An unanswerable question

[Angrboda]

Did this 'God' reveal to you that all the God mandated killings in the bible were in fact God mandated, and if so, how? How is your evidence that what is in the bible is God mandated better than a person (or group of people) telling you that they have a mandate from God? How is the bible or whatever you base your belief in God's prior mandates on better evidence than either verbal or written claims made today?

Yes, I believe that the bible is the inspired word of God. No book in the world has received as much investigation and criticism as the bible. Archeological discoveries continue to be found hat support the authenticity of the manuscripts and the timeframes of the historical claims. There's also fufillment of prophesies and many other things, which I won't get into because it would take pages and pages and you can read it from many sources on the internet.

While I appreciate the answer, and accept that is why you believe the bible, I can't help but note that you've jumped ship from your earlier criterion of personal revelation confirming God's mandates. I'm sure you know there are others who would say the bible fails on all those accounts. Are you saying that in the case of the bible you've had personal revelation attesting to its verity, or are you engaged in special pleading by using a different standard to evaluate the mandates in the bible. It seems a bit unfair of you to demand archaeology and prophecy of David Koresh or L. Ron Hubbard meet the same standard, even if the bible meets it.

So why do you use different standards to evaluate contemporary proclamations from historical ones? And I'm sure that you can understand that the Hindus and the Muslims make similar claims. The Koran is inspired and miraculous. The Vedas are the timeless wisdom of rishis supported by archaeology showing ancient civilizations going back thousands of years. So why is the bible special such that a) it gets its own criterion for belief, and b) that the criterion applied to believing the bible are not equally applied to other religious texts with similar claims?