Many years ago I ceased to feel the anger and resentment I once held against fundamental Christianity. I’ve also forgiven those who convinced my husband that he needed to be “saved” and become a member of a local super-conservative church. It won’t do for only one of us to be a X******, were the only words I recall uttering when he first told me he was joining the church. I have only myself to blame for meekly following him into a church that I am positive I would never have chosen on my own. A few weeks after our basic instruction, sometime during 1948, I found myself among the “saved” and a member of a strict, King-James-Bible-only, Bible-believing, congregation.
My skepticism began one evening, either in 1957 or 58, when a good friend—a learned doctor—said to me, you think you are thinking but you are not cogitating. Two or three years later, after reading first, Worlds In Collision by Immanuel Velikovsky, a Russian scientist, and Man And His Gods by Homer W. Smith, a history professor and pundit on ancient Middle East religions, I knew for a certainty I was on my way to “Freedom From Religion”.
Some thirty-six, thirty-seven years later, I answered a rapping on the front door to find a neatly dressed, pleasant-faced man, possibly in his mid-forties, holding a small briefcase in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. He introduced himself as a Baptist preacher making a tour of the neighborhood, inviting its residents to attend a special service being held the following Sunday in a nearby boating club. I thanked him politely, but told him I did not attend church services of any kind, something he must not have been accustomed to hearing. He paused for a moment, then insisted on knowing my reasons for not attending church. I told him I did not care to discuss such matters on the porch and invited him in. Although I suspected he had a Bible in his briefcase, he asked me if I had one and I told him I did. I went into my studio and chose the Revised King James Bible. I might just as well have handed him the New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures favored by Jehovah Witnesses, which I have. Seems the one and only Bible containing the “Holy Word of God” is the King James Version published during the reign of King James of England. I happened to own a well-worn copy of that particular Bible and brought it forth.
As he began to explain the one and only way to salvation, a subject with which I was already well-versed, and since he wanted to know why I shunned church, I asked him to explain Leviticus, Chapter 27, verses 28 and 29. He opened the Bible to Leviticus, found the proper verses and read them—to himself. He continued to gaze down on the page for a few moments, then closed the book and told me he would explain them by letter. However, in the letter I received three or four days later, he completely ignored the book of Leviticus. Instead of an explanation, I received, not only a sermon, but discovered I was a sinner no better than Eve, the Eve who first brought sin into the world when she disobeyed God. Furthermore, I was on my way to hell! He hoped I would reconsider my obstinacy, and that he would pray for me. It isn’t prayer I was after.
Until somebody can convince me that Leviticus, chapter 27, verses 28 and 29 means something other than what they so obviously state, those verses will continue to mean exactly what I read into them when I first stumbled upon them. No Sunday School teacher I ever had ever referred to those particular scriptures, nor had I ever heard them used in any sermon I ever listened to. Seems God, according to the Bible, and at least up until the birth of Jesus, approved the practice of human sacrifice—as long as the victim was sacrificed to him. They also explain Jephthah’s vow to the Lord and his subsequent sacrifice of his only daughter to God in the form of a burnt offering. They also explain why God, without the slightest protest, willingly accepted the murder of an innocent virgin. Judges, Chapter Eleven. As for Onan, Genesis, Chapter 38, verses 9 and 10, for merely “spilling his seed on the ground”, God slew him. In no way could I accept and love such a God.
Recently, I shared a few memories on my blogsite. I wrote about my reasons for becoming a member of a fundamental Christian church sometime during 1948, and my reasons for leaving the church sometime during 1960. A friend from long ago, keeps in touch with me via e-mail and reads everything I add to my blogsite. In spite of her affection for me and her concern for my soul, I felt a bit challenged when she accused me of blaming God for the bad turns in my life. There are consequences for turning one’s back on God, she wrote. When challenged, I rise to the occasion.
How can I blame God for “the bad turns in my life, when I believe this: if there is a “God”, a Divine Creator, he could not be the God of the “Holy Bible”. For all I know, there is a Force that set all things into motion, but whatever that Force is, I cannot believe that “He/She/It/ Whatever”, inspired men to write what I read when I read the Bible—for instance: according to most Christians I’ve met over the years, God created just one man and one woman with whom to begin the population of the earth. To believe in that God, I have to believe in the Creation story as found in the first five chapters of Genesis. Ah, but I see a serious flaw in the account.
