Category Archives: Contradictions

Do Gentiles have to obey the Law?

Contradictions,

The Bible says God requires his chosen people, the Jews, to obey the laws he gave them. But what about people who aren’t Jewish? Do Gentiles need to obey God’s laws too?

Yes.

When the kingdom of Israel was overthrown, the Israelites were deported to Assyria. Then people from other nations came to live in their land. But God didn’t like how those foreigners didn’t do what he required. So he started sending in lions to kill them. Then the king of Assyria had to send an Israelite priest back there to teach the new inhabitants what God required them to do.

Ezra praised God for giving the king of Persia the idea to severely punish (sometimes with death) anyone in his kingdom (not just Jews) who didn’t obey God’s Law.

Paul required Timothy, who had a Gentile father, to be circumcised before he could go anywhere with him. Paul said Jesus wanted him to call all the Gentiles to obedience. He said God judges and punishes everyone the same way, regardless of whether they’re Jews or Gentiles. And the way he judges them upholds the Law, rather than nullifying it. Paul told his Gentile followers to put someone to death for breaking one of the Jewish sex laws. He did not think it was okay for Gentile Christians to do whatever they wanted.

No.

God’s Law itself says Jews can give Gentiles things to eat that would be forbidden for the Jews themselves to eat.

The apostles declared that Gentile Christians should not be required to keep the law of Moses, which even the Jews had been unable to fully obey. They rejected the idea that people could only be saved if they were circumcised. They said anyone could be saved by the grace of God.

Paul took this further and said that all believers, no matter if they were Jews or Gentiles, could be saved by grace and by faith apart from the Law. He said no one can be justified or saved by keeping the Law, since everyone inevitably sins. Paul didn’t think Gentiles should be forced to follow Jewish customs. And he didn’t require his Gentile companions to be circumcised.

Paul said anyone who relied on the Law was cursed, and could not be justified before God. He taught his Gentile followers that they were not under the law, because Jesus had set aside the Law and set them free from that curse. Paul’s followers tried to follow the law anyway, which he thought was foolish. He said there would have been no point in Jesus dying if following the Law was what people needed to do to be saved.

According to Paul, even if the Gentiles were under the Law, it would kill them, and then dying would release them from the Law. If Paul’s claims are true, it’s impossible for anyone to remain under the Law!

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Did Jesus drink from the fruit of the vine between the last supper and the second coming?

Contradictions,

During the last supper, Jesus was drinking wine. Then he told his disciples that he would not drink from the fruit of the vine again until the kingdom of God came.1

Later, before he was crucified, Jesus was offered some wine, and he refused it, as you would expect after what he had said. But then when he was about to die on the cross, he was offered some wine vinegar (which is made from grapes, the fruit of the vine), and he accepted that drink.

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Who is God’s firstborn?

Contradictions, , ,

Of all God’s children, who is the firstborn? Paul says Jesus is God’s firstborn, having been there before he made anything else. But the gospel of John suggests that Jesus wasn’t created in the beginning, much less born. He was just always there. So the only way Jesus could be God’s firstborn would be if God had no other children before Jesus was actually born, 2000 years ago.

Is that really the case? The Bible says it’s not. Instead, it calls David God’s firstborn.

God also says Ephraim is his firstborn son, and Ephraim was born long before David. But wait, that same verse also says God is Israel’s father. And Israel was Ephraim’s grandfather. So Israel must be a son of God who was born before Ephraim, right?

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Will all the mountains be removed when the heavens recede?

Contradictions, , ,

In the book of Revelation, the author has a vision of the future where the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, and every mountain is “removed from its place“. Then the next thing he sees is everyone hiding in caves and among the rocks of the mountains. How can they do that if the mountains aren’t there anymore?

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Does God listen to sinners?

Contradictions, , ,

No.

We all know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but only to godly people who do his will. That’s what a man said in the gospel of John, when he was defending Jesus against the Pharisees.

There are several passages in the Old Testament that agree with that statement. A psalmist wrote that if he had cherished sin, God wouldn’t have listened to him. Solomon said God hears the prayers of the righteous, but is far from the wicked. He also said that if anyone ignored his moral instruction, their prayers would be detestable. When God’s people sinned, their prayers just made him angry, and he wouldn’t listen to them. He covered himself with a prayer-proof cloud!

If you half-heartedly engage in religious rituals, but your behavior isn’t actually good, you can’t expect God to hear you, because your sins separate you from God and hide his face from you. If you don’t listen when God calls, God won’t listen when you call. God doesn’t even want to let wicked people ask him anything in the first place.

Even just being related to a sinner was enough to keep Saul from getting an answer from God. God pretty much never listens to people at all, so of course he doesn’t listen to sinners. Or is it that he always listens to everyone, so he does of course listen to sinners…?

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When did Nebuzaradan burn down the buildings of Jerusalem?

Contradictions, ,

In 2 Kings, it says Nebuzaradan, a commander working for the king of Babylon, burned down all the important buildings in Jerusalem, including the temple, the palace, and all the houses. It says he did this on the 7th day of the 5th month of the 19th year of Nebuchadnezzar.

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Did Jesus want people to obey the law?

Contradictions, ,

Yes.

Some people claimed that followers of Jesus were speaking against the law and saying that Jesus was going to change the customs given by Moses. But those were false witnesses. Paul didn’t believe Christ promoted sin. Jesus himself said he had not come to abolish the law. He said as long as the world exists, not even the smallest bit of the law will disappear. After he healed a leper, Jesus told him to go through with the rituals that the law of Moses requires.

According to Jesus, the law is still very important. Keeping the commandments is how you get eternal life! So you must be careful to do everything the teachers of the law tell you. You can’t get into the kingdom of heaven unless you’re even better at obeying the law than law-obsessed people like the Pharisees. (Even they didn’t keep the law thoroughly enough to satisfy Jesus.) And even after you make it into the kingdom of heaven, he says your status there will be determined by how strictly you keep the law.

No.

A lot of the things Jesus taught were in contrast to the Jewish law given by Moses. Jesus would specifically mention one of Moses’s laws,2 and then contrast that with how he thought people should behave. Sometimes he was just adding to what Moses taught, but other times he was telling people not to do what Moses had told them to do.

For instance, Jesus thought the command to love your neighbor also said you should hate your enemy. It doesn’t actually say that, but that’s what Jesus seemed to think the law was. And he said you should do the opposite. Then there’s the “eye for an eye” rule, which actually is in the Old Testament law. Jesus told people to disregard that law, and to instead encourage people who mistreat you to mistreat you even more.

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Did Israel take any of the land of the Ammonites?

Contradictions, , ,

No.

The Bible says when the Israelites were conquering some nations on their way to the promised land, they stopped at the fortified border of the Ammonites. God told them to leave the Ammonites alone, and the Israelites obeyed, and kept away from the land of the Ammonites.

After the Israelites had settled in the promised land, Jephthah stated that Israel had not taken the land of the Ammonites. The Amorites, maybe, but not the Ammonites.

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Did God only create good things?

Contradictions, ,

The Bible says when God finished creating the world, he saw all that he had made, and it was very good. Later on, it says his works are perfect, and everything he created is good.

But that’s clearly not true. If God made everything, and not everything is good, that means not everything God made is good.

What about that one tree? The Bible says God made a tree that would bring death to those who ate from it. What’s so good about that tree? It served no purpose but to tempt people to disobey God and bring a curse on the world. That tree is something God created that was not good at all.

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