is talking about how some men were bowing down to the work of their own hands: idols.  They had turned away from The Lord and had chosen to worship false gods.  Therefore, they were not to be forgiven.  Now, let’s take a look at these two verses in The Book of Mormon.

8 Their land is also full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made.  9 And the mean man boweth not down, and the great man humbleth himself not, therefore, forgive him not (emphasis mine).

Notice how Smith changed the entire meaning of verse 9 by adding the word not.  Obviously, if one reads verse 9 all by itself, it makes perfect sense to say that a man who does not bow down or humble himself before God should not be forgiven.  However, when read in context with the surrounding verses, adding “not”  in makes this verse utter gibberish, for you are now saying that a man who does not bow down to idols and false gods should not be forgiven by the One True God. 

In his desire to correct the mistakes he thought were in The Bible, Joseph Smith made the classic error of failing to read in context.  He brought his own wisdom to bear on The Word of God, and in the process, the Word of God proved its own worthiness and demonstrated the falseness of his prophetic claims.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 3

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 2 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #6: Basing a Teaching on an Obscure Passage.

Some passages in the Bible are difficult to understand because the author used a word which isn’t found anywhere else in the Bible.  In cases like this, Bible translators try to determine the meaning from context, but sometimes they just don’t know for sure.

Some passages in the Bible contain well-known words, but we may not know to what those words refer.  An example of this can be found in 1 Cor. 15:29 where Paul speaks of those “baptized for the dead.”

Geisler and Howe ask, “Is he referring to the baptizing of live representatives to ensure salvation for dead believers who were not baptized (as Mormons claim)? Or, is he referring to others being baptized into the church to fill the ranks of those who have passed on? Or, is he referring to a believer being baptized “for” (i.e., “with a view to”) his own death and burial with Christ? Or, to something else?”

When we aren’t sure about the meaning, there are some guidelines to keep in mind:

First, we should not build a doctrine on an obscure passage. The rule of thumb in Bible interpretation is “the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.” This is called the perspicuity (clearness) of Scripture. If something is important, it will be clearly taught in Scripture and probably in more than one place. Second, when a given passage is not clear, we should never conclude that it means something that is opposed to another plain teaching of Scripture. God does not make mistakes in His Word; we make mistakes in trying to understand it.

Mistake 7:  Forgetting that the Bible Is a Human Book with Human Characteristics.

Quoting Geisler and Howe:

With the exception of small sections, like the Ten Commandments which were “written with the finger of God” (Ex. 31:18), the Bible was not verbally dictated. The writers were not secretaries of the Holy Spirit. They were human composers employing their own literary styles and idiosyncrasies.

These human authors sometimes used human sources for their material (Josh. 10:13; Acts 17:28; 1 Cor. 15:33; Titus 1:12). In fact, every book of the Bible is the composition of a human writer—about forty of them in all.

The Bible also manifests different human literary styles, from the mournful meter of Lamentations to the exalted poetry of Isaiah; from the simple grammar of John to the complex Greek of the Book of Hebrews.

Scripture also manifests human perspectives. David spoke in Psalm 23 from a shepherd’s perspective. Kings is written from a prophetic vantage point, and Chronicles from a priestly point of view. Acts manifests an historical interest and 2 Timothy a pastor’s heart. Writers speak from an observer’s standpoint when they write of the sun rising or setting (Josh. 1:15).

They also reveal human thought patterns, including memory lapses (1 Cor. 1:14–16), as well as human emotions (Gal. 4:14).

The Bible discloses specific human interests. For example, Hosea possessed a rural interest, Luke a medical concern, and James a love of nature.

But like Christ, the Bible is completely human, yet without error. Forgetting the humanity of Scripture can lead to falsely impugning its integrity by expecting a level of expression higher than that which is customary to a human document.

More to come!

Love, Morality

What Does a Loving Person Look Like?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

This post is a little bit off the beat and path for Tough Questions Answered, but here goes anyway!

A couple nights ago, famed author and speaker Gary Chapman spoke at our church about his recent research and book project.  The subject was how to live a loving life.  Chapman interviewed people and asked them who the most loving people were that they knew.  He then asked them what it was about those people that made them loving.  He found that he could group their answers into 7 categories.

The first category is kindness.  Kindness is doing or saying something that is beneficial to others.

The second category is patience.  Patience is accepting the imperfections of others.

The third category is forgiveness .  Forgiveness is the ability to release someone who has wronged you to the justice of God, and not continue to hold on to the pain they caused you.

The fourth category is courtesy.  Courtesy is good manners and polite behavior.  Chapman listed several examples of courtesy, such as saying “thank you,” asking others if they need help, or looking people in the eye when you talk to them.  He stressed that the best way to be courteous is to think of every person you encounter as your friend.  We don’t treat friends badly, but we often are discourteous to strangers.

