Wait, Isn’t God All-Powerful?
The Bible has a lot of contradictions contianed within the varied theology that it tries to convey to its readers. One of those contradictions is whether God is all-powerful or if he can easily be defeated. At one point, God is undeniably all powerful and with god anything is possible. Look at Jeremiah for instance:
Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?
Nope, there isn’t anything too hard for you God…except for iron chariots as Judges will tell us:
And the Lord was with Judah, and he took possession of the hill country, but he could not drive out the inhabitants of the plain because they had chariots of iron.
But then when we pop over to the New Testament, Matthew is telling us something completely contradictory:
But Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
So, what exactly are we supposed to think here? Is God actually all powerful? When god is with us, and we are doing the things he wants us to do, can we do anything? Some may say that Judah had sinned and caused God to not be with him at that point but that isn’t supported in the text at all. God was clearly with Judah at that point in his bloody career.
Other apologists just say that it was Judah’s fault that he was defeated by iron chariots but that doesn’t make sense because God was with Judah and caused Judah to always be victorious. Judah wasn’t doing anything against God or had made God mad so there would be no reason for god to withdraw his support.
Conclusion
Simply Put, there is no clear answer to this as people will rationalize their way around this contradiction in scripture. God is and always has been all-powerful because God says so in his holy book the Bible…which also claims God wasn’t enough power to defeat iron chariots. That’s as clear as the bible can put it.
(h/t Bibviz.com)
