Mark Tier - When God Speaks for Himself: The Words of God Youll Never Hear in Church or Sunday School

He Uses Words Youll
Never Hear in Church
or Sunday School

: Yesbut theyre not the Ten Commandments you think you know.

: How the Bibles own words completely contradict this well-known story.

: Is there a whale that could swallow a human whole? Yes, but...

or did he?

Yes! The Gospel of Matthew. No! The Gospel of Luke.

: Does Jesus obey this Commandment himself?

And many more...

WARNING!

This book contains lewd and graphic scenes of sex, incest, violence, murder, rape, cannibalism (including the eating of babies), and massacres that some people may find offensive. But theyre all from the Holy Bible, so its okay to share them with your children.

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The Words of God Youll
Never Hear in Church
or Sunday School

Mark Tier

George Forrai

Copyright 2010 by Mark Tier and Pronto Express, Inc.

Published by Inverse Books, G.P.O. Box 9444, Hong Kong

www.inversebooks.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior, written, permission of the copyright owner.

Print ISBN: 978-988-97769-4-7
eBook ISBN: 978-988-97769-5-4

eBook design by Manila Typesetting Company

A Note From the Authors: This book is the result of a collaboration but is written in the first person ( I instead of we) as Mark Tier is the writer of the team. Nevertheless, the opinions expressed herein are those of both authors.

Have you read the Bible?

From cover to cover? From Genesis to Revelation?

It would seem that few of us have.

Even those youd think would be required to read the whole Bible havent as I discovered, to my surprise, when a nun happened to see a proof copy of the back WARNING! cover of this book. Horrified, she burst out:

Thats not true!

Those verses arent in the Bible!

To prove it, she opened the Bible only to discover that she was wrong.

How can this be?

As kids in Sunday School, we hear the stories of Adam and Eve and the creation of the world, Jesus in the Manger and the Three Wise Men, Jonah and the Whale, and how Noah saved the animals from the flood.

These are, naturally enough, edited into an engaging style appropriate to five and ten year olds. Eve ate the apple, Jonah was swallowed by a whale, and Noah took the animals two by two.

But how many of us have actually opened the Bible to read the original texts of these stories and found that:

We dont know what kind of fruit Eve ate. Genesis 2:16-17 merely says: ...the L ORD God commanded the man [Adam] , saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil , thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

The kind of fish that swallowed Jonah is not specified: the L ORD had prepared a great fish [a whale, of course, is not a fish but a mammal] to swallow up Jonah [Jonah 1:17].

Noah took the animals, two by two, is actually not what God instructed: Of every clean beast [that can be eaten according to Jewish dietary laws] thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and the female;... [Genesis 7:2-3].

These innocuous edits improve the story value but dont change the meaning. But even if weve read the Bible, its the edited versions of the stories that stick in our minds which we treat as the Word of God.

This does not explain why, as adults, few of us know that Moses does command:

Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children that have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves (Got your Bible handy? Its in Numbers 31, verses 17-18.)

Quite understandably, thats a passage youll never hear in a sermon, any more than youll be instructed in the finer points of boiling and eating your children (Deuteronomy 28:53), the God-given procedures for selling your daughter into slavery (Exodus 21:7-8) or His recommended treatment for stubborn or rebellious sons (death by stoning: Deuteronomy 21:18-21) though, come to think of it, theyre pretty good threats for keeping unruly kids in line!

How come even devout Christians, like the nun I mentioned above, are mortified to learn that these and, hundreds of similar passages, are the Word of God?

Because such passages are almost never heard in church!

Of the three to four Bible passages to be read in Catholic Church services each day, just one every other week contains a few verses, like those above, that the average person will find offensive.

Those verses are, for the most part, buried in the middle of the reading: unless youre paying close attention, youll miss them completely.

In politics this is called spin: exaggerate the positive, downplay the negative or ignore it and hope no one notices.

While politicians may be telling you the truth (a proposition that should automatically be doubted), you can be sure they arent telling you the whole truth.

Similarly, what most people know about God, Jesus and what the Bible says is the abridged, saccharine version of the Word of God.

No wonder, then, that most Christians are astonished to learn that, When God Speaks for Himself, he uses words youll never hear in church or Sunday School as you can discover for yourself in the following pages which contain:

Gruesome, bloodthirsty massacres ordered by God Bible passages that will make your stomach churn;

Bible passages that say the exact opposite of another Bible passage, sometimes in two consecutive verses!

Bible passages that contradict what you know : was Jesus born in Bethlehem? And he gave his Sermon on the Mount on the mount, right?;

Obvious inconsistencies about the Virgin Birth, Original Sin, and other central tenets of Christianity to which the churches only possible answer is: have faith;

Simple questions about such Bible favorites as the Creation, the Flood and Noahs Ark that make Cinderella and The Three Little Pigs seem far more realistic;

Plus: extracts from official church documents some kept hidden for centuries including the actual words of the Inquisitions reasoning and verdict on Galileo, a collection of pointed and often hilarious quotes and comments from skeptics and believers from all over the world...and much more.