Often critics will say (usually because they have heard it somewhere else first), ‘the Bible contradicts itself and is full of errors’, but I have personally read the Bible through several times and I’ve never found any. And when, on occasions, I’ve challenged someone to go and find a mistake and show me, no one has ever been able to so! Other people say the Bible contradicts itself. It’s true that there are a number of (minor) differences in the way some of the authors report certain events – the Bible says ‘all Scripture is God-breathed’ [God-inspired]; it does not say it is God dictated – but the Bible never contradicts itself.

One typical example of a ‘supposed’ contradiction surrounds Jesus’ return: The Bible teaches that Jesus will one day return to earth. In Matthew’s Gospel (24v40-41) it says that at the precise moment Jesus returns: Two men will be in a field (…) and two women will be grinding with a hand mill, which seems to indicate that it will be during daylight hours, when people are at work. However Luke says (17v42): ‘on that night two people will be in one bed.’ Now, this looks like a glaring error or contradiction, until we remember that the middle of the day in one part of the world is the middle of the night in another. The Bible doesn’t contradict itself.