Looking for Loopholes in All the Wrong Places – Part 5

Looking for Loopholes in All the Wrong Places

Part 5 – Is the Bible Still Relevant?

We continue our series on looking for Biblical “loopholes” this week by looking at the relevancy of the Bible in our modern “enlightened” age. If you missed the previous articles in this series, you can find links to them below.

So far, we have looked at four questions:

We were also reminded that God loves us dearly and wants the best for us. He wants a relationship with us, and he wants us to have physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. With that in mind, let’s look at this critical topic.

“The Bible was written thousands of years ago. I believe that Jesus died and rose so I could go to Heaven, but honestly, we know so much more now and most of the Bible simply doesn’t apply anymore.”

Confession: This was me. I grew up in a Christian home and believed that Jesus was the Son of God, that he died and rose, and that by believing in him I would go to Heaven. I was baptized as an infant, went to church, sang in the choir, and taught Sunday School because those were the “right” things to do. Then when I attended a liberal arts college, my childhood faith was challenged in a religion class, of all things. I began to see my faith as just one of many paths to Heaven and the Bible as nothing more than a history book.

This belief system impacted my faith, and it had a devastating effect on my life and well-being. I no longer had a moral compass, so I was left trying to figure out things for myself. In essence, by rejecting the Bible, I had to become God. If you’ve ever done this, it is exhausting and it has a high failure rate. The outcome was multiple failed relationships, work-related problems, violence, trauma, substance abuse, depression, physical complications, anxiety, and even thoughts of suicide.

We are not God.

As prideful humans, it is easy to get puffed up about our latest discoveries or intellectual enlightenment. When our discoveries don’t mesh with the Bible, we simply replace the Bible – the inspired word of God – with our new discoveries or “wokeness”. We have already seen that God knows the past and the future and that he never changes his mind. If we are to now replace all or part of the Bible with our own philosophies, we are putting ourselves as equal to or even above God!

Satan was originally Lucifer, a very powerful and beautiful angel. Here is what the prophet Isaiah saw regarding Satan’s fall:

“How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn! You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to the heavens; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon. I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit. Those who see you stare at you, they ponder your fate: “Is this the man who shook the earth and made kingdoms tremble.”
Isaiah 14:12-16 (NIV)

It was this same rebellion that caused the fall of humans. Listen to how the snake (Satan) tempted Eve to take the fruit that God had forbidden them to eat and what Adam and Eve’s response was:

“For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Genesis 3:5-6 (NIV)

As a result of their desire to be like God, their relationship with God was broken. They immediately felt shame and guilt, and life would never be the same again.

When we rewrite the Bible based on our vastly limited understanding, we are playing God. We are saying that we know more than the Creator of the universe who has always been and always will be. This is a very dangerous position that will always end badly.

But is the Bible Really Relevant?

The Bible was written over approximately 1500 years by 40 writers (from many different walks of life) in 3 different languages. It was copied by hand by scribes and has since been translated multiple times. In spite of that, the Bible has an internal consistency of 99.5%. (For comparison, Homer’s Iliad only has a consistency rating of 95%.)^1. This would suggest that the Bible actually had one author – God.

Archaeology has provided further support for the accuracy of the Bible. Even some of the most detailed accounts in the Bible have been shown to be accurate through archaeological studies. If we contrast that with the writings of other faiths, the Book of Mormon for example, this is simply not the case.² Even science and mathematics provides evidence for the creation account of the Bible and actually disproves the theory of evolution.³ This suggests that the Bible is accurate.

The Old Testament contained over 300 prophecies about the first coming of Jesus Christ. Jesus literally fulfilled all of them. The mathematical probability of any one man fulfilling just 48 of these is 1 times 10 to the 157^th power.^4.It is statistically impossible that Jesus isn’t the prophesied Messiah. This suggests that God knows the future and that nothing takes him by surprise. This same accuracy is found in every other fulfilled prophecy in the Bible.

Now consider this: there are over 1,000 prophecies concerning the second coming of Christ and the age in which we live. These pertain to current conditions as well as those yet to come. Logic suggests that these will happen just as God said they would. This alone makes the Bible relevant for our lives today.

Finally, God is the same God and he never changes. Last week we talked about the reality that God didn’t change his mind on morality or what constitutes sin. Again, he didn’t call things sin to take away our fun or to be unfair. He called things sin out of love because he knew they would hurt us.

In 2003, I gave my life to Jesus. I admitted that I had done a terrible job of managing my own life and asked him to take over. My life didn’t magically get better. I still suffered the consequences of my earlier bad decisions. Temptations didn’t magically disappear, nor did I magically become a “better” person. And I still had times when I was anxious or depressed. What did change is that from that moment on I had the power of the Holy Spirit working in me. His strength helped me to handle things better. The more I prayed and studied my Bible, the more he revealed to me. Over time, my mental health improved greatly.

Now I am blessed with an amazing marriage of 13 years to an amazing man of God! My beautiful and talented daughter has overcome early-life trauma and shines the light and love of Jesus wherever she goes! I can face Covid-19 and all of the other chaos in our world today with a sense of peace, knowing that God knew this would happen and he is still in control! And when I look back at the wretched life I lived before, it almost feels like it was someone else. Paul’s words to the Corinthians truly came to life for me.

Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them.

So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!

And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.
2 Corinthians 5:14-21 (NLT)

If you haven’t committed your life to Jesus, I urge you not to wait. Simply confess your sins to God, acknowledge that Jesus came to earth, lived a sinless life, died and was raised to life again so that sin could be forgiven, and tell him that you have decided to turn to Jesus and away from sin. The decision is life changing!

Songs of Victory: