Three of the gospels tell this story: Jesus crosses a lake and meets a violent man who is being controlled by a group of demons, who call themselves Legion. The demons assume Jesus is there to banish them and torture them. But they convince him to just send them into a herd of pigs instead. The man regains his sanity, and the pigs kill themselves. The locals make Jesus go away so he’ll stop pointlessly destroying their livestock. And everybody forgets about the demons, who are now homeless and on the loose.
Continue reading How many men were possessed by the Legion of demons?Category Archives: Contradictions
Will there be death and curses in the new heaven and earth?
The Bible says after the world ends, God will create a new heaven and a new earth. Things will be different then: There will be no more death, pain, sadness, etc. And there will no longer be any curse, such as the painful curses God inflicted on humanity when Adam and Eve sinned.
God will dwell among people, so they can see his face. But wait… No one can see God’s face and live! So I guess everyone who serves at God’s throne in the new Jerusalem is going to die.
Continue reading Will there be death and curses in the new heaven and earth?Why did God leave some nations among Israel?
According to the Bible, when God brought the people of Israel into what would become the land of Israel, there were other nations already living there, so God had to get them out of the way. He thought those nations were terribly wicked, so he drove them out and destroyed them. Except he didn’t get rid of them completely. He let some nations survive and continue to live in the land among the Israelites. Why did he decide to do that? The Bible gives four reasons, but they can’t all be true…
Continue reading Why did God leave some nations among Israel?Should we follow God’s example?
The Bible says we should follow God’s example. That makes sense, because God is perfect, and everything he does is right. God is love, and we should walk in the way of love. We should be holy as God is holy, and perfect as he is perfect. We should speak the way God would speak. We should think like Jesus and follow his ways.
Paul taught his followers to transform themselves and become like God, because God wants his people to become like him. Paul followed Jesus’s example, and we should follow Paul’s example, so that we end up following Jesus’s example too.
How can we follow God’s example, though? I mean, if we can’t see God, how can we know what kinds of things he does, so that we can do the same? We can find out what God does by reading stories about God in the Bible. That includes stories about Jesus, since according to the Bible, Jesus is God.
So, here are some things we should do in order to follow God’s example, according to the stories about God in the Bible:
- We should be perfect.
- We should tell people to obey God’s laws.
- We should tell people Jesus is the Messiah.
- We should observe the Sabbath.
- We should be wise.
- We should try to keep our lives.
- We should show everyone how good we are.
- We should keep our good deeds secret.
- We should perform supernatural signs and wonders.
- We should pray so others can hear us.
- We should only pray for those who are close to us.
- We should receive good things.
- We should refrain from stoning people if we are without sin.
- We should let foreigners enter holy places.
- We should take oaths.
- We should eat and drink excessively.
- We should celebrate.
- We should roar.
- We should be easily angered.
- We should be impatient.1
- We should be proud.
- We should be jealous.
- We should be hateful.
- We should cause chaos.
- We should argue.
- We should call people fools.
- We should judge and condemn people.
- We should judge those who are outside the church.
- We should disrespect our parents.
- We should refuse to listen to people.
- We should refuse to forgive people who curse us.
- We should curse people.
- We should lie.
- We should bring charges against people.
- We should accuse people when they have done us no harm.2
- We should be late.
- We should desert our flock.
- We should scatter God’s people.
- We should drive away God’s people.
- We should take retribution.
- We should punish people for the sins of their ancestors.
- We should refuse to help those in need.
- We should heavily burden people.
- We should unnecessarily delay doing good to others.
- We should make people stumble.
- We should steal our neighbors’ land.
- We should return runaway slaves to their masters.
- We should get married.
- We should be married to two sisters at the same time.
- We should impregnate other people’s fiancées.
- We should impregnate our mothers.
- We should marry our daughters.3
- We should hate our wives and treat them harshly.
- We should get divorced.
- We should be violent.
- We should destroy fruit trees.
- We should be quick to destroy fig trees that aren’t fruitful.
- We should sacrifice on the mountains.
- We should harm foreigners.
- We should harm Edomites.
- We should harm Moabites.
- We should harm our enemies.
- We should harm our neighbors.
- We should plot harm against those who trust us.
- We should murder people.
- We should shed blood on a bare rock.
- We should sacrifice our children.
- We should besiege David’s city.
- We should kill the Lord’s anointed king.
- We should kill people and take their land.
- We should destroy unwelcoming towns with fire from heaven.
- We should destroy the earth.
- We should call men fathers.
- We should make images of things in heaven.
- We should work on the Sabbath.
- We should change God’s commands.
- We should reject Jesus.
- We should betray Jesus.
- We should call ourselves gods.
…Wait a minute. Those are all things the Bible says we shouldn’t do!
Continue reading Should we follow God’s example?Was Shelah the son or grandson of Arphaxad?
In Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, it says Shelah was the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad (who was Noah’s grandson).
Continue reading Was Shelah the son or grandson of Arphaxad?Should people give everything to the poor?
Yes.
Righteous people give without sparing. God rewards those who give to the poor by making sure the givers lack nothing. If you invite guests over for a meal, never invite your friends and relatives; only invite poor and disabled people.4 One of the requirements to gain eternal life is to sell everything you have and give the money to the poor. If you do that, you will be perfect, and God will reward you in heaven. Even if you’re poor yourself, you must work your way out of poverty, just so you’ll have something to give to the poor.
But if you refuse to listen to the pleas of the poor, your own pleas will be ignored and you will be plagued with curses. If you ever keep anything to yourself when poor people want it, the love of God is not in you, and you deserve to lose an arm.
Continue reading Should people give everything to the poor?Are bald men always clean?
The Bible says if a man has lost his hair, he is clean. Even if he’s only bald in front, he is clean.
Continue reading Are bald men always clean?Is Jesus the only foundation the church can have?
It is written: Jesus Christ is the foundation that the church is built on, and no one can lay a foundation other than that one.
It is also written: Peter is the rock that Jesus built his church on.
Continue reading Is Jesus the only foundation the church can have?Is Jesus’s kingdom of this world?
After Pilate asked Jesus if he was the king of the Jews, Jesus stated that his kingdom was not of this world at all; it was “from another place”.
But Jesus contradicts this in one of his parables, in which a man tells his harvesters to pull the weeds out of his field before harvesting the wheat. This represents Jesus sending angels to weed all the evil people out of his kingdom at “the end of the age”.
If pulling the weeds out of the field represents taking the evil people out of Jesus’s kingdom, that kingdom must be represented by the field (or part of it). And what did Jesus say the field represents? The world.5 So Jesus’s kingdom must be in this world.
Continue reading Is Jesus’s kingdom of this world?Will the day of the Lord be at the beginning or the end of the thousand years?
Several prophecies in the Bible mention a future event called “the day of the Lord”. Here’s what we know about that day: On the day of the Lord, the sun and moon will be darkened, and the heavens and earth will be destroyed. Jesus will return in between those two events, after the sun and moon have already been darkened, but while the heavens and earth still exist. And when Jesus returns, his dead followers will be resurrected. So those things all happen on the same day.
Another future event is mentioned in the last few chapters of the Bible. It says after many apocalyptic disasters occur, the devil will be temporarily locked up and the world will get a break for a thousand years, before the world truly ends. But when will the day of the Lord occur, relative to the thousand years?
Continue reading Will the day of the Lord be at the beginning or the end of the thousand years?