Questions Blog

I've just had the Jehovah's Witnesses round, I was polite but feel there is a better way to spread the gospel with them. Any advice?

The first thing to know about the JW's and any Christian deviant cult/sect (Mormons, Christadelphians...) is they have a persecution mentality. This means if you slam a door in their face they're pretty happy, if you set the dogs on them they're really happy and if you chase them down the street screaming at them whilst throwing large heavy objects they are ecstatic. So being polite, welcoming, inviting them in for a cup of tea and biscuit is what they're not expecting, especially from Christians.

Does the devil act independently?

Put simply, no, the devil (or Satan) does not act independently – he is not outside of God’s sovereign control. There are three points to make here which will make this clearer.

Firstly, God is in complete control of everything, and has absolute power over Satan. We see this most clearly in the first two chapters of the book of Job. Satan is unable to do anything to Job without God’s permission, and nor can he do anything to us without God’s permission.

Will more books be added to the canon?

One of the requirements for being included in the canon is that the author is either an apostle (most of the New Testament) or working closely with an apostle in putting their book together (Mark, Luke, Acts). This is because Jesus promised the apostles that he would open their minds so that they could remember all that had happened, and so that they could understand and explain the Old Testament to people.

There seem to be lots of books which would fit with the three tests that were mentioned when deciding whether a book is canon, for example J. I. Packer’s Knowing God. Should they be classed as part of scripture, too?

The simple answer is, no they shouldn’t. The three tests given were not meant to be exhaustive and to be used on any book, but just for those we have in the Bible now. There have been many, many books written over the years which are extremely helpful in the Christian life, and do cause us to know and love the Lord Jesus more, while fitting with what scripture says, and being internally consistent.

On QI the other day, it was made clear that the census described at the beginning of Luke’s gospel could not have happened. How does this fit with the Bible being inerrant?

The two assertions made on QI was that there were (a) no censuses of the whole Roman empire and (b) no censuses which required people to return to their home town. However, there are two main pieces of evidence to suggest that these assertions are false.

If the Bible is inerrant, why does John have a different chronology of the crucifixion to the other gospels?

There are lots of very common objections to the doctrine of the inerrancy of the Bible, and this is one of them, but it doesn’t take too much thinking to realise that the gospels can be easily harmonised.

Do you think that some things happen to you to test your faith? Does the devil intervene sometimes and make things hard?

Throughout the bible we see God's people going through hardships; whether the Hebrews in slavery in Egypt to the apostles taking the gospel to the nations and being imprisoned and beaten for it. God's people face opposition. I would say that God does not send times of testing to His people, however there are times when God decides not to stop a period of testing or struggle for His people.

Why does God not just make everyone follow Him?

God does everything He does for His own glory. When He made the world, that showed how creative He is; when He spoke to Adam and Eve, that shows us His caring concern for those He has made; and when He sent Jesus, who gave up His own life so that we can know God through Jesus, that shows us that He is a loving, compassionate, merciful and amazing God who wants us to be saved at the greatest cost to Himself possible.

In the same way God disciplined Israel and Judah because of their rebellion towards Him by allowing them to be taken into exile, does God discipline us in this life through hardship? Or is our suffering nothing to do with how we live?

Suffering is not part of God’s plan; difficulties we go through remind us that we are living in a fallen world. However, when the sufferings we go through alert us to our sins and that in turn leads us to repentance, this functions as an act of discipline from God, but also as an act of mercy because He chooses not to punish us in a way that we ultimately deserve for our disobedience to Him.

Some verses: 1 Corinthians 1:31, Hebrews 12:1-13

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