Recently, I came across this little piece of wisdom, and I quote: “Men do not reject the Bible because it contradicts itself but because it contradicts them.” I do not even know who made this statement or when and why it was made, but I do know that it is a “jewel” of wisdom.
The word “contradict” means to “say the opposite of what has been said”; “to be contrary to or disagree with”; “to declare untrue” or “to speak against.” We often hear someone quote two different Scriptures from the Bible and affirm that they are contradictory to each other. How foolish! God is perfect, and He did not put into His Holy Word something that would “speak against” or “say the opposite” of something He said somewhere else. Only men are capable of doing that. Men are just not willing to accept the Word as perfect, and they themselves want to change the context or meaning of Scriptures so that they can salve their own consciences about the falsehood they are peddling.
There are those who sometimes just set out to create confusion and cause others to question the validity of what is said. When Paul preached at Antioch to a Jewish audience, he made quite a stir and the Gentiles asked him to preach the Gospel to them on the next Sabbath. Following their request, we read in Acts 13:44, “The next Sabbath day, almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But, when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy and spoke against those things that were spoken by Paul; they contradicted and blasphemed.” The Jews most definitely were there just to cause trouble.
However, the Jews were noted as being troublemakers. We read in Acts 17:7ff, “Those Jews who didn’t believe were moved with envy and took certain lewd fellows of the baser sort and gathered a company and set all the city in an uproar and assaulted the house of Jason (where they believed Paul to be staying) and sought to bring them out to the people… they troubled the people and the rulers of the city.” The Jews had an agenda to fulfill their own hate and disregard for the person of Paul and others because they were jealous of the following Paul had. In order to accomplish this, they took into their company those with a bad reputation, and they were willing to blaspheme, which is to speak evil of God. What a price they were willing to pay for their anger and hate!
From the beginning, God has punished those who go against His will because, in doing so, they deny His power and authority. In the Garden of Eden, God specifically told Adam and Eve not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but because they wanted to be “as gods, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5), they did eat. They chose to go contrary to the will of God and brought death, the consequence of sin, upon all mankind. There has been and always will be punishment for those who deny the authority and God. He has given us His Word by which to live through His Son Jesus Christ, Who “is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). This means that the message of the Gospel of Christ is never going to change. It is what it is, and we are not to be troubled by “divers and strange doctrines” (Hebrews 18:9) that are contradictory to the Word of God but which erroneously are presented to the world as truth.
God didn’t prepare one set of rules for one class of people and another set of rules for a different class. To do so, would be to create chaos, and “God is not the Author of confusion but the Author of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). He has given a singular message for all mankind, and that message is that He wants “all men to come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4). However, in the beginning, God gave a warning: “My Spirit will not always strive with man” (Genesis 6:3). He will get tired of man’s contradictions and lack of respect for His authority and take vengeance on those who don’t know Him. Contradicting God is self-destruction!
