Ray Comfort - Mark Twain: A Christian Response to His Battle with God

Mark Twain (18351910)
(Photo courtesy of Library of Congress)

CHAPTER ONE

The Naked Couple

I t sounds surprising and almost heretical to say that the Bible opens its pages with a naked couple who were told by their Maker to have sex. But its true. God made mankind naked as male and female, and He commanded them to be fruitful and multiply. And they happily complied. Ask a believer in evolution to explain the existence of male and female in elephants, horses, birds, fish, whales, giraffes, kangaroos, bears, fleas, flies, dogs, frogs, cats, bats, rats, and all 1.4 million different species of animals and they will be befuddled. As evidence of their befuddlement they will try to take you up a rabbit trail by pointing to a few snails and such that reproduce asexually. But the elephants are still in the room both male and female.

If the entire universe is the result of nothing exploding into something, caused by nothing, why is it that almost every species has male and female, and they each reproduce after their own kind... just as the Bible says? If you press skeptics, they will admit that they dont know. They will embrace intellectual insanity, hoping that someday someone will come up with a sane explanation anything but that God created male and female and caused them to reproduce after their own kind. This is because every human being is born with a carnal mind that is in a state of enmity toward God. That exists because shortly after Adam and Eve were created, sin entered the human race, and because we are human and are running the same race, we inherited a sinful, carnal, rebellious nature. The Bible says that we are enemies of God in our minds through wicked works (see Colossians 1:21).

This is never more evident than when blasphemy rolls off human lips. For millions, the prayer which says hallowed be Thy name has long been forgotten. Instead, OMG and J---s Chr-st are used to express disgust or said flippantly in a way that fails to give Gods name due honor from those in high public office, to celebrities in entertainment and music industries, to schoolchildren, to the man and woman on the street.

The enmity that finds expression through the mouth is deeply rooted in the human heart. The majority of Americans have some sort of belief in God, but until we find peace with Him we are offended by the God of the Bible by His moral requirements and particularly by His judgments that are a consequence of those requirements. We dont want to be answerable to Him and will go to any lengths to shake off that uncomfortable yoke like a wild steed that bucks in revolt when we are saddled with moral accountability. Anything that helps accomplish that is therefore highly prized by a sin-loving world.

Dirt on God

Mark Twain thought that he had found a lot of dirt on the God described in the Bible. If Mr. Twain could show that the God portrayed in Scripture was a morally bankrupt and merciless judge, then the judgment spoken of so often in the Scriptures shouldnt take place. Humanitys case would be thrown out of court.

One example of his moral outrage was the pitiless judgments of God upon the Midianites. Although Twain doesnt give the source of the passage to which he refers (leaving no easy way for the thoughtful laymen to examine the legitimacy of his claims), he is clearly pointing to portions of the Book of Numbers:

Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Harass the Midianites, and attack them; for they harassed you with their schemes by which they seduced you in the matter of Peor and in the matter of Cozbi, the daughter of a leader of Midian, their sister, who was killed in the day of the plague because of Peor (Numbers 25:1618).

God told Moses to declare war on the Midianites and to kill them. After the battle, Israel took the spoil:

And the children of Israel took the women of Midian captive, with their little ones, and took as spoil all their cattle, all their flocks, and all their goods. They also burned with fire all the cities where they dwelt, and all their forts. And they took all the spoil and all the booty of man and beast.

Then they brought the captives, the booty, and the spoil to Moses, to Eleazar the priest, and to the congregation of the children of Israel, to the camp in the plains of Moab by the Jordan, across from Jericho. And Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the congregation, went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, with the captains over thousands and captains over hundreds, who had come from the battle.

And Moses said to them: Have you kept all the women alive? Look, these women caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to trespass against the Lord in the incident of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord . Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. But keep alive for yourselves all the young girls who have not known a man intimately (Numbers 31:918).

Here is Mark Twains exposition of the above passage: