question about the bible

[Anymouse]

I never said not to read the entire Bible, everyone should, however reading srtaight through is not a study of scriptures it is just completeing a read. I'm not sure where you get your info on what goes on in churches, I've never experianced what your touting. No those verses are not taught in Sunday School and the reasons should be obvious, however with the way some on this site reason it would not suprise me if they thought it to be true.
Please answer this question, why do you think that pastors of churches do not want the people of the church studying scriptures, what would that profit them?

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My experience with churches: my sister converted to Christianity and eventually became a deaconess in the MCC church. My aunt was chief presbyter of Chicago. Pat Robertson and his bully-boys sent pickets to my apartment when I was running a Wiccan bulletin board in Virginia Beach, and the police would not remove them, though picketing a private residence is against the law. Some of the pickets even had signs that said "Burn the Witch." (My family and I were forced to leave our home for two weeks and live on-base at Naval Air Station Oceana until the furor died down.)

Martin Luther (the founder of the Protestant Revolt) was in favour of the Bible being printed (though he edited out several books, parts of Daniel and Esther, and Psalm 151 from the Canon, called the Book of James "The Book of Straw," and rejected everything after II Peter) because it would put the Bible in the hands of the parishoners.

But then people started reading it. And they came across such things as found in Numbers 11:12: Have I conceived all this people? have I begotten them, that thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their fathers?

They don't want you reading it because so much of the "Word of God" doesn't make any sense, and if that is the case, maybe the rest of it doesn't either? Because if people read and interpret it for themselves they don't need churches and pastors? Because if 100,000,000 Christians read and interpret the Bible there will be in fact 100,000,000 different versions of Christianity, each a religion unto itself?

I don't really know, I am not a Christian, therefore I have read (more than once) the entire Bible. Non-Christians in this "land of the free" have to read the Bible to defend themselves from the endless zealots knocking on our doors that don't. (I have found that pro-Wicca bumper stickers on my car deter both the Mormons and JW's working our little village lately, as well as the Lutheran Church across the street. The church who's founder wanted the Bible in everyone's hands.)

I note again that if you base your entire faith on a book, don't you want to know and understand everything in that book? If you can make sense out of Numbers 11:12, can you enlighten me?

James