Great Contradiction of the Gospels PART3

You can reject the bible as a book of religion all you want, but that does not change the fact that it is the most renowned, read and respected book of all time by more than just people who follow Christ. It also does not change the fact that it has more manuscript integrity than any other book on the face of the earth, including the Homer's Iliad and other famous books that we assume have not been changed for centuries. Also I want to point out that phrases in QUOTES are not quotes in the original discussion blog are not from the Bible... But I do have a few explanations for you. 1. It's all about context. As a general rule, God is invisible. The two times that you refered to were a little different. First was in the garden (Gen 3:9) when men were actually walking with God because he was the only man created and sin was not introduced into the world yet. Sin separated man from God and made it impossible for us to see him. That is why Moses (your Exodus scripture) was only allowed to see God's back or an image of it...who knows if it was him physically. God covered moses until he passed, but that moment was necessary for God to establish his law in the natural world for people who would receive it better from a man than from a supernatural being. God did create us all differently with our own quirks. In Isaiah it was a VISION that God gave him. That is why his book and those around his book are called the major prophet books. In John, you have a generation of people who for thousands of years have been separated from God because of their sin, so besides Adam...he is invisible to them 2. You also have to remember that the old testament is translated from Hebrew and the new testament is translated from Greek. In those languages there so many more meanings for one word. They have a different word depending on the type of rest or weariness that you speak of. If we are sleepy, we say I'm sleepy or tired and that means we could get in the bed, but if we decide to take a break from something then we just say I'm going to take a break unless that break is the result of us being tired or sleepy. i don't have a hebrew and greek translation bible on me currently, but I will find out and I bet that I will find that two different words were used and when God "rested" on the seventh day, it won't be the same type of "rest" or "wearines" that Isaiah says God never has. 3. This is actually the weakest of them all and that is because the scriptures that say that god is not everywhere present, neither sees and knows everything are all given with huge assumptions. In both Genesis 11 and Genesis 18 it uses the phrase "God came down" and that is the evidence that God was present. We just talked about translation and when the original (many think it was Moses) wrote in Hebrew he used the same phrasing for these scriptures. It is very possible that translating this into English gave the implication that God had to come from somewhere else, but it also could mean that God shifted the focus of his angels or it could be part of the slang (every culture for centuries has had some type of slang) or diction that Moses spoke with. Back then someone reading it would have understood it perfectly, now it seems weird. Don't you wonder why no one back then complained of contradictions, were they not smart and analytical...when this was written, "Christians" didn't even exist and this part of the bible is in the jewish bible and Islamic Koran. As for the Genesis 22, the writer said that Adam and Eve hid (in their minds they were hiding), it never said God didn't know where they were. Later it says that God calls out "Where are you?" and several other obvious questions. Scholars throughout the years have said that this was a series of rhetorical questions... that were meant to make Adam realize exactly what he did and what happened to him. All through the bible God operates like this. Jesus asks questions before his sermons and tells parables giving people the opportunity to figure it out on their own. It has more meaning that way...God knows that, he created us. 4. Now for this one...God does know our hearts. In the "contradicting" scriptures that you pointed out, never once does it say that God did not know. In Duet 13:3 "The Lord God is testing you to find out if you love him..." It seems implied that we are talking about God is testing for himself, but it is not directly stated and as a result of what talked about earlier...it can be concluded that God is testing for you to know. Some people think they love God until things get hard. This test reveals something to the person being tested, not to God. In Deut 8:2 has the same explanantion and in Genesis 22:12, that is not God speaking. That is an angel that God sent. He chose to say that the way that he wanted "I now know your heart is to serve the lord..." Obviously angels have personalities and different ways of doing things or how else would lucifer get a third of the angels to rebel. God obviously knew Abraham's heart because he sent the angel. What the angel said tells us nothing of God's thoughts...just the angel. Nothing will be perfect in every way because men wrote it. To this day there are cryptic things written in the bible that no one quite understands and there will be questions from now until the end because God is bigger than being contained in a book. People have written down their interpretations and this little blurb from a 5 year old christian may not be enough to convince you otherwise, but if you totally discount the possiblity of what I'm saying then you aren't really interesting in figuring out the truth...just bashing the bible. One thing that no one can argue with is my testimony and God has performed crazy miracles for me...so I don't just think him and his word are real...I know...I've seen it in my own life.