Best of Broadcast: Responding to Serious Objections to the Bible

The following is a pre-recorded program.

Hey friends, Michael Brown here. A few weeks back, I solicited questions on social media through Facebook and through Twitter, saying what are some of the most serious objections you hear when it comes to the Bible, when it comes to the God of the Bible. Maybe they're questions you have, maybe they're questions, objections that you encounter. And we got so many responses, which of course is no surprise. This is the world in which we live.

No surprise that there'll be many questions and objections, especially in this current generation where there's more animosity towards the God of the Bible, more dismissing of the authority of Scripture, more questions about the inspiration of Scripture. So I answered a bunch of questions and I said, God willing, in the weeks ahead, we'll devote broadcast to answering more of your questions. So that's exactly what we're doing today. You'll see that they're from April 29th and dates like that. In other words, we solicited these some weeks back.

We did the first show, now the second show here. So let's see. I'm going to start with a question from Medium Sean. I take it he's not a medium like having seances. Somebody said that Jesus lied in Matthew 24-34. The generation passed and all the things he said did not come to pass. So did Jesus say in Matthew 24-34 that this generation will not pass away until all these things are fulfilled and he was wrong? Well, the first question is, why would the gospel authors preserve that? In similar words, in other gospels, why would they preserve that in the generations afterwards if it didn't happen?

In other words, some of the gospels may have been written before the year 70 when the temple was destroyed, others after that time, but certainly all of them edited, distributed after that time. So why would you keep that in if it was a saying that didn't come to pass? Just a logical question, right? If you just eliminate it, well, we don't need that part in because he got that wrong and it looks bad. Well, obviously they didn't believe he got it wrong.

So there are several answers to the question. One, he was speaking about things first and foremost that tied in with the destruction of Jerusalem, with the destruction of the temple, with the terrible things he said would happen, even with the exiling of Jewish people. And it happened with extraordinary accuracy, with mind-boggling accuracy, in ways that no one could have imagined back then in terms of the level of decimation and the flattening of the temple, the glorious temple. How could it be in the flattening of much of Jerusalem and terrible suffering? According to Josephus, a million Jews killed. Maybe it's an exaggeration, but it was a terrible time of great suffering, unprecedented in the nation's history. Jesus said it was going to happen in detail, so it did.

That's the first answer. The second objection to that answer would be, okay, well, maybe so, but what about the coming of the Lord and all the things he spoke of? Well, some would say that he came in that context. It's not the end of the age coming, but rather he came in judgment at that time. That's how some would read it.

Here's another way to read it. That he's talking ultimately about the end of the age. That he wasn't talking just about the destruction of the temple in the year 70 and the judgment on Jerusalem, but that he was talking about the end of the age. And he's saying the generation that is here to see signs ABC at the end of the age, they will see it all.

They will also see XYZ. So this generation, this final generation that sees ABC happen, they will also see XYZ, and there will be many things that will be parallel to what happened in the year 70 then unfolding at the end of the age. The other thing is the disciples asked him three questions when he was talking about the destruction of the temple.

Well, when's this going to happen? What's going to be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age? As if all three things were one, whereas the temple was destroyed in 70 and his coming and the end of the age are still future.

So he answers everything all together, weaved in as one. And you have it with many biblical prophecies that it says it's all going to come to pass, but it's like layers. The first layer is now, the second layer may be a thousand years later, but when the prophet receives them, it feels like they're very close. The common description given about prophecy is like standing on the top of a mountain, looking at the top of another mountain, and it seems fairly close.

There's actually a miles-long valley in between them. So that's how it is with prophetic ministry. The Bible tells us that that's how it is. So it could be that he's answering all these questions together, and he's first saying, this is going to happen in 70, and the generation that sees these things, you're going to see the rest of this happen, this destruction.

And then there's the end of the age, and the generation that sees this, they're going to see the rest come to pass. In any case, there are good, simple explanations to this passage, and more importantly, if the early believers were scandalized by it, they would have thought, well, we don't understand that, but let's leave that out. The fact that they put it in there was to say what Jesus says is accurate. All right, let's see another question here, and this is from Elijah. Natural disasters, natural disasters. Larry King said that he didn't believe in God because how could God allow Katrina to happen?

I've always thought it's a good question. So it's one thing when human beings commit atrocities against other human beings, right? It's one thing where the Nazis slaughtered six million Jews and many others. It's one thing when a person does something evil. You could say, well, where was God? But the question is, who said that God stops us from doing evil? He gave us free will, and people do terrible things, but that's different than Katrina.

