What If The Bible Is A Lie
10/10/2021 Genesis 1:1-21 Revelations 22:8-21
We are in our series, “What If?” How many of you have played the game What If I won a million dollars? That’s one game I can never get my wife to play with me. She will always say, “come back and talk to me after you have the money.”
But what if the Bible is a lie. For some people that would be a great disappointment and lead almost to despair. Are you saying that all the suffering I have gone through is meaningless, and there isn’t a God working in my life for good? “Are you saying that God doesn’t love me and I am still lost in my sins?”
But for others to have the Bible be a lie would be a sigh of relief. “Wow, I can do what I want and get away with it. There are no more rules for me to have to follow. I don’t have to worry about hell or reaping what I sow. I don’t have to give tithes or offerings or to love my enemies. Which of the two camps are you more likely to fall in. A lot of people want a lot of the bible to be true, but not all of it.
Every now and then, you will run up against a person who comes up with what they think is an educated opinion about the Bible. They will say something like, ‘how do you know the Bible wasn’t written by a person who made it all up just to keep people in oppression or under control?
That’s actually easy to disprove. The person would have had to have been a couple thousand of years old to have done it, How many 2,000 year old people have you heard about. The oldest person in the Bible itself to have lived was Methuselah, and he was only 969 years old when he died.
The author of the Bible would have lived on three different continents, been able to speak Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew, and have had the ability to accurately predict world history events before they actually happened.
They would have also had to of been able to plant archeological evidence of cities, places, and things listed in the Bible, so that we could find them with archaeological digs today. I don’t think anybody would have gone through that much trouble just to write a book full of lies.
We can prove that the Bible is a historical document, and how it came to be written. We cannot prove that it is true in all that it says unless we take a step of faith. But that is true about all belief including science itself. Science is based on their being a certain kind of order and predictability in the universe. For instance science says water will boil at 212 degrees unless you change the pressure pressure or put something in it.
The bible never takes a stand against science. That’s something people use to try and discredit religious belief. Science can neither prove nor disprove the truth of Scriptures. You will find scientist on all sides in debates regarding the bible.
Today I want you to take on the role of being a scientist as we look at the topic, “What If The Bible Is A Lie.” In our Scripture reading we read the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 1 and the end of the Bible in Revelations 22. But what if they both were a lie?
If Genesis chapter 1 was wrong and Revelations 22 was wrong, what would we be left with? Would this world be a better place? Would you be a happier and more loving person? Would humanity finally be able to get along with each other in a place where righteousness and justice prevails.
Let’s look at the opening statement, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Well, we see the heavens and we see the earth, so as scientist we are not going to debate their existence. The lie has to be 1)that there was a beginning, 2)that there was a God, and 3) that God was the Creator.
Now as a scientist, we know there has to be fixed point somewhere or we have nothing to base our laws on. What if the further back we go, the laws of physics change, because it was a different kind of universe. Can we prove there was nothing before the beginning?
Can we prove there was something at the beginning? If something was there, can we prove what it was? Can we tell where it came from? Do we know how much of it was there? As scientist, we can’t actually prove these statements, we can only make assumptions from what we have. So we have to begin with some faith steps that our assumptions are correct.
As scientist, can we prove there was a God there at the beginning? Can we disprove there was a God in the beginning? So anything we say about the existence of God is an act of faith. So the believer and the non-believer both arise at their position based not on science, but on faith.
Now Jesus acknowledges there was a beginning when he said at least three times, from the beginning. Jesus is actually the only person who was actually put at the beginning. In John 1:1, the Scriptures tell us in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. But if the Bible is a lie, we can’t assume the apostle John and Jesus really knew anything about the beginning.
The other possible lie in this early verse is that God created. If this is a lie, then there are several times in the Bible this lie is told. Okay if God did not create, then who or what did.
Let’s see how well we might do at creating life, starting with something already in existence. Suppose I died, and you were able to preserve my body with all my systems in tact and you put be in a glass containter with just the right amount of oxygen for me to breath, water for me to drink, and food for me to eat.
To try to help me get going again, you occasionally send electric sparks into my body. You even put in a fan to circulate the air. How long do you think it would take before I came alive again with a soul inside of me? A 1000 years, a million years, a billion years.. As a scientist, you have a hard time explaining how I instantly came to life no matter how many years passed.
Now if bible the bible is a lie, when it said God created life it’s wrong. How then did life begin. If you can’t accept me as a dead man who once lived coming back to life under ideal conditions, why would you accept the theory that something that never was alive; suddenly sprang to life, stayed alive, and reproduced itself quickly enough before it died out. What would have caused it to know to reproduce? What caused the conditions to stay ideal for it to reproduce again and again and again?
God’s explanation of humankind, is that God created a human being and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. That’s where his soul came from. So our souls came from outside of our bodies. It took a supernatural act to get us to start breathing and somehow that initial breath and our soul were tied together.
That chapter ended stating God created humankind in His image. That’s huge because it separates us from the rest of the living creatures on the planet. It gives us certain rights and privileges. But What if that is a lie. What if human beings are no different than any other animals?
Then it would be just as justifiable to raise them and eat them for food as any other animal. Whatever we do to apes, monkeys, sheep and chickens could be done to us. We could be sold as slaves or put on the restaurant menu. But something tells us that ought not to be done. That somehow it isn’t right. No matter which human culture you go to, they would say this ought not to be done to their family or their cultural group.
Have you ever started to do something, and inside your head, you heard or your felt, “you ought not to do that.” Who are you talking to or who is talking to you. If something is saying you ought not, then it is appealing to a higher authority than yourself.
We even have rules for others, that we don’t keep for ourselves and we expect them to do it. It’s not that we went over the rules with them, we just have some universal “ought to’s” that people should follow. Ever said something like, “he ought not to have lied to me.” Have you ever lied?
