Former Evangelist Dwight L. Moody told the story of a Methodist minister, on his way to a camp meeting, through some mistake took passage on the wrong riverboat. He found that instead of being bound for a religious gathering, he was on his way to a horse race. His fellow passengers were betting and discussing the events, and the whole atmosphere was foreign to his nature. He asked the captain to stop his boat and let him off at the first landing, as the atmosphere was so distasteful to him.

The story continues to relate how, on the same occasion, a sporting man, intending to go to the races, by some mistake found himself on the wrong boat, bound for the camp meeting. The conversation about him was no more intelligible to him than to the man in the first boat, and he, too, asked the captain to stop and let him off the boat.

Mr. Moody concluded: “Now what was true in these two cases is practically true with everyone. A true Christian is wretched where there is no fellowship, and an unregenerate man is not at ease where there are only Christians. A man’s future will be according to what he is here prepared for. If he is not regenerate, heaven will have no attractions for him. Heaven is a prepared place for a prepared people.”

Ever found yourself in a place where you were very uncomfortable? Tell us about it.

Tags: fellowship, mistake

A couple of weeks ago I shared in church the story of opening the sunroof on our new car while going through the car wash. Everyone had a good laugh at our expense. If we had only read the instruction manual first, we would’ve known which buttons to push. Come to think about it, most of our mistakes are the result of not reading the instructions first.

Much of the pain in our life could be averted if we just read the instructions in The Book first. God loves each of us with a love that cannot be measured. Because He does not want us to hurt, He gave us some wise counsel for living in the Bible.

The Book says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect [mature] thoroughly furnished unto all good works (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

Old Chinese proverb say: “He who ignores instructions could end up in hot water!”

Tags: Bible, instructions, mistake

Can there be a mistake in the Bible? History records quite a mistake in an eighteenth century printing of the scripture. The command in the Gospel of John to sin no more had been printed as “sin on more.” This simple one-letter reversal obviously changed the entire meaning of the text and subsequently had to be revised and the wrongly worded Bibles pulled off the market.

In 1712 an Oxford edition of the Bible printed a chapter heading in the Gospel of Luke referring to a vineyard gardener as, “The Parable of the Vinegar.” And a gender mix-up in a 1923 version produced, “A man may not marry his grandmother’s wife.” These blunders make it appear that the Bible cannot be trusted. But I think its printers who cannot be trusted. God has never made a mistake.

What arguments have you recently heard about why the Bible is untrustworthy?

Tags: Bible, mistake