Ep.1246: Does God REALLY Require Human Sacrifices? Contradictions Series
Clarifying Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and if we should make oaths or not
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CHAPTERS
Theme Scripture: Genesis 22:1-2
The actions of God in the Bible are an easy target for criticism. It is so easy to look into this ancient book and pick out events that may not look sensible and even make God look bad and wildly inconsistent. Examining these events carefully does reveal truth and harmony - if we are willing to look for it. One such event is the account where God specifically tells Abraham to take his son Isaac and kill him as a sacrifice to Him. This sounds absurd! How can a God of love, compassion and justice just arbitrarily ask someone to murder their son? What possible good could ever come from such an action? And what about other accounts in the Bible that seem to show God as minimizing the value of human life? These are hard questions. The good news is, the Bible has clear and legitimate answers!
God called out to Abraham one day with a very specific command. In Genesis 22:2 God said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." It would be hard to understand this command from God in any other way than it sounds. To make it even harder to comprehend, remember that Isaac was the promised child born to Abraham and Sarah when they were 100 and 90 years old respectively. Abraham had waited 25 years from the time that God originally promised this child.
How could God even think about undoing such a miraculous fulfillment of His own promise?
This is a searching question. When dealing with such deep and apparent contradictions within the Bible, we need to focus on finding the whole truth instead of jumping to unstudied and shallow conclusions. The fact is, God did NOT want Abraham to murder his son as a sacrifice to show his loyalty to God. How can we be sure of this as it looks to be contrary to what was written? Check out our September 12, 2022 podcast, “Does God REALLY Require Human Sacrifices? for more.
As part of our Contradictions Series, we delve into the details of this intriguing account and find the missing pieces to the human sacrifices puzzle. Solving this issue is just the beginning of answering the sacrificing question. We look at another Old Testament event involving King David turning seven men over to another nation to be executed, seemingly as a price of appeasement to God and that other nation. Wouldn’t that constitute God condoning human sacrifice?
One other supposed biblical contradiction we look at has to do swearing something is true by taking an oath. Jesus seems to flatly reject making any oath for any reason, yet he himself testified by taking an oath. How do we explain that one? Join us for this revealing episode that uncovers biblical truths about issues that many assume to be evidence of biblical inconsistency. The truth is waiting!
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