Live Free with Josh Howerton - Does the Bible Have CONTRADICTIONS!? (Pastors EXPLAIN) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Does the Bible contradict itself? What should you do when someone points to two passages that seem impossible to reconcile? Pastors Carlos and Paul tackle one of the biggest questions Christians and skeptics ask about Scripture. Starting in 2 Timothy 3, they unpack what Christians actually mean when they say the Bible is inspired and trustworthy—and then put those claims to the test. From different Gospel accounts and genealogies to faith versus works and supposed scientific errors, this conversation offers a practical framework for approaching difficult passages without ignoring honest questions. In this episode, you'll learn: Why the Bible should shape how we see the world What “God-breathed” Scripture actually means The difference between a contradiction and a difference How context, audience, genre, and authorial intent affect interpretation How to approach alleged numerical, historical, chronological, theological, and scientific contradictions Why Paul and James don't contradict each other on faith and works What to do when difficult questions begin shaking your confidence Why Scripture is meant to transform you—not simply inform you Stand firm. Think biblically. Live free. 💬 This week’s giveaway: Comment HAT 🧢 Want a Live Free hat of your own? Visit LiveFree.shop 📲 Looking to grow deeper in your faith? Check out the Lakepointe App to access our Discipleship Guide, daily Bible reading plan, and more. Text APP to 20411 to download

The Bible is not just to receive information, it is to experience transformation. You're not supposed to just be informed. You're supposed to be formed. Inspiration means that the words of Scripture are God's words themselves in such a way that to disbelieve or disagree with anything this says is to disbelieve or disagree with God himself. Well, hey, Live Free Nation. Before we jump into the episode, this podcast is recorded right here at Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. But the Live Free Nation is spread all over the country and all around the world. So if you've been watching and thinking, man, I wish I could be part of something like this.

We want to invite you to take a simple next step, and that is join us for church online. Every weekend we stream our services live on YouTube, Facebook, and our church online platform, and it's more than just watching a service. There are a live host in the chat, prayer team's ready to stand with you, and people all around the world worshiping together in real time. And so whether you're exploring the faith, coming back to church, or just looking for a place to start, church online is a great way to jump in. and experience what God is doing here at Lake Point.

We would love to see you in the chat this weekend, and now enjoy the podcast. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. My name is Carlos Arraso, and today I am excited because I am here with the one and only Pastor Paul Cunningham reloaded. Come on, man. What's up, bro? You're good? Yeah, I'm good.

You know why you're reloaded? Why am I reloaded? Because you've been to Israel, bro. I have been to Israel, left about 3% of me there. Oh, my goodness. That's a lot. If you didn't hear the stuff last week, I'm not going to even take the time to recap what I mean by that. But let's just say I found a really effective diet for breaking through weight plateaus.

People might be in. It's called acute gastroenteritis, man. But that being said, if you didn't catch last week, we went to Israel. That's right, man. You were there too, man. It was your first time as well. At first time, that's right. But people are not as excited about that.

People are more excited about you being there for the first time. And I will say, Chad Gipal C, you've never seen him like this. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the reloaded version. because now that you've been to Israel, like your knowledge of the Bible is just kind of like 10-ext. That's right, man. Whole another level of passion, dude. It's been fun this past week. People have been sending me messages on social and even emails saying, dude, he finally win.

People were to celebrate. Man, it was fun. Hey, let me record this episode with this podcast episode with my phone because Jason is in the controller. So I want to make sure that after recording, he's not going to say, oh, I forgot to hit record or something. That's a joke, Jason. That's a joke. We love you, Jason. Trinity's off today, I suppose.

And so, man, we got Jason the controllers. Just so people know, not the Trinity, like God, but Trinity who is usually behind the scenes. Who's at our team? Who's in everything else out. There you all, man. Hey, we're grateful that Jason's here, by the way. Hey, Jason, thank you, man. That's right, man.

But hey, man, it's just you and me this week. Come on. PJ had a busy day the other day. That's right. Doing some awesome interviews that we're going to release here next week. Especially, we're actually going to release a special one this Wednesday, right? That's right. What we got?

I'm going to let you. You can do the reveal in case people didn't see it. We have Philip Anthony Mitchell. come on joining the live free podcast yes he is and i will say uh we were there in the conversation it was a great conversation this wednesday you don't want to miss it uh philip anton mitchell with pastor josh howerton on the live free podcast is going to be a great conversation don't want to spoil it for you but again i think it's probably going to be one of those episodes that's going to be pretty impactful that's awesome and yeah and because you spent a good couple hours

with him we thought hey you and i can handle the first part of our normal episode and we got some good stuff coming up today right this is going to be a great episode good, helpful things that people ask a lot of questions about a lot of the time. So I'm excited for this, Paul, because honestly, this is the episode that I wish I would have received when I was, like, graduating college. Wow. Or as a teenager, honestly. Okay.

Today, by the way, for people asking, Live Free Podcasts coming to you from Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas, shout out. Yep. Today we're going to talk about 2 Timothy chapter 3. We're going to be asking the question, does the Bible have contradictions? We will be addressing what are those? We're going to be reacting to a couple of videos of one is a TikTok theologian sharing his thoughts on some quote unquote Bible. Very generous title.

Very generous title you gave him. Some Bible contradictions. And we're going to be reacting to a video from Alex O'Connor as well. If people don't know, he is a famous, pretty recognizable atheist. Actually, former atheist, he's an agnostic now. But I've been watching him now for over a decade because he's OG YouTube. And so it's going to be fun. By the way, by the way, brilliant guy.

Brilliant guy. It doesn't mean that we agree. Obviously, we very much disagree. Strongly disagree. Brilliant guy. Brilliant guy. Whereas the other one was a very generous description. Alex has got a good head on the shoulders, really good thinker, again, even if we disagree.

But yeah, man, I think just for people understand, it's like, man, this is such important because we'll dive into it in a minute in the text. Like, Second Timothy 3 says that all scripture is inspired by God, but it also says it's useful. It's actually something that impacts our lives. But if that's true, we got to, like, it throws people off and they see videos like that, or they even read things. Like, wait a second, I thought this other passage says this. That can really throw people off and therefore throw their faith off and their confidence in God's word.

And we want people to be confident in what God has said because what God has said will change your life. That's right now. So we really just want to help this not become a stomach buck to people. Think this is going to be really helpful. It's going to be great. By the way, do you know what movie I watched recently? What movie did you watch? Speed.

Okay, if you had not said that, I was going to do a follow of it, ask you if you finally watch speak. If you had never seen it, what do you think? People need to know, like, Josh and, Paul have this list of like really old movies that I got. Wow. I mean I mean they're not recent movies. Movies from my teenagehood. Yeah, really old. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying they're not recent movies. But I was say, bro, I will say up this rock I got here for fun. It was a great movie. It was a great movie. I enjoyed it. Amazing. I mean, it's it's hard not to like a young Keanu Reeves with a young Sandra Bullock. Yeah. Good old classic action. Man, I will say,

I will say this. They don't make movies like that anymore. No. No. No. Pop quiz, Hot Shot. Is that part of a movie? Yeah, that's part of the movie.

You're really paying attention. My goodness. Maybe I'll use that when we get to the contradictions. Wait, who said that? That was the bad guy. Oh, you're right. Yeah, the bad guy. You're right.

Yeah, yeah. He's got personality. Yeah, dude, for sure, dude. That's hilarious. But I love that you watched it and that you enjoyed it. Yeah, for people, again, who may be new to the podcast. This is an ongoing thing where Pastor Josh and I have a list of movies for Carlos, mainly movies from the 90s and early thousands.

I thought you guys would be... Just back when movies were good. I thought you guys would be encouraging me to read the Bible. You guys encouraged me to watch Tombstone, Breit Hart. Listen, Bible on one hand, those DVDs... Well, you don't do DVDs, but those movies are VHS. You know what? Okay.

Wow. I'm feeling some animosity, just rising in my heart to you, bro. You know what? We got to talk about the Bible. A couple things before we do. Man, we want to... So this weekend, it's a big weekend. this upcoming weekend, why?

Oh, we've got baptism weekend coming up this weekend, bro. Here at Lake Point. Man, yeah, here at Lake Point in person, we're going to be baptizing hundreds and hundreds of people. And we do this as a celebration of what God has already done their life. So we don't do this in order to save people. We do this because God has already saved these people. But it's a way for them to go public with their faith

and for us to join them and celebrating what God has already done in their lives. And it's amazing. We've got people who hundreds already signed up, but then also what always happens without fail is that people will be there and they'll see what God is in in their life and they'll feel a conviction of like, man, he's done that in my life too, but I've never taken this step. So oftentimes we'll give an invitation to people to come down

and we will be there after the service is over for like half an hour sometimes seeing people be baptized. So really powerful, if you can make it in person, would encourage you, especially if you're here in the obvious of the DFW area. How did someone sign up if they're actually local, if they're a part of Lake Point or if they're local and can join us in person, how would they sign up? Yeah, we'd love to help you out.

If you are within driving distance or, or if you call Lake Point Your Church Home, text the word life to 20411, and we love to follow up with you personally. It's going to be great. It's going to be a great part. And even if you've already taken that step, this is a great weekend to come. Celebrate. Because when we do baptisms here, we don't do like a silent little golf clap or anything like that.

Like we cheer and we hoot and holler. That's right. It's going to be fun. Come play. I was going to make a joke about Frozen Chosen Reform and how we... Don't do that. Okay. That's for another time.

Okay. Hey, if you're on YouTube or Spotify, we'd love to give away hats. We got free giveaway every single week. So comment hat in the description or sorry, in the comments on YouTube or Spotify. Also, to get our live free merch, you can go to live free. Dot shop or text the word hat to 20411. Thank you for subscribing on YouTube, all the places. Bro, YouTube's got like blowing up recently.

