If someone handed you an open Bible at your kitchen table tonight, , and asked you to defend the three hardest passages in it without reaching for your phone, could you do it?
It was a Sunday night at 7:26 PM when a comment landed on one of my Bible reading posts. Most people were winding down the weekend on the couch, scrolling through their phones or watching a game before Monday morning hit. An atheist who goes by the handle BigRedBetz was doing something else entirely. He had his notes open, and he was hunting through Scripture for a weak spot.
Here is what he wrote under my post:
"God DID order genocide and there is NEVER justification for it. Only EVIL people order genocide. Revelation is gibberish that charlatans tell suckers they can explain. Jesus has been coming soon for 3000 years."
Seven hundred and ninety-one people read that post on Sunday night, and seven hundred and eighty-nine of them scrolled right past his comment without saying a word.
They did not stay quiet because they stopped believing the Bible. They stayed quiet because an unbeliever walked right up to the three hardest doors in Scripture and rattled the handles, and almost nobody in the room knew where the key was kept.
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He did not pick those three subjects by accident. He picked them because he knows how most modern Christians read the Bible.
Most of us read for comfort when we are hurting, which means we know the twenty verses that fit on a coffee mug and we skip the chapters that make us uncomfortable. Meanwhile, a dedicated skeptic reads systematically to find the fault lines. He knows where you stutter. He knows which chapters you turn past when you are reading with your kids, and he has done his homework on the exact passages you have avoided for ten years.
Your grandfather would not have needed three minutes or a search engine to answer all three charges from the plain text of his Bible.
Take the first charge about judgment on the Canaanite cities in Joshua and Deuteronomy. People who only read four-verse devotional cards freeze up when someone brings up the conquest of Canaan because they never read four hundred years earlier in Genesis. God told Abraham flatly why Israel had to wait four centuries in Egypt before setting foot in that land, while the Canaanite nations practiced child sacrifice and burned their own sons and daughters in the fire:
"But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." (Genesis 15:16)
God waited four hundred years before bringing judgment. A reader who has actually walked through Genesis, Leviticus 18, and Deuteronomy 9 knows that cold. A reader who only skims for inspiration hears the accusation and panics.
Take the second charge, that the book of Revelation is unintelligible noise. Revelation only looks like a riddle when you treat the Old Testament like a locked museum you never visit. Once you have sat down with a pen and read Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah for yourself, Revelation stops looking like a code and starts reading like the final chapter of one continuous book.
Take the third charge, that two thousand years of waiting proves the return of Christ is a hoax. The funniest part about that man's Sunday night comment is that he repeated, almost word for word, the exact script the Apostle Peter wrote down nearly two thousand years ago:
"Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation." (2 Peter 3:3, 4)
The scoffer thought he was debunking the Bible, and he was fulfilling it in real time. And if you keep reading four verses further down the page, Peter tells you why the Lord has waited:
"But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:8, 9)
Here is the question that stayed with me after I closed my laptop that night.
An unbeliever spent his Sunday evening cross-referencing Numbers 31 and 1 Samuel 15 so he could tear down the faith of the next Christian he meets. How much time did you spend in the actual text this week so you could build up your own house?
Because sooner or later, the person asking those hard questions is not going to be a stranger in a comment thread. It is going to be your son coming home from a college classroom, or your daughter sitting at the kitchen counter at eleven o'clock at night, or your spouse walking through a hard season when the easy answers stop working.
When someone you love looks across the table and asks why they should still trust this book, what are you going to hand them? Are you going to mumble a slogan you heard second-hand, or are you going to open the pages you have worn thin yourself?
"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:" (1 Peter 3:15)
If you are tired of skimming around the hard chapters and want the full Biblical Man study archive, plus our 25-page Prayer Reset manual and both the marriage and family field manuals included with an annual membership, step inside the house here:
You do not beat a scoffer by shouting louder on the internet, and you do not keep a household steady on verses you only half-remember from childhood. You build an unshakeable home by opening the Bible before the storm hits, reading the hard chapters right alongside the comforting ones, and doing the work for yourself.
"Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15)
If you want our two practical household field manuals, Stop Having the Same Fight and When Your Family Won't Talk to You, you can grab both of them together right here:
If you are already a paid subscriber, do not buy them. Both guides and the 25-page Prayer Reset manual are already waiting for you inside your membership. If you are a free reader and want to step up to an annual membership tonight, both guides, The Prayer Reset, and the complete archive come with it right here:
If you know a husband, wife, or friend who wants to study the Bible for what it actually says instead of skipping the hard parts, pass this letter along to them:
Open the book on your kitchen table tonight, , and read the chapter you have been skipping before someone else reads it to your kids.