That's different than the tsunami years back that killed several hundred thousand in a matter of minutes or hours in Southeast Asia. How do you explain those natural disasters, and what kind of God would allow those to happen? Well, the answer is that we are in a fallen world, that the sin of the human race had consequences on everything, because of which we're in a fallen world. A world that has the beauty of a sunset and the terrors of a tsunami. A world that has the miracle of childbirth and the agony of a premature death.

A world that itself has things you could say are good and things you could say are evil. And that's why one day there'd be new heavens and new earth. And that's why before the fall, we were in a garden, the Garden of Eden.

Even if you take that metaphorically, rather than literally, I take it literally. But the fact is, we were in paradise, and that's God's heart and desire. And when I could tell Larry King, who's now facing eternal reality, hope that somehow he came to know the Lord before he left this world, but I would say you don't like human suffering? God doesn't like human suffering.

God grieves over it. And even though God says that he is the God of nature, that he is the God who controls the world, there are also things that are in this world that are fallen and the result of human brokenness. Or of previous spiritual rebellion. Someone said that the world is marked by that because of the fall of Satan and previous spiritual rebellion. But ultimately, I'd say this is not God's final intent for us. That's why we started in paradise. That was God giving us a picture of the way things were.

Someone said, well, wait a second, wait a second. The earth has been messed up for long since before the fall. Well, one scholar addressed this, and his answer was that just like when you build a new community, you build hospitals and prisons, you know, if you're developing a large city, knowing that you're going to have people that are sick and people that need to be incarcerated, and you have a police force and so on, that when God made the world, he made the world itself with these flaws in it. Yes, everything he made was good, but he made this world in itself with flaws in it. And then the paradise for human beings, and ultimately human beings would then subdue the earth and have the full blessing of God, or the whole world would be a paradise.

But if not, you get expelled from the garden into the bad places. In any case, what we need to do is point out God's heart of compassion for the poor, for the needy, for the outcast. God's even pouring out rain. The book of Job talks about this when God reveals himself to Job. He pours out rain on desolate areas where you don't have human beings. It's like, what?

Why? Because he's watering it. He's a God of beauty. And the wonders of nature, that shows his beauty and goodness. And then all of the calamities and judgments, that shows what happens because human brokenness, human sin, human failure. And it's interesting, with Katrina mentioned, that one man responded, Psalm 37, Maranatha, I lost my house and job in Katrina. It was one of the most challenging, painful, inspiring events of my life. I learned so much about myself and the goodness of others. There were blessings even in the most difficult circumstances.

Maybe I needed to be humbled. This much we know, God can bring good out of evil. God can bring good out of calamity. And that which is devastating and brings terrible loss of life, God can bring something good out of that because he's the Redeemer. And by the way, if you don't get to have my book, Has God Failed You? Finding Faith When You're Not Even Sure God Is Real, we address these very kind of issues and I think you'll be helped by that.

One more question, a Skylar fiction. God orders the execution of babies in 1 Samuel 15. We talked about this a few weeks ago, the command to kill the Canaanites. And there are some who speculate that those that were killed were of the Nephilim, that it was a mixed breed of human and fallen angel, a breed destined to destruction that was inherently evil. At the very least, those that were killed were guilty of themselves burning babies alive in the fire to their idols and committing all types of sexual sins and atrocities.

God said because of their evil, they had to be wiped out. So what about those that are killed in 1 Samuel 15? It has to be that level of guilt because over and over in the Word, God is extolled as a God of justice and a God who cares for the outcasts and the little ones in need, as I said a moment ago. And Scripture says his compassion is over all his works.

And it could well be that even DNA and things passed on generationally, that you have people who become increasingly wicked by their very nature. And there are only two instances you have like this in the whole Bible, with the Canaanites, the Canaanites and the Midianites. And then here in 1 Samuel 15, this is never something that's commanded through Scripture. In fact, there's a constant emphasis on God bringing judgment because of people killing babies and burning babies in the fire. So this is the same God who knew that this evil needed to be eradicated from this people. At the same time, if we believe in eternity, if you're going to object to the Bible and take the Bible with face value, right, that these little children still could have been innocent. They hadn't developed into the evil they would have. And therefore, they could have eternal life and be with God.

So cut down in this world before they do evil. But with him forever, God's setting things right. All right, we will be right back with many more of your probing important questions right here on The Line of Fire. And again, my latest book, Has God Failed You? Finding faith when you're not even sure God's real.

