How can we know