I'd like to hear if you believe that the Bible was inspired by God or it was written just by people without God's influence.

Feel free to extend your answer as much as you like to.
(P.S.
I used to trust the Bible as a divinely inspired book but after studying it in detail I started to consider it as a book designed/manufactured to control people.)

Question

I'd like to hear if you believe that the Bible was inspired by God or it was written just by people without God's influence. 

Feel free to extend your answer as much as you like to. 
(P.S. 
I used to trust the Bible as a divinely inspired book but after studying it in detail I started to consider it as a book designed/manufactured to control people.)

dongelev85 · Accepted Answer

On the historical side, aside from all the absurdities in Genesis, archaeologists no longer believe that any ancient Hebrews were ever enslaved in Egypt, as there is no evidence for it among the existing artifacts of that era. The book of Exodus was most likely propaganda put out to enourage a war between Israel and Egypt around the 5th century BCE.

On the moral side, aside from the very different characters of Old Testament God and New Testament God, both testaments explicitly tolerate slavery, which is enough for me to consider them valueless as moral guidance.

LearningStar · Answer

The Bible's content sounds so evil that it's a clear indication of not being from God. Life Giver is much better than what portraits the Bible.

dongelev85 · Answer

It wasn't written down until decades or centuries after the events it describes, and different gospels describe the same events in very different ways. The question of which books are canon and which books are apocryphal was very much informed by the politics of the times. The apocrypha were written by exactly the same sort of people as the books that became canon.

As with other events in human history, if God was controlling it all, then God has a dark sense of humor.

As with other events in human history, if God was controlling it all, then God has a dark sense of humor.

kayla_mm · Answer

The Bible was written by multiple different authors of thousands of years with no inconsistencies. It presents the same God with an unchanging character from the Old Testament to the the New Testament. Jesus Christ fulfills all if the prophecy of the Old Testament prophets, who didn’t know each other or live in the same time. The Bible is the only book which provides the answer to how and why we were created, why the world is in its current state, how we can have hope, what comes after death, what is the purpose of life, etc etc etc.

In life you will either be controlled by the world or by the Holy Spirit (if you are a Christian). Paul the apostle said he was a prisoner of Christ, and blessed to be one—because he was free from sin, free to choose righteousness, and became a child and heir of God.

God forces no one to follow and obey Him. He gives us a choice, which if you’ve studied the Bible should be apparent: sin or righteousness, death or salvation, selfishness or selflessness, self-love or humble love and compassion...the list goes on.

I hope that when you study the Bible in detail, you read it for yourself, cover to cover, list the facts and see if they match up, study the attributes of God, the prophecies, the life and teachings of Jesus and Paul. I’ve studied them my whole life and found nothing but love, assurance, safety, and hope.

Good luck!

kayla_mm · Answer

@LeraJoy At the foundation of the Bible is the premise that sin entered the world through Adam and was passed down to all men, including us. Once sin entered the world (which until then was perfect and allowed man to dwell with God) death and suffering entered the world, man’s eyes were opened to what sin was, and man was separated from God.

Another premise at the foundation of the Bible is that God is holy. It’s not just a part of Him, it is who He is. He literally cannot abide with sin— anything apart from God is sin. How do we know what sin is without God? We can’t. He is the one who defined sin for us, and thus defines the only absolution for sin, which is blood/death.

In Genesis 2 verse 15, God prophecies the death and resurrection of Christ. He says to Satan (the serpent) “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Satan would deal Christ a blow which would not kill Him, but Christ would deal Satan a killing (defeating) blow. God knew that the only solution for the sin which had entered the world and would be passed down to all of us was His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, as God, knew this also. God didn’t force Jesus to go through that suffering on the cross. Jesus did it because he loved us. God didn’t force the Jews to beat and humiliate Jesus. That was just the result of the sin inside of them, inside of all of us, which makes us do hateful things that we never thought we would do. But Jesus endured it, took on Himself the guilt and punishment for all of our sin to the point where God had to turn His back on Him, and shed His pure and holy blood, the only blood holy and powerful enough to take the sins of the world. Then He showed not only His victory over sin but His victory over death in His resurrection. It is prophesied that every knee will bow on heaven and earth one day to worship Jesus Christ, who God will honor and exalt for His sacrifice on the cross and His victory over Satan.

In regards to the suffering that people in the Bible endured and that the Bible commands us to endure in the New Testament, this suffering is not initiated by God. It is the obvious product of living a righteous life in a world corrupted by sin. I will not get cancer because God gave me cancer to make me suffer for Him; my mother will not die because God took her life to make me suffer for Him; God does not ordain bad things to happen to us—that is not biblical at all. Disease and evil and hatred and death are the results of sin, a sin-corrupted world and our sin-corrupted bodies.