It's a little wild. It's been insane. Honestly. So praise God for that. We are passionate about not so much numbers, but really just reaching one more. So, man, if this is helpful, that encourages us a lot. lot, one of my favorite things, Paul, is to hear people share then how this can be helpful for their own personal life, for their group. So praise God for that also to download the Lake Point

app. Again, if we're just trying to be helpful, giving you resources and things that you can use to deepen your faith, you can, through the Lake Point app, you can get the daily Bible reading plan, the weekly sermon, an early release of this episode with the one and only chat Gipal C, the epistle, reload it. And you can also get the discipleship guide, text the word apt to 2041 or go to Apple or Google Play Store. moment. Hey, bro. Week number five, fight the good fight. Almost, man. Last few weeks of the series, it's crazy. It's great. What do you think? Oh, man. Incrab. PJ knocked it out. Pastor Josh didn't knocked it out of the park, as usual, man. It was just incredible,

incredible. What about you? Anything laying on you either from what he said or maybe some nuggets from 2nd Timothy 3 in the passage that stood out to you? I think 2nd Timothy, Paul, is probably one of my favorite books because, you know, there's just so much in there. One thing that, as I was reading through this text, I had to, you know, I stand out to me is when you read the Bible, you need to understand. The Bible is not just a mirror to look at, but a lens to look through. That's good. So what you need to do is you need to grab your Bible, and then what you need to understand is you can see the world through the lens of the word. So we don't just look at the word, we look through the word and into the world. So we can understand what's going on out there by what we read in here. So let me just read one more time, 2 Timothy chapter 3. This says, but understand this that in the last days, there will come times of difficult.

for people will be lovers of self. That's an interesting way to phrase what it's saying. Lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless. Check out these words. Unapesable. Slanderous. Without self-control. Brutal.

Not loving good. Treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit. Lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Having the appearance of godliness but denying its power. And then Paul tells Timothy, hey, Timothy. avoid such people. So a couple of things, again, we're looking at the word,

through the word to see the world. Bro, this is literally like a description of our culture. Paul's talking about the last days, like when you look at our social media saturated world, lovers of self, proud, arrogant, unholy, heartless, unapesable, slanderous. Like, literally the whole list. The Bible is so irrelevant.

It doesn't speak to anything. the world is actually like. Like, and then it says people having an appearance of godliness, but denying its power. And then it says, avoid such people. By the way, Christians are called to be loving, compassionate, reach out to people to share the gospel. And the Bible commands Christians to avoid some people. Those two things are true.

And so when you read this particular list, what you'll find, Paul, is there's a theme here of repetition of being a lover of something. So it says lovers of self. lovers of money, not lovers of good, lovers of pleasure, not lovers of God. It's almost a safe of Paul saying, hey, Timothy, watch out what your highest love is because if you make you your highest love,

everything else becomes distorted. All your other affections becomes distorted. And then another thing that I find interesting, again, he's talking about the quote unquote last days. That there will be times of difficulty. And then in the last days, it says that people will be lovers of selves. bro, has there been any other generation in history that has been a quote unquote a lover of self? Oh, it's insane, man.

Social media, like today think about it. We literally are the generation that we have our own little websites with my name and my likes, my opinions, my thoughts, my photos. We are the generation that has championed self-expression, self-love, self-care, self-empowerment, self-esteem. And yet you see what's out there. And then when you read the Bible, what you find is Jesus' invitation is, Hey, it's not self-love, it's self-denial. That's good. Jesus said in Matthew 1624, if anybody wants to be my disciple, let him deny himself and take up your cross and follow me.

Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who lives but Christ who lives in me. Some people hear that and be like, whoa, like, this is so intense. It feels super radical. But biblical Christianity looks radical in a world that has normalized what God calls sin. Yes. And so again, when people read this verse, they'll be like, oh, yeah, the world out there is terrible. Actually, some people think Paul is talking about people in the church.

Yeah. Because it says that people will have a form of godliness, but they're going to be denying its power. And so again, I start here because as we are ready to talk about the Bible, Paul is telling Timothy, hey, Timothy, I'm trying to prepare you to lead faithfully in a world that is corrupt, heartless, unholy, and honestly, just difficult. And really, in order for you to be faithful, you're going to have to stand on the Word of God. You're going to have to be efficient at handling the Word of God. And you're going to have to be preaching the Word of God. What do you think? Man, I love what you just said.

I love the connection you just made between the idea of, hey, the behavior he talks about here at the beginning and what the world is normally like. And by the way, you're totally right. Like, has there ever been a generation in history that was more obsessed with ourselves? This is literally what we're seeing today. Even just think about some of the popular expressions that seem like benign and end. of like YouTube. I don't know if it's still this way, but in the early days of YouTube, like the catchphrase was broadcast yourself. Hey, bro, don't hate on YouTube. Talk about the other system. We're on YouTube. So again, I'm a little bit of a YouTube

fan over here. I'm not, I'm just saying, just think about that. That is how it visually advertised. It's like broadcast you. You can be the main star in the movie of your life or whatever you want to say. That's right. Even, and I noticed this, man, even 10 years ago when I was a student pastor and being on social media on Instagram and Facebook, the common things, thing was selfie, selfie, selfie, selfie, selfies. And I actually made this observation, a loving observation to some of my students that just said, hey, man, like, if I scroll

your feed on Instagram or on Facebook, in this case, you know, younger generation, maybe like TikTok, things like that, I can usually spot, like, the three or four things that are most important to you in your life. Like, the things that you're posting on there. So, man, if you're posting a lot of pictures of food and of hunting or whatever, it's like, oh, man, this person

loves to hunt, they love to eat, all that kind of stuff. Or, hey, they post a lot about sports. Okay, they love sports. So then I just said, hey, if every single picture you post is a selfie, what are you saying is most important in your life? Yeah. You. Yeah. And so I'm just saying like we are a generation, we are obsessed with ourselves. And yet I don't think that's any coincidence that this is also one of the most depressed generations. It's making it's miserable. Yeah, because the more we look inward, the more depressed we get. Because life was actually not meant to be focused on ourselves, but be focused outside of ourselves, ultimately on Jesus,

but then also on other people. So I love those observations. but I'll also love your connection to the Word of God because the idea is, man, these are increasing the world that we're living in. And if, man, we're going to be faithful in the midst of that world and if we're going to look different than that world, then ultimately we have to be grounded in what the Word of God says because there's what the world says we should chase after what we should be,

and there's what God's word says we should chase after and we should be. And so we've got to be grounded in it, and we have to have confidence in it. A few other things that stuck out to me, and then maybe even I think it would be helpful as we're setting up Really a conversation about the Bible and supposing contradictions in the Bible. It might be good for you to clarify for people of like, hey, like, what is the Bible? What is it? Not give some people some context.

Before we get there, some things that stood out to me. Paul here says that all scripture is God breathed or is inspired. All scripture is inspired by God, specifically looking at 2 Timothy 316. That word scripture is used 51 times-ish. That's a funny thing to say times-ish when I literally gave a specific number. around 50 times. Yeah, 51.7-ish, I don't know. You know, give or take, none.

But yeah, it's around 50 times in the New Testament. And in almost every place, it's talking about the Old Testament. However, there is a place that gives us a sense that it is not only talking about the Old Testament. And admit, I want to talk about how Jesus viewed the Old Testament, how he viewed the Bible. But in most of the time in the New Testament, it's talking about the Old Testament. There's actually another place where it seems to be broader than that. It doesn't seem to be. It is broader than that.

In 2 Peter 316, Peter uses the word scripture in an interesting way. He's talking about Paul's letters. Interesting. And he's counting giving some things to people and helping people understand some things. And I love what he says. He says, there are some things in them in Paul's letters that are hard to understand, which, by the way, I just love that. That should be encouraging to people that if you've ever been reading Paul and you're like,

what in the world is he saying here? And this is tough for me. The Apostle Peter literally had the exact same opinion. He literally had the exact same opinion. Like the guy who was with Jesus for like three-ish years. Yeah. And who, by the way, wrote his own letters. Like Jesus' best friend, basically.

That's right. And who wrote part of the Bible. And he said, yeah, sometimes I don't even know what Paul is saying, man, I'm right there with you. But he says, okay, they have some things that are hard to understand which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. So he's saying, hey, they take what isn't God's word and they twist it. They manipulate it. But here's what's so interesting, as they do the other scriptures.

So the other scriptures here, Peter is talking about the Old Testament, but he just put Paul's letters on par with the Old Testament right there. So we already get the sense that what is happening is they recognize, not just Paul, but the other apostles writing in the New Testament as authoritative God breeds scripture. Now let's talk about how Jesus views scripture, how he sees the Old Testament. I think this will help us to start to kind of begin to weave a little bit of a tapestry of things we're going to be talking about. Jesus says in John 1035, speaking of the Old Testament, Testament, that scripture cannot be broken. In the context, he is saying that, hey, scripture has said

this, it can't be broken. So what it said can't then, therefore, be wrong. In John 17, 17, he says, sanctified them in your truth. Your word is truth. Mark 1236, introducing Psalm 110, which was written by David. Jesus says this, David himself, in the Holy Spirit, declared. So right there we see, hey, yes, David wrote what he wanted to write, but actually it was the Holy Spirit who inspired him. So Jesus himself believe that the Old Testament was inspired by God. If you don't believe me on that one, look at Matthew 19, 4 through 5. Jesus is teaching on marriage, and he refers to the book of Genesis. And there he says, he created, who created them, Adam and Eve said.

So in the original context, God isn't directly speaking. It's the narrator of Genesis describing it. And yet, Jesus says that what the narrator? Narrator said, God himself said. That's interesting. So here's why this is important. Jesus had a high, high view of scripture. He believed the O Testament was inspired by God,

that it was God's breath, his words on a page. And so if we're going to be followers of Jesus, we should probably have the same opinion as Jesus on the Bible. And so at the end of the day, when people begin pointing out contradictions or they begin saying, hey, it's not just the word, it's not the word of God. These are not God's, these are human words. I'm like, hey, if I believe that Jesus was the son of God,

that he predicted his death, he predicted his resurrection, and then accomplish it, I'm going to go with whatever he says. Yeah, he's probably right. He probably knows what he's talking about. He knows more than you. If a guy, you know, if a guy basically claims to be the son of God and that you're going to kill me and then he pulls it off, you should probably just go and defer to him on anything else he says.

And so if he is saying that the scripture is God breathed, that is inspired and that what God's word says is what God himself is saying that, just what humans have said, I'm going to go with him. So those are just a few things that stuck out. That's great. But that being said, let's kind of maybe begin to kind of slide into talking about contradictions in the Bible, maybe just give some context for people before we get into these and how to approach these contradictions.

