Critics view the violence in the Bible from the perspective that God doesn’t exist which means that death is forever, but the existence of a benevolent God takes the finality out of death. A God who transcends time would have a different perspective of death than what we have, and a loving God would have no problem killing someone which is to say “moving” someone from this world to the next phase of life if He had a good reason to do so. In the violent events of the Torah, God could have been communicating a message without any hostility, so the violence in the Torah does not actually rule out the possibility of a benevolent God.
The real difficulty with the Bible has always been the message. With the violence, God clearly communicated the existence of a very harsh Law by which we will all be judged; but why did God give us a Law we can't live up to? There is also the problem of reconciling the apparent contradictions in the Bible, but the solution to this riddle must also explain why the contradictions were put there in the first place. If the enigmatic Bible is the word of God then there must be a reason for God to send us a message while keeping much of the meaning hidden in riddles.
Some say that God is secretive since He wants us to come to Him on our own, but achieving this objective does not require that God be secretive, it only requires that God not give us any physical proof. God could have communicated a clear message without giving us any miracles so that our decision to come to Him is based on our faith in His Word. The question remains, why did God give us such an enigmatic message?
Christians tend to believe that Christ explained the riddles of the Bible, yet Christ spoke in parables and as far as explaining everything, Jesus said the Holy Spirit would do that at some point in the future. This opened the door for every Christian to believe that their particular church has the true solution to the riddle of the Bible as revealed by the Holy Spirit, but there are many versions of the truth, and they can’t all be right.
It seems that none of them are right since every Christian doctrine has some passages in the Bible that the believers must try to avoid. Instead of avoiding passages that conflict with their view sometimes Christians will change the definitions. This solution suggests that the Bible is not enigmatic because God was giving us a riddle to solve, but because God has poor communication skills. Others will dismiss verses they don’t like by saying that nothing in the Bible should be taken literally, but much of the Bible is written in such a manner that it must be taken literally.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.
How can this not be taken literally? When God said He created evil, we must conclude that (according to the Bible) evil does exist and it was intentionally created by God. It upsets a lot of people to think that God intentionally created evil, but perhaps God had a good reason. Ignoring passages like this one won’t make them go away, and claiming that this verse is an alteration leaves no reason to put any confidence in any of the Bible. We do not know if the Bible is the inspired word of God, but if it is a message from God then God would have to keep every significant passage free from alteration otherwise He was wasting His time sending a message. This mysterious message from God called the Bible was fifteen hundred years in the making, so there is a major plan being executed by the Creator of the Universe, but then God allows His communication to be altered?
Everybody who believes in the Bible has some passages that they would like to have removed, but the true solution to the Bible must reconcile all contradictions. Not just make a choice between “free will” and “predestination”, the true solution must show how both are correct, and it should do this without altering or simply throwing away passages that will not cooperate. The true solution also has to explain why God created evil, why God established a harsh Law, and it has to explain why the truth had to be kept secret.
There are secrets that were not revealed at the first coming of Christ, so the first coming of Christ did not satisfy the conditions for releasing all the information. Certainly there has been no event since Christ to have greater Biblical significance, and there will not be an event of that magnitude until the time of the end. This suggests that some secrets of the Bible will not be revealed until near the end, and this may explain why the Biblical book that describes the end is called “The Revelation”.
As it turns out, we are now at the time of the end and it is now in our present time that the solution to the Bible is being revealed. The truth had to be kept secret until the end since this revealed knowledge is what causes the end. Hidden within the riddles of the Bible it is explained why God created evil, and how God destroys evil. This knowledge will enrage the evil egocentric spirits who must then be cast from Heaven causing the period often called Armageddon. As the evil spirits take their revenge on humanity, God begins to reveal Himself to His children. This is the awakening that we are approaching.