That’s why God promises to redeem our bodies, just as He redeemed the body of Christ after His 3 days in the tomb. Jesus Christ still wears His human body, but it has been glorified just like ours will be—what hope!

Anyway, God doesn’t force us to suffer. However, He tells us that whatever we do, we must do it to His glory. We must show Who we serve and Who we live for to others and show how powerful His love and grace is in our lives. It allows us to endure suffering and come out of it better, stronger, and closer to God than we were before. Isn’t this just another example of the evidence of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life?

Sorry for the long answer, and you may already know all of this, but some other people might not so I thought it might be helpful to give a more thorough response 😊

kayla_mm · Answer

@LeraJoy can you give some examples of the low standards in the OT and NT that God demands us to accept? Can you give examples of immorality in the OT or NT which God condones and does not condemn?

Jesus claims to be the God of the OT. “Before Abraham was, I AM.” He is one with Yahweh God. Unfortunately you cannot believe one half of the Bible and not the other. (Which may be your point.)

Without the Bible, we would never know about God or that He was a holy God. You would never know about Jesus or salvation. You simply cannot separate the two— but I would encourage you to make a list of questions or doubts you have about the Bible being the true inspired Word of God and discuss them in person with someone who is strong in the Christian faith. Why? Because it’s not a trivial matter. It’s a life or death matter. You know that to choose not to believe is biblically to choose death and separation from God for eternity. The answers that other guy gave are frequently used to deny accuracy and truth of Christianity but they are easily blown down if you even dig a little bit into them. “Professing to be wise, they became fools” Rom. 1:21-22 Please take this matter seriously and don’t give up looking for truth. Praying for you~

kayla_mm · Answer

@LeraJoy The Bible describes what man did and does. Man was and truly is that sinful and evil. The Law was given to show us that we could never attain perfection on our own and that we were slaves to sin. But the Old Testament is all about Jesus. Everything leading up to His coming and being born of a virgin and the line of David is in the OT. Once Jesus Christ came, died, and rose again, he gave a New Covenant prophesied about in Jeremiah. We (Christians) are no longer under the law or slaves to sin.

A healthy perspective on life is that I am a sinner in need of Jesus Christ. That is the message of the Old and New Testaments. God is the same God throughout both books— despite the violence and evil which happened among men throughout the OT, He consistently offered to these wicked men His mercy, grace, forgiveness, protection, and love if they would just turn away from their sin and worship Him only as God. This is repeated over and over and over again in the OT. It is exemplified in the death of Christ and the Gospel.

kayla_mm · Answer

@LeraJoy No, it’s not. To become a Christian you must admit that you are a sinner, acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation, and ask Him to forgive you, save you, and come into your heart and life. Christianity is not a religion— it is a direct relationship with Jesus Christ that begins when the Holy Spirit comes and dwells within you at salvation. The Holy Spirit becomes your direct line to God— you don’t need a priest or anything else to communicate with God because He literally dwells within you. The Holy Spirit opens your eyes to understand the Bible, convicts you of sin, gives you grace and strength and power to pray prayers that will be answered.

However, according to the New Testament, once you become a Christian you become a member of the Church, also called “the body of Christ.” It is made up of all of the other Christians around the world, and we are each members of it with different gifts and responsibilities. In order to grow in faith and knowledge and spread the Gospel (the command given by Jesus to all Christians) we are commanded to assemble ourselves together in the form of the local church. (Christianity is not a solo act- you are born into a new family at salvation.) This is a model which can be seen directly started by the apostles after Jesus’s ascension. This is the reason there are so many churches. An offspring of this became church denominations, which fundamentally were formed because of a disagreement in certain doctrines of the Bible. These disagreements began from New Testament times and have continued until today— why? Because we are all still people flawed by sin. Christianity didn’t make us perfect by any stretch. If we do not live in the Spirit then pride, greed, and selfishness will creep in and cause division among us.

BUT in regards to denominations, there are many that differ in more trivial issues but agree on the soteriological doctrine of the Bible (doctrine of salvation). For me, I believe in the inspiration of the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, the creation of man by the direct act of God, the incarnation and virgin birth of Jesus Christ, His identification as the Son of God, His vicarious atonement for the sins of mankind by the shedding of His blood on the cross, the resurrection of His body from the tomb, His power to save men from sin, the new birth by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of eternal life by the grace of God. If the denomination I choose believes all of those things, I don’t care which it is, I will join and worship with those believers. If it doesn’t believe all of those things, it is missing a vital doctrine of the Bible and I won’t.

The Bible's content sounds so evil that it's a clear indication of not being from God. Life Giver is much better than what portraits the Bible.

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