Like, what is the Bible? What is it? Yeah, let's start with, so again, we're getting ready to talk about Bible contradictions. Let's start with what the Bible is not and what the Bible actually is. So this is probably a simple way to start. What the Bible is not, it's not just another book. So as we talk about some of these contradictions, Paul, what we can't do, man,

is we can't just literally grab the Bible and be like, well, let me just get this book from my bookshelf and let's just open it up and see if it contradicts itself. Like, this is not just another book. If you zoom out all the way, the Bible is the best-selling book of all time in history. I believe it's Guinness World Records Data

says that it's been over 5 to 7 billion copies have been printed, sold, distributed historically. And by the way, there is literally no other book that comes even close to that. Nothing close. The Bible is the most translated book in history. As of 2025,

it's been translated to over 4,000 of the world's 7,000 living languages. And in addition to that, more than 99% of the world's population has access today to at least some scripture in a language that they do use. And so again, no comparison with any other book. So it's not just another book.

Here's what the Bible is. Paul, we have a lot of like brand new Bible readers, people that are like, I kind of grew up in charge, but never really cared about it. But today I just bought my first Bible. Like, we have a lot of those. So let me, for some people, this might be kind of obvious. For a lot of people, probably not, especially if you're into the Bible.

The Bible, we have a couple of Bibles right here. So the Bible is a collection of books written over a period of roughly 15 centuries. Thousands of years ago by more than 40 different authors in different context with different socioeconomic statuses, with different writing styles. in different literary genres across three different continents and in three different languages. And even while all of that is true, all of it points to one gospel, one message

when we find that in one person in his name is Jesus. That's the Bible. Now, you and me and people in our culture, we're so familiar with Scripture that we treat this as if it's just another book. But when you look at history, like there is literally no comparison. there's actually a series of quotes from the most influential people in history that are, I could literally list the whole thing.

Let me just share a couple. Napoleon Bonaparte, shout at French. He said, the Bible is no mere book but a living creature with a power that conquers all that opposes it. Can you now translate into French? No, I'm not going to do that right now. I'm tempted. You're tempted me now.

I'm tempted. Don't take a thing, bro. Carlos is that French is one of the 17 languages that Carlos speaks. We need to keep going to. Isaac Newton, he says, we account the scripture of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatsoever. So real quick, because that's actually sets up for people who, you know, like, oh, these are obvious contradictions. The Bible contains errors.

Isaac Newton is, you know, a little bit of a heavy hitter intellectually. By the way, he's a little smart. That's not a theologian. That is, you know, anything we pretty much begin to know about physics. It begins with my God Isaac Newton. You know, just saying, he's got some weight to him. He's a decently smart guy. He's not an idiot reading the Bible.

You know, he's got... I decided to cut in there. Keep going. He makes a couple good points. Keep talking. John Quincy Adams, that's the sixth president of the United States. He said, the Bible of all books in the world is the one that contributes most to make men good, wise and happy.

Okay, so even today when you look at the Bible, the Bible is actually illegal, totally banned, restricted or dangerous to own in countries like North Korea, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya, Iran, and Algeria and more. Now, you hear all of this, you know, like, man, how can this ancient document or ancient collection of books be so influential, so consequential, so treasured in history, and yet at the same time, so opposed, so maligned, so hated, and so dangerous? Here's why.

Because the Bible was written down by man, but it was authored by God. It's good. There is no other book like it. So when we approach it, one, it's going to be a sense of humility, which often you see we're lacking this. in some of these conversations, but you have to approach it with at least a respect of like, hey, even if you don't believe in what it says, you got to acknowledge that this is not just another book. So this is a couple of things I would say.

Paul, you are going to share with us a couple of theological terms regarding what we believe about the Bible. What are those? Yeah, before I get there, I just want to, man, you did such a good job there, Carlos. That was so good, just kind of giving us that context. Yeah, just maybe even a couple things to have. on. One is just to help you understand just how insane it is when you're reading this. Because this, I'll even get into this way, as like when I said earlier, and I probably should even get in context in, is that when it says this is inspired by God, that all

scripture is God breathe. It literally is it's God's breath on a page. Yes, it's human authors writing this in their genre, their style with their vocabulary over your said at 1,500 years. And yet if it says it is inspired by God, the idea is that they are saying what they want to say, but God is saying what he wants to say through them. And so simply put, inspiration means that the words of Scripture are God's word themselves in such a way that to disbelieve or disagree with anything this says is to disbelieve or disagree with God himself, because these are his words on a page. Can I ask you a question? Well, hold on. Let me say one more thing. Let me say one more thing. You can ask you the question. But I just, I wanted to connect it to a personal thing. That means

that, like, when you're reading scripture, like, think of this, like, how did God? God create in Genesis. He spoke creation into existence. Let there be light and there was light. In scripture, it talks about how often when God speak, the earth shakes. And so what that means is when I'm reading God's word, I'm reading the same voice in the same words. Wow. I may not hear it audibly, but I am reading those words. And so in the same way that God's simple voice in his words had the power to bring the universe, to bring creation itself into existence, imagine what can it bring into existence in my life? Imagine the power can exert in and through my life. So again, this is, when we say this, this isn't simply to know academic things about the Bible, it's because we believe that

God's word is powerful in general. It brought the heavens and the earth into existence, and it can be powerful in our lives. And I just want to make that connection with people of why this matters so much. We're about to say, no, no, no, actually keep going, because I'll ask after. Yeah, and so when we say, when we say that the idea of that the Bible is inspired, we're not saying that humans were robots and that they didn't write what they wanted to write. No, again, they wrote in different genres and styles of their day. We're also not saying that God kind of picked up a telephone

and called him and said, hey, now I want you to write this sentence and now that I want you to write that sentence. Instead, there's this faincy of little doctrine. Although I will say there are parts in scripture that says, thus says the Lord. There are some parts. That's usually more in the prophetic literature. There you go.

But like with the Apostle Paul, he's writing to a letter to a people at that time. That's right. And he has a message for people at that time. And yet the Holy Spirit was inspiring to write it because not only did God want to say something to the people at that time, he wanted to say something to all people for all time. That's right. God's word was timely to them and it's timeless for us and for me now.

And so that's the idea of inspiration is that God has a message to say to them, but he also has a message to say to us. And so it was the authors of Scripture wrote what they wanted to write, but the author, God, had them write what he also wanted them to write. It's called congruence, the idea of both things can be true. They wrote what they wanted to write, but yet they also wrote what God wanted them to write. So it's something you wanted to double-click on that before we talked about in-er-and-cy.

Keep going, keep going, because we're going to take it. There's all these different places we could take it. There's all these potential different places that we could take it. But still, I just want people to understand that. So then- So, hold on, because I'm trying to help people understand. Inspired, you're saying, means that men wrote what they wanted to write in a sense and led by the spirit to write, but it is God speaking through what they wrote.

Exactly. And that's where you even think about when I said earlier about what Jesus said. He said, David himself, in the Holy Spirit declared. And then he talks about it. Again, he quotes Genesis and he said, hey, God said this. But when he says God said, that's simply a narration part in the book of Genesis. So the words of the author of Genesis Moses were the words, Jesus says, of God himself. Both can be true at the same time. Then this gets us into a word called anerrancy.

So, hey, it's really the idea of that the Bible does not err, and it does not have errors in it. And this is key to qualifying things we got to say in the original manuscripts that it was originally written in and according to what God intended to say. And the idea is this, is that if God cannot lie and if he cannot err, the things that he would have people write and that are inspired by him would not contain lies and would not contain error in them. But we got to qualify and say, hey, in the original manuscripts, because we don't have the originals. We don't have the original thing that Moses or Paul or Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John wrote. Instead, we have copies. Now, we have thousands of copies. Overwhelming amount of copies. Overwhelming amount more than any other document in ancient history.

And so we can know with 99% accuracy of what the originals did say, but there are places where there are some variations. And what's amazing about our Bibles is it will literally give us notes and saying, hey, some manuscripts actually say this. And so we guess, hey, there might be not in discrepancy, but there might be some debates in some place where it says. But that's important because sometimes people say, well, hey, there's an error. It might be, the error might simply be that we don't know 100% certain what the original manuscript said. So God was in error, I mean, sorry, scripture was in there in the original manuscript and according to what he wanted to say. This is important, especially we're talking a little bit about,

hey, are there scientific contradictions? Well, if the Bible is intending to be a scientific textbook, then yeah, there might be some places where it seems like that's the case. But there are many cases where, hey, man, the Bible wasn't intending to make a scientific statement on a weather phenomenon or we'll talk about the sun, you know, rotating around the earth. That's not what an intended to say. So those are key, two key things that I need to say that will help set up for some of our ongoing conversation.

Anything you think I missed there that would be helpful? And by the way, I know for some people are like, oh, but what about the, we're literally about to, like we're going to go through specific examples, a whole bunch of them. it's going to be really fun. Because with that being said, like, hey, if I just said that the Bible's inspired, and these are God's words, and hey, if God can err,

we would say then that the Bible cannot air, cannot have errors in it, again, in the original manuscripts, then people are like, well, wait a second. It seems like there's places in the Bible that just straight up contradicted each other. How can that, that shows,

hey, Paul, that shows that what Second Timothy 316 says isn't true. The Bible does have errors. In fact, I think we got maybe a video to kind of show an example of this. You want to introduce it to us? Yeah, man. we, again, people live on social media and we're going to have a little fun here.

So this right here is a video of, man, somebody sent us this video, I suppose. And Paul here, reload it, will be sharing a response to this video. Okay. So I guess, Jason, let's play it. Yeah, so I can name a few contradictions in the Bible. So the Bible says that God is all knowing. Psalm 147 says that his understanding is infinite. 1 John 320 says that God knows all things.

Matthew 1030 says that he knows the number of hairs on our heads. But in Genesis chapter 18, God says he's going to go down to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to know how sinful they're being. And all-knowing God would know that. He wouldn't have to go down there. Also, an all-present God would already be there. Another contradiction, or, I guess, inconsistency, is that in the books of Matthew and Luke, in the resurrection story,

it says that the women who discovered the empty tomb ran off and told everyone that the tomb was empty. But in the book of Mark, it says that the women were afraid and didn't tell anyone. And then, of course, there's the whole God is love. But then it also says that love is patient and kind, never jealous or boast. But then it says that God is a jealous God. So how could God be love if love isn't jealous? But yeah, there are a lot more. There's... All right. Yeah. And so, like, yeah, you'll see stuff like this. Paul? What say you? I guess he's, I guess he's right. I guess, man, I've never seen those things before. And I have to abandon my whole faith now. Hey, first of all, first of all. Hey, man, don't bully him.

I don't want to bully him. I don't want to bully. Hold on. I got you, Paul. I got you. First of all, hey, hold on. I want to do this. To the young man sending that video, hey, thank you for sharing that video.