Cain was sent into exile before the birth of Seth. Seth, the first son said to born in the likeness of Adam, was born when Adam was one hundred and thirty years old. I digress a bit here … in whose, or what likeness, were Cain and Abel born? Perhaps a bit ape-like, with Cain a bit more ape-like than Abel? That would somewhat explain “Biblical” evolution, would it not?
According to Christians I have known throughout the years, I am not permitted to assume anything whatsoever when I read the Bible, and yet, they do it all the time. Christians assume, in spite of the Bible’s silence on the subject, that Adam and Eve had other children after the birth of Abel and before the birth of Seth. If true, how was it possible for those sons and daughters, and their sons and daughters, to have committed incest to the point their offspring could have multiplied, moved far away, built cities and become strangers to Cain—and to have done so in the space of one hundred and fifteen years, give or take a year or two. Cain must have been at least in his teens when he slew Abel. Not that it really matters but, at what point in time did God change his mind and declare incest to be a sin?
To believe in the God of the Bible, I have to believe in a God who, at one time, delighted in the sight of sacrificial blood, and found the stink of burning flesh, a pleasing aroma. I’ve never understood that God and never will.
To believe in God, I have to believe in a God so devoid of pity and understanding that he demanded the death by stoning of any bride who did not produce proof of her virginity—blood on the sheet after her wedding night. I find it impossible to believe in and love such a God.
To believe in God, I have to believe in a God who commanded the wife of a priest to be burnt to death, should she commit adultery. I would despise any God who demanded such a cruel death for anyone, regardless of the sin committed. To heads of households, God gave them power of life and death over all female members in the family. As a female, I’d also despise that god—if he existed.
To believe in the God of the Bible, I have to believe in the power of voodoo. I have to believe God gave husbands the right to drag their wives—whom they only have to suspect of committing adultery—before a priest and force them to drink a concoction that could very well kill them. Ordeal by trial was widely used by the church for proof of innocence during the dark ages. In the Bible story, the accused, or suspected women, were given a bowl of water to drink containing dust gathered from in front of an altar where goats, sheep and cattle were sacrificed. The concoction might well kill the women because the gathered dust could contain anthrax! Anthrax can be fatal if swallowed.
To believe in God, I have to believe in more voodoo … sheep and goats able to defy genetics—if they but mate before saplings stripped of their bark, but even more, …
To believe in God, I have to believe he sanctioned child sacrifice! Exodus 22: 29, 30. I would like to read so much as one scripture in the Bible where God “specifically” forbids the early Israelites from sacrificing their children to him. He did, indeed, forbid the sacrifice of children to other gods, such as the Philistine, Baal. If the early Israelites were not commanded to sacrifice their firstborn sons to God, how did the commandment find its way into the “Holy Bible”? I am aware that the word “likewise” has been removed from at least one Bible in my possession. The word, likewise, is ignored by believers who do not, or cannot believe verses 29 and 30 really mean what they say.
Even so … why, if it was not an accepted practice to sacrifice a son to God, was it possible for Abraham—for no other reason than he believed God told him to sacrifice Isaac—to set off on a journey without fearing the wrath of the priests, his neighbors, or the camp elders, upon returning home without his son? God’s intervention in the matter, does not negate the seriousness of the question.
To believe in God, I have to believe God gave instructions to his people, by way of Moses, to stone to death and discard the flesh of any ox who gores a man, and the man dies. The unfortunate animal is not to be killed humanely and its flesh given to the poor. No, God demands the helpless and doomed creature to suffer a slow and hideously-painful death. Naturally, after being stoned to death, its flesh would be unfit to be eaten by a human being. No: I cannot believe in that God.
I also have to believe that any animal: sheep, goat, calf, dog, when used for sexual pleasure, those helpless creatures whom God created without the sense to know right from wrong, must suffer the same senseless and brutal method of execution as its abuser. They, too, must be stoned to death. Why, in the name of God, would God command such cruelties as those few I’ve stated? There are many, many more. Christians may have no problem with such a God, but I do.
My friend’s letter continued, Now you refuse to acknowledge His existence. That is definitely your right to choose. But please know, that when we turn our back on Him, there are consequences. I wrote: I know, you believe those “consequences” to be eternity in hell. Well, at one time, a long time ago, I, too, believed that to be true. My friend added, “Even Paul taught on judgment”.
I replied, “Yes, Paul indeed wrote on the subject of judgment, but Christians, those already convinced that hell exists before they read Paul’s letters to the churches, read his words without comprehending what he actually wrote. Paul, indeed, believed in eternal life for the “saved”, and I have no wish to even try to alter the fact, but a careful reading of his letters, reveals that while he believed in salvation for the saved, he also believed the “unsaved” would simply cease to exist. Please, somebody, send me so much as one scripture wherein Paul describes the torments of a fiery hell awaiting the unsaved, and I will re-examine his letters more closely than I have. Just remember, Paul was, as were other Jews of his time, caught up in the “end of the world” fervor—something still going on today among Christians—especially fundamental Christians as well as those Christians who have a somewhat, more sensible understanding of the Bible—Jehovah Witnesses. At least the latter wisely rejects all belief in hell. Did Jesus believe in hell?:
Fact: Jesus was a Jew. Have Jews ever believed in a literal Hell? If not, Jesus could not have used the terms Gehenna and Gehenna Fire to mean anything other than what the people to whom he was speaking, understood them to mean. If he did believe in hell, he would have had to be referring to the Old Testament. Where, in the Old Testament, can a reader find anything resembling the teaching of hell?
Fact: Jesus spoke the common language of the area in which he lived and taught—the Aramaic language. Just like the English language, the Aramaic tongue is rich with idioms. Jesus used terms such as Gehenna, and Gehenna fire, terms familiar to the people, when admonishing them against stealing, trespassing, envy and so on. Example: Better to cut one’s foot off than to enter Gehenna with both feet meant: Stop your trespassing if you wish to keep the respect of your family and community. Better to cut your hand off? Stop stealing if you wish … etc. and etc.
I picture God, if he exists, as weeping and greatly saddened by the knowledge that his supreme creation, the talking spirit—according to a Jewish friend of mine—finds it possible to believe all the horrible, as well as the foolish things men have written and claimed to be “His Holy Word”. I may have turned my back on the “God” fundamental Christians believe in, the God I know does not exist, but I’m open to anything the God “Who May Exist” wishes to tell me personally. “Something” must be pleased with me because, “Something” keeps leading me to the truth, such as …
I don’t believe in the impossible. Just four thousand years ago, according to the Bible, water is supposed to have covered the entire earth for several months to a depth of fifteen to twenty feet over the highest mountains and then … just drained away … to where? Don’t try to tell me that just four thousand years ago, huge plates, far under the earth’s crust shifted, mountains such as Mount McKinley, the Tetons and the Alleghenies here in North America, the Andes in South America, Mount Everest in Asia, the Alps in Europe, Mount Ararat in the Middle East—as well as all the other mountain ranges throughout the world—rose and land under the seas gave way creating deep basins. Though evidence of a catastrophic flood was discovered in Ur, the region from which the Biblical Abraham migrated, and directly south of the Black Sea, there are remains of civilizations of equal age scattered throughout the world that do not show any sign whatsoever of ever having been destroyed by flooding. There are pristine caves right here in America which contain delicate stalactites and stalagmites that took hundreds of thousands of years to form and which can be damaged by a careless touch of the fingers and yet, today, those same caves show absolutely no sign of ever having been disturbed by raging, debris-saturated flood water for close to a year some four thousand years ago.
No, I don’t believe in “adult fairytales”, or in magic, or in voodoo. Iron axes floating, oil vessels and grain containers refilling themselves for days, bread and fish that miraculously multiplies itself, wind that obeys a spoken command, and so on and on and on. I cannot believe in such impossibilities, and, I cannot conceive of a God, who is supposed to have endowed me with intelligence, expecting me, or anybody else, to accept such nonsense for truth. I gaze in speechless awe and wonder at the marvelous photographs the Hubble telescope has taken of the universe and sent back to earth, and laugh to myself when I think of some of the things I’m supposed to believe when I read the Bible.
Paul warned his followers to beware of myths and ‘old wives’ tales. I think I am on solid ground when I follow suit.