I think you'll find that super helpful. Thanks, friends, for joining us on The Line of Fire. Now, here we are later in May, so it was a few weeks ago, the end of April. I solicited questions on Facebook and Twitter asking for your toughest objections, either that you struggle with or that have been presented to you, objections to the Bible, the God of the Bible, and said that I'll be answering them in the days and weeks ahead. So we did part one. Now we're doing part two, still focusing on objections to the Bible. We'll look at larger philosophical questions and questions about the existence of God in general in some further broadcast, God willing. That's what we plan to do.

But let's go back over to Twitter. Here's one from the JBGIFKing. On the slavery topic, he, meaning me, discussed with DJ Hammurabi, so Digital Hammurabi, and agreed it was troublesome. So the whole issue of slavery in the Old Testament. This was something sanctioned by God. This was something given by God.

We've addressed it before, but I'll address it again in brief at least. That under no circumstances does the biblical narrative and the biblical laws, under no circumstances do they justify the African slave trade. Under no circumstances does this justify that you go into other countries, that you kidnap people, that you separate them from family, that you ship them across the ocean with millions dying along the way, and then subject them to brutal lifetime slavery. No, there's nothing in the biblical system that justifies that. There's one verse in Leviticus 25 that talks about you can buy slaves from neighboring countries, but even then, there were still rules about the treatment of slaves within Israel. And even then on the Sabbath, everyone would rest. So there were still issues in terms of how Israel was to treat others.

But two things I want to emphasize. One, this was under the Sinai covenant, and it's not part of the newer and better covenant. It was under the Sinai covenant, and it is not God's eternal best.

The second thing is that it was a massive improvement on the conditions that Israel was used to when they were slaves in Egypt. The idea that there has to be compassion on an Israelite slave. And scholars have even debated, had major debates, do we translate the Hebrew word eved as slave or as servant, or as an indentured servant?

What should we say? Because if you just say slave, then we think of African slave trade and the horrors of that. Just say servant, you might just think of someone that, you know, works at somebody's home and is like a butler.

It was in between those. But you'd serve for six years and then go free in the seventh, unless you said, no, I love my master, I want to stay here. Then you'd serve for life or until the Jubilee year. There were requirements as to how the master had to treat the slave.

As I mentioned, everyone resting on the seventh day of the Sabbath, if you got angry with your slave and knocked the tooth out, they'd go free over that. So there were protections. There were things that were much more humane than in the ancient Near Eastern world. And it was basically a financial necessity for people in debt and people impoverished that this was a way that they could work.

And they could pay off debt and things like that. So it was a system that, just like divorce, Jesus said, because of the hardness of human hearts, Moses gave it as part of the law. But it wasn't God's ideal for humanity. The same way with slavery. That's why it was through the Bible that slavery was opposed and overthrown. It was Bible-believing Christians like William Wilberforce that were instrumental in England or Harry Peacher Stowe in America that were instrumental in overthrowing the horrors of the slave trade because of Christian principles.

And because of the biblical emphasis on the captives being set free and the Israelites. Remember, you were slaves in Egypt. Now don't be slaves to other men, only serve God and treat the foreigner in your midst with compassion and kindness. Because remember, you were enslaved in Egypt. You were foreigners and you were mistreated.

Don't mistreat the foreigner within you. So that's the heart of God. We don't want to exaggerate this or see it wrongly. There are reasons for this, and again, it is not the eternal plan.

Let's go down to Stephen. Some people criticize the time between the events of the Scriptures and the date when the biblical authors wrote them down, claiming there was time for the stories to change before being solidified in writing. Actually, let's just look at the New Testament for a moment. The Gospels. There is conclusive evidence from every angle that you look at this that when the Gospels were being written, if they were not themselves written by eyewitnesses, and Richard Balcom in his book, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, really makes an excellent case for the testimony of the eyewitnesses. But if they were not written by eyewitnesses, they were written within a generation of the events that were taking place or the oldest people were still alive to remember things. In other words, it's not like everybody forgot something and said, let's come up with this like Jesus said. Jesus said, he dies and he rises from the dead. Everybody's dead like a hundred years later, we'll just come up and say this happened.

No, no, no. First, in the ancient world, passing things on orally was normal. That was part of culture. That's how you did most of your learning. Here, let me ask you a question. I'm just going to sing this out.