“They ought not to have stolen my money”. “She shouldn’t have taken advantage of me and cheated me.” When we say things like that, aren’t we saying there are some laws that everybody should follow?
If there is no God, and we are not created in the image of God, why do we think some things are right and others are wrong. In the garden, the forbidden fruit that Adam and Eve ate, placed inside of us the knowledge of good and evil. So we have a nature that’s prone toward sin, but we still know right and wrong.
Science can’t prove what’s right and wrong by science when it comes to morality. A drug that kills one person is the life saving treatment for another.
If we are just randomly here to live and die, shouldn’t we try to have the best time we can even at the expense of others? Why should we care what happens to people on the side of the planet, or on the other side of the city for that matter?
Why do we have to lie to ourselves to take advantage of other people? Why do we have to make others less human than ourselves to destroy them?
Wow, if God did not create us, and if we are not created in the image of God, does this make the world a safer place? Does it make it more likely that we will love and serve one another?
Will our science and technology draw us closer to each other and help us to eliminate the sin in society as well as the individual sin in our hearts? Will we grow to be so pure in our hearts that we won’t need a savior? Will we be able to show that the Bible is a lie when it says all of us have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
What if the Bible is a lie on what it says about the end of human history in the book of Revelations.. What if God does lose the battle and Satan actually comes out on top in the end What if as believers we really are on the losing side?
Is that a picture of the after life that we really want to have to look forward to? We die and leave this world, and but instead of Jesus being there to greet us and take us to place prepared for us, we find that Satan is waiting for us. Satan says, “I’ve got just the right torture chamber set up for you. Now if you just follow my demon down the hall, don’t pay attention to any of the screams along the way, he’ll take you safely to your spot.”
Do we really want to believe, Jesus lied to us when he said, “I’m going to prepare a place for you that where I am you will be also.” Do we really want to believe that there will not be a new heaven and a new earth, with no more tears, no more sorrow, and no more pain? Do we want to give up the hope that we will be reunited with all those who have died in Christ?
If the Bible is a lie, then life will go on forever and sin will get worse. Those of you who are star trek fans, you may recall episodes in which they claim to have eliminated hunger and disease back on earth. Yet when you watch the episodes and you discover they have not eliminated, lust, greed, sexual immorality, murder, oppression, and selfishness.
All these things make their way into the 25th century, because the human nature goes into the 25th century. Why is it that we cannot conquer the human hear?. Is it a lie when the bible tells us that the human heart is most wicked and deceitful.
If the Bible is a lie, then is it true these things will continue until scientist tell us that one day the sun will either die out or the earth will drift to far from the sun as the sun’s gravity grows weaker.
If the Bible is a lie, then in the end there will not be a resurrection and there will not be any rewards given for the way we lived our lives. Those who did things for the cause of Christ, will have no reward for any of it. When you die it would be over with and it would be as if you never existed.
Jesus himself would have never been resurrected, and it would be a good thing if we were not resurrected, because if there is a God we would have to pay for our sins.
On the other hand if the Bible is a lie, it’s possible that we could all be resurrected but no one will have to give an account for anything they have done. God would simply say, so what if you didn’t do what I asked you to do. So what if you were a murderer, thief, unbeliever, liar, cheater, hater or guilty of everything under the sun, I am a loving and just God. None of that really matters to me, let’s just all have one big party together and let bygones be bygones.
There’s just something inside of us that says “but that isn’t fair”. Not only do we hold each other to a standard outside of ourselves. We also expect God to behave in ways consistent with God’s nature. We expect God to not only be loving, but to be just and to be fair.
We also trust God to be faithful to His word. We believe that everyone will have to give an account to God for the way they lived their lives. We expect God to hold us accountable for the wrong we have done.
If you went to court and the judge had a reputation for being just and fair, how long would you respect the judge if the sentence did not meet the crime. If the judge ruled, “you are guilty of murder but I see you have a pretty good heart, so I’m only giving you 3 days in jail”.
“You are guilty of human trafficking, but I know your parents so I’m going to let you go for their sake.” That judge is neither just nor fair. We expect a judge to administer justice and to do so impartially.
We believe that God is a just and a fair God. If God says the payment for sin is death, then in order for us to have eternal life, we have to make a payment that satisfies our sin death.
We believe though that if God said our sins have been paid for by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, then we won’t have to pay for them a second time. God told us if we put our faith and our trust in His Son, we shall be saved.
If you owed a gas bill of $2500 and had not paid your gas bill in weeks. The gas company has the right to turn off the gas to your home. That would be the price of disobedience of paying your bill. But if I went to the gas company and paid your $2500 bill in your name, the gas company no longer has the right to turn off your service.
Your debt has been paid in full. Justice has been served. God the Father demands justice for the payment of our sins. Jesus the Son, paid the payment through his death on the cross. Since our sin debt is paid through our faith in Christ, We are found to be righteous in the eyes of God and welcomed into heaven.
When you read the last chapter of Revelations, it reads as though it was tyring to answer the question “What If the Bible is a lie”. John has a warning for those who try to take things out of the Scriptures, particularly the Book of Revelations and a warning for those who try to add to things to the Scriptures, because either process would make the Bible a lie. It would be saying things that God never intended it to say.
Without even considering all the things in between Genesis and Revelation we can see how if just the first and last chapters of the bible is a lie, then we lose all kinds of rights, privileges, comfort, and hope. There is nothing to look forward to in the life beyond death. There is no reason for us to expect others to act in a loving way toward us.
I don’t know about you, but I sure am glad that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and in the end God wins with a promise that Jesus is coming, and the grace of God will be with the Lord’s people. Next week, “What If, you could create your own God.”