Yes. We love to respond to you. Yeah. But I will say, I want to, I want to, for people that are wrestling with some of these questions, hey, those questions are welcome. Yes. Like, it's okay to look at some things and be like, wait a minute. What about that? That's fine.

Yeah. Like, we want to talk about those things. Yeah. Now, so Paul. Well, a few things. I'm not going to go into every little thing you said. I think because some of the categories we're going to cover here in a bit will hit some of the things that he did say.

But here's what I will say. It's like, I see some videos like that. And usually just guys on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook Reels. And like for guys like that, you know, I would just say, man, I would love if I could to get a cup of coffee with that kid. Yeah, man. And just say, okay, well, let's talk about some of those things. Because most of those things that he threw out, if you just give me 30 seconds on most

of them, I'd say, hey, there's pretty plausible explanation. So, for example, on the whole, well, God is love, but then First, says that love is not jealous. It's a classic example where of, hey, the same word can be used in certain ways in certain contexts that would be appropriate in other ways that would be inappropriate. So, for example, yeah, it says love is not jealous, First Corinthians 13. And so, yeah, I should not be jealous if my wife were simply to say hello to a male co-worker. But I actually should be jealous if my wife slept with that male co-worker. Something's wrong if you don't have a sense of, quote, jealousy. Exactly, because jealousy is this sense of like an internal angst or even anger of the

idea of, hey, something that I think belongs to me. Well, in that case, if my wife is having a affair, she is giving what belongs to me to someone who does not, or is not supposed to have it. So in that case, I simply say, like, there's an example we say, yeah, on one level, jealousy is bad, but on that level, jealousy is actually an appropriate thing that I should be jealous for my wife's covenantal love. The reason I give that analogy is that usually when it says God is jealous in the Bible, it's in relationship to his people Israel. And it talks about unusual in context that they are his bride. And they are giving love to a different God or a different thing that only belongs to him. So I think that's just an example of many. We won't go into the rest, but I like,

hey, most of those are explained. But let me just say this. Like sometimes you'll see examples like that or small. But other times you'll see former Christians or former pastors who will go on there and they'll say, well, man, you know what finally did it for me. And the reason I had to deconstruct my faith is because I just had to eventually get a point where I was intellectually honest that there were contradictions and false things. So like the list five or ten obvious contradictions in the Bible that now that they're so honest and vulnerable and open that they have to admit. And I'm just going to be honest, these people drive me crazy. They annoy the crap out of me because those statements are so foolish in the grand scheme of history. So let's think about this.

Wow. So like man, yeah, for 2,000 years, no one noticed these errors or has created plausible answers for them. And so you came along and saw them. And then when you go and you do videos to talking about them, you don't give those plausible explanations. You just give your side of it. Man, thank you for your service. Well, hey, like, wow. You mean like people like Anselm and Augustine and Thomas Aquinas and Isaac Newton, as you said earlier. And C.S. Lewis and so many intellectual giants, well, man, they just must not have had the intellectual humility to acknowledge those contradictions that are so obvious. I am so glad that you are a God-given, giving. to the church and to the world, and now, whereas they were not able to be humility and be

honest, you have come along and done it for everybody. Congratulations. Give me a break. Like, I get it. You lost your old platform and now you've got to build a new one, and it's probably be better to do this than to sell use cars. Like, I get it. You got to do something.

But come on. So I know I'm getting fired up right now, and people are like, man, that was kind of low. But here's my thing is actually like, scripture does say correct people with patience. But there are places where Paul and others call out. people specifically if they're leading other people astray. So it fires me up specifically, not so much about videos like we just saw, but when I see ex-pastors or people who have deconstructed, who are throwing out these things that there's good explanations for. So that being said, now that I've been into a little bit and I got it off. I got it out. You got more?

You got more? Thanks for being my thing. Oh, I got more. I had to filter. I didn't want to go too specific. It took a little water, bro. I need to get a little water. We need to get some coffee over here. Okay. That being said, okay, it fires me up because man, like when people do that, a lot of people who don't like know what to do these things, it destroys their faith. Now, by the way, they're going to have the answer for that. Bro, that's so true. So that's why you see me getting fired up, man, Paul really took that personally. Yeah, because I've seen how some people who don't know what to do with that, it wrecks their faith

and it shouldn't. And so actually, before we jump in, we're going to give in a few minutes five like big categories of types of contradictions and some of the leading types in each one. Before we do want to do that, I just want to give a simple framework for how do you respond to videos like what we just saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how do you respond to videos from like ex-passers or ex-famous Christians saying they're deconstructing because of these glaring, obvious contradiction? Okay, hold on.

You addressed a jealousy thing from the talker. He mentioned, too, that God seems to be asking questions he didn't know before. Is that what? Like, you know, let me just, like, I play with my four-year-old son every single night. I'll be like, before going to bed, he'll hide. And I'll say, where are you? I don't see you. Yeah.

I know where he is. Yeah. because I'm his father. And so when God seems to be asking questions and when he seems to not know one thing, he knows. It's what a fancy phrase for that is called anthropomorphic language, is that God has to use language we can understand. To help us understand a God, we can't completely understand. And so even for example, there's one passage where it says God changed his mind. And yet in the exact same passage, it says, God is not a man that he should change his mind.

So it's almost like he's trying to say to us, hey, from your perspective, it's going to look like I changed my mind. But I'm not like you where I do that. He's just trying to communicate. I think Calvin calls it baby talk. He has to communicate to us through baby talks. Yeah. But let me just give a framework for like, whether is this video or like more sophisticated ones, like if you're a Christian, what do you do?

Here's the first thing. Don't freak out. As I already kind of said, as I was going on my little rant a few minutes ago, is that for the last thousands of years, people have seen these things and very smart people have come up with very plausible explanations for seeming contradiction. So when you see videos like this, don't freak out if they bring up something you've never thought about because someone else has thought about it and probably given a really good answer for it. There's a few good resources you can go to. One is like Zondervin.

If you look up like Zondervin, book of Bible difficulties or something like that, it's a great book that will literally go book by book of the Bible and point out some of these things and give plausible explanations for him. You've also got guys like Wes Huff, Gavin Oortland, Frank Cherokee's been a guest. They're great. Man, you just go. If you ever hear one, like just Google and see. if someone has given a response to it. Just know, like, if you first encounter it, don't freak out. Like, we've had the Bible for a long time. People have given very plausible answers. The other thing I tell people of why not to freak out is the early church would have seen these things, too,

especially when we start talking about the Gospels. They would have seen supposed to contradictions, and yet it didn't freak them out. Why? Probably because they had access to information we didn't have. If they really thought it completely, like the gospel's completely contradicted each other, they probably would have said, well, hey, we only got to pick one of these, which is the right one. But yet got all four. So they probably just knew some things that we unfortunately today don't know. Okay. Second thing to do, don't freak out number one. Number two, define contradiction correctly. So even like if I'm talking to one of these people, if I were talking with the person, I would say, hey, what do you mean by contradiction? Because the law of non-contradiction says this, something cannot be

A and non-A. So the classic example is that, hey, Carlos, you and I cannot be married bachelors. Those are mutually exclusive. I'm saying like separately. You mean obviously. You cannot be a married bachelor. Because by the proper definition of those, those are mutually exclusive, it is impossible to reconcile them. Or like, here's the thing. I can't say, Carlos, I only, that's the key word, I only have one arm and I have two arms. Those are mutually exclusive. So a contradiction is something that is impossible to reconcile. A difference is something that is possible to reconcile.

So, for example, if I say there is a table in this room, is that correct? That's correct. If I say, and people won't be able to see this because they can't see the whole room, there are two tables in this room. Is that correct? That's correct. That is correct, because there is a table off camera over there. In this case, I was focusing on this particular table. So where this helps is that you'll get in some accounts like, hey, well, was there one angel with the tomb or was there two?

Yes. Because in the synoptic gospel, that's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We're going to say that a few times. Where if it says, if it focuses on one angel, it doesn't say only one. It's just focusing on a specific. So again, you've got to define contradiction correctly. Number three, you've got to realize that most. of the supposed contradictions in the Bible are based on logical fallacies or improper interpretive

techniques. Not just at the Bible, but of literature in general. Can I give a few? And then we can riff together on these? One is that just because something is unexplained doesn't mean it's unexplainable. This is a logical fallacy. It's like, oh, well, it doesn't explain this. So therefore, it must be unexplainable, must be a contradiction. That's not true. Kenneth Cancer, who is a theology, a professor who would tell this story. of a mother or a friend of his who was killed. And he first learned of it through a mutual friend who said that the mother had been standing on a street corner

and been hitting by a bus and died shortly after. Sometime later, he was talking to the grandson of that grandmother who had got information from his mom, so the grandmother's mom, saying, actually, like, she died because she was in a car, got in an accident and was thrown out and was killed instantly. It's like, well, wait a second. These two are contradictory. One said she got hit by a bus and died shortly after.

The other one said she got thrown from a car. Well, eventually he was able to get both the grandson and the friend in the same room and he has already found out. The mother and slash grandmother was hit by a bus. A car came by and saw her put her into the car to take her to the hospital. On the way there, that car got into an accident because she wasn't strapped down, she was thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly. Wow.

So actually, there was an explanation. It wasn't contradictory. It was complimentary. So here's the thing we got to know. is that what Dr. Cancer was able to do was to get those people in the same room. Well, we're 2,000 years removed now from the gospel specifically, and more than that from the Old Testament. We can't do that, but what we can do is we can't ask, are there at least plausible explanations for the differences that we see in Scripture? There's other things that we can say, but we'll get to it as we get to the Gospels.

Here's one last thing. This is a really and really important one. When it comes specifically to the Gospels and the differences in them that we're going to double-click on today and some that we won't have time for, Here's what I like to tell people, focus on what the critics can conveniently ignore. And that is where they are actually in unanimous agreement. There you go. So you'll see videos like this and other videos that we'll see from Alex O'Connor, and they'll focus on what the Bible seems to not have in common.

The gospel specifically, I'm like, no, no, no, focus on what they do have in common. Every gospel agrees that there is a man named Jesus, that he performed miracles, that he preached and taught on the kingdom of God, that he predicted his own death and resurrection, that he was then arrested, charged with blasphemy, convicted, put to death on a cross, and then rose on the third day. They all agree on that. Focus on what they do, agree on. And even, like, extended it beyond that, I did some research.