A, B, C, D, E, Z, Y. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you said it wrong. As a kid, you memorized that. As a kid, you sang it and you know it. It's just ingrained. It's ingrained because you heard it over and over. We're a culture that's used to seeing things, writing them, reading them. But the ancient world, some parts of the world to this day, things are passed on orally. And in fact, the oral culture will say, oh, it's much more accurate here. Because when you have a community of people all memorized the same thing, you can't perpetrate a lie on them. You could change texts that are written and shift things around, but we've all memorized it and passed it on. And the grandparents remember it and the parents remember it. Now, the kids have just learned it. You can't perpetrate a myth.

Now, there's only so much you can pass on. That's why things are ultimately written down. But in point of fact, you can make an excellent case that either eyewitnesses of the events wrote down critical events of the Gospels, or there were living eyewitnesses that had seen them themselves. Because look, let's say Jesus dies around the year 30. Let's say you got people that were eyewitnesses who were 20 at that time, so they were born 10 of this era.

Let's say some of the Gospels are written as late as 80 or 90. You got people that are 70, 80 years old that were eyewitnesses. And then you have all those. You've got a community that's heard these reports and repeated them.

So you're not going to be able to just voice something on them. And it's, oh, we never heard that. We just accept that. Obviously. Then you have, you know, when was Paul writing his letters? As they were happening. That's the letters he wrote them when they happened, etc.

You know, the Psalms, as he's pouring his heart out, he's writing the things down. You say, yeah, but what about the creation accounts? Who was there? Or Adam and Eve, who was there? Or the patriarchal narratives?

Fair questions. So here's the deal. You have these various accounts that were then passed on and children of Israel going into Egypt and all these claims. And now they're brought out of Egypt by God's supernatural hand with signs and wonders that the whole nation sees. The whole nation hears them on Mount Sinai.

So now you have that, like, boom. All right, so that's confirming the revelation we had before then. Then you have the prophets adding to that, speaking to that, reinforcing Mount Sinai revelation. Now they begin to prophesy of Jesus, the coming one. Now the Messiah comes, dies, rises from the dead.

You have a whole generation that sees that. So that verifies now what's come before that. Now you have the eyewitnesses and the immediate followers of Jesus writing down their accounts. And then they're backed by the power of God. So God's vindicated that, verified that. And then as that message is preached, he continues to do so. It's not just like out of the blue somewhere. And again, the ancient world, historians would not write like a contemporary news broadcast.

Breaking news! No, they would wait often a generation or longer to get the larger flow of history. And then rely on the accounts that have been passed down orally and in other means. And now, looking back, now they could write the history. Because they've seen how things can develop. It's like debate over who was a good president or a bad president. It takes a generation or two to be able to see the final results and then look back and sift those things out. So in that sense, the Bible has been preserved with amazing accuracy.

And the discrepancies are utterly minor and nothing that affects the overall narrative. I would encourage you, along with Richard Balcom's book, so B-A-U-C-K-H-A-M. Richard Balcom, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. This award-winning book, second edition, expands on things in response to some reviews. Kenneth A. Kitchen, one of the world's foremost Egyptologists. His book, On the Reliability of the Old Testament.

I often recommend these titles. Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament, by a top Egyptologist. And then a classic little book by F.F. Bruce, since updated by N.T.

Wright. The New Testament documents, are they reliable? I believe Walter Kaiser, Walter C. Kaiser has one on the Old Testament as well. The New Testament documents, are they reliable?

In fact, the F.F. Bruce book, one of the foremost New Testament scholars of the last generation. I believe that's available just as a free PDF that you can read online. And of course, you can buy it as an updated edition by N.T.

Wright. You'll be stunned by what you read. You'll be stunned at how the New Testament stands out from ancient histories and ancient accounts that we only have preserved in like three manuscripts. And there's 700 years later, you know, because the early manuscripts are lost, so copy, recopy, recopy.

Now, we have an embarrassment of riches of New Testament documents and at least one that many scholars date to within a century of the death and resurrection of Jesus, which is extraordinary to have a manuscript that early and saying these things were being passed on. Before then, OK, you've been answering your Twitter questions. I'm going to go over to Facebook.

And these were posted at the end of April, so don't post them now. But we'll continue to answer as many of these questions as we can. And it is our joy and privilege to be here.

