“The story of Balaam’s donkey speaking to him is considered a miraculous event rather than a scientifically plausible occurrence”. We know such cannot happen, and therefore the Bible contains myth, not verifiable truth.<\/p>\n
Again, the Creator of the donkey and of the voice can certainly make this happen. Whether it is now “scientifically plausible” is a silly argument. That it wasn’t “scientifically plausible” is why it shocked Balaam. That was God’s purpose for doing it. To shock him into thinking. It is plausible when you know God is real and God had a purpose. Once again, the Bible critic is not proving that the Bible “lies”. He is only demonstrating that he doesn’t believe the record God gave. God’s purpose in giving the record was to preserve a memory of an event that the first readers remembered and their collective memory could not refute. If they had seen and witnessed such things and a record preserves such events with certainty to them, then we can’t dismiss it as mere myth unless we have the power to disprove the existence of the Creator, disprove that He ever demonstrated His powers in such ways as testified, and show that the earliest readers tried to refute that these things even happened.<\/p>\n
We can only notice that the bulk of divine demonstrations could not all be explained away naturally, and that helps to add credibility to the record of the miracle under dispute by the modern critic. Has he explained away every prophecy and fulfillment hundreds of years later? No! Has he explained away the creation of the universe itself and of the formation of life and intelligence? No! So, we can’t accept his claim that the testimony of miracles in the Bible is myths. Every miracle and prophecy has to be logically explained away, and that is a greater task than the critic has demonstrated ability and knowledge to deliver.<\/p>\n
If the God of the universe has the power to make this orderly universe and make the voice of a man, can He transfer the voice of a man into the mouth of a donkey for divine demonstration purposes? When the first readers of the story had recall of many demonstrations from God and saw many prophecies fulfilled hundreds of years later, are they being gullible or just observant? If there are too many amazing demonstrations of divine power and wisdom to refute them all, then it seems there is no reason to doubt the testimony of any particular one, such as God making a donkey speak words.<\/p>\n
We have to explain away the numerous items of divine demonstration, such as prophecies of Jesus with details too amazing and numerous to fulfill by lucky guess, before we can legitimately claim that God did not make the donkey talk. The talking donkey does not take away the credibility of the Bible; it only adds to the credibility of the divine testimony. A doubter of the Bible does not deserve greater respect just because he used his own limited experience to undermine what the testimony of God expressed and what many claimed to have witnessed and experienced in the past. Modern limited experience does not get to trump all of history’s previous experiences.<\/p>\n
You would not use today’s weather patterns to deny patterns people claimed to have experienced in the distant past. Your limited experience does not trump the recorded experiences of others in the past so that you can dismiss their claims as “myth”. When friends and enemies of Jesus both tried to explain His miracles in the first century, one side saying it was God’s power and the other side explaining that it was sorcery, one thing stands out. Both sides saw miracles and felt a need to explain them. Somebody 10-20 centuries later does not get to use his own experience to deny their experience and trump them as more credible.<\/p>\n
The claim is that God explains the universe, life, and intelligence, and has testified and verified with power in the written records for all history. A single doubter does not get to dismiss it with new credibility that trumps the credibility of the recorded testimony and its first readers. We all can agree that a donkey does not talk with human voice today, but I think it would be reckless to doubt that the Creator of the universe once made a donkey talk to the man who was being sent to speak God’s words to make that prophet know that God can get a brute and stubborn animal to talk in His behalf if a stubborn man doesn’t want to deliver His words. I believe it happened because I am certain God has demonstrated Himself in many ways and especially in Jesus. Therefore, I have reason to doubt the credibility of the modern Bible critic over the credibility of the written Testimony of God.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Terry Wane Benton Daily Points of Light from Heaven Critics of the Bible say: “The story of Balaam’s donkey speaking to him is considered a miraculous event rather than a scientifically plausible occurrence”. We know such cannot happen, and therefore the Bible contains myth, not verifiable truth. Response: Again, the Creator of the donkey…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[700,363,907],"class_list":["post-96999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-balaam","tag-miracles","tag-myths"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":31874,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/do-you-support-conscientious-objection\/","url_meta":{"origin":96999,"position":0},"title":"Do you support conscientious objection?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Do you or your church support selective conscientious objection and conscientious objection? 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