And the places where all the Gospels relate the same event, 80% of the time, they completely agree with each other. And the remaining 20% of the time, about 12 to 15% of those, are things that are very easily explainable. And so only in about 5% to 10% of the cases, do we have something that's moderately difficult, to pretty difficult to explain. So here's an analogy I use. I know we're getting a little long wind on this, but I think that this is really important

as an overall framework, and then we'll just address a few of the specifics. Yeah, we're gonna go to specifics here in just a second. We're actually gonna go to click on some common ones that people bring up. Is this, is this a common analogy? If people have never seen this, it's usually used for something different,

but I have a jar here. If you're not watching on YouTube or Spotify video or something, I've got a jar here. And it looks like it's mainly sand, but actually at the core, are some really big rocks, some small pebbles, and then I filled in sand, and it all fits in there together. If you've never seen this analogy, if I took everything out and I put the sand and the pebbles in first, the big rocks would not be able to fit in. That's right.

But because I put the big rocks in first, followed by the smaller pebbles, followed by the sand, it all could fit in there. Here's why I'm saying this, is that oftentimes people want to focus on these small places where there seems to be, again, where there just seems to be disagreement. and they don't focus on the big areas where they all agree. And what interests me is that sometimes even just taking a piece of saying, like, we'll take such a small, minor place where it seems like they disagree. Or I've got here a pebble over here. We'll take something like we'll get to in a minute. Like, hey, why does the Book of John put the cleansing of the temple first

where the other Gossus put it later? And almost towards the end of his ministry. We'll take this. And basically, we've got these other huge rocks, things that the Bible agreed on and that there's great plausibility around things like the resurrection. of Jesus. And we'll say, well, hey, because I can't explain this one little pebble, well, then I guess

I have to drop this big rock. And this is silly. I would just say, hey, if you're a believer, and at the end, I want to follow up on this and say, hey, if you're actually interacting with a skeptic, what can you do? I want to give you, I hate to say ammunition because it's not a fight, but I'm going to give you just some tools for your tool about. Here's what I'd say is, hey, you can still hold on to all the places where scripture unanimously agrees as you're wrestling with some places where it seems to disagree.

You don't have to abandon your faith that has been time tested and true for something that is really small in comparison. Does that make sense, Carlos? That's a good word, Paul. And, man, say that last line one more time. Because honestly, it's really important. Say it one more time. You do not have to abandon your faith that is based on the big places of Scripture where everyone agrees and that has been time tested and is true. That has been time tested and is true.

That has been time tested and is true. That has been time tested and true. If you're wrestling with a specific issue right now, you're something. now and you're listening to this, listen, you're not the first person to wrestle with it. Exactly. And it's like, am I, I'll get specific. Again, am I really going to throw away my belief that I'm holding up here a rock if people can't, if they're not watching a big rock? Am I really going to throw away my belief in the resurrection of Jesus? Because, oh, in one account, it says there is one demoniac, another account it says two. Am I really going to throw all that away

for this? So I also want to highlight, man, the reason I want to go back to, because you were getting fired up here, and we were kind of joking about it, but I do want to emphasize. Paul, and I know you, I know this is true about you. The reason you're getting so fired up is not because you're just trying to win an argument, but because what you believe about the Bible, your ideas, they have consequences. Yes. And I say this out of the experience, because here in just a second, I might share a little bit of a faith crisis I had like over 10 years ago regarding what I believe about what scripture

is and what it was not because I was listening to some of the voices out there as a young, recently graduated student that were telling me things that, like you said, oh, like, hear me out. I just discovered this one little detail that nobody told you about, but now I'm giving you this information. And guess what? You should throw away all your faith because of it. And guess what?

Like, if you believe those lies, it'll mess your life. It'll wreck your life. Yeah. It matters what you believe about what is true and what is not true. and if the word of God is true, then if you don't believe that, like there's consequences to that. Exactly, and I do,

and I'm so glad you said because I want to even clarify something. When I got really fired up earlier, I was directing that at people who were trying to tear down the faith of others. And again, I think that's actually a good, righteous anger that should be directed. And sometimes we have to call people out

that are doing that. And again, we see the examples of that scripture. I don't want people to think, if you're out there and you have honest questions that you can't ask those questions. No, no, like, if anyone who's ever approached me with questions, with that. I genuinely go, yeah, well, let's walk through. So I just want to make sure

and double-click on that because I even like- Every single every single weekend in the lobby, literally I get people come to me with a bunch of questions. And it's so much fun. And so if you're out there and you see stuff, don't think like we're saying, you can't ask questions. No, I was directing that towards people who are trying to tear others down. That's right. What we're actually saying is, let me put it in a way that's a classic set way. And then let's get to some of the specific contradictions, is that what you need to have as a Christian is the idea of you can have faith seeking understanding. You can say, hey, I'm going to hold on to the big things of scripture that are

obviously true. Then I'm going to hold on that are time-tested and true. And hey, if there's something I don't understand, I don't have to throw away my faith because of these small little things. I can hold on to my faith while I'm seeking plausible explanations for the things that I cannot explain. That's what we're saying. Is I saying, hey, don't throw out everything that is time-tested and true for the things that I can't explain, especially if they're really small. So here's what we're going to do right now. We're going to go through five different types of quote-unquote Bible contradictions, and these are different categories. And we're going to help you think through some of the these. We're going to go through specific examples. We're going to react to a video from our

friend Alex O'Connor. It's going to be really fun. And so Paul, go ahead. Number one, what's the first one. Yeah, oftentimes what you'll see, especially in the Old Testament, is numerical contradiction. So you'll have one account of one event that says this amount and then another account to say this amount. Or one says, hey, they were this old. And other one says they were this old. And so again, this is mainly in the Old Testament. Like one of the classic examples, it is Second Samuel 24-9 versus First Chronicles 21-5. giving different census figure. So in Second Samuel, it says,

Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king. In Israel, they were 800,000 valiant men. That's a key phrase I want to come back to, who drew the sword. In First Chronicles, it says, and Joab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to David. In all Israel, there were 1,100,000 men who drew the sword. One says 800,000.

One says 1,100,000. That seems like an obvious contradiction. So let me say something in general about how, how to approach this. A couple general pointers. Number one, you have to remember, when we say the Bible does not error, we said in the original manuscripts.

So not in this case actually, but in many cases where there's a numerical difference, oftentimes it's because there's differences in manuscripts. And again, when you're reading the Bible, it'll usually take a note, but that's also where getting a good resource like that book I mentioned earlier is really helpful to you.

Because it'll let you know, hey, when is it because there's different variations? And here's why I tell people it was like, hey, that shouldn't throw you off. Yeah, and why would you find some variations because people literally hand-wrote the copies. Yeah, and in places where this is happening, and I'm talking about census figures.

Here's where we don't have variations, for example, in the New Testament. Jesus rose in the grave, oh, then there's another manuscript. He didn't erase in the grave. Usually this is over really minute stuff of numerical figures and things like that, where this is happening. In this case, this is actually not what's happening. It said, let me give just a simple plausible explanation for how you could approach this. Well, in one passage in Second Samuel said that he gave the number,

and it was 800,000 valiant men, or that word in Hebrew can mean mighty men, battle-tested men, people who had seen combat. Where the other one, it doesn't use that phrase. It just talks about, in all Israel, there were 1,100,000 men. So a very plausible explanation is that in 2nd Samuel, he's saying these are the battle-tested men who have seen combat. And First Chronicles is saying these are all the eligible people who can fight, not just 800,000, but another 300,000 men who have been eligible to fight

but haven't seen combat yet. Classic analogy is like in the Second Lord of the Rings, you know, there's a battle scene where they are facing an enemy and you had some soldiers that had seen combat and were battle tested, but they're so outnumbered that eventually they described pretty much any boy who can hold a spear or a sorting draft a men. So like, let's say there were 400 of soldiers

in that Battle of the Rings, so it's seen combat, and then there was 200 boys that were added into because they needed all hands on deck. It would both be accurate to say that there were four, 400 soldiers at that battle and that there were 600 men or males at the battle. Both can be true. Hey, Live Free Nation, let's have fun with this and swing some elections in all seriousness. Midterm elections are obviously coming up in November. In the state of Texas, there's an estimated 16 million Christians, and the midterm elections coming up in November will be decided

by a predicted, actually, about 300,000 votes. So what this means is if Christians do their job as salt and light in the world, good things really easy. happen. So what we've done to live free nation is we actually built a website to help mobilize Christians to do our job assault and light in society. So you can simply text the word vote to the number 20411. Text the word vote to 20411 and we have built a website all at our own expense to help Christians remember to vote leading up into the midterms because the number one reason that Christians don't vote especially in midterm elections is they just forgot. So with one text vote to 20411 you will get one text which is a link to the website where you can put in your

address we do not keep any of the information and it will tell you where the polling location is for voting in your area when to come and what in your area you need to bring again we keep absolutely none of the data and we will send you that text and then only one other reminder text right before midterms so let's have some fun with this text vote to 2041 and we'll see what live nation can do. That's a great example. So first category is numerical contradictions. Category number two would be historical slash factual contradictions. And this would be more so the quote unquote the contradiction that says, well, you said that it happened this way. And somebody else said that that event happened a different way. Same event, but then different details. So perfect example is

this video of Alex O'Connor. Again, he's an English YouTuber and podcaster. Bright thinker. Appreciate the question that he's been asking recently. So we're going to react to this video. Let's go ahead and play it. We begin with the birth narratives. There are two narratives in the Gospels in Matthew and Luke. Both give different accounts. Okay, stop right there, Jason. Okay, so Alex says two birth narratives, both give different accounts.

So let me just rephrase what he just said. Here's what I would say. Both Matthew and Luke tell the same birth story, but they emphasize very different details. Now that's true. And to your point, Paul, again, they both say that Mary is Jesus' mother. They both say that Joseph is the father. They both say that Mary was a virgin.

that Mary conceived of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Again, this is the same story, but they emphasize very different details. Now, why would they emphasize different details? So a couple of things, this is a big conversation. Let me just give it to you quick. They have different audiences. So Matthew speaks primarily to Jewish people. Luke is a gospel primarily spoken to a more universal audience.

Also, as with every biography, this is just how it works. You cannot include every single detail of everything that happened in somebody's life. So the biographer will choose what to highlight and what not to highlight. That's what's going on here. So different details and aspects of the events are emphasized. But like you said, different does not mean contradictory. No. There is no place where Matthew explicitly says X happened.

