According to Paul, the law produces sin, and without the law, there is no sin. Sin only comes to life when there are commandments to give it an opportunity. He says the only reason we have any desire to sin is that the law makes us feel that way. Where there is no law, there can be no transgression. And 1 John says if someone sins, then there must be a law that they’re breaking, because that’s what sin is.
In the story where David acts like a madman in front of a Philistine king because David is so evil that he’s actually less threatening that way, it says the king in question was Achish of Gath. But in the note at the beginning of a psalm that David supposedly wrote at that time, it says the king’s name was Abimelek.
Continue reading What was the name of the king who thought David was insane?One time when God was telling his people why he wasn’t happy with them, he assured them that it had nothing to do with them not sacrificing enough animals to him. He explained that he didn’t need anyone to give him animals for food, because he doesn’t eat the flesh of bulls. And anyway, all the wild animals in the world belong to him already. So even if he did get hungry, he wouldn’t have to demand food from someone else.
So God doesn’t need to be fed. God doesn’t need anyone to make him a house, either. In fact, God doesn’t need anything from anyone. Why would he? He’s the all-powerful creator who provides everything humans need, not the other way around.
God needs food. He demanded, many times, that his people regularly give him food offerings, which are the food of God. (And don’t forget the salt!) When his people don’t do what he wants, he just devours their fields. God also needs water. He needs to drink from a brook, so he’ll be refreshed enough to continue heaping up the dead.
Jesus, who the Bible says is God, ate food during his days on earth. And he got hungry when he went without food. Even now, Jesus expects people to let him into their homes so he can eat them eat with them. But does he actually need food? Yes, he said he plans to send people to hell for failing to give him free food, drink, shelter, clothes, and healthcare when he needs it.
God also needs money. He once cursed his chosen nation for “robbing” him because they weren’t giving him as much of their wealth as he wanted. I’ve never heard of God actually buying anything with money, but he must need money for something. Why else would people be telling people to give their money to God? I mean, unless “giving money to God” was some kind of scam, or something…
Continue reading Does God need anything?Jesus advised people not to worry about what they would eat or drink or wear. Why worry about those things? There’s more to life than having the things you need to live! He says you should follow the example of the birds and the flowers. Birds don’t bother with farming or storing up food, and they’re doing fine, aren’t they? Flowers don’t bother making clothes, and they still look great, don’t they?
Jesus said the reason the birds and flowers don’t have to worry about agriculture and tailoring is that God cares about them. And God cares about us a lot more, so he’ll definitely provide us with everything we need without us having to work for it. So just don’t worry about it. Never plan ahead. Worrying is for pagans. And being worried wouldn’t actually change anything anyway.
Paul agreed that you shouldn’t worry about anything. You should just let God take care of everything.
Genesis says God created humans in his own image to rule over all the animals. Sound like we’re the greatest of God’s creatures, then.
David says humans may be insignificant compared to God, but God has indeed crowned us with glory and honor, and made us rulers over the rest of his creation, putting all the animals under our feet.
Except he says humans are a little lower than the angels. So we’re actually not quite the greatest of all creatures, then. Angels are.
Then there’s Solomon, who wisely points out that humans don’t even have any advantage over animals.
Continue reading Which creature is the greatest?There are a couple of epistles that say you should love them. The book of Hebrews says to keep loving one another as brothers and sisters. (Maybe that’s not actually about actual siblings, but it still only makes sense if you should love your actual siblings.)
1 John says has quite a bit to say in favor of loving your siblings. It says if you love your brother or sister, you live in the light, and there’s nothing in you that will make you stumble. But if you hate your brother or sister, you’re walking blindly in the darkness. It says God has commanded that we must love our brothers and sisters. If people don’t love their siblings, you know they’re liars, murderers, and children of the devil, who don’t love God and will not have eternal life.
Jesus himself says just being angry with your brother or sister will bring God’s judgment on you. He seems to think God takes grudges between siblings more seriously than things that God actually made laws about.
But Jesus also says people who don’t hate their brothers and sisters can’t be his disciples. And Paul says the debt to love one another is a debt that should remain outstanding. In other words, don’t love anyone.
Continue reading Do God’s people love or hate their siblings?Jesus says no branch can bear fruit by itself. A branch can only bear fruit if it remains in the vine. (So if it’s a detached tree branch that was never even part of a vine to begin with, it definitely can’t bear fruit, then.)
But the Old Testament says Aaron’s staff once sprouted, budded, blossomed, and produced almonds, which are fruit seeds. So either Jesus proves the Old Testament is wrong, or the Old Testament proves Jesus is wrong.
Continue reading Can any detached branch bear fruit?The answer in Genesis is that there were no stars when the earth was created. God didn’t make the stars until three days after he made the earth.
But in the book of Job, God has a different answer. Now he says he laid the earth’s foundation while the morning stars sang. So there were stars, then.
Continue reading Were there stars when the earth was created?The Bible says Jesus once got mad at a tree for refusing to give him figs at the wrong time of year. And rather than miraculously make it produce fruit for him out of season, Jesus chose to curse the tree so it would never make fruit for anyone again.