Welcome, friends, to the line of fire on today's broadcast. I get to do one of my favorite things, which is tackle some really serious objections and questions that you're often confronted with, either in your own studies, your own spiritual walk, or from friends or loved ones or folks you interact with online. So end of April, I solicited questions on Facebook and Twitter and said on a show a few days later I was going to begin to respond to the questions that you posted, serious objections to the Bible or the nature of God that you struggled with or that friends you know struggled with. And we did part one, first part answering, but we got so, so many questions that I said, OK, we're going to continue doing this. So now a few weeks later, this is part two.

So I'm going to start with a question on Facebook from Brooklyn. Ask Dr. Brown, I have a genuine friend who is an intellectual and really struggles with more complex theological issues than most pastors can help with. He has a very high IQ, but if he could only come to some answers, I feel he would be a brilliant apologist. Recommendations on Old Testament scholars in discussing the concept of Elyon and the beliefs behind there being multiple gods referenced in the Old Testament, or anyone you could think to put him in touch with that would be willing to listen to his questions to ask would be an answered prayer for me. Thank you, my husband, and I love and appreciate your ministry so much. Well, thank you for the good word. I appreciate that.

And I appreciate your love for your friend. Obviously, really pray for him. Really, really pray for him. That's the greatest thing you could do, that God would work in his heart, that God would make him aware of his own sin, his own need, that he would somehow have a revelation of God's reality and would be drawn to him in repentance, even a revelation of God's love through Jesus. But along with praying for him, which is the most powerful thing you could do, I would do a few things. First, I would ask him, hey, has he ever watched a debate like with, say, a William Lane Craig, you know, maybe William Lane Craig versus Christopher Hitchens, or, you know, a brilliant philosopher like Craig, or a brilliant mathematician like John Lennox, and both of them with strong science backgrounds, like Lennox debating Dawkins, or has he watched any of those? Would he watch them together with you? Just so he sees there are people out there. Maybe he'd watch my debate with Professor Bart Ehrman.

Does the Bible provide an adequate answer to the problem of suffering? So, you know, see if he'd do that. And maybe you've done this already, but others like this, here are some suggestions. The other thing is ask him, is he willing to read much? Is he willing to dig in deeper and try to understand these things more? Maybe if he read John Oswald's book, The Bible Among the Myths, John Oswald, O-S-W-A-L-T, maybe that would open his eyes to the uniqueness of the God of Israel compared to the gods of the ancient world. A book I just mentioned in an earlier segment, Kenneth A. Kitchen, foremost Egyptologist, on the reliability of the Old Testament.

That's the name of that. Maybe something like that would help him. Maybe if he struggled with the nature of God, the God of the Old Testament, books by Paul Copan, you know, Is God a Moral Monster, C-O-P-A-N, or David Lamb, L-A-M-B, as it sounds, a God behaving badly. Maybe these types of books would help him.

Or some of the books by John Walton where he looks at the Old Testament and issues relating to the Old Testament from a little different perspective as an ancient and recent scholar as well. Maybe these would be of help and maybe he could reach out to some of these people and they'd be willing to interact with him. The other thing is he could send some of his questions our way, although it's very difficult for me to interact with everyone directly. Maybe I take one of his questions and talk about it at length on the air. And I do have an associate who's an Old Testament scholar and fluent in Hebrew, Russian, and English, a Jewish believer. So Messianic Jew and Old Testament scholar, he answers Jewish related questions that come into our ministry and copies me in all his answers.

Maybe if your friend writes in and says, hey, I'm Brooklyn's friend and Dr. Brown asked to be aware of this, I'll see that. So maybe I could address things in that way. Okay, let's see. This is, okay, Rena had a hard time answering how God could tell someone to kill his own son. Even though a ram was provided, I couldn't answer how God could request it in the first place. A valid question, right?

Valid question. If someone heard a voice today, you know, and you see them walking down the street, you know, and holding the hand of their child with a knife in their hand, it's like, where are you going? God told me to sacrifice my child. You'd call 911 on the spot.

You'd rescue that kid from abuse and potential death. I had an atheist ask me, what if God commanded you to kill me? So he asked me, if God commanded me to kill him, an atheist, would I do it? I said, well, God would not command me to murder you. And he said, well, what if God commanded? I said, well, he would not command me to murder you. He doesn't just command his people to go kill someone in innocent blood. That would be murder. And God's not a murderer. I said, now, if you were an ISIS terrorist and you were about to slaughter a group of children and I was a sniper with orders to take you out in the military.

Yeah, I'd take you out and save those children. And that would be a good thing, just like the allies fighting against Hitler and the Nazis did a good thing. But here you're talking about God commanding Abraham, testing him, Genesis 22, right? God tests him, tells him to kill his son. OK, so there are three answers to the question. Number one, God never intended it. God was not going to let it happen.