Fact: The King James Bible was not the first Bible in existence. If all Bibles before the King James Bible were directly inspired by God, why did it require, forty-seven learned men divided into six groups, three years to translate the King James version? And, why, did it require another nine months to revise it? That does not sound like inspiration to me. It sounds like good old-fashioned research and study, as well as a “hell” of a lot of comparison and selection from available resources. From pages 244/245, Six Thousand Years of the Bible, by G. S. Wegener, as well as in the preface of a King James’ Bible I once owned.
Fact: History would have to be rewritten, carbon-dating proved a fraud and archaeology determined to be a farce in order to be compatible with “God’s Holy Inspired Word. No, I think it is the Bible which needs to be corrected.
I fully understand: there is a faith that brings a peace beyond understanding. For me, I will continue content with the peace that does not require faith.
The following is a portion of a comment by Ty Harris that I received via e-mail, but one I unknowingly deleted from my blogsite when I deleted the above blog in order to update it. sorry about that Ty.
From Ty…
I must admit that I share your skepticism about some parts of the bibical story of Creation , which is why I am a theist but not a literal biblical creationist persay.
I do believe there is a Creator, and I do think that God has a greater plan for humans both as a group and as individuals, but I would be very careful before I ascribed particular traits to that creator. I expect that any Creator/ Designer powerful and wise enough to make the universe and everything in it would be far enough beyond our concept of gender to render the question moot on that point.
I am not willing to follow skepticism about literal biblical creationism down the slippery slope to atheism for two reasons-
1. I cant accept that our lives have no meaning beyond random particle collisions and natural selection. I think most of us have an innate understanding that life has a higher metaphysical meaning than that, and that there is such a thing as right and wrong beyond mere survival of the fittest. There is just too much that is good and wonderful in this life for me to say that it doesnt matter as part of a higher plan. Obviously if our lives have no design or intent, then there would be no plan or idealogical framework for any concept of right and wrong to even exist, and I know innately that they do. Everything we are in a Godless universe would be reduced to nothing more than random particle interactions and I jsut dont accept that.
Ty, many thanks for the visit and your comment. I have good reason for approaching the Bible as I do. I found out a long time ago that, if I wanted to ward off any and all proselytizing, by whatever particular “brand” of Christian faith, I had to “know the Bible” inside out and upside down. Logic and reasoning never worked for me and neither will it work for you.
[...] Updated « Meander With Me [...]
Mary, very insightful, as always.
Mary:
Sorry, pressed for time. I haven’t read your post thoroughly, as I intend to, and likely comment, but IMO, Ty has settled for the worst of both worlds. Rejecting the scriptures as unrealistic, he is unable to give convincing answers to others and himself on essential questions: why death, why suffering, why evil, for instance. And yet he is not pleasing to the “rationalist” crowd either, who accuse him of needing religion “as a crutch.”
Tom sheepandgoats, Always pleased to have you visit. As for Ty rejecting the scriptures as unrealistic, I find many of the stories found in the Bible to be unrealistic. Sometime during the 1950s, I read in the daily paper an account of a “holy” man in India who was reported to have fed several thousand people from one bowl of some type of porridge. Someone made an effort to locate the wonder-worker, but could never catch up to him. He was always somewhere else and yet, there were always plenty of “witnesses” ready to swear they knew someone who had witnessed the miracle. Someday, that story may end up in a “Holy, Hindu Book” and be believed by the faithful. That’s what faith can do to the mind.
as an afterthought: when it comes to comments such as: he is unable to give convincing answers to others and himself on essential questions: why death, why suffering, why evil, … for some reason I have always been somewhat amused by those people who believe there has to be some “mystical” reason for such things as suffering, death, evil and so on. Why are we born? What are we here for, and so on. For me, there is a law called “cause” and “effect”. And that, for me, explains everything. Freedom of mind is a wonderful gift to one’s self.
My time to read your post came sooner than I thought, alas, due to some unanticipated sick time. My wife is in the other room with flu, and I show every sign of soon following her path. But I’m not quite there yet, and maybe if I immerse myself in a good scriptural discussion, God will bless and cure me and I will be skipping about like a child. (just kidding, you know we do not believe such things) No, I fear I am doomed for a few days. But at present, I can still function.