Then the tree immediately withered, and his disciples were amazed that it had withered so quickly. That’s how it happened according to Matthew, anyway.
But in Mark’s version of the story, Jesus curses the tree, and then goes and spends the day in Jerusalem wrecking stuff and making people want to kill him. And it’s not till the next day that the disciples pass by the tree again and Peter notices that it’s withered. When Peter points out that the tree has withered, he’s remembering Jesus having cursed it the previous day.
Continue reading Did the fig tree wither immediately?The prophets warned that the destructive and disastrous day of the Lord is near. Zephaniah says it’s near and coming quickly. God told Ezekiel that the fulfillment of every vision was now near. And in particular, that the day of the Lord is near, when the nations will be doomed. When God told Habakkuk about the end, he said it will come and will not delay.
Paul told his followers that the day was almost here, even nearer than he’d thought. He told them to stop acting like they were going to go on living in this world, because the time is short, and the present world is passing away.
Letters from other early Christian leaders have the same message: This is the last hour. The end of all things is near, because the Lord’s coming is near. Jesus will come in just a little while, and will not delay.
The book of Revelation claims to be about what will take place soon. It repeatedly says the time is near, and it repeatedly has Jesus say he’s coming soon.
When God told Habakkuk that the end would not delay, he also contradicted himself. He suggested that if you’re looking forward to the end of the world, you’re going to have to wait for it.
Jesus told multiple parables in which the events corresponding to the second coming were described as a long time in coming, or only happening after a long time. He did this to correct the misconception that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once. He said if you hear about wars, it’s not the end of the world. And even if someone says he’s Jesus and that the time is near,1 Jesus says that’s a deception and you should ignore him.
And according to a passage in Revelation, the last judgment apparently isn’t going to happen until all Christians are dead.
The answer the Bible most commonly gives to the question of when the world will end is the most absurd one: It has actually happened already, way back in biblical times.
God told Noah that he was about to put an end to all people, destroying both them and the earth. If God said it, it must be true. The earth doesn’t exist anymore, and there haven’t been any people in over 4000 years.
Daniel predicted that God’s everlasting kingdom would come once Babylon had been taken over four times after Nebuchadnezzar. In reality, Babylon has already been taken over more times than that. Yet it has been “left to another people” rather than to God, contrary to Daniel’s claim.
Daniel also had a vision about the time of the end, where an angel said it would only take 2300 days (less than seven years) before the vision would be fulfilled. He had another vision later, about the last judgment, which also had an angel telling how long it would be before it was fulfilled. And the angel’s answer in that one is generally taken to mean just three and a half years. These predictions would put the end of the world way back in the 6th century BC.
The angel then stated that those words would be sealed up until the time of the end. Since they’re not sealed up, since we have had access to those words all this time, the time of the end must have already come a long time ago.
Jesus said the end would come as soon as the gospel had been preached throughout the whole world. In fact, he said his twelve disciples would not even finish going through the towns of Israel before Jesus came. Since Jesus had obviously already come by that time, he must have been referring to his second coming. Well, the Bible says the disciples did preach everywhere, so that means Jesus must have already returned.
Plus it says Paul preached in all Judea. And he said the message had gone out into all the earth, to the ends of the world, and the gospel had been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. If that’s all true, the world definitely should have ended a long time ago.
Jesus said his generation would not pass away until all the events of the end of the age happened and the whole world passed away. And more specifically, he said some of his disciples he was talking to would not die before they saw him coming in his kingdom. So Jesus must have already returned almost 2000 years ago, when not all of the twelve had died yet.2
Jesus said when Jerusalem is conquered, you’ll know the kingdom of God is near. Jerusalem was conquered just a few decades later. Since Jesus specified a future event when the kingdom would be near, rather than just saying the coming of the kingdom was near, he must have meant that the kingdom of God wasn’t near yet. So if the coming of the kingdom is near the destruction of Jerusalem, but it’s not near the time a few decades earlier when Jesus was talking about it, that clearly means that the kingdom is coming just a few years after the fall of Jerusalem, not thousands of years after. Jesus was saying the world would end just a few years after that event that happened in the 1st century AD.
When the apostles received the Spirit and started speaking in tongues, Peter explained what was happening, claiming that this was a fulfillment of a prophecy about the last days. So the end can’t have been too much later than that.
The culmination of the ages was back in Paul’s time. Paul wrote about what was true if anyone was in Christ. I’m not sure what exactly “in Christ” is supposed to mean, but it didn’t sound like he thought it wasn’t the case that anyone was. So we can assume he was saying that what follows from someone being in Christ was already true… which was that the old creation had gone, and the new creation had come. Paul also said he was among the people who would still be alive when Jesus came back. So that means the second coming must have happened back before Paul died.
Other letters from early Christian leaders at that time also claim that they were living in the last times, the last days, or the culmination of the ages.
Of course, the Bible also says the second coming and the day of the Lord have not already come. Paul says you can ignore anyone who tries to deceive you by telling you things like that, even if it’s in a message that appears to be from him. Looks like a lot of what we call the Bible is fake, according to the Bible.
Continue reading When will the world end?