With Bill O’Reilly: “The Spin Starts Here”

I heard Bill O’Reilly a few nights ago talk about the failure of Christians, of which he claims to be one, Roman Catholic. He lamented that we were not rising to the occasion to withstand the liberal onslaught against anything Christian. Lamentably, he has a point. As I’ve said many times in the past decade or more, it is not darkness that controls light. Walk into a dark room, turn on a light, and the darkness immediately disappears. The same is true in a spiritual sense, as the Lord taught us. Preach the gospel faithfully, and those who hate  Christians look for the dark to hide (John 3:17-20). Put yourself back in the room that is now full of light that is controlled by a rheostat. We Christians control the light, and we have been turning down the light every so gradually for at least 150 years. Now the god-haters have control of the rheostat, and they are turning down the light with increasing fury. They are removing every vestige of Christianity and its symbols from society. They want a pagan society, and for too long we Christians have obliged them.

But, we are waking up. Apparently, O’Reilly is not aware of it, and I would venture to say it is because he has so little contact with Christians, or the wrong ones. I just hope our “resurrection” is not too late. But here in Houston, for example, we have various pastors’ organizations that are designed to oppose local immorality, like our lesbian mayor. The organization I’m associated with is TXPC, Texas Pastor Council, and there are many such organizations around the country. We have pro-life organizations everywhere, and I’m a member of two, and national organizations that oppose abortion (euphemism for killing babies). We are on the march, and if it is of God, we cannot be stopped—but that remains to be seen. Our efforts are more grass roots and not the flamboyant splash he may be used to.

But O’Reilly really displayed his bias and spin several nights ago when he was very rude to Laura Ingram, a Christian whom he had on his show for an interview. Not only would he not let her talk, but he would speak over her when she tried. She was pointing out what a bad mistake he made saying that so far Christians had only succeeded in “thumping their Bible,” and I heard that horrendous barb myself on his show. Moreover, he said that Christians needed to put away their Bibles and use reason, for that was the only way to reach the liberals (read god-haters), but then some (many?) conservatives are also god-haters. By “God,” I mean the Christian God, the only One, who exists as one being in three persons, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, when did we start allowing our enemies to tell us what weapons to use? If someone breaks into your house to do you harm and he has a water gun, and says he has the real weapon, are you going to put down your .357 magnum? The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, and opens the hearts of unbelievers to understand who God is, who Christ is, who they are, what the gospel is, and what they need to do to be changed. Here is what God says:

•  18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent1.” 20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. (1 Cor. 1:18-21)

Then on last Saturday (I believe it was, March 30), he interviewed two lovely Christian people who are putting on TV the series on the Bible, and for what I’ve seen, it is reliable to the text of Scripture. They said they wanted to be true to Scripture, and when asked why they were doing it, they said they especially wanted to reach those who do not read much, like teens.

Then Bill asked the Christian lady if she took the Bible literally, saying that (“of course”) much of it was allegorical, whatever he meant by that, not being aware of the varying definitions of it in biblical scholarship. And with condescending tone, he implied that surely she did not think that Adam and Eve were two literal people or that in light of evolution (again without defining if he meant micro- or macro-evolution, but implying macro-) that they would surely not think that Genesis should be taken seriously about creation.

It never occurred to Bill to consider how the Son of God, in whom he claims to believe, thought that the Genesis story of creation was literal and that likewise the one man and one woman was literal:

• ⁴ And He [Jesus] answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning  ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’” (Matthew 19:4-5).

The Bible defines its own terms quite well, thank you Bill. The Lord Jesus quoted Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 2:24, both right out of the creation narrative. The Apostle Paul also quoted Genesis on marriage in Ephesians 5:31, and three times he made an analogy between the first Adam and the Last Adam (Romans 5:12-21; 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; 1 Timothy 2:13-14). Moreover, Hosea 6:7 also mentioned that Adam had a covenant with the Lord (as the Hebrew most likely indicates), like Israel. Also, it seems that Job 31:33 is similar to Hosea 6:7: “If like Adam, I have concealed my transgressions, by hiding my iniquity in my heart. . .” The word for “Adam” used without the article, as here, often refers to the person “Adam,” whereas with the article, it often means “mankind.”  Now Bill has to argue with the savior, whom he claims to know, and the apostle Paul, whom he claims his church was built on, and Old Testament references. Even more, Luke in his Gospel in chapter 3, traces the genealogy of Christ back to Adam as the first man. All the other people in the lineage are literal people who lived. Finally, Jude in his one chapter epistle refers to Enoch as “the seventh from Adam.”