Building on conversation we’ve had in the past, (for the record, lest any of your readers think otherwise, I am not the religious friend who urges you to reassess) the conclusions you came to about hell, Jehovah’s Witnesses came to 100 years ago. But we’ve covered that before. You also know I maintain that churches “sold out” centuries ago, mostly in order to remain popular and relevant to the world’s power structures, and so they have incorporated within themselves self-contradictory teachings that make understanding of God impossible. Hell is by no means the only example.
Regarding Jephthah, since the Mosaic law expressly forbids any such human sacrifice, (see, for example Deut 18:9-12) why would you be so quick to assume that Jephthah, a “Bible hero,” as the children’s books might say, did exactly that? Moreover, why would that idiot preacher not see though the puzzle, instead of threatening you with hell? To illustrate, if I know you well, and I hear that in some monumental way you have gone against fundamental principles by which you live, do I immediately assume matters are as they appear at face value? If I am your enemy, that is exactly what I do, but if I have regard for you, I probe a bit. Perhaps another explanation will present itself.
It was possible in those times for a parent to devote a child to exclusive service in God’s sanctuary. Other examples are Samuel (1 Sam 1) and Samson (Judges 13). The best current parallel that comes to mind is being sent to a monastery, which not too long ago was quite common. Israelites, as you may know from your OT reading, were forever offering (animal) burnt offerings (and other types of offerings) for every conceivable event, so Jephthah, in fulfilling his vow, would have accompanied her dedication to the sanctuary with burnt offerings, not offering her as the offering. The daughter “bewailing her virginity” (vs 37) plainly refers to her virginity from that point onward….she would be forever single….a considerable life sacrifice in those days when children were thought to be evidence of God’s blessing. After all, it is implicit that up to that point she was a virgin….she is bewailing her future virginity. And (vs 40) the “daughters of Israel went yearly to lament the daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite four days in a year.” That’s a lot of days just to mope. And which daughters? All of them in the entire country go up to bellyache, annually, for four days? But visiting her in her sanctuary service, “lamenting” over the family sacrifices she has made in order to embrace her new path, makes more sense. She is the daughter of the national hero, after all, at a time when people respect leadership. She is not the partying Bush daughters; she submitted to the vow of her father so as to embrace a service that was held in high esteem.
Is that explanation the first to present itself from the Judges account? No. Is it plausible? Yes. Given the knowledge of the times, peoples, and circumstances, is it the most likely? In my view, yes. It all depends upon your jury. If you are tried before a hostile court, Mary, they are going to hang you. If you are tried before a more fair-minded court, they will not. But this illustrates my previous point. Fundamentalists are not likely to have such an explanation, since they encourage their people to remain stupid. They have to, since their basic tenets make no sense. On the other hand, the “wiser,” more liberal churches, in an effort to stay popular and in the mainstream, have long bought into the view that the scriptures are hopelessly rife with contradictions, and so they make no effort to resolve matters like this. That leaves few, perhaps nobody, other than Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mary, I knew this explanation off the top of my head. It’s not because I am especially bright. It’s because I am affiliated with an organization that doesn’t bend with the wind of popularity, that has high regard for accurate understanding of the scriptures, and that defends it.
Similar explanations readily present themselves with regard to the other points you raised. Possibly they are found nowhere else except from Jehovah’s Witnesses. But that’s hardly our fault. As you know, at considerably personal sacrifice, Jehovah’s Witnesses invite persons to study the Bible with them. I don’t know what else can be expected of us. That not all Bible study is equal is evident from the fact you were totally unaware of the Jephthah defense, (if only to reject it) despite spending decades in church.
Oh, and with regard to your comments. Is the Hindu holy man fake? Possibly. I would say likely. (though I don’t know) But there is also an abundance of counterfeit money in circulation today. That does not mean there is no such thing as real money.
Is it possible for one to get by without explanations for death, suffering, and evil. Of course. People do it all the time. But why willingly refuse to consider them? They make life more pleasant. I frequently comment on the notion… one hears it all the time…that this or that person can walk on his own two feet and “doesn’t need religion as a crutch.” In my view, the analogy of a crutch is correct, but the premise is wrong. Considering human frailty, we plainly do need a crutch, but for various reasons we may consider ourselves above making use of it.
