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?In the book of Isaiah, God gives a comforting message to a desolate, barren woman. She has never been able to have children, but God says now she will have children. You can tell she still doesn’t have a husband, though. After this woman has children, God contrasts her with a woman who does have a husband, making it clear that the first woman does not.
Continue reading Does the desolate woman have a husband?Joab and Shimei were both violent men who had wronged King David at some point. David let them live, but before he died, he told his son Solomon to kill those men. David said he trusted Solomon to know how to deal with those people, because Solomon was a man of wisdom. But David also described Solomon as young and inexperienced.
Continue reading Was Solomon a wise man when he became king?God made an everlasting agreement with Abraham that required all his male descendants to be circumcised, as well as any other males who lived with them.
God doesn’t just want babies to be circumcised. Even if you’re 99 years old, you should still get circumcised. That’s what Abraham did, and he always did what God wanted him to do. God also once had Joshua circumcise all the Israelite men, all at once.
Jesus thinks circumcision laws are so important that they override Sabbath laws. In addition to mandating the circumcision of Israelite boys, God’s law says even a Gentile man can only celebrate God’s holy days if he and every male he lives with are circumcised. The Bible also says if you’re not circumcised, you can’t marry a daughter of Israel. That would be a disgrace.
Even if God’s chosen nation and other nations do practice circumcision, God isn’t satisfied. He thinks they’re not circumcised enough.
The apostles were troubled when they heard rumors that Paul was teaching Jews to give up circumcision, so they suggested a way Paul could try to disprove those rumors. Paul agreed to do so, because he actually thought circumcision was a valuable thing.
Paul says he used to think it was good to be circumcised, but now he considers it a loss. He calls people who practice circumcision evildoers and mutilators of the flesh.
He even says circumcised people can’t be saved! If you’re circumcised, you’re trying to be justified by the law. To actually be justified that way, you would have to follow all of God’s laws perfectly, but no one can actually do that. So if you get circumcised, all you’re really doing is rejecting God’s gift of forgiveness. You’re alienating yourself from Jesus, who will therefore be of no value to you at all.
Continue reading Should people be circumcised?Right near the top of the Ten Commandments, God says you shall not make an image of anything on earth or anything in heaven. (And you shouldn’t worship those images, either.) That would mean you had become corrupt. God’s law says not to make any idols or any metal gods. That would definitely mean you had become corrupt (at least if you made them in the form of something God had forbidden). If you do that, God will get angry, and soon everyone in your land will die.
According to the prophets, idols and the people who make them are worthless. Those people are sinning, and they will all be disgraced. There is shame and scorn and terror and destruction in store for them. God will punish people because of the lifeless forms of their images. And images doesn’t just mean idols. God also thinks wall paintings of certain kinds of animals are wicked and detestable. God gets so angry over images people have made, he feels the need to destroy entire cities.
Joshua mentions that the Israelites were already worshipping idols back when they were slaves in Egypt. And rather than deciding that this made them evil people who didn’t deserve to live, God performed miracle after miracle in an elaborate effort to rescue those pagans and give them a land of their own. He didn’t even mention their idolatry until later, so it must not have bothered him all that much.
God commanded Moses to make some things in the image of things on earth, like plants and a snake.
God also told Moses to make two cherubs out of gold. These cherubs were not only a graven image of something in heaven, but part of the ark of the covenant, which, just like other idols, was treated as a representation of a god and an object of worship. When Joshua bowed down to the ark, God rebuked him not for idolatry, but only because God didn’t happen to like what Joshua was asking for. Apparently God doesn’t have a problem with this particular idol.
The whole temple that God had Solomon build was a copy of something in heaven.
God himself has made images of something in heaven. He made man in his own image. And he made some people in the image of Jesus, who he had also made in his own image, as an exact representation. Everything God does is perfectly good, so we should follow his example and make our own images of God.
Continue reading Should people make images?The gospel of John says that Jesus’s disciples still didn’t understand that Jesus was going to rise from the dead… even after Jesus had already risen from the dead.
Continue reading Did the disciples know Jesus would be resurrected?Solomon says flogging people is a good way to make people less simple-minded. He says you can cure your child’s folly by beating your child with a rod.
But later, he says no matter how much you crush and pulverize fools, you can’t remove their folly. After all, the Bible says witless people becoming wise is as impossible as a donkey giving birth to a human.
Continue reading Can folly be removed?