THE BIBLE IS TRUE.

 The Bible contains only apparent contradictions. They are not real; they only seem to be. The Bible portrays reality, and real life is complex. The Bible is not written like a novel. In a novel every detail in every part of the book must harmonize with every detail in every other part of the book. For example, if Jane is walking down the path with Joe on page 50, she will also be strolling along with him on page 52. But if she is now walking with Frank, page 51 will have explained the switch.

Reality is more complex than a novel, and the Bible does not try to explain every detail and switch. For example, Let’s say I told you in a letter that I went to Florence to visit a pastor friend of mine, and then in another letter I told my sister that I went to Columbia to visit our cousin. If someone who is not my friend should find these two letters, he might think I was lying to you or to my sister, when in reality both are true. I went to Florence to visit my pastor friend and then drove on to Columbia to visit my cousin. Sometimes in the case of what appears to be contradictions, both are true. Each simply refers to or applies to a different aspect of reality.

Think of the difficulty the Jewish scholars might have encountered trying to interpret and understand the prophecies concerning the location of Messiah’s birth. The prophet Micah said HE will be born in Bethlehem. The prophet Hosea said, “Out of Egypt I have called my Son.” Isaiah prophesied that “He shall be called a Nazarene. So you could end up with church fights as they argue over which is true. You could also have the skeptics seeing these verses as contradictory and therefore discounting all of them as error and untrue. As a result you might have a Bethlehem church on one side of the street, an “Out of Egypt” church across the street, and a “Nazareth” church down the block.

Theologians could have wasted their time debating their positions when the fact is, all of these verses are true. Jesus was born in Bethlehem. His parents took him immediately to Egypt to escape Herod’s desire to kill him. Mary and Joseph then returned to Israel with the child and lived in Nazareth.

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