Seems good to me. (flex bahth house)
Tom, I will touch upon Deut: chapter 18:9 When you come unto the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations There shall not be any who makes his son or his daughter to “pass through the fire”. Children sacrificed to the Philestine Baal were thrown alive into a fire contained in the belly of an idol of Baal. Here is Exodus, Chapter 22, verses 28 and 29, taken directly from the only Bible I know of to have been translated directly from the Aramaic—still in use in certain parts of the Middle East. “You shall not delay to offer the first fruits of your harvest of your threshing floor, and of your wine press; the firstborn of your sons you shall give to me”. Likewise, you shall do with your oxen and with your sheep.”
Oxen and sheep were first slain, then sent to Yahweh, which constitutes a slight difference in the manner of sacrifice. With Yahweh, according the the writers of the ‘word of God” little things meant a great deal, like eating an apple one was told not to eat. When it came to burning witches alive—as if there were such things as witches—I’d say that any nation, savage enough to burn anybody alive was a nation capable of sacrificing their firstborn sons to an unseen god.
Tom, I just now…Thursday, 26, 09, upon rereading a comment from you, took a closer look at what you wrote … “Building on conversation we’ve had in the past, (for the record, lest any of your readers think otherwise, I am not the religious friend who urges you to reassess) the conclusions you came to about hell, Jehovah’s Witnesses came to 100 years ago”
… Tom, I assure you that I have never, and will never, refer to anybody known to me “blogwise” when adding a post to Meander With Me. That would be an unforgivable indiscretion. I refered to a Baptist minister who came to my door to invite me to a service. That really did take place. If you happen to be a minister, if that is what the leader of a Jehovah Witness congregation is called, than I understand your concern. No, we may be miles apart in our individual thinking process, but I should hope that we have too much respect for each other to ever stoop to such hypocrisy. One thing more: I came to the conclusion that there was no hell without ever having read anything left me by a Jehovah Witness. I may have learned that a hundred years after the first Jehovah Witness learned it, but I did it by reading the King James Bible, only. I did not acquire other versions of the Bible until later. All it takes to notice that Jesus did not believe in hell, is to ask a simple question or two of one’s self, then, find the answer. If I did it, anybody can do it. and one does not have to become a Jehovah Witness to accomplish the fact. That is why my brain remains my own property and not that of an organized religion of any kind.
Tom, you wrote, “since the Mosaic law expressly forbids any such human sacrifice, (see, for example Deut 18:9-12)
I agree with you, up to a point. When I first brought up the subject of child sacrifice, I stressed it to be among the earliest of the Israelites. I did so maintaining that laws against it had not yet been set in motion by Mosiac law, at least not up until after the time of Jephthah. Up until then, God, nor the people, nor the Priests appeared to be unduly upset by the practice.
I quote from Isaiah, Chapter 45, verse 7: I form light and create darkness. I make peace and create hardship [the King James Bible says "evil"] … Could there have been anything harder to bear for the people during the time that Abraham lived than to believe that when they offered their firstborn sons to God, they were giving him the very best they had to offer… as it was with other people around different parts of the world? Read “The Golden Bough” by Sir James Frazier. I’d like to express what the prophet Eziekiel had to say on the subject…
Eziekiel: Chapter 20, verse 26 And, “I let them” defile themselves through their own gifts, when they offered their firstborn sons as sacrifices; that I might destroy them and that they might know that I am God.
God may not have approved, but he sure took his time preventing the practice.
With that, I am going concentrate on some of my other work. Perhaps I’ll even try writing a few more poems.
Mary, I’m enjoying reading your blog and your giving up on religion. To tell the truth, I have no use for it either. Religion is man’s effort to make himself presentable to God through his good works and religious ceremonies. Jesus had His harshest words for the wicked religious leaders of His day. You can read them in Matthew 23.
The Apostle Paul gave up on it also when He met Jesus and became a changed man by the power of God. You can read his testimony in Philippians 3. He likened his religious efforts of the past to cow manure.