And then here comes Luke. And then he says X did not happen. Again, different does not mean contradictory. Let's keep, let's keep watching. The genealogy of Jesus, for example. But the genealogies are different. More importantly, Matt- Okay, stop right there.

So he said the genealogies are different. Which, by the way, is true. Different gospel writers. means different audiences, means different purposes for the genealogies, which means that there are some differences when you compare both genealogies.

Now, this is probably the, quote-unquote, the trickiest example of the differences in the genealogy. So Matthew says Joseph, the father of Jesus is the son of Jacob. Luke, on the other hand, says Joseph is the son of Heli, or Eli? Yeah, I think Heli.

Heli, okay. Luke says Joseph is the son of Heli. So which one is it? Is it Jacob or Heli? So let me start here. One, like you said, man, this is not a new discovery. No.

Christians have been talking about this for literally for 2,000 years. There are potential explanations by early Christians of what could be going on here from like 100 to 200 years after the events of the New Testament happened. One possible explanation, it is possible that Joseph, the father of Jesus, had a biological father and another father in the legal slash genealogical sense. And this is what we see in Deuteronomy chapter 25. It speaks about what people call a leverate marriage. Yes, right.

which says that if brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, the wife of the other brother should marry the brother, and then the firstborn son will carry the name of the brother that had died. So that particular son would have a biological father and another father in a legal genealogical sense. And by the way, this is an explanation given by Julius Africanas, who was an early Christian scholar in his historian that lived in AD 200. Wait, what you mean? So we're not just discovering this contradiction.

AD 200. Man. And by the way, when he explained why he, this is what happened, he said, man, this is, I got this from Jesus's family. That is literally what he said. So way early, nothing new. Here's another explanation. Matthew's purpose in giving the genealogy is not to give us ancestry.com is to trace Jesus back to

the lineage of King David. So what he does is, and you'll see this in his genealogy, he skips some generations. By the way, very common in genealogy this time. They were not trying to give a step-by-step thing. Instead, they would emphasize different people for different reasons. I just wanted to point that out to people. And so when you see him saying, this is the son of somebody, it doesn't necessarily mean that that's an immediate biological son.

It could just mean descendant. And we know this because Matthew chapter 1, verse 1 says Jesus is the son of David. We know that Jesus is not literally the biological son of David. And then he's the son of Abraham. We also know that Jesus is not literally the biological son of Abraham. It's a descendant. And there's more. but you get the point. Let's keep on. Let's go on.

You then says that the family traveled to Nazareth and he says, so was fulfilled what was said through the prophets that he shall be called in Nazarene, quoting the prophets. I'll notice if you read an online Bible that where the Old Testament prophets are quoted, there's a little footnote

telling you what the prophecy is. In this case you won't find one. Because the prophecy simply doesn't exist. It's not there. There's no such thing. So there are two options here. either Matthew made up this prophecy or got it wrong, in which case the New Testament is mistaken, or the prophecy does exist, but for some reason fell out of our scriptural tradition and now no longer exists, which makes the accuracy and at least the completeness of the Old Testament suspect.

Okay, great. Okay. Yeah. Um, or there's a third option or perhaps more options, um, not just two. You know, this is what some people call. Good debater always likes to frame the data in only his way. Good old false dilemma, either or fallacy. Exactly. Or there's a third option. So here's what's interesting. When you read Matthew, I'm actually reading Matthew in my personal time.

So there's like, I think it's like nine other specific prophecies that Matthew specifically quotes and says, hey, this has been fulfilled by Jesus. And every time he does so, he says the prophet. Then he names the specific prophet. And then he cites the actual prophecy. Now here in Matthew chapter 2 verse 23, he does not say the prophet. he says the prophets in plural. So he's not quoting a specific prophecy. Instead, he's nodding to something that the prophets, in plural,

have collectively expected or anticipated for the Messiah. And what was that? Matthew was saying that Jesus would come from a place like Nazareth, which was a place that was not impressive. It was obscure, lowly despised. And even if you remember, Nathaniel said, Nazareth, like what good can come from Nazareth? Or can anything good come from this place?

which means the Messiah would be someone that is lowly, obscure, not impressive, and he would be despised and rejected. Did the prophets, in plural, say that? Yes, they did. Isaiah 53. He was despised and rejected. Psalm 22. I am a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. Zechariah 9. Your king comes lowly and riding on a donkey. Lowly, obscure, not impressive, rejected. Can anything good come from Nazareth? And in addition to that, there's another prophecy in Isaiah 11. One, this is what it says. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.

So basically saying that David's dynasty is like this chopped down tree, like a stump. And from that stump, a branch will come out. The word branch in Hebrew is the word netzer. And so some people think that Matthew might be doing a little Hebrew play on words here by saying, hey, from the stump of David, they would be a branch, a netzer.

Jesus is the branch. Jesus is the Nazarene. Netser, Nazarian. Again, some people say, this is what could be going on. The whole point is, when you find something in scripture that you don't fully understand it, it doesn't automatically mean that it's a contradiction. Maybe it just means that you need to keep asking good questions and keep digging a little deeper. And I love that you pointed out, again, we mentioned earlier that so many of these are really built on logical fallacies.

And I love that you point out specifically, this is the logical fallacy of the false of them. You think, oh, there's only two options. There can't be anything besides the two. that I put forth. It's a classic Fowles. I just wanted to highlight. I want to highlight a couple other things. I think it's important to begin even connect to some dots with some different things we said. And then we'll move to the third category, which is probably one of the hardest categories, some of the hardest examples. And I guess I get to take that one. Thank you, Carlos. You're welcome. But I want to first quote, I think, Wes Huff, who said this, is that the Bible

was written for us, but it was not written to us. It's a key distinction. What that means is, I told earlier, how God's word was written in a timely way to the people that he addressed it but also in a timeless way that we can get things, and he's still speaking to us today. But it was not written to us, and we need to understand that it was written in the genre and in the styles of, in the case of the gospels, first century, first century ancient world.

And then if you're on Old Testament, even older. And so here's what we often do, especially skeptics, is we'll bring 21st century standards of historical chronology and history books and biographies, and we'll say, hey, if the Gospels are going to be, accurate, they have to abide by the same style, even though they were written 2,000 years before our time. This was often called chronological snobbery is what CSO. This one's called this in addition to some other things. And so we've got to remember that, hey, the Bible is conveying truth on its terms and in the

style that the first century, again, when we're talking about the new testament, first century authors wrote it and God was communicating through them and through their styles. And so, for example, in ancient biographies, there is this common set technique called compression, or they would omit certain things because to your point, they were wanting to focus on those things. So if you go and you actually read the post-birth narratives, it's like, well, hey, why is it that in one, they go to Egypt, but in the other, they don't, it feels like they're going to different places, because to your point, they're highlighting different things. There's a very common practice. In fact, I'm going to highlight another one here with our next one. I just want to double click on that and help connect

that for people. Differences, not contradiction. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So our third category, our chronological contradictions. These are places where it says, hey, especially now thinking about the Gospels. Hey, it seems like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John put this event here. I mean, sorry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke put this here, but John puts it elsewhere. So two big examples, and even beginning to connect some other dots, like some things that will throw out are like little grains of sand pretty easily explainable. These next two are kind of like decent-sized pebbles. These are some of the harder ones. And so because of that, they do require some more careful explanations. So, and some more careful than we've been doing. We've been going through these

pretty fast. So two big ones. One is that in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus cleanses the temple, he turns over the tables. This happens at the end of those Gospels right before Jesus is put to death and then is resurrected. In John, it happens at the beginning. So people look at this and say, well, wait, this is contradicting each other. The first three said that it happened at the end. John is saying it happened at the beginning. So two very plausible explanations for these. I actually don't think this one is hard as people make it out to be. One plausible explanation is that he does it twice. After all, he fed the multitudes multiple times. Even in the same gospel, you'll have him feeding to 5,000 and the 4,000. He heals the lame multiple times, a blind multiple times. He teaches

often the same material multiple times. So therefore, it would be illogical to say, hey, maybe he did it twice once at the beginning of his ministry, once at the end, kind of his bookends. So that's a very plausible one, although I actually hold more to the second one, that is this. In ancient biographies, it was very common for people to rearrange material chronologically to make a point thematically. This really throws us off as 21st century people. Our thought is, hey, history, the way that biography has to work is it's this and then this and then this. That is not the way they thought. In fact, Michael Lacona has written a great book called Why Are Their Differences in the Gospels,

where he examines ancient biography, specifically Plutarch, and shows how even in Plutarch's own work, he will often rearrange material. Interesting. He will leave out details sometimes the same story in different settings because he's wanting to emphasize different things. So one very plausible that I actually think is probably a little bit more likely than the first option I put forth is John puts that story first to emphasize something thematically. But if you actually go and read the reading, there's nothing in the reading of the story that says, oh, he went to the temple and then immediately after that he did this. He did this first. Instead he's rearranging to make a point or to kind of create some narrative tension or structure.

I mean, we actually still see some of this today. There are some biographies that move some stuff around chronologically because they're trying to focus on themes of a person's life. But then also, I thought about Mission Impossible Three. Come on, man. If you haven't seen Mission Impossible Three, great movie. Shout to Tom Cruise. Great movie. Tom Cruise, if you're listening to this.

We love you, man. Man, we're a big fan. And we all want to know what you and Taylor Swift were talking about at the game on Monday night. I don't know if you saw that this week on social meetings. That was in my Bible. You're so much holier than me. Anyways. That's a joke.

That's a joke. At the beginning of the movie, it actually at the beginning of the movie, it actually at the beginning begins at the end. It shows a scene of something that actually happens chronologically at the end, but he does it to introduce something. And then he goes back to the beginning. So it's like even I think we get a sense of this that oftentimes when people are telling a story, they'll take something and start from the end, put it at the beginning. But that doesn't mean that when they're making Mission Impossible Three, they're like, oh, they got this out of order. They're trying to make a point. What's your name? Huh? Ethan. Where's the rabbit's foot?

Do you know who you're talking to right now? I'm going to hurt her so bad. I really hope, I really, I do. Ethan, don't do it, Ethan. I really hope someone doesn't go, like, they don't accidentally click this part in the podcast. Like, what is wrong with Carlos right now? That's a good scene. Ethan, don't do it, Ethan. Ethan, I know who you are.

