Category Archives: Contradictions

Does God listen to sinners?

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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?

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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?

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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,1 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?

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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?

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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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Should people try to keep their lives?

Contradictions,

Yes.

Moses presented his people with a choice between obedience, blessings, and life, or disobedience, curses, and death. And he told them to choose life.

Should you be reckless with your life because you have faith that God will protect you? No, that’s a twisted, satanic idea. Jesus says you shouldn’t put God to the test like that.

When God decided Jesus had to die, Jesus tried to get out of it. Jesus always did what pleased God, and never sinned. So trying to stay alive must be the right thing to do, even if God wants you dead.

Peter encouraged Christians to actively do everything they could to try to make sure they would make it into the kingdom of heaven and gain everlasting life. So you should try to stay alive even after you die.

No.

But Jesus said if you try to keep your life, you’ll lose it. That can’t be good, can it? You wouldn’t really be choosing life, would you?

So the right choice must be to be indifferent to death, or even to try to die, like Samson did. When he asked God to give him his super-strength back for the purpose of a suicide attack, God cooperated and helped him die. God must not have wanted him to try to keep his life.

God sent Jesus on a suicide mission too, and didn’t let him quit. He didn’t want Jesus to try to keep his life.

Jesus expects his followers to put themselves in life-threatening situations just to prove that God is with them and will protect them. (Exactly like Satan challenged him to do!)

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Who were the twelve apostles?

Contradictions

The gospels of Matthew and Mark each contain a complete list of Jesus’s twelve disciples, or apostles. The two lists have all the same names. One of the disciples is named Thaddaeus, and Judas Iscariot is the only Judas on the list:

  • Simon Peter
  • Andrew
  • James son of Zebedee
  • John
  • Philip
  • Bartholomew
  • Thomas
  • Matthew
  • James son of Alphaeus
  • Thaddaeus
  • Simon the Zealot
  • Judas Iscariot

The gospel of Luke also has a list of the twelve disciples, but this one has two people named Judas, and no one named Thaddaeus:

  • Simon Peter
  • Andrew
  • James
  • John
  • Philip
  • Bartholomew
  • Matthew
  • Thomas
  • James son of Alphaeus
  • Simon the Zealot
  • Judas son of James
  • Judas Iscariot

The book of Acts lists all the same apostles as Luke except Judas Iscariot, since he was dead by that time. The gospel of John doesn’t have a list of all twelve disciples, but it agrees with Luke and Acts that there was a Judas other than Judas Iscariot among them.

But John also says one of the disciples was named Nathanael. He’s not mentioned in any other book.

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Who is the light of the world?

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The gospel of John repeatedly refers to Jesus as the light of the world. It says John the Baptist was sent to testify about “the light of all mankind” that was coming into the world. One of the ways it describes God sending his son into the world is by saying that light has come into the world. And most importantly, it has Jesus call himself the light of the world.

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What kinds of faces did the creatures have?

Contradictions,

In the first chapter of Ezekiel, Ezekiel sees four strange “living creatures”. Each creature has four faces: the face of a human, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle.

In chapter 10, Ezekiel sees the same four creatures again, and realizes they’re cherubs. It specifically says their faces looked the same as what he had seen earlier. (Which should go without saying, since they’re the same creatures.) Yet the description is different: This time, it says each creature has the face of a cherub, the face of a human, the face of a lion, and the face of an eagle. So instead of an ox face, this time they have “the face of a cherub”, whatever that means. (Isn’t that what all their faces are?)

Then in chapter 41, Ezekiel sees a depiction of some cherubs. This occurs while God is showing him a vision of a future temple he wants built. So this is what cherubs look like according to God. Yet their appearance doesn’t match the actual cherubs Ezekiel saw earlier. These cherubs have only two faces each: the face of a human and the face of a lion, facing in opposite directions. The living cherubs Ezekiel had seen earlier had the lion face to the right of the human face, not on the opposite side.

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