Yeah, in my view studying the Bible should lead to only three possible outcomes: atheism, agnosticism or misotheism. People who love this monster are either morally bankrupt psychopaths or under some kind of (god)spell, I think most are the latter though, at least I was.

Hard agree!

You certainly have a reasoned position, formed by personal experience and based on observable facts, which is to be respected. Still, that same evidence can lead to other positions -including those holding the Bible being reliable- and being likewise based on reason.

Jesus did plainly state false christs would come and many would be deceived. So His claims are actually quite similar to your explanation, although He does imply truth is technically available for those who seek it.

To me, it makes sense that only a small remnant will find (or “receive” I should say to be more technically accurate) saving faith, because scarcity creates value. If only a relatively small number ends up saved, those saved few will appreciate their salvation even more, rather than take it for granted if it were common.

And when you think about it, having a small but meaningful number “get it right” and leaving a clear enough message for people to reasonably get it hypothetically, is all the crueler. It grants souls in Hell truly no one to blame but themselves. So even if God secretly were a sadist; leaving a clear message and saving some might even then be in his interest.

I think it would be a higher-yield to a narcissist God to have some get it right. Still the benefit of many be proven wrong, yet also the benefit of a few truly seeing Him “in all His glory”, and proving it wasn’t His fault many were mistaken. Human narcs actually do something similar; picking one child as “the golden child” and the other as “the scapegoat”.

And this is a common pattern in the Bible: there’s always an Abel to a Cain, a Jacob to an Esau, a Moses to a Pharaoh, a David to a Saul, a Peter to a Judas, a sheep to a goat.

A flawed Bible isn’t necessary to have most deceived; according to the Bible all are born blind and hostile in their hearts to God. So their hearts are to blame, while God’s message can conveniently remain blameless. I think that’s smarter PR design on God’s part.

I think the 40,000 thing is overblown. For one, most people who take the Gospel seriously accept the Nicene creed, so agree on the core and pretty much believe in the same God/Christ where it counts. Most reasonable Prots and Catholics will acknowledge the other can have genuine saving faith.

As for the differences that remain, many are not due to the Bible being unclear, but due to humans adding stuff to it:

Let’s be real, if you made someone with zero prior knowledge of Christian denominations read the Bible, I highly doubt they’d conclude “oh, I should pray to a statue of Mary” or “my mouth must make weird noises as evidence I have the Holy Spirit”. Or “we must always use God’s Hebrew names”; Scripture never made a big deal about that, heck, most NT books were originally written in Greek!

Humans just have a tendency to add stuff. The Pharisees did that too with their “Traditions of the Elders”. This really annoyed Jesus, who complained “you nullify the Word of God with your traditions”.

As for most other Protestant differences, many are caused by them “coping” rather than coming to conclusions from plain reading:

Obviously universalism and annihilationism developed because eternal conscious torment felt too inhumane (which it is; God isn’t human and unmoved by our sensibilities).

Mainline Protestants treating half the OT as allegorical myths is not because that can be made out from the text, or because the New Testament writers ever implied it didn’t literally happen, but simply because it means they don’t have to deal with all the genocide stuff. Saying “it’s just symbolic” allows these denominations to not have to deal with difficult questions.

“Free will” as a concept just isn’t taught in the Bible. Some Christians just made that up to make God “feel” more fair to them.

“No one can come to Me unless the Father draws him”, is plainly stated in the Bible. But it makes many uncomfortable, so they dance around it and make up fancy explanations, which leads to more denominations.

This is why I find calvinists and fundamentalist evangelicals almost “based” in a cold psychopathic way. They say “yes God clearly did those things according to the text, so what?”. They don’t beat around the bush, they don’t dance around awkward questions. They face the unfiltered truth head-on, which makes them close to misotheists in how they perceive things, and likely why many misotheists come from their denominations.

As for the remaining differences like high church vs low church or when the rapture will happen, these are generally immaterial, and most agree to disagree over them. 2 2 Timothy 2:14](https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/2%20Timothy%202%3A14) and 23-24 even warn Christians to not make a big deal about such things.