It is the proclamation of the Gospel, not argumentation, that transforms minds. See Give Them the Gospel.
Everything we believe either is founded on the Rock, Jesus, or else it’s founded on the sand, axioms. Axioms are just assumptions. They are generally deeply rooted assumptions. Using circular reasoning, axioms are made up and then believed because they are believed. Even for those who are most dedicated to logic as the only way to truth, there are axioms, however deeply buried, at the basis of all their thoughts. That is, unless the Rock, Jesus is the basis. For Christians, there’s a mixture of Axioms and Jesus. These two competing gods are in the heart. We could call the axioms, “self.” Jesus is Christ in us the hope of glory.
Pick any belief. If you ask yourself why you believe it and keep digging for the basis of belief repeatedly, eventually you come to a point where you either say, “because that is what I believe,” the circular reasoning problem, or else you come to a point where you say, “because God has revealed it to me.” You can make the second statement regarding anything you read in the Bible, if indeed God has revealed it to you. It’s possible to read the Bible without having God reveal everything, and it’s plain that God doesn’t show us everything just because we read the Bible.
The Atheist will say the statement, “God revealed it to me,” is circular reasoning. It seems circular to an Atheist, but that’s because they don’t believe God exists. In fact, the Atheist is using circular reasoning. Revelation seems circular to a person who believes in Scientism because the philosophy of Scientism says that only those things that can be proved through logic and observation are valid–and God isn’t material. According to the Axioms of the Atheistic worldview, there’s nothing that’s not material. Based on this, the Atheist uses the presupposition of materialism to disprove anything that’s not materialistic. In other words, the Atheist states that materialism proves materialism. That is circular reasoning.
When God shows us something, this is revelation. It is illogical, though, to deny that God reveals since that would be the logical fallacy of a universal negative. There is nothing illogical about saying that God revealed any more than it would be illogical for a man to say that his friend had explained something to him. Someone could challenge whether or not the friend had really said anything at all to him. Someone could challenge the authority of his friend’s statement. In the same way, an Atheist may challenge whether or not God has really spoken, but the Atheist is on shaky ground in denying that God has spoken. The Atheist can attack God’s authority, as Atheists often do. It has been said that the Atheist has two creeds: There is not God, and I hate Him.
We accept a lot just because we accept it, but that is circular and we don’t have to do that. It is truly building on the sand to allow these thoughts to remain based on axioms. God has so much more for us. We know that some fact has always been true from our past experience. We know that some fact is universally accepted, but lots of things that are universally accepted are not true. And even those things that are really true, if accepted only because everyone else accepts them, have no foundation. The only real foundation is the Rock, Jesus Christ.
Jesus can show us things about the realm of the spirit, yes. He can also reveal the things in the natural realm. Great Christian scientists have received revelation and verified it through experimentation. They have watched as God unfolded His Truth to them.
On what basis do we believe that 1+1=2 for instance? And how can we really know that one plus one would be equal to two on another planet or in another 100 years. We can’t test that. In a sense, we cannot imagine that it could not be true, though.
Are there exceptions to this simple rule of math? The answer may surprise you. Yes, there are exceptions. We call the exceptions to God’s rules of logic, miracles.
Here it is. God created math. God is faithful and orderly in everything that He says or does. God created other rules. Gravity is always there. Days pass at the same rate all the time. Time passes at the same rate. And numbers work in the same way.
Except sometimes. What? Let me explain.
Remember the feeding of the 5,000 and the feeding of the 7,000. God is not constrained by His laws. At times, He demonstrates that He does not have to let 1+1=2 or any other law of the universe be true all the time. He decided that very little food would just keep being there as they handed it out. The numbers didn’t add up. Remember in the Old Testament when the oil never ran out. There should have been only a little bit, but it just kept coming.
And God made that one day last longer for Joshua. He turned time backwards for Hezekiah.
Gravity didn’t work on Jesus or Elijah. God has laws, but He is above all of His laws, and we only know a very small piece of how God thinks and how things really work.
We take the laws of nature and math and logic for granted. We think that they are just there. But by Jesus all things consist. God is maintaining the universe constantly. He is very orderly. Except for the few instances that are mentioned above and any other miracles, He does everything consistently, so we can use the processes of science to understand how things work. We don’t realize that the things that we call the laws of nature are actually the evidence by which we can know that God is. Romans 1:19-20 Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it to them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.
Ungodly people are forced to hold on tightly to some basic presuppositions. These presuppositions are just simple-minded assumptions. They are filters and a way to censor out any information that supports the existence of God. They set up a web of rules to filter out God. They will only accept those things that conform to Naturalism, materialism, and uniformitarianism. Naturalism claims that God does nothing. Materialism claims that there is no God or spiritual realm. Uniformitarianism claims that there was not creation and that there was no violent worldwide flood, as the Bible and numerous other historical accounts record. Whatever they observe that does not conform to this complex filter is censored. The way that it is censored can take several forms. The ungodly may boldly proclaim that, though the data appears to support God’s version and refute the version of the ungodly, yet it still must be interpreted to mean just the opposite of what it does mean. A backup method that ungodly people use is to prophecy that in the future, science will be able to explain what they see as an anomaly. If that fails, they will hide the data, set it aside, or lie to keep the public from knowing the truth. The data clearly demolishes the story of the ungodly and clearly supports the reality of the Creator God, His Bible, and His abiding Presence in His people. When confronted with the obvious, a closed-minded ungodly person says, “I can’t understand it.” They are willingly ignorant because they refuse to hold God in their knowledge. The reality is that these people, for whatever reason, don’t what to know the Creator. They don’t want to truly know Jesus, their Creator.
