Ten Bible Stories Never Preached in Church
By: Tim Zeak
Tags: Bible, Religion, Atheism, Apologetics, Mythology

Is it really the “good book” that many people think it is?

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Part 1 of a Two-Part Discussion

Let us assume that the God of the Bible is real and that He inspired the Bible to teach us humans about His nature, His will, and to provide us with instruction and wisdom on how best to live and to serve Him, and most importantly, how to gain His salvation. Everything would be true and trustworthy. Being from a perfect and all-knowing God, mistakes would be an impossibility. 2Timothy 3:16–17 states that “All Scripture is inspired by God and beneficial for teaching, for rebuke, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man or woman of God may be fully capable, equipped for every good work.”

Here are ten things we learn from His “inspired and mistake free” book.

1. God decided to punish David for committing adultery with Bathsheba and for having her husband killed after she became pregnant. Two of the punishments were that God arranged to have his wives raped in broad daylight and that his new born son would die after the baby suffered a sickness for seven days.

2Samuel 12:11: Thus says the Lord, “Behold, I will stir up evil against you from your own household; and I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your companion, and he will lie with your wives in broad daylight.”

2Samuel 12:16–18: ……and the Lord struck the child that Uriah’s widow bore to David, and he was very sick…… Then it happened on the seventh day that the child died.

For some reason, the law that required stoning to death apparently did not apply to David. I am not sure what lesson we can learn from this one, especially since the Bible teaches that David was a man after God’s own heart.

2. God literally caused parents to kill and eat their own children. Again, as preachers must often say, “God works in mysterious ways.”

Jeremiah 19:9: “And I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and the flesh of their daughters, and they will eat one another’s flesh during the siege and in the hardship with which their enemies and those who seek their life will torment them.”

Deuteronomy 28:53: Then you will eat the offspring of your own body, the flesh of your sons and of your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, during the siege and the hardship by which your enemy will oppress you.

Deuteronomy 28:56–57: The refined and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and tenderness, will be hostile toward the husband she cherishes and toward her son and daughter, and toward her afterbirth that comes from between her legs, and toward her children to whom she gives birth, because she will eat them secretly for lack of anything else, during the siege and the hardship with which your enemy will oppress you in your towns.

3. God literally instructed the Israelites to capture young girls after killing their parents and take them home to rape them. However, He does show “mercy” by giving the girls 30 full days to mourn.

Deuteronomy 21:10–13: ”When you go out to battle against your enemies, and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take them away captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and have a desire for her and would take her as a wife for yourself, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and trim her nails. She shall also remove the clothes of her captivity and shall remain in your house and mourn her father and mother a full month; and after that you may go in to her (that means to rape her) and be her husband and she shall be your wife.” (Rape and kidnapping were not only approved by the Bible, but they were expressly authorized as part of God’s Law)

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4. God’s instructions on how to cure leprosy. Despite the Bible’s cure, some people have the audacity to trust Science and Doctors instead.

Leviticus 14:49–51: “ To cleanse the house then, he shall take two birds, cedar wood, scarlet string, and hyssop, and he shall slaughter the one bird in an earthenware vessel over running water. Then he shall take the cedar wood, the hyssop, and the scarlet string, with the live bird, and dip them in the blood of the slaughtered bird as well as in the running water and sprinkle the house seven times.”

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5. God justifies all the evil and suffering in the world because Adam and Eve ate from a forbidden tree. He later inspired Paul to develop the doctrine of man’s fall, often referred to as “original sin.” While God accused Adam and Eve of disobedience, what He does not explain is that only after eating from the tree of “knowledge of good and evil” that they would have known what doing wrong was. They were like babies born in a complete state of innocence, not knowing the difference between right and wrong. God indicated they would have always remained in that state if they did not eat of that tree…never having any idea that not obeying was wrong. It seems they would have completely lacked any intent or motive to do wrong before the fruit that God made on that one tree, for lack of a better word, “poisoned” them.

Genesis 3:22: Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out with his hand, and take fruit also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.” (God’s use of the plural pronoun is another interesting study in itself.)

Is it not shocking that a loving and perfect God would admit He made a mistake and then to correct it, decide to drown almost every living thing including all babies and pregnant women in a world-wide flood in order to start over? Unfortunately, even that “do- over” was no better.

Genesis 6:6–7: So, the Lord was sorry that He had made mankind on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. Then the Lord said, “I will wipe out mankind whom I have created from the face of the land; mankind, and animals as well, and crawling things, and the birds of the sky. For I am sorry that I have made them.”