Not a hair on Isaac's head would be injured. That's the first thing. You say, but where would the command even come from? In the ancient world, people sacrificed their children to gods.

They did that. So this was not something that would be unheard of for the deity to make that demand or for someone to think that in worship of their deity that this was a good and right thing to do. The third thing, though, is that this is God's way of teaching Israel and all generations, I don't want human sacrifice.

I don't want you to do this. So it's a powerful object lesson in that regard. And then finally, it was a way of Abraham demonstrating his love for God, that he was willing to even sacrifice his own son, the one through whom all the promises would come, the one for whom he waited for 25 years, that he was willing to sacrifice and believing that God would raise him from the dead. Even if he did that, God would raise him from the dead, as Hebrews 11 tells us. That's where Abraham's faith was, because he does say to his attendants, well, we're going to go to the mountain and we'll come back.

We, we, we will come back. So somehow in his mind, he felt even if I kill him, God will raise him from the dead. So this is anything but just a mandate of God saying, go ahead and kill your child. Now, this is God forever saying, I don't want that. You say, isn't that what he did with Jesus? No, Jesus is a perfectly righteous one, laid his life down on our behalf. He took our place.

Big, big difference. So that, that's how I would answer that. Let's see, Stephan, divine hiddenness, and thus God's silence when you suffer. Just think, for example, of Job, but if he had no friends to comfort him and God would be silent, is at least emotionally disturbing, or just silence during prayer, not knowing if the answer is no, or wait a bit longer. So here's, here's the answer to that, which is a very important question, that the Bible actually says, and I cover this in my book, Has God Failed You? Right at the beginning of the book, I get into this verse.

If you don't have the book, you'll find it super helpful. As God failed you, finding faith when you're not even sure God is real. That, that what happens is, the prophet Isaiah says, God, you are truly a God who hides himself, God of Israel, our Savior. So he calls God the God of Israel, meaning he's the covenant God. He calls him our Savior, but he says you're a God that often hides himself, and then that's in the Bible. So the Bible is telling us that God does often or sometimes hide himself, but that he does it for reasons. He does it to reveal what's in our hearts, like he withdrew his presence from Hezekiah to find out what was in his heart and revealed pride that was there. He does it to teach us lessons of faith. When it comes to Job, the so-called comforters, I mean his friends, were terrible for him, made life much, much worse for him, and then falsely accused him of being some terrible sinner that God had to discipline and even destroy his kids.

Ultimately, Job has an encounter with God. So I want to take comfort in the fact that the same God who said, I'm with you always to the ends of the earth, also has it in the Bible that he's a God who hides himself. That will only drive us to seek him more diligently, and if we'll do that, we'll encounter him more deeply.

Let me say it again. If we seek him more diligently, we'll encounter him more deeply. Hebrews 11 6, he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Read Proverbs 2, 3, 4 in particular, other places in Proverbs as well with those chapters, and look at how wisdom is pursued. Look at the call to search for wisdom more than for hidden treasure. Think of people traveling around the world, you know, the gold rush in America, right? Everyone going to the West Coast looking for gold.

People going to all lengths, miners risking their lives underground just to dig up precious jewels and gems and things of value. God says, if you look for me like that, if you look for my wisdom like that, you'll find me. You'll find wisdom.

And look, I'll speak as a man here. Maybe, sir, there's some young lady that you really like and, you know, you're a young man and you think, oh, man, 25, she's 21. She's beautiful. She's got this great personality.

She loves the Lord. I really like her. I'm just going to pray, God, is there something in this for us and should I get to know her better and stuff? And she talks to you a little bit, puts you off a little more, and you got to kind of earn her respect a little. She's got to see who you really are and check you out. And it's over a period of months that she really begins to open her heart to you. And then you realize, wow, we're in love and we're going to be married one day.

Well, you don't just expect the first time you smile at her, she's going to say, hey, let's sleep together. That's a godly person. That's not what you expect. That's not who you would want. Rather, it's someone, OK, you got to earn this person's trust. You got to show her that you're serious, that you're not superficial, that it's not just about good looks and that.

And then over time and then rightly before God, she will give herself to you and not before that. We would expect that if you were going for a job with a top, top company and, you know, massive security issues, they got to vet you and stuff. Hey, those kind of jobs take that kind of vetting. And if they just look at the resume and you filled it out by hand and it's like three lines long, it's like, yeah, I think you're the you're the person.