The fifth category is humility.  According to Chapman, humility is “stepping down so others can step up.”  Put others’ interests before your own.  Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.

The sixth category is generosity.  Generosity is the giving of your time, abilities, and money to help others.

The seventh category is honesty.  Honesty is, quite simply, telling the truth, even when you know it might hurt the person you’re speaking to.

If you want to be a loving person, and every Christian should, then these are the areas for you to work on.  I know I need to work on them, and I thought maybe I would share them with you, so that you, too, could become a more loving person.  With Christ’s help, it’s possible!

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 1 of this series, we now turn to more of the mistakes critics make when alleging errors in the Bible.  These mistakes are taken from Norman Geisler and Tom Howe’s The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.

Mistake #3: Confusing Our Fallible Interpretations with God’s Infallible Revelation.

The words of the Bible are infallible, meaning they cannot be broken (see John 10:35).  We can trust everything in the Bible because it is God’s Word and God cannot err.  However, humans must interpret the words of the Bible and our interpretations are not infallible.  We can make mistakes when we handle the Word of God.  Geisler and Howe explain that “the Bible cannot be mistaken, but we can be mistaken about the Bible. The meaning of the Bible does not change, but our understanding of its meaning does.”

Likewise, we must all be careful of pitting scientific findings against Scripture.  Both science and Scripture require fallible human interpretation and so both are open to error.  It is impossible for true scientific interpretations to contradict true interpretations of Scripture, so when we think there is a contradiction, we know that one of the interpretations is false.

Mistake #4: Failing to Understand the Context of the Passage.

No word, sentence, paragraph, or chapter of the Bible can be understood without its context.  In fact, this is true of any written document.  Since modern Bibles include verse and chapter numbers, many readers freely quote phrases and sentences in isolation without anchoring them in their surrounding context.  Because the Bible is so easy to quote (from verses and chapters), critics commonly ignore the context of biblical passages and draw improper conclusions from what they read.

Mistake #5: Neglecting to Interpret Difficult Passages in the Light of Clear Ones.

According to Geisler and Howe, “Some passages of Scripture are hard to understand. Sometimes the difficulty is due to their obscurity. At other times, the difficulty is because passages appear to be teaching something contrary to what some other part of Scripture is clearly teaching.”  In these cases, the best course of action is to take what is clearly taught in Scripture and interpret the difficult passages through what is clearly taught.

More in part 3…


Cults, Faith and Works, Mormonism

Run And Not Grow Weary?

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 Post Author: Darrell 

Isaiah chapter 40 is among my favorite chapters in The Bible.  A large portion of the chapter is devoted to contrasting the Lord’s greatness with the meekness of man. Verses 6 and 7 say, “All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them.”  Verses 22 and 23 liken men to grasshoppers while verses 25 and 26 say of the Lord:  

To whom will you compare me? Or who is my equal? . . .  Lift your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one, and calls them each by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength,  not one of them is missing. He brings princes to naught and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing.

We truly have an incredible God!  He knows and names each and every one of the billions of stars, yet He was willing to condescend Himself in order to lift us up!  The promise at the end of chapter 40 in verses 29 – 31 speaks to the great love the Lord has for us:

He [the Lord] gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint [emphasis mine].

If we place our hope in Him alone, He will renew us, strengthen us, and lift us up!  There is nothing we can do to receive this promise; rather, it is something that He does in response to our trusting in Him.  What a wonderful promise!

One of the Mormon Church’s four canonized scriptures, The Doctrine and Covenants (D&C), carries this exact promise in Section 89, also known as the Word of Wisdom.  Among other things, the Word of Wisdom commands Mormons not to partake of coffee, tea, or alcohol.  This commandment is considered so important that obedience to it is a requirement for entering the Temple to receive one’s endowment, an ordinance required for admitance to the highest level of the Celestial Kingdom (Mormon Heaven). 

One of the surprising differences between the promise in Isaiah and the promise in D&C 89 is what one must do to receive it.  While The Bible says that all one must do is hope in the Lord, Section 89 says that complete obedience to the Word of Wisdom is required.  Verses 18 – 20 say:   

And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings [the commandments in the Word of Wisdom], walking in obedience to the commandments . . . shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint [emphasis mine].

Why the difference in requirements?  Did the Lord change His mind and decide that He would require more in order to receive this blessing?  Fortunately, we know the answer to that question is an emphatic “No” as The Lord never changes His mind.  Unfortunately, this is just one more example of how Joseph Smith plagiarized The Bible.  There are numerous places throughout Mormon scriptures where Joseph Smith took portions out of The King James Version of The Bible and made blatant changes.  Stay tuned.  I will cover more of these later.