To put it another way, Bill implied, when he asked the couple if they took the Bible literally, that there was a choice, an arbitrary choice. If Bill thinks part of it is allegory, I would like to know his definition of allegory, how many allegories he is familiar with, and what characteristics he looks for in an allegory. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress is one very famous allegory where every character has a special name that defines their moral character, such as Christian, Apollyon, Pliable, Obstinate, and so on. It does not pretend to be history. But for at least 3,500 years, biblical scholars have mostly understood Genesis to be history. Bill will not believe Genesis 1-2—and he can take that up with the author later—but don’t call it allegory. Don’t spin it, Bill, for your are truly one of the great spin misters. In the Bible we have real history, cities and rivers that are still there and in the daily news, archaeology that confirms that Pontius Pilate really lived, and so forth. It is not allegory, and even if parts are symbolic, it does not deny the historic. (Paul’s use of the word allegory in Galatians 4:24 simply means a symbol, an analogy or likeness to something, and that something was historical: two women, Sarah and Hagar,  two places, Mount Sinai and Jerusalem; Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael, three men that Judaism, Islam, and Christian claim—all these existed and are well known!)

And to compound spin on top of spin and arrogance on arrogance, Bill announced that he was going to write a book titled Killing Jesus, to complement his other works, such as Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and so forth. Apparently, he fancies himself a great historical scholar; maybe he is, I don’t know. But one thing I do know as one who has spent the last 40 years in the ministry and in academic Christian circles, teaching in a seminary, is that Bill does not know what he’s talking about in this area. He said he would be dealing with the contradictions between the four gospels, and what makes him a biblical scholar? How well does he read Greek, which is the language of the New Testament? Will he only refer to liberal scholars, or will he consult the Church, which has 2,000 years advance in interpreting the four gospels? Will he read St. Augustine and Aquinas?

And after 2,000 years of biblical scholars from Irenaeus to Augustine to Aquinas to Calvin and Luther, not to mention such erudite modern men who have spent careers in the gospels today, such as Darrell Bock, Peter Williams, Hendriksen (deceased), Keener, Leupold, Leon Morris (deceased), Rodney Whitacre, and dozens of others I could name, will Bill even know these men exist and the history of interpretation? Will he know the so-called problems that have been solved of alleged contradictions between the gospels, or will he just repeat the same old stuff? One thing will come of Killing Jesus: true Christian scholars will rise up to refute his errors, as they did Dan Brown’s The Da Vince Code and other pseudo-scholars. If Bill goes the way he implied, his work will be not be anything that Christians will take seriously, at least not for long, and decades after he and I are gone from planet earth, the Church and its gospels will continue. Bill, you are definitely out of your area this time, no matter what National Geographic says, or I should say, especially what they say. To quote him when he analyzes others, “That is insane” to consider himself a biblical scholar.

Indeed, his denial of the Bible’s infallibility is an announcement of his own infallibility, for he will correct its alleged errors. As I’ve said many times over the years, infallibility does not go away, it just changes places. Like the pieces on a chess board, it just moves around.

Moreover, in his interviews this past week, Bill has revealed that he has read little if any true Christian scholarship, for he kept equating faith with ignorance. Down through the centuries, Christians have based their faith on historical events, on logic and reason, and yes, especially on the written word of God, the Bible, which is the only infallible source. But it also it is based on objective historical events, such as the bodily resurrection of Christ. Christian faith is not opposed to reason, as Bill thinks, but as Hebrew 11:1 states: “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We know with calm confidence that the Bible is supported by science, history, archaeology, and sound reasoning. We reason from the Bible to ourselves, such as Romans 1:18-32, stating that those who engage in same sex unions destroy themselves, which is what we see all round us. To put this another way, it is impossible to live life without assuming the Ten Commandments; otherwise, one self-destructs. But it is God’s word that validates our reason, not reason that proves God’s word. Yet reason is on our side.

