The Bible: True Then, True Now

Another of the devil's snares is doubt. If Satan can get you to doubt God's presence, God's love for you, God's forgiveness, God's purpose for you, or God's commandments, he is well on his way to getting you to yield to his temptation. The devil seems to specialize in several categories of doubt.

Here are just a few of the devil's more popular lines: "The Bible was written thousands of years ago to people who lived in the Middle East. This is a different time and culture. Some of the products and technologies and social systems weren't present in Bible times. People back then didn't know what we know today. You have to pick and choose what you read from the Bible. Not everything in the Bible applies to us today where we live."

"The Bible was written by human beings who were subject to making mistakes. How can you know this is really what God commands? After all, the Bible was written by different authors over hundreds of years. Each author had a particular point of view or ax to grind. They lived in different political times and sometimes in different places. You can't take at face value what some of them said. You have to read what seems right to you and discard the rest."

"The Bible is just for Jews and Christians. What about all the other people and their religions? Surely you don't think the Bible is the only book of truth."

"So much of the Bible is just symbolic. All that about the Garden of Eden in Genesis-that doesn't have anything to do with science. And all those symbols in the book of Revelation? How can you know with certainty that everything between Genesis and Revelation isn't also symbolism?"

"The Bible is a series of stories, and you have to take from stories what you can get from them. They aren't real. The people weren't real. The situations weren't real. It's all fiction."

"There are exceptions to every rule. God surely doesn't mean this in such an absolute way, for all people all the time."

"Everybody has to interpret the Bible for himself. There's no one interpretation that can be trusted."

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