That's just an example of like, I can bring it this back. That's an example of something that, hey, that might feel foreign to us, but that's where I've got to remember. Hey, the Bible was written for me, but it wasn't written to me. And I can't bring my expectations of what I think, how it's. should be done to first century people and how they wrote at that time. Basically, learn how to read an ancient document. Yeah, in its terms, according to the way its style is done. Okay, here's a big one.

And I would actually say this is probably one of the top two most difficult ones, is that there seems to be a contradiction on the day that Jesus was crucified. So in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they all say that Jesus celebrated a Passover Seder, the Passover meal with the lamb and everything, on Thursday night. And then, so that would have been Passover on Thursday night, and then that he died on Friday. John makes it seem like that that Passover meal has not happened before Jesus died. Where you see this specifically is on John 1828. He says this, the Jewish leaders would not enter Pilots headquarters so they would not be defiled but could eat the Passover.

John 1914 also calls the day of Jesus' trial the day of preparation for the Passover. So people see that and they say, well, wait a second. If Jesus died on the day of preparation, one is saying he died on the day of the Passover, the other is saying that he died the day after it was celebrated. Which one says that he died on the day of Passover? The day of Passover would be John, would be John. And so it's like, well, hey, there's no way around this. This is an obvious contradiction.

So I think two of the best plausible ones, I lean more one towards the other. One is to say, this is another example of John changed in the chronology. They would say, hey, John really uses rich symbolism throughout his god. And right here, he's picking up on something that he had mentioned earlier in the gospel, where John the Baptist says, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And so John here, we got to remember John was the last gospel. So Matthew, Mark and Luke were already out there. And so when people are reading John, they're not going to read this and say, oh, he got it wrong. Instead, we're going to think, hey, what point is John trying to make here? Oh, he is having Jesus being slaughtered at the same time as the Passover lambs. John seems to be making the point that Jesus is the new land. lamb. He is the one who was slain. Behold the lamb. So that is a possible thing. I think it's plausible. I'm just going to be

honest, I wrestle with that one. That's one that if that were the case, when I got to heaven, I'd be like, hey, God, like, I trust you. But can you explain to me how, like, this seems like John is deliberately saying something that didn't happen in history to make a point. Can you explain how I can all these things together? But I say it that way to say again, I'm not

God. I'm not going to tell him how he should have written it. But sure, I personally wrestle with that one. Here's a different explanation. Here's a different explanation, is that they actually both agree, but it really comes down to what do these words mean? Two big things stand out. Number one is the idea that when they would say Passover, that didn't just mean that meal and that specific day on Thursday. Passover was a larger term that could represent not just one day or one meal, but all the festival days around it. So for example, in Luke 22-1, it says now the Feast of Unleven Bread, guess when that started?

Passover. Thursday night of Passover, and then it continued another seven days. Interesting. The Feast of 11 bread drew near, which is called the Passover. So right there, Passover is not just referring to one specific meal and day. It's a wider time frame. It's responding to a wider time frame. Interesting. And to a wider time frame. And so, you know, there's other places that kind of, you know, it's like right there, we would say,

so when the religious leaders say, hey, we got to eat the Passover, we don't want to be ceremonially and clean, they, the idea here is that they had already celebrated the Passover Seder the night before. they're going to another feast. Some people would call the Haggiga. They're going to that on Friday night. So it's the same thing, but they would have said, hey, it's the Passover because they referred to that as the collective celebration, not just of the Passover Seder, but all the days around it.

A second thing that people point out, yeah, you had the thing where it says, well, it's the day of preparation for the Passover. That word preparation is Paruisguet. It had become a standard designation for Friday, the preparation for the Sabbath day. In fact, you actually get this in John itself. A few verses after you get this,

this seemingly troubling phrase, it says since it was the day of preparation, and so the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath. They took his body down. A few verses later, on 1942, it says because of the Jewish day of preparation, and it is speaking of the Sabbath. So, like, right there we would say, hey, this isn't saying that it was preparation for the Passover meal. Instead, what this is saying is, hey, this is the Sabbath day on Passover week. I think this can be a very plausible explanation.

But again, when I just gave you there, like, I'll be honest, this is one of the harder ones. There's some nuance to it. But what we're basically saying is, hey, there were two plausible explanations for this, while this doesn't have to be a contradiction. At the end of the day, on this side of heaven,

we're not going to know which is which. But again, just around people, just because something isn't ultimately explainable, I mean, just because something is left unexplained, doesn't mean it's ultimately unexplainable. There's some plausible things out there. So numerical, historical,

chronological, and now we got theological contradictions is number four. So, okay, so now we're, talking about what we believe our theology, the study of God. That's what theology means. So this right here is probably the most misunderstood apparent contradiction in the whole Bible, in my opinion. Check this out. So let me just read the Bible. Romans chapter 3, verse 28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. James chapter 2,

verse 24. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. It can't be both, So obvious contradiction. On one end, you got Paul saying, hey, we're justified by faith apart from works. On the other hand, we have James saying, actually, we're justified by works, not faith alone. Paul, so which one is it? A couple things. Number one, when you read the context of each book, one, there's different books, by the way. When you read the context of each book, Paul and James are answering two different questions.

Paul in the book of Romans, he's answering the question, hey, how does a sinner become right with God? And Paul says, I'm going to tell you how. You're justified by faith apart from works. He says this again in Ephesians chapter or two. He says, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works so that no one may boast. By the way, this is good news. We are not saved by work.

We're saved by putting our trust in Jesus. James, on the other hand, is not answering that question. He's answering a different question. He's answering, what does genuine saving faith actually look? like. Yeah. And what he is doing is he's confronting, if you read the context, he's confronting somebody who's claiming to have faith, but their life shows no evidence of it.

Yep. So this is why you see in James chapter two, he says, what good is it, my brothers? If someone says he has faith, but does not have works, can that faith actually save him? The quote unquote, faith that James is talking about here seems to be a faith that's more of an intellectual assent. And this is why in verse 19, he says, hey, you believe that God is one. and you do well, but even the demons believe, and they shudder. So on one end you have Paul, and Paul is talking to the guy that basically says,

hey, I can earn my salvation because of what I do. And Paul says, no, you cannot. You are a sinner who just turned your back on God. It is by faith alone that you are saved. And then James is talking to the guy that says, on the other hand, man, I believe in God, and I can do whatever I want with my life. And he says, no, you cannot. Even demons believe in God.

And that doesn't mean that they're actually saved. Now, what people will do, Paul, is they will characterize. caricaturize Paul as the faith guy and James is the works guy. But if you, again, if you keep reading, if you don't grab isolated verses out of context, you keep reading Paul, you will find that Paul never teaches that works don't matter. In Ephesians chapter two, this is really interesting. In Ephesians chapter two, literally a verse after Paul says that we are saved by faith and not as a result of works in verse 8 and 9, if you read verse 10, it says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which means, here's what it means.

We are saved by faith alone. We are not saved by faith that is alone. That's right. If you have an authentic faith, if you have a relationship with Jesus, if you have put your trust in Jesus, it will show, like, people will be able to see it in your life. And so both James and Paul, they are agreeing, that's not a contradiction. And somebody might be hearing this and be like, well, yeah, but one is literally saying justified by faith and the other one is using that same word justified by works,

here's what you need to know. In scripture, the word justified can actually be used in two different senses or two different ways depending on the context. Again, context matters. The first way it can be used as a legal term to be declared innocent. That's the way Paul uses it. To be declared righteous, to be justified before God, just as if you've never sinned. The second way, it can also be used to refer to someone being shown to be right,

proven right or vindicated. So when Paul says justified by faith, he's using it in the sense of having a legal declaration of being innocent before God because he's answering the question, how can you be saved, how can you be righteous before God? When James uses this word justified by works, he's talking about somebody claiming to have faith but not having works. So when he says, so you are justified by works, what he means is you are proven right, you are vindicated in what you're saying, you're demonstrating that your claim is right by the

works that you do. We see the same usage in Luke chapter 10, verse 29. There's a lawyer talking to Jesus and the lawyer says, but the lawyer desiring to justify himself said to Jesus and who is my neighbor? What the lawyer is not doing here is he's not trying to be declared innocent before God. He's trying to justify his own claim. He's trying to vindicate his position. He's trying to say that he is right. He proved that what he's saying is correct. Again, that's why he says he wants to justify himself. And so that's what James is saying. Hey, if you want to prove that, that you are saved. If you want to justify your claim that you have faith,

you've got to show me your works. And so here's the point. No contradiction between Paul and James. Works are not how you get saved. There are evidence that you have been saved. Classic example of sometimes people will take things out of context. Again, just another example of how so many of those supposed to contradictions are based on logical fallacies or bad interpretation.

A good rule of interpretation is you have to interpret in context. What is this author trying to say to this audience? and what does he mean by this word? Because you basically are pointing out is that we can use the same words but have a range of meaning by them and it can look contradictory, but if you're asking

what are they communicating to this audience and what do they mean by this word, it actually does not have to contradict. It can be complimentary, not contradictory. Context matters. That's exactly right. Context matters. Last one.

Last one. This is a fast one. This is a fast one. This is a fast one. This is a fast one because I really don't think this is hard. So a lot of the things that we've been talking about are called internal errors, things that were within the Bible

that seem to contradict each other. This is an example. of an external contradiction or an external error. Something outside of the Bible seems to conflict or contradict with something that's inside of the Bible. And that is as if you have a scientific contradiction. And hey, the Bible says something that seems to contradict what we know is true in the scientific or natural world. So a classic one is that it says, hey, if you read the Bible, it seems to say that the sun rotates around the earth. Ecclesiasis 1-5, the sun rises and the sun goes down and hastens to the place where it

rises. In Psalm 194 through 6, the sun is pictured as leaving its tent and running its course across the heavens. Around Psalm 931, Psalm 9610, First Chronicle 1630, the world is talk about, our world is talking about being established and that it cannot move. And so someone reads it, says, see, they thought that it actually, the sun rotates around the earth and the earth is fixed. Obviously, the Bible has an error and it contradicts what we know is true from nature. This is a classic example of going back to what we talked about when we talked about inerrancy. Inerrancy means that there are no errors in the original manuscripts and in what the Bible intends to communicate. So if the Bible is intending to communicate right here, a scientific proclamation that the sun rotates around the earth, yeah, Houston, we got a problem.

Houston, we got a problem. But if that's not what it's doing, if it's using something called phenomenological language, which is a fancy way of simply saying it's describing things the way they appear to the naked eye, then there is no contradiction whatsoever. Yeah, but Paul, so somebody's listening to this and be like, well, what, then why does it say, like, if it's the Word of God, why would it say that the sun was rising or that the sun stopped? Like, why not just say what actually is? Yeah. So here's what I would say is if someone is asking that question right now, I want them to pull out their phone. Carlos, you can if you want to, but you don't have to. Yeah. I would say, hey, pull out your phone and I want you to go to your weather app or if you don't have the weather app app or whatever your weather thing is. And I want you to go and I want you to look up when it says that the sun is going to appear in the morning and distance. appear at night. And what does it say there? It calls it sunrise and sunset. So do the meteorologists at Weather App and all of our meteorologists on these news stations, people who are trained professionals, do they believe that the sun is actually rotating around the Earth? Or is it simply a shorthand way

of describing what it appears? And it's much easier to say than saying, well, you know, the Earth is rotating around the sun at this angle and this time kind of like, it's just a shorthand way of saying it. So what I'm saying is if we can use phenomenal language, phenomenological language, and not be confused or contradict what we know is true of science, the biblical authors can do the exact same thing. That's really good. Okay. So numerical, historical or factual, chronological, theological, theological, theological,

scientific or natural world contradictions. That's right. So Pastor Paul Cunningham, great. So there are ways, we've learned a lot, man, why does it even matter? Why are we even having this conversation? It's good. A few festival thoughts. and really a lot of this that I'm going to say,

and I'd love to hear what you have to say. It's really reiterating things that we've been saying over and over again throughout all this. Part of this is going back to what we talked about at the beginning is if we believe that this book, the Word of God, is inspired by the author of the universe and spoken by the author of the universe and it has power to save our lives and to change our lives,

man, then we want to have confidence in it. We want to have confidence in it. This is one of those things that both we want to stand under the word and send under its authority, and live the life it is telling us to live and believe in things it tells us to believe, but also it's something that we want to be able to stand upon, not literally don't stand in your Bible,

but something that we want to base our lives on and build our lives on as a firm foundation for our lives. And with that, then we want to have confidence in it because it will change how we live and it will change the world that we live in if we begin to live as if it is true because it actually is true. So some of this is just wanting to undergurb people's confidence

and being able to stand under the authority of God's word and to be able to stand on the firm foundation of God's Word. A couple other things that I would say is this, is that, man, I hope what we've just noted is saying it over and over again is to say, hey, there's plausible explanation for these. We didn't even cover nearly all of them, but I hope you can see there's plausible explanations for them.

So here's what I would tell people to focus on if you encounter these. Go back to this. Focus on where the Bible does completely agree if you're still struggling with this. Focus on that. And then here's one last little final thing. This is more of a tactic.

Let's say a tactic if you're talking to someone who's a skeptic. This is not if you're watching a video. We hit a lot of those and saying, hey, don't be thrown off by those. You can have confidence God word. But here's a tactic if you're actually talking to someone who's throwing these things at you. I've gotten to point where I make a deal with them. I say, okay, listen, man, I would love to give you a plausible explanation for this. But you have to agree that you will give me a plausible explanation for something else.

And like what? And I'll say the resurrection. Because I'll say, hey, if you go back to the early church in the book of Acts, they actually didn't go around saying, you should believe in Jesus because we have an inspired and fallible Bible that you must believe in. Although, by the way, I still believe that. Instead, what they went around saying was, hey, there is a man named Jesus who went around doing miracles, and he was crucified and raised.

And so you should believe in him. He is the Messiah, the Son of God. And so I would just say this. I'd say, listen, all atheist historians would agree with a few basic facts around the resurrection. that there was a man named Jesus who was crucified, that there was an empty tomb, that the earliest disciples believed they had met their risen Jesus, that Jesus' own brother, James,

believed that he was resurrected and believed in him as a Savior, and that there was a guy named the Apostle Paul, who at first went around persecuting Christians and put them to death, but then claimed that he saw and met their risen Jesus, and because of that, put his faith in Jesus, and then went around telling people about Jesus, and eventually was killed for the very faith

he eventually, he at first was persecuting other people for. What is the most plausible, simple explanation of all those facts that all atheists would agree on? It's the resurrection. And so in other words, like, I don't want Christians to think we're only the ones who have to give the answers to these issues. I would say, hey, if you're talking to someone to say this, man, I would love to address this potential contradiction in the Bible. But I want you to address what all the Gospels unanimously agree on. Let's not focus just on what they potentially disagree on, although we've surely don't. let's focus on what they agree on.

And can you give me a plausible explanation that is better than the simple fact that there is a resurrected Savior who would love to save you and have a relationship with you? That's great. Yeah. Bro, so after graduating college,

over 10 plus years, 15 plus, 14, 15 plus years ago. Contradiction, just kidding. I had a little bit of a personal crisis of faith because I remember I started reading a lot more than ever in my life because I was doing social media videos on the Bible and theology. And I have a little bit in me that I enjoy listening to somebody that disagrees with me because it stretches me and it pushes me.

But then I was reading so much that as I'm reading some of these books, I'm like, oh, but what about that? That's a good point. And all these voices and, man, watch out for what voices you're letting in your heart and in your mind because those voices are shaping you in one way or another. And it made me doubt some things. And again, it's not wrong to ask questions. It's not wrong to doubt.

Man, I'm sure we're hearing. We have a lot of people listening right now that are probably wrestling with a couple questions. That's fine. My mistake that it made it much more difficult for me to figure it out was that I was isolated. Most of the people that I know that have gone through some sort of faith crisis or their questioning their beliefs about the Bible or Christianity. are people, ultimately, there's a little bit of a root issue underneath, and that's just like, you're isolated.

You do not have community around you of people that actually, like, they can handle the questions, but then they can also handle you not being 100% on some issues. And so, again, isolation is dangerous, man. So if you're listening to this and you're wrestling with a couple things, this is why it matters, because you need people around you that love you, that they say, hey, come doubt together. Let's doubt together. Let's bring me your questions. Let's go hang out.

You need mature Christians that have also wrestled with some of the things that you are wrestling now. Again, you're not the only one. Whenever you wrestle with some of these things, you feel like you're the only one, and I can't believe in. There's a crisis, and what if this is all a lie? And God doesn't even exist. Hey, the church is full of senior saints, full of people that have been there, done that, that love you. You were not meant to follow Jesus and wrestle with these doubts in isolation.

So I would say one, it's important to have the community. And number two, here's why it matters because, Paul, when you have confidence that this word is true, man, it changes. It will change your life. The Bible is not just to receive information. It is to experience transformation. You're not supposed to just be informed. You're supposed to be formed. Man, that is so true.

And you need to have utmost confidence today. This is what Paul tells Timothy. You have to have confidence that this word is true. Let me show you something that this right here is amazing. I cannot believe even until this day I had the opportunity to see this with my own eyes. So this photo right here is a photo of the Isaiah Scroll, is an ancient scroll of Isaiah in the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. And this right there is the oldest surviving complete copy of the book of Isaiah ever discovered. So that right there, we were able to go there in person.

and we saw it. It was found in a cave in Kumran, which we were at as well. And it was found alongside other 22 manuscripts, most which were just fragments in 1947. It is 24 feet long, and it is 2,100 years old, and it was copied more than 100 years before the birth of Jesus.

So if you think about this, we have a scroll here that is older than Jesus. Like Jesus would have actually used the Bible this way with a manuscript, and that right there has all 66 chapters of Isaiah, 2,000-year-old document that we have, and by the way, when you read it, which obviously you can, it's the same book. Your Bible is that book right there. Now, hold that thought.

Recently, I found this online evangelist named Jeff Morgan, who is a messianic Jew, which means he is a Jewish believer in Jesus. And what he does is he goes to the street. in Israel. And he does evangelism with Israelis. And what who do is he'll be like, hey, guys, come here. And you got a young group of men. And he says, he grabs the document and he says, I'm going to read the Bible to you.

And what I want you to do is when I read it, after I read it, you tell me if you think this is New Testament or Old Testament. And so what he'll do is he'll go to a section in scripture and he'll go and he'll read this. He'll say, surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. and yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions and he was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him

and by his wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all for he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors. And so he'll finish reading, he'll look at these men, and he'll be like, you tell me, is this New Testament or Old Testament?

And they're all like, oh, man, definitely New Testament. Who do you think is talking about? Oh, no doubt. Like, that's Jesus right there. These are all Jewish people, by the way. They're hearing these words, oh, definitely New Testament. And then he will say, exactly. It sounds like he's talking about Jesus, right?

And then he'll say, guess what? that's the Old Testament. And then he reveals he's reading from the book of Isaiah. That's the same book. And here's the point. What Isaiah says does not sound like Jesus because somehow people manipulated the text and at some point they went back and make it fit into Jesus or the text has been edited. Like we know that's not true.

That's a 2,000-year-old document. This is our Bible. It's the same book. We have a copy of Isaiah that dates over 100 years before Jesus was even born. We know Isaiah was written 700-ish years. before Jesus fulfilled every word, how could that be? I'll tell you how that's possible. This is the Word of God.

Yes. It was written by men, but it was authored by God. And listen, everything that God says is true. Everything that God says happen would happen. And if it hasn't happened yet, it will happen. And listen, if this is true, if this is really the Word of God, then you can trust every single word, every single promise for your life. It is true. You can trust it.

and that will change your life. That just will change absolutely everything, man. And so this is why it matters. This is why it's important. The word of God is true. The gospel is true. You can trust your life on it. I love it, man.

Pastor Carlos, you don't get any chance to do this, but I would love to ask you. Would you pray for us? I would love to pray for us right now. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much because, man, it's good news that right now we have a word that is true.

The Bible says that your word, Lord, is like a sword. It's also like a hammer. Father, I pray that as we study it, may it not just be for information, but it really may it be for a transformation of the soul. Lord, I pray thank you because your word does not return void. Lord, I pray that it may change people's lives. I pray that right now, even you may awaken a hunger to study more, to go deeper, to consume the Word of God, to be filled with the Word of God, to renew our minds with the Word of God. that we may live lives that are witnesses and it's just evidence that you are a good and faithful God.

Father, may we be light in the middle of darkness. May we be bold in proclaiming your word. And may we find joy as we study it, as we read it, as we meditate on it, and as we live it out. We thank you for your word. Thank you for this podcast. And we pray this in your name, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

Free. Free Brother.