Consider the irrationality of Bill and those who hate the Triune God. First, they think that everything came from chaos, from molecules in motion, but as one scientist put it, the silence of the scientific community regarding the origin of all things is deafening. Then everyone uses the laws of logic, which are invisible, invariant, and universal. One cannot even talk without them, but the christophobic people just assume them. Even the laws of grammar must come from one person to another, so how did one person learn to talk so that they came about? Wasn’t it convenient that both male and female came along at the same time, both knowing how to use their “equipment” to get pregnant, and both knowing how to deliver a baby and take care of it? And they call that intelligence!

Then they engage in various logical fallacies. First, O’Reilly is constantly inferring “ought” from “is,” which David Hume demonstrated in the 1700s was not possible. I have an extended treatise on that if anyone wants to send me an email for it, when I finish editing it (cicrenshaw@gmail.com), where I demonstrate from Holy Scripture the same thing. I wrote it about 1975 while in seminary. For example, the liberals argue that since some are born with two genders (“is,” fact), that means anyone should (“ought”, moral obligation) be allowed to decide his gender at any time.

Second, they argue that two men should be allowed to marry, for they love one another as much as those of the opposite gender, to which the Bible demonstrates, in excellent logic, that morality is not defined by love but love by morality (Romans 13:8-10). If love defines morality, then why not kill one another in love?

Third, evolutionists are constantly making a leap by using analogy. Some are dishonest who use variation within a species (micro-evolution, Chihuahua to Great Dane but still a dog) to “prove” that one species can become another one (macro-evolution, fish becomes bird). Some know better, but they fool the public. My rebuttal is that such is not scientific, for one species never becomes another one and has never been observed, which is why they resort to analogy. Moreover, it is only an analogy that a species changing within itself proves that one species can become another one. In other words, because dogs can be bread to be various sizes, colors, and intelligence does not mean a dog can become a cat. There is no scientific observation of that, but only wishful thinking in the form of a loose inductive analogy. Analogies do not prove; they only show similarities. They are inductive (showing maybe), not deductive (showing proof).

Three, I don’t have enough faith to believe something that irrational, but my faith must have evidence, both historical and logical. Bill’s version of reason is apparently autonomous, something that one makes up as he goes along, Enlightenment humanism, which he thinks is what will save our culture, not “thumping the Bible.” You say we need to prove the Bible; we say it proves itself by predicting the results of disobedience to its commands. Example: those who violate God’s sexual commands will contract diseases, destroy children they take care of, if they can figure out how to get them, and we’ll reap the society we have now with all its blatant immorality. We are decaying from within because we think we can be like Adam and Eve—make up our own morality with impunity.

I turn it around on you, Bill: prove reason and the laws of logic? You should say that the only way to prove reason is by using it, to which I saw the only way to prove the Bible is by assuming it. God, a person, created the laws of science and the laws of logic, so when you ask us to prove the Bible, you are assuming it. You assume the rational God who gave it and self-destruct when you disobey, just like He said. You are thumping your reason as final authority without proof while assuming the God you reject who gives the basis for logic.

You assume, dear fellow, that you’re not part of the problem, but with your views you are as much the enemy of the Triune God as the rankest liberal. In fact, your worldview is basically liberal, assuming that man is the measure of all things and that we really don’t need the gospel of Jesus Christ to solve our problems. You keep asking what has happened to our culture in the past decades, and you can’t figure it out. If you would read the Bible, it is simple: we love sin rather than God. We want our immorality, not His morality as seen in the Ten Commandments. The Church, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant, is beginning to awaken, if it is not too late for the West. The Holy Scripture preached truly, and taught in sound Christian books is what will win the day, for this is a spiritual war, not just a war between liberals and conservatives, as you and everyone else at Fox News seem to assume, and that is almost the only news I watch. And it must be Christian, not Mormon with its many gods, not Muslim with its death orientation and hate, not Buddhism with its pantheism, and so on. There is only one savior and one gospel, that of Jesus Christ, and we have His authority on that (John 14:6; acts 4:12).

• ¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places (Eph 6:11-12).
• For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).
• So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it (Isa. 55:11).
• ¹² For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. ¹³ And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account (Heb. 4:12-13).

I fear that with your new book, Killing Jesus, that you will make enemies of those who have followed you. You have already indicated that you’re way out of your area. Don’t try to be an expert where you are not.

I guess you’ll never see this, but I’m praying for you to the Almighty Father through the merits of the Almighty Son in the power of the Almighty Holy Spirit, one God, eternally existing in three equal persons. Amen.