Do You Know?

See if you can answer the following true or false questions without looking them up.
  1. Before his death, Barnabas looked up and saw Jesus standing at the right hand of the Father. Saul, later called Paul, held the coats of those who stoned him.
  2. One night, Peter preached for so long that a young man went to sleep and fell out of a window to his death.
  3. David had a one night stand with Bathsheba while his army was off in battle. As a result, their first son, Solomon was born.
  4. The Lord told Hosea to buy Gomer, a prostitute, and marry her.
  5. King Saul consulted with a witch and asked her to bring Isaiah back from the dead.
Think you know the answers? Compare your answers with those at the end of this post. Did you get them right? The point of this exercise is to highlight the existence of Bible illiteracy. Many people go to church and they claim to believe the Bible and yet they don’t know what the Bible says. Some churches don’t bother teaching from the Old Testament these days. I don’t know how they think they can understand the New Testament without the Old Testament, but that is the case. I was in one church where the pastor read one verse at the beginning of his sermon and then spent the rest of the time talking about things that I would have expected to hear in a college psychology class.

I’m not sure what the solution to the Bible illiteracy problem is. I would like to think that parents would start teaching their kids about the Bible again. I would like to think pastors would read the Bible from the pulpit again. I would like to think that individuals would read the Bible on their own again. But how do we convince Christians that they need to get back in the Bible? I don’t mean non-fiction books that may or may not accurately reflect what the Bible says; I mean actually picking up a Bible and reading it.

I suppose there are a few things Christian authors can do to encourage their readers to study the Bible. I enjoy writing books based on Bible stories. I would hope that these stories would encourage my readers to compare the story in the book to the Bible story and not just assume that the Bible story matches what I have written. But we need more people reading the Bible, or the world will grow dark.

Answers: 1. False, it was Stephen who saw Jesus standing at the father’s right hand at his death. (Acts 6:8-8:2) 2. False, Paul was preaching. (Acts 20:9) 3. False, David and Bathsheba’s first child died. Solomon came later. (II Samuel 11:2 – 12:25) 4. False, Hosea did buy Gomer, but she was already his wife. She turned to other men, fell into slavery, and he bought her back. (Hosea 1:1-3:5) 5. False, Saul sought to bring up Samuel by a woman with a familiar spirit. (I Samuel 28)

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