Ten Bible Stories Never Preached in Church
Is it really the “good book” that many people think it is?
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)
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.”
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.”
All ten of the above were innocent but God still drowned them all.
6. God decreed a law that allowed a man to rape a young virgin girl and then force her to marry him for the price of 50 shekels of silver. Maybe an alpha male snuck this one in while it was being edited.
Deuteronomy 22:28–29 “If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and he seizes her and has sexual relations with her, and they are discovered, then the man who had sexual relations with her shall give the girl’s father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife, because he has violated her; he is not allowed to divorce her all his days.”
Millions of young girls are brutally raped every year. Even if for some strange reason, God wanted to remain concealed, but still loved and cared for them, He could easily call 911.
7. God uses raunchy and X-rated language to describe His anger in many places.
Ezekiel 23:19–21: Yet she multiplied her obscene practices, remembering the days of her youth, when she prostituted herself in the land of Egypt. She lusted after their lovers, whose flesh is like the flesh of donkeys and whose discharge is like the discharge of horses. So, you longed for the outrageous sin of your youth when the Egyptians handled your breasts because of the breasts of your youth.
Jeremiah 13:26: “So I Myself have also stripped your skirts off over your face, that your shame may be seen.” You read that right. God was the one who removed their skirts.
Malachi 2:3: “Behold, I am going to rebuke your descendants, and I will spread dung on your faces, the dung of your feasts; and you will be taken away with it”
8. God’s word clearly teaches that He is an unrelenting racist, and if we do not believe it, we may be in serious peril of hell fire.
Ezra 9:1–2: Now when these things had been completed, the officials approached me, saying, “The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, as to their abominations, those of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and for their sons, so that the holy race has intermingled with the peoples of the lands; indeed, the hands of the officials and the leaders have taken the lead in this unfaithfulness.”
Ezra 10:3–5: So now let us make a covenant with our God to send away all the wives and their children, following the counsel of my lord and of those who fear the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the Law. Arise! For this matter is your responsibility, but we will be with you; be courageous and act.” Then Ezra stood and made the leading priests, the Levites, and all Israel take an oath that they would do according to this proposal; so, they took the oath.
Deuteronomy 9:1: “Hear, Israel! You are crossing the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, cities that are great and fortified to heaven…”
Joshua 6:24: They burned the city with fire, and all that was in it. Only the silver and gold, and articles of bronze and iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the Lord.
1Samuel 15:3: “Now go and strike Amalek and completely destroy everything that he has, and do not spare him; but put to death both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.”
There are dozens of other very similar passages, but a final example is that Jewish slaves were freed in the seventh year, although the slave’s wife and children were still owned by the master unless the slave agreed to remain his slave forever. See Exodus 21.
But “foreign” slaves were never freed. They were inherited by their owners’ heirs.
Leviticus 25:44–46: As for your male and female slaves whom you may have — you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you. You may also acquire them from the sons of the foreign residents who reside among you, and from their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession. You may also pass them on as an inheritance to your sons after you, to receive as a possession; you can use them as permanent slaves. But in respect to your countrymen, the sons of Israel, you shall not rule with severity over one another.
9. As absurd as it sounds, the Bible seems to actually teach that God does not like little children or even the unborn ones, since He has killed untold millions of them.
Hosea 13:16: Samaria will pay the penalty for her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, their children will be slaughtered, and their pregnant women will be ripped open.
See number 2, 3, & 6 above, and remember what happened during God’s world-wide flood.
As an aside, WebMD indicates that up to 50% of all pregnancies end during the first 30 days, usually, not even noticed by the mother. It seems that God and God alone have the knowledge of them and the power to correct those occurrences if He desired that more babies were born.
For other details showing that God is not “pro-life”, see here.
10. God loves the smell of roasting animals as its smoke floats up to His house in Heaven. He demanded daily sacrifices and Solomon would have especially pleased Him when he slaughtered 120,000 sheep and 22,000 oxen in one day (1Kings 8:62–63).
Leviticus 1:17: Then he shall tear it by its wings but shall not sever it. And the priest shall offer it up in smoke on the altar on the wood which is on the fire; it is a burnt offering, an offering by fire of a soothing aroma to the LORD.
Exodus 29:18: And you shall offer up in smoke the whole ram on the altar; it is a burnt offering to the Lord: it is a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to the Lord.
Despite having 700 wives and 300 concubines (sex slaves), God declared Solomon the wisest man on earth. Is God trying to teach us something here? Not only about having many wives, but also why would God enjoy smelling the smoke from innocent burning animals?
Bible Stories Never Preached in Church, Part 2
