Defending The Grass Grazing Church

So Friday's post, about the grass grazing congregation in Africa, was the teaser to this week's series on the validity of the Bible. The pastor is basing his grazing challenge to his followers based on the end of the Book of Mark, verses 16:9 and on. As a Christian: you can eat poison, you can be bite by a viper, etc. and not die. So, what is the problem .... ?

The Problem

It was early 1974 when my Biblical studies revealed that the whole end to the book of Mark was not a part of earliest copies known for this book. I was stunned.   How could this be?   How could God’s Word have extraneous content?   Further research showed these verses appeared about the time of the creation of Jerome’s Vulgate, the Latin Common Bible, about 400 AD and continued to be brought forward by Erasmus into his Greek New Testament in the sixteenth century; which Luther’s Bible (German) and the King James Version Bible (English) were all based upon.

So, it was true. I was really confused as to what this meant to my new faith. I was a young Christian who had discovered what salvation through Jesus meant, but if you think about it – the four Gospels are what announced the coming of my savior to the world – if they had been corrupted ... was I now believing a lie?

In the roughly four hundred years since Luther and the King James Version translations have been done, literally thousands of portions of ancient Biblical texts have been found.   There is a whole branch of biblical studies dedicated to grouping these fragments together into “families”, in an attempt to show how change has occurred to the copied texts across time.

And, here is where this problem crops up: If there is a first century text of Mark, which lacks the verses from 16:9 through the end of the book, but several hundred copies from later periods with this passage present – which reading is correct?  The oldest copy or the newest?   The single copy without or the vast majority with the text?   With the verses or without them?  The single "Eastern" copy or the vast array of "Western" ones? You can argue this all day long……and still never get a real answer.

Now what do you do as a Bible translator?  Leave this questionable section in, drop it or make a comment about its validity in a footnote of the Bible you are creating?  All of these methods have been tried; all have brought sharp criticism from all sectors of the Christian community.  You are not going to win this one, no matter what you do.

Okay, so as a student of the Bible, you know intellectually that the end of Mark is an add on, so how can you help but start to question the rest of the Bible? And, if you start to question the structure of the Bible, can you help but start to question the validity of the Bible, its authorship and its content?  What is true?  What isn’t?  What was added, what wasn’t? What exactly was God trying to tell us?  Is this God’s Word, or just a bunch of myths?

It is enough to drive you away from your faith – if you really think about!

Back to the Question

God is sovereign.   If you eat poison by accident or were poisoned by those against you and God, your time on this Earth is not up - guess what?   He can keep you alive if He wants to! If your are stung by a scorpion, bit by a snake or even approached by wildlife - guess what!   He can keep you alive and even give you authority over said creatures whom might attack you!

I have seen so many miracles in this regard it is amazing!   Not stories others have told me, or I have read about, real eye witnessed events by Kris and a few even involving Kris!   The end of the Book of Mark is true.   You can and will survive - as long as it is in God's determinative will for your life and His ministry that you be spared!

However, just because it is true, does not mean that a late addition to the Book of Mark should not be removed!   It was not penned by Mark, and makes fools out of Christians - as I showed in Friday's post.  Not shown Friday, were all of the photos I downloaded of the faithful throwing up all of the grass they ran out and grazed on.  Yeah, they lived, they were sick, they did not prove that verse in the least! Grass is not poisonous to most creatures ...