Bible Interpretation, Difficult Bible Passages

How Should We Not Read the Bible? Part 1

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common accusations I hear from skeptics is that the Bible is full of errors and contradictions.  How do you and I, as Christians who believe the Bible is without error, deal with these claims?

Several years ago, I purchased a book by Norman Geisler and Tom Howe called When Critics Ask, now re-published under the name, The Big Book of Bible Difficulties.  This book has been a loyal companion to me when skeptics confront me with a Bible difficulty which I have not analyzed before.  If you interact with skeptics of Christianity, I highly recommend this book to you.

One of the most important sections of the book is in the Introduction, where Geisler and Howe list 17 mistakes that critics of the Bible make when they attempt to cite errors.  The next few blog posts will briefly discuss these mistakes so that we can better understand how not to read the Bible.

Mistake #1: Assuming that the Unexplained Is Not Explainable.

There are, indeed, many passages in the Bible which are difficult to understand.  Nobody who has read the Bible could say otherwise.  But for those who take the Bible seriously, its contents have been vindicated many times throughout history as more information has become available through the fields of history, archaeology, the physical sciences, and even linguistics.

Geisler and Howe cite a couple examples of how critics have been proven wrong in the past:

For example, critics once proposed that Moses could not have written the first five books of the Bible because there was no writing in Moses’ day. Now we know that writing was in existence a couple of thousand years or more before Moses. Likewise, critics once believed that the Bible was wrong in speaking of the Hittite people, since they were totally unknown to historians. Now, all historians know of their existence by way of their library that was found in Turkey.

Since we have seen the Bible proven right so many times in the past, it is reasonable to believe that those things in the Bible which are today unexplained, will some day be explained.

Mistake #2: Presuming the Bible Guilty Until Proven Innocent

Critics often begin with the supposition that the Bible is wrong until it is proven right, but this is an unfair approach.  Other books are presumed innocent until proven guilty, and so should the Bible be presumed innocent.  As a book that has shaped western civilization over the last 2,000 years and which contains some of the most important literature ever written, even critics need to treat it with respect and approach it with the same attitude that they would approach any other great literary work.

I will continue with Geisler and Howe’s list in the coming days.  Stick around!

Difficult Bible Passages

Is There a Mistake in Mark 2:26?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus, he relays a life-changing event that occurred during his university days at Princeton.  He wrote a paper on an alleged historical error made in Mark 2:26, where Jesus refers to David and his companions entering the house of God and eating the consecrated bread.  Here is the verse in question:

“In the days of Abiathar the high priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”

The apparent difficulty with this verse is that 1 Samuel 21, which originally recorded the event, states that Abiathar’s father, Ahimelech, was the high priest when David ate the bread, not Abiathar.

According to Ehrman, in his research paper, he developed a “long and complicated argument” to explain away the apparent mistake.  But when he received his graded paper his professor had written, “Maybe Mark just made a mistake.”  When Ehrman read the professor’s note, “the floodgates opened.”  If there could be a mistake here, then there could be mistakes in other parts of the Bible.  Ehrman’s doubts about the truth of Christianity snowballed and today he is an agnostic, no longer able to believe what the Bible says.

When I read this account of Ehrman’s life, I could only shake my head in disbelief.  How could this one little issue be such a strong catalyst toward doubting the entire Bible?  Is there no answer to the Mark 2:26 problem?  Had nobody ever dealt with this problem before?

I attempted to do a little research and quickly found satisfactory answers to the alleged historical difficulty in Mark 2:26.

According to Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe, here is one way of dealing with this problem:

First Samuel is correct in stating that the high priest was Ahimelech. On the other hand neither was Jesus wrong. When we take a closer look at Christ’s words we notice that He used the phrase “in the days of Abiathar” (v. 26) which does not necessarily imply that Abiathar was high priest at the time David ate the bread. After David met Ahimelech and ate the bread, King Saul had Ahimelech killed (1 Sam. 22:17–19). Abiathar escaped and went to David (v. 20) and later took the place of the high priest. So even though Abiathar was made high priest after David ate the bread, it is still correct to speak in this manner. After all, Abiathar was alive when David did this, and soon following he became the high priest after his father’s death. Thus, it was during the time of Abiathar, but not during his tenure in office.

Abiathar was a high priest during David’s reign as king, and he is mentioned some 29 times in the Old Testament in relation to his priestly role.  Those familiar with the Hebrew Bible in the 1st century (when The Gospel of Mark was written) would easily connect Abiathar to David, so Mark 2:26 is merely reminding readers of the time frame of David’s eating the consecrated bread.

The words “the high priest,” coming after “Abiathar” are just his title, much like we might say, “When President Obama attended college, he made many friends.”  Obama was not president while he was in college, but whenever we mention Obama, we refer to him as President Obama.

