Mangling the Word of God

January 26, 2009, 8:43 am by dc-agape.

Mark 1:1-9

These nine verses are all that Simon Peter tells the Romans about John the Baptist, as recorded by John Mark.  The important thing to a TrueChristianTM is that of the message that John the Baptist proclaimed.  Baptism with repentance is the name of the game.  Reading the study notes, the way for a Gentile to convert to Judaism was through baptism.  John the Baptist opens repentance baptism to the Israelites.

Here is one of the first Tall Tales in the New Testament:

Mark 1:5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him, confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

That is one whooper!  Everyone in Jerusalem and the countryside were baptized and heard john the Baptist preach about the coming of someone more powerful than him.  Everyone?  Come on, we know the Pharisees and the Sadducees did not get baptized.  Otherwise they would have been waiting with open arms for Jesus! 

But this is not the only non-truth in these nine verses.  Read Mark 1:1-3.  Notice that Mark combines two different verses from the OT together to make one prophecy.  But everyone should take a closer look at where those verses come from.  The TrueChristianTM complains that Atheists take verse out of context.  Well, let’s just see how badly John Mark takes verses out of context.

Mal 2:17-3:1 You have wearied the Lord with your words.  “How have we wearied him?” you ask.  By saying, “All who do evil are good in the eyes of the Lord, and he is pleased with them” or “Where is the God of justice?” “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me.  Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple: the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” Says the Lord Almighty.

We need to continue this passage to see how badly out of context John Mark has taken it, read Mal 3:2-5 here.  This set of verses in the Book of Malachi is not about John the Baptist.  This prophecy in Malachi is not even about Jesus’ first coming, no, it is about his second coming…the day of Judgment.

But that is not all that is out of context, the section from Isaiah is also wrong, take a look:

Isaiah 40:3-4 A voice of one calling: “In the desert prepare the way for the Lord; make straight in the wilderness a high way for our God.  Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain.

There is no “voice calling in the desert”!  It is a voice calling to make a way through the desert.  The same voice is calling to flatten mountains, rough terrain, and hills.  And don’t forget to raise up the valleys, that is what the voice is doing…it is not calling out from the desert!

John Mark has made two major blunders and he has not even said a word about Jesus!  Can we be certain that the rest of the Book of Mark will be any better?  Where is the Holy Spirit when you need it to keep the Word of God inerrant?

To make matters worse, this Book of Mark is the source material for the Books of Matthew and Luke.  This is not looking good for the Inerrant Word of God.  I certainly see why it is said in:

1 Cor 2:14 The man without the Spirit does not accept the thing that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Let’s hope that the Book of John is better!  Well on the other hand, the Book of John does not look promising when you read this Wikipedia article.  I know it’s that evil Wikipedia, but hey it’s the most concise material on the web.  Talk about “god bias” verse “non-believer bias”, all the web pages and books revering to the authorship of the Johannine works are so biased it is impossible to tell if the Book of John was written as early as 57AD or as late as 140AD.  But I will get to that in much later posts. 

Before I get to the Book of John I want to cover much more of the OT, NT, Gnostic writing, Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Apocrypha.  I have so much material to work with, and it is all impossibly intriguing to me.  This is so much fun, and I think it will get even better.  Even though I am not looking forward to the Book of Numbers or the repetitiveness of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  The same problem exists, of repetitiveness exists in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles.  I do plan on stirring this stuff up and making it interesting for me.

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Posted in Gospel of Mark, Tall Tales, Readings | Print | 1 Comment »