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Compare God’s Story to the Secularistic Story
Stories are very powerful, but they can be true or false. When presented well, they can be very convincing. In a post-modern culture, presentation is everything. It’s all about winning. Winning is accomplished by convincing. Convincing is accomplished by presentation. The Secularistic presentations are paid for by tax dollars. God’s story is told plainly by very average people without Federal grant money. Yet, there is something called Truth. The Spirit of Truth lives in God’s Story. His Story begins with origins and goes to the completion. The Truth, even if it’s persecuted, is still Truth. A lie, even though funded by tax dollars, is still a lie.
Saved from Sin to Good Works
We’re not saved from Hell by good works. We’re saved from sin to good works. Good works are a gift from God. Righteousness is part of our salvation.
Faith isn’t make-believe. It comes when we hear the Word of God. (Ro. 10:17) Looking into the original Greek, it comes when we hear the rhema of God. “Rhema” means “utterance.”
Faith gives access to grace. The free gift of righteousness flows from God through us. (Ro. 5:17) Our part is to receive it and yield the members of our bodies to His righteousness.
(Ro. 6:13) When we try to self-generate righteousness, knowledge, wisdom, understanding, peace, joy, or anything else, we frustrate the grace of God. (Gal. 2:21)
The Ad Ignorantiam Question
One of the most common debate tactics from both sides of the Creation-evolution debate is the fallacy of the ad ignorantiam question. For an Atheist who is depending on his or her own mind and knowledge of everything, the inability to answer a question is answered by, “science will find a way one day.” The inability to answer doesn’t disprove “evolutionism” or “no-Godism.” However, the inability to answer does mean that the Atheist ought to be a bit less dogmatic and open-minded to God. The Atheist who isn’t ready to come to Christ already knows that God exists and has made great effort to create a worldview the filters out God’s Voice because of the love for darkness rather than light.
For the person following Christ, it’s another matter. A person following Christ can say, “I don’t know.” The person following Christ hasn’t rationalized a reason to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. The Holy Spirit has revealed that the books of the Bible were selected by God the Holy Spirit moving through God’s people long ago. The Holy Spirit has been speaking to the Christ-follower through those Scriptures, and the Christ-follower isn’t reading dead letter. The Christ-follower is having an intimate, moment-by-moment experience with Christ.
I’ll add that the Christ-follower’s experience with Christ can’t be used to arm-wrestle the Atheist into submission, of course. However, apologetics is actually the flow of Jesus Christ through the follower of Christ to the unbeliever—or to the believer. When the follower of Christ is living and speaking, the testimony of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of prophecy. The unbeliever can receive this Spirit or not. If the Holy Spirit is rejected, Jesus Christ and the Father are being rejected. This is not a rejection of the Christ-follower.
Yet, all of this can be tested by the unbeliever if the unbeliever doesn’t refuse to look at the evidence. Whoever seeks Christ finds Christ. The believer can instruct the unbeliever in how to come to Christ. If the person is truly open-minded, that person will easily find Christ, and then they will know.
Seek Him; Find Him
Everyone who seeks Christ does find Him. The Spirit will guide you into all the truth.
What a Day that Will Be!
God has so arranged His Creation in a state of interdependence. No part of a single cell can get along on its own. The cells of the body are interdependent. All the organisms, from amoebas to humans, are interdependent (food, air, CO2, etc.–none could live in a vacuum) and all are dependent on Jesus Christ Who was the Word by which they were created and Who now maintains the laws of nature moment by moment. If you disturb the order that God has established, nothing works quite right. Consider the human body. When one member suffers, all suffer with it. If one part is out of order, the entire body is hurting. Consider the Body of Christ in which no member has any purpose when not function in his or her place in the Body of Christ, in submission to the Head, Christ, and in cooperation with every other member. As God says, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.” Though this Body of Christ is largely hurting and in disorder right now, God has a plan to restore everything until we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to A perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. What a day that will be!
Ever Learning
Realize that if what you think you know requires even a single assumption, you don’t know it. It’s a bare assertion.
2 Timothy 3:2-9 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
The Holy Spirit is sent from the Father and the Son to teach us all Truth. Jesus is Truth.
Oracles of God
We are to speak as oracles of God. We don’t do that very often, but that’s the standard that God sets. An oracle is a mouthpiece. Unless God is saying it through you by His Spirit, your mouth should be shut. Our walk is from glory to glory. God forgives when we fail, but He is looking for the fruit of the Spirit. He cuts out the branches that don’t bear fruit and casts them into the fire. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. So what is faith and what is “not of faith?” Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. What’s substance? It is that which is part of reality as opposed to a concept. Faith isn’t a thought. It’s reality. What is evidence? Evidence is absolute proof and certainty. So, faith is certainty and it’s reality. Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the utterance (rhema) of God. In other words, the Holy Spirit leads and teaches. He gives us the thoughts to think, words to say, and acts to do. We know what to do at every moment because we always have a teacher, the Holy Spirit, with us. Any time we think our own thoughts, say our own words, or do our own acts, it is sin. So what is sin. Sin means straying from the way. We can slip off the way or step off the way. All of this is seen in the original language, but the translation missis it. Who is the Way? Jesus Christ is the Way. See, the Spirit of Christ is leading us. He is the Way. When we don’t acknowledge Him, we slip or step off of the Way. The Way to what? Jesus is speaking of the path that leads to the absolute and genuine life—the life of the Kingdom Age. Who is that Life? Jesus says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” It’s important—a matter of life or death.
Allow One Assumption
Allow one assumption and you can prove anything to yourself. For instance, let’s assume that all the stories of evolutionism happened. So, all the stories of evolutionism happened. Therefore, all the stories of evolutionism happened. Oh, that’s too obvious. Let’s put some steps in there, some circular reasoning, and some infinite regression to hide the fact that we’re just making stuff up. btw, the same trick is done with theologies based on Bible verses plus assumption. All it takes is a single assumption and we have added to God’s words, whether God is speaking through the Bible, the Creation, personal leading, conscience, or through one of the other means mentioned in the Bible. For the deceptive and desperately wicked carnal mind, assumptions are a very natural way of thinking.