You're not going to be making a million dollars a year and have high level security clearance with the CIA. It doesn't happen like that. So the same is the relationship with God. You really pursue him. You make it your number one priority to find him, to know him, have wisdom. And he will reward you.

It's a promise that sure is gone. It's the line of fire with your host, Dr. Michael Brown, your voice of moral, cultural and spiritual revolution. Here again is Dr. Michael Brown. Boy, I really enjoy answering your questions and thank you for trusting me with such difficult questions, painful questions, hard questions, saying, hey, Dr. Brown, I think you can help with these. I'm glad that you want to put them in our direction and we'll do our best to answer them with integrity before God. Let me just say this. You'll never get a cheap answer for me.

You'll never get an answer to just kind of distract you from the real issue because I don't have an answer. If I don't say that's a good question. And that I wonder about that also.

And I got to dig deeper to find out more. All right. So some more questions that were posted for us.

This is this was the end of April. Thereabouts, the questions were posted. Let's see.

This one is Mark and Amy. What does God protect and spare some people and not others? What does God allow children to be abused and killed? Those are the two questions I get the most. So let's deal with the second one first. Why does God allow children to be abused and killed?

Because he gave us free will. Yeah, all the consequences are utterly horrific. The realities are the suffering of little ones is mind boggling. Some years ago, maybe about 10 years ago, I read some news about a girl that had been kidnapped. I was following the story.

Just some dreadful news. A girl had been kidnapped across the street from where she had been kidnapped was a former child abuser, sex offender that was out of jail. But they found no evidence to connect him to the crime. It turned out he was the one. That in the middle of the night, he crawled in through a window, kidnapped the girl, maybe she's eight, nine years old, and then sexually abused her and then killed her.

But when they unearthed where he had buried her with his favorite doll, they discovered that as far as they could tell, she was buried alive. When I heard that, I became so overwhelmed. I thought God should destroy the whole human race. If one of us could do something that evil, just wipe out the whole planet. I was so overwhelmed with human guilt.

And it's hardly one person committing atrocities like that. Why does God allow it? Because he gave us free will.

It's that simple. He said we shouldn't have created us at all. Well, why don't we all just commit suicide? Because we want to live. Well, why don't we just press a button so we don't do evil? Okay, how about we press a button, you can never make a choice the rest of your life, but you'll be happy. No, I want to be able to make choices. So if we want to exist and we want to be able to make choices, then there are going to be horrible things that happen.

It's reality. Why doesn't God do something about it? Well, he did. First, he works in the world all the time. Secondly, he sent his son to die for our sins, to give us eternal life. And third, he will bring final judgment on this world and forever and ever and ever will show the beauties of his redemption. But if we're going to exist and if we're going to have free will, then there's going to be evil like this. Well, then the first question, okay, why does God protect and spare some people and others?

We don't know. Now, some, it's a promise. In other words, here's a godly person, God-fearing, God-honoring, living for him, and God protects that person because they're honoring him and they put their trust in him and he delivers them from evil. And others are defiant and rebellious and sinful and they get cut down prematurely. Well, that happens all the time. Even just if you were a health insurance company and you're insuring people, this group, heavy smoker, heavy drinker, gluttonous and reckless, this group, discipline, good physical shape, don't drink, don't smoke, safety living, who gets the better insurance rates? And if you look at 10,000 people in each group, on average, who lives longer, who lives shorter? But then you have this terribly wicked person and they live to be 92 and you have a godly young person and they die at 18.

Why? We don't know. In this world, we don't know all the answers.

You can speculate different times, but we simply don't know. And the Word of God tells us that all of creation is groaning and we groan, too, for redemption. And the Holy Spirit within us is groaning because God grieves over these things.

As Basilie Schlink, godly German Christian woman who opposed the Nazis, that she said that anyone that loves as intensely as God loves must feel tremendous pain, paraphrase of her words. So God grieves over these things, too, and yet he does not just intervene in ways that we think are right and his ways are above us. So I'm saying, ultimately, we have to ask ourselves, have we seen the kindness of God in our own lives? Does the Bible constantly speak of his goodness and kindness? Do we see it displayed in Jesus? And does the Bible also have books like Ecclesiastes that say it doesn't seem to matter? You know, the wicked live long, the righteous get cut short, you work your whole life to accumulate things, now it's given over to some son that's just a fool, he loses it all.

