Can a Perfect God Write a Flawed Book?
By Rich Bitterman
The kid came in late, eyes down, hoodie up. He slouched into the back pew, heart armored in doubt.
Someone had dragged him here, his mother, probably. Her prayers had filled the silence in their home louder than her voice ever could.
The preacher up front wasn’t slick. He wasn’t young. His voice cracked when he got passionate, which was often. He held up a battered black book and looked at the crowd like he was holding a grenade with the pin already pulled.
“This,” he said, “is not just any book.”
He didn’t smile.
He wasn’t trying to impress.
He said it like a man who’s been pulled from a burning house and wants you to know who lit the match and who wrote the rescue plan.
Can the Bible be trusted?
That was the question. It still is. Not just for the teenager in the back pew. For all of us.
And the way you answer it will shape everything else.
This Isn’t a Book You Can Ignore
The Bible isn’t a spiritual Instagram page filled with good vibes and feel-good quotes.
It’s thunder in paperback.
It doesn’t blink, hedge, or flatter.
It names your sins before you do. It tells the truth before you’re ready. It leaves no room for fence-sitters, no comfort for the unrepentant, and no escape hatch for the proud.
The Old Testament begins with dirt under God’s fingernails and breath in Adam’s lungs. It tells the story of a broken world with jagged honesty: blood on the ground, idols in the heart, tears in the wilderness.
Yet every page tightens its grip around a promise, a whisper that grows into a roar.
There is someone coming.
And He isn’t coming to fit into your life. He is coming to set it on fire.
One Thread, One Voice, Sixty-Six Books
Thirty men wrote the Old Testament.
Poets. Prophets. Shepherds. Kings. One spoke from a palace. Another from a cave. One wrote with ink still wet from exile. Another bled the truth onto scrolls while enemies closed in.
And still, every single one points forward.
To a seed born of a woman.
To a lamb led to slaughter.
To a man of sorrows.
To a king who carries no sword but conquers death itself.
The symmetry is startling. Five books of Moses. Twelve more of history. Five thick with poetry. Five major prophets. Twelve minor ones. History wrapped in music, wrapped in warning.
Every word presses forward like birth pains toward Bethlehem.
And then, the silence of four hundred years breaks.
When the Word Put On Flesh
The New Testament doesn’t offer commentary.
It offers blood.
It tells of a manger, not a throne. A teenage girl’s womb trembles under the weight of eternity. Angels descend. Shepherds run. God needs to be burped.
And then He grows up.
He flips tables. Opens blind eyes. Calls dead men out of graves. And when His time comes, He doesn’t run. He walks toward the cross like a soldier walking home.
The Gospels tell it plain. Acts explains what happened next, how cowardly fishermen became lion-hearted preachers who wouldn’t shut up, even with swords at their throats.
The letters tell us why.
The Revelation shows us where it is all going.
This is not a collection of stories.
This is one voice.
Spoken across sixty-six books.
Across fifteen hundred years.
Through shepherds, liars, prophets, and kings.
Through smoke and fire, desert and dream, womb and tomb.
One voice.
His.
The Miracle of Agreement
Open it. Ask it anything.
Ask what sin is. Moses, David, Paul, James, Peter…all say the same.
Ask what righteousness looks like. The answer never changes.
Ask who God is. What He’s like. What He wants. What He has done.
One answer. Every time.
How is that possible?
These men lived centuries apart. They never met. They had nothing in common.
Except for one thing.
Someone greater was breathing through their words.
That’s why we call it a miracle. That’s why we call it a sword.
It doesn’t sit still. It cuts.
It doesn’t whisper. It wounds.
And if you let it, it will raise you from the dead.
The Book That Won’t Stay Buried
They’ve tried.
Governments banned it. Empires burned it. Scholars mocked it. Universities dissected it like a dead frog on a lab table.
Still, it speaks.
Voltaire said it would be forgotten in Europe within a century. The house where he said that now distributes Bibles.
Many once laughed at the Bible’s claims about creation, the shape of the earth, or the laws of hygiene. But the march of science hasn’t buried the Bible, it’s often caught up to it.
Critics said John’s Gospel couldn’t have been written by John. Then archaeologists uncovered a mummy wrapped in fragments of John’s Gospel, and those fragments predated their theories.
They said there was no such place as Gabbatha or Bethesda. They claimed Luke made up city titles like “politarch.”
Then they dug deeper. And once again, the ground agreed with the Word.
The critics were wrong.
The Bible stood.
If You Still Don’t Believe
Let’s imagine.
You say the Bible didn’t come from God.
Then it came from men.
So what kind of men were they?
Were they wicked?
Then why does the Bible condemn every wicked instinct we have? Why do people who hate it the most still tremble when they read it?
Were they honest?
Then why did they lie and say, “God wrote this through us”? And why did so many of them die refusing to take it back?
There is no exit door.
If the Bible is evil, it is too holy.
If it is holy, it cannot be from man.
If it is not from man, then it is from God.
And if it is from God, you cannot ignore it.
Why We Trust It
We trust the Bible because Jesus did.
Not out of politeness. Not out of tradition.
He stood on it. Every word.
He quoted Moses as truth. He called the Psalms Scripture. He said the Holy Spirit spoke through David.
He didn’t call it interesting. He called it the Word of God.
Then He walked into its pages.
He fulfilled its promises.
He wore its curses.
He bore its wrath.
He rose with its victory.
And then He sent His apostles to write the rest.
To reject Scripture is to reject the Christ who bled under its banner.
If your view of the Bible contradicts His, you are not following Him.
You are following a version of Him you created.
You Are Not Safe
That is the real reason people avoid this Book.
It doesn’t let you stay safe.
It tells you the God who made you is angry with your sin. That your heart is not mostly good. That your thoughts betray you. That your works will never be enough.
And that your only hope is a Jewish carpenter nailed to a Roman cross.
It tells you that grace is free. But it will cost you everything.
It tells you that forgiveness is offered. But only if you lay down your pride.
It tells you that the path to life is narrow. Most people will not take it.
It tells the truth.
Then it offers a Savior.
He Still Speaks
Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.”
That voice hasn’t gone silent.
It still calls from these pages.
Still draws rebels home.
Still breaks chains. Still mends hearts. Still ruins the plans of the proud.
If you want to hear Him, open the Book.
Not as a textbook.
Open it like a starving man opening his last meal. Like a prisoner handed a pardon. Like a drowning woman grabbing the rope thrown from the shore.
Open it.
And live.
I’m Pastor Rich Bitterman, a country preacher from the Ozarks. Guy Howard, the old Walking Preacher, once wore out his boots traveling from church to church, meeting strangers and sharing the gospel. I’m doing the same today on digital roads. Each post is a visit. Each verse is a step. Let’s walk the Word together.