I became a Christian over 65 years ago when I admitted that I could never live up to God’s holy perfect standards as taught in the Bible and when I realized that God Himself became a man, Jesus, and then went to the cross and died, paying the death penalty for every sinner who has ever lived. By putting my faith in Him alone at the age of 9, He gave me the gift of eternal life and I have lived for Christ ever since. No, I am not perfect, and won’t be until I am in Heaven. But my sins are paid in full and I rejoice in my Saviour, Jesus Christ and have served Him with all of my heart ever since.
I’m sorry for the bad experiences you have had with Christianity and in particular with Fundamentalists. I just want to address two of your issues: The KJV Only position and the Leviticus 27:28-29 passage.
I have been a Fundamentalist pastor for 53 years and now at age 76 this month, I am still pastoring. I never even heard of the “King James Version Only” position until about
thirty years ago. I heard Fundamentalist pastors all through my childhood, and until the early 1980’s I never ran across a KJV Only preacher. It has never been a historic
Fundamentalist position. I think it is a foolish, divisive position. Though I preach from the KJV version, I use other versions also to clarify thoughts.
As for your problem with Lev. 27:28-29, As you no doubt know, the sacrifice of the blood of innocent lambs has been God’s plan for covering sin ever since Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden and God killed animals as a sacrifice for their sins and used the skins to cover their nakedness. All these animal sacrifices of the O.T. pointed to the one perfect, final sacrifice for sin forever, the blood of Jesus shed for us on the cross.
A devoted animal is one set apart for sacrifice to God. Verse 29 is saying that if a man devotes an animal as a sacrifice to God, He cannot redeem it and spare it from death. It must be put to death as a penalty for the man’s sin. Verse 28-29 are not talking about putting men and women to death. It’s all about animal sacrifices.
You mentioned Jephtah’s vow in Judges 11. This does not teach that Jephtah sacrificed his daughter by killing her. Rather, he vowed that she should remain a virgin all her life. Is this an example of Christianity. Absolutely not. The book of Judges is filled with all sorts of terrible things that have no place in Christianity. The book just shows the continual failure of Israel to please God. The last verse in Judges tells us why they were such failures. Every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
When one turns from the Bible to do his own thing and ignore Biblical morality as described in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, there is no telling how low and depraved he can become.
If you go to my web site http://www.alamedabiblechurch.com and to HIDDEN TREASURES and then to EVOLUTION, you can read the testimony of a preacher I once heard,
John Whitcomb. He was working on his PhD at Princeton Univ. when He heard and understood the Gospel for the first time. This article is his testimony of how and why he ceased being an evolutionist and became a creationist.
I hope this has been helpful to you. God bless you in you search for Truth.
See John 14:6,
Mal Bicker
mgbpjb@msn.com
April 12, I’ve been fighting lung congestion for some time and have not at my computer for the past two or three days. Hiddentreasures, always pleased to have you visit and your comments always welcome.
Any “bad experiences” I had in the past with christianity had nothing to do with my reading the Bible and understanding it to have been, in all too many cases, sadly and badly mistranslated over the centuries, giving my good reason to doubt the book to be the “inspired, without error, Holy Word of God”..
You say animal sacrifice was God’s plan for “covering sin”, but you believe that because that is what you read when you read the Bible. The Muslim believes just as fervently in Allah and in “the Holy Koran” as you do the Bible and, there isn’t enough logic in the world to dispel either’s faith in what each believes be “Holy Scripture”.
I shall touch once again on Lev. 27:28,29. the words read … Notwithstanding … all that he hath … both of man and beast … shall surely be put to death.
Now, please explain in plain lauguage how those two scriptures refer to the sacrifice of animals and only animals. So far, no one has tried because to do so, he/she would have to admit there are scriptures in the Bible God did not cause to be written.
If, by referring to turning from the Bible to do “one’s one thing”, means restoring God to the “Heavenly Father” Jesus preached, I plead guilty. The God people worship today is a combination of the teaching of Jesus, and Paul’s letters.
Paul, born a Jew, was brought up in an area where the worship of Mithra was prevalent. Mithra, born of a virgin, birthed in a cave, visited by angels on Dec. 25, grew to manhood, suffered death, was resurrected and went to heaven. Mithra was widely worshipped in the entire Middle East two thousand years ago. It took such early church fathers as St. Augustine to weave a tale from what was available to them and still told two centuries later. The truth can be found if one takes the time and the trouble to find out for him/herself. I did.