For what? What's the purpose of it all? There's a whole book dealing with that, but then saying, you know, in the end, fear God, keep his commandments.

That's the only thing that makes sense. You have a book like Job, where Job challenges God. In Has God Failed You, you have a whole chapter, just what would Job say to someone suffering?

What would his words be? We don't understand why certain things happen. But if we hold on to God, we'll see him bring good out of evil, we'll see him bring redemption, we'll see him bring hope out of hopeless situations, resurrection out of death. And we'll know, I don't know why this prayer wasn't answered, I don't know why this person died, but I know that God is good and faithful and not indifferent. Good question.

Steven, obviously, well no, this actually got a few people responding with likes. Why would God let his people believe crazy conspiracy theories about vaccines? Again, he lets us believe what we want to believe. Why would he stop that when he doesn't stop people from being downright atheist? Why would he stop that when he doesn't stop a Hindu from believing that there are 33 million gods?

Why does he stop that when he doesn't stop heresies within the church? That's why we have all the warnings in the Bible. Warnings against false prophets, false teachers. Diana, the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Bible.

So here's where it gets really interesting. The more you study scripture and put it against its ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman background, the more you're stunned by accuracy, by familiarity. Let me just give you one proof of the book I referenced earlier in the broadcast, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Balcom. He starts off by dealing with names. Names in the Bible. Names in the Gospels. You say, what's the big deal about names? Okay, if I'm writing a book today about America before the Civil War, if I want to get that right, in other words, I've got to get the names right. I've got to get if somebody earns money, what they were earning at that time.

Like if I'm using, let's say, Kristin as a common name now, or Jonathan as a common, whatever the names are, right? But they were totally rare names back then. Or I've got geography wrong because things have shifted. You know, this was a major city then, but it's not now. And if I don't have all the facts right, anyone reading that, if I'm trying to write history of them, they'll say, you're way off here. Or trying to write a novel, a historical novel about the assumptions, they'll say, you're way off.

That's not the way it was. So if the Gospels were written by people who weren't there, who didn't have the background, who didn't know the facts, the sights, the sounds, that kind of thing, then it would be immediately revealed because of the historical records we do have. You say, well, why couldn't they just go back and study the records? Because they didn't have the records written then. In other words, we have the data compiled and scholars can look at it, but you didn't have that data available. So, for example, from inscriptions, from tombstones, from contracts, from things with names, that we have a good idea about the time of Jesus as to what the most common men's names were and what the most common women's names were. And basically, you go through the Gospels and that's what's reflected there. It's like, well, if they didn't write at that time, how would they have known that, you know, a hundred years later or something?

They'd be getting a lot of it wrong because they'd be using the names that were common in their day and things had shifted. Or just a casual reference that you wouldn't. I remember seeing a movie.

Radio City Music Hall is a boy with my family. I think it was Operation Crossbow, some name like that. I don't know. Maybe I'm making the name up. But in the movie, there's some general.

There's James Garner who played, I'm just saying how far back I go, 47 years back, plays a general. And during one scene, he cuts his finger. It's a paper cut. I remember thinking, why does he get a paper, he's taught, why in the world get a paper cut?

It seemed insignificant. Well, later he's kidnapped, he's drugged, he's then, they put him in a whole different situation. They dye his hair and they tell him, yeah, all this time has gone by, like he just came out of this medical condition. And they're trying to brainwash him that the world has totally changed and I don't remember any of the other details. But what's the thing that makes him realize that the whole thing, because he sees his hair, he sees everything that's different, he's different, the world's different. He sees the paper cut.

And that's when he realizes, wait a second, that was days ago I got this paper cut. And this is many, many years later, the thing's long since been gone. So along the way, it seemed like an insignificant detail.

Now later it comes to be relevant. But you'd only know that if there was, you were just an observer. So a lot of the New Testament, the way it's written, it's like the casual observer making comments that don't really tie in with anything else, but prove that they were there, they knew what was going on. The more you study it, listen back earlier in the broadcast, I gave references to books that help establish the credibility, the authority, scripture, the trustworthiness. And then just check out apologetic study Bibles. I can't recommend one off the top of my head, but there are one or two out there, apologetic study Bibles. And just check those out because those will go through the Bible and say, hey, we have a record for this, confirmation for this. The more I've studied over the decades, the more confident I am in the reliability of the scriptures, God's words. Visit the website AskDrBrown.org, AskDrBrown.org, and sign up for our e-mails if you haven't done it.