This argument is easy to grasp and hardly requires an entire research paper, so one wonders why Ehrman didn’t know about this approach to the challenge of Mark 2:26.  It seems to me that there were clearly other, more important factors in Ehrman’s rejection of Christianity.

My challenge to Christians who are intimidated by claims of errors in the Bible is to go do some research for yourself.  There are answers to these challenges.  Remember, virtually all the Bible difficulties that critics raise have been known for 2,000 years.  None of them are new.  Instead of throwing your faith away, do some digging.  I only wish Ehrman had.

Polls, Salvation

Poll: Does a Person Need to Explicitly Believe Jesus Is God to Be Saved?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Religion

Can All Religions Be True?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If you actually know anything substantive about major world religions, you know the answer to this question is an emphatic “no.”

The only people claiming that all religions are the same or that all religions are equally true are those people who know little to nothing about world religions, or who are unable to do a little bit of critical thinking.

The major religions of the world profess profoundly different views of the nature of God, the nature of man, the afterlife, the source of evil, and a host of other weighty topics.  It is true that the ethical teachings contained in major religions have some commonality, but ethics are but one portion of what constitutes a religion’s core beliefs.

If you are a Christian, then you believe that Jesus is the third person of the Triune God.  No other major world religion recognizes Jesus as God in this sense, so clearly somebody is wrong!  We can’t all be right because Jesus can’t both be God and not God at the same time and in the same sense.

If  Christians are right about Jesus being God, then other religions who deny this fact are wrong about who God is.  They get God wrong, in other words.  I would say that is a serious error which dramatically undermines the claim that all religions are true.

Faith and Works, Grace, Mormonism

Why Don’t Mormons Have the Peace That Passes All Understanding?

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Post Author: Darrell

God has given believers of Jesus Christ the promise of “a peace which passes all understanding” (Phil 4:7). What a wonderful promise! This peace does not come from anything the world can give us. Rather, it comes from having a relationship with Christ, being forgiven, and knowing that our salvation is assured. In fact, our salvation as believers is so certain that God has told us we can approach the throne of grace with confidence (Heb 4:16).

While a member of the Mormon Church, I never experienced this peace.  In fact, during my time as a Mormon I often wondered about my salvation.  I wondered if I had done enough to merit God’s grace and if I would be able to spend eternity with Him in the Celestial Kingdom (Mormon version of what Christians call Heaven).  Coming into a true relationship with Christ opened my eyes, and I now understand what is meant by the “peace that passes all understanding” because I have it!

My experience in Mormonism is not uncommon.  Over the years I have had several LDS friends confide in me and their experiences are very similar.  This is due mainly to the works based salvation that the LDS Church teaches. Mormonism teaches Christ’s atonement opened the doors for salvation to us; however, we have to earn the right to receive this salvation by our works… faith in Christ is not enough. In a 2001 Ensign article, James E. Faust, then counselor in the First Presidency of the Mormon Church, had this to say:

Many people think they need only confess that Jesus is the Christ and then they are saved by grace alone. We cannot be saved by grace alone, “for we know that it is by grace that we are saved, after all we can do.” . . . All of us have sinned and need to repent to fully pay our part of the debt. When we sincerely repent, the Savior’s magnificent Atonement pays the rest of that debt.  [Emphasis Mine]

It is only after we do all that we can do and after we completely repent that Christ’s sacrifice comes in to help us.  Since true, sincere, and complete repentance in required, what must one do to repent? LDS.org has this to say about repentance:

Although confession is an essential element of repentance, it is not enough. The Lord has said, “By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins—behold, he will confess them and forsake them” (D&C 58:43). We must maintain an unyielding, permanent resolve that we will never repeat the transgression. . . . Full obedience brings the complete power of the gospel into our lives .

Until one completely forsakes a sin, they have not repented. I don’t know about everyone else, but I can think of several sins that, try as I might, I can honestly say I still struggle with.  Sure, I may be able to point to the big sins (adultery, fornication, murder) and say I am okay. But what about the standard Christ set?  He said if we get angry with someone unjustifiably that we have committed murder in our hearts.  By this standard I think we can all say we are murderers.  Christ also said that if we look upon someone to lust after them that we have committed adultery in our heart. Sounds like we are all adulterers!

Have you completely forsaken the sin of unjustified anger? Can you honestly say you won’t ever look upon someone of the opposite sex again? If not, then according to the Mormon Church, you have not sincerely repented and your sins are not forgiven. In fact, according to D&C 82:7, if you recommitt a sin you have supposedly repented of, all the times you have committed it return and you will be judged for each of them.  Does this sound like a gospel that provides a “peace that passes all understanding?”

All praise be to my great God and Savior Jesus Christ! For He, and He alone, has atoned for our sins.  Praise Him that we can know with confidence we have been forgiven!

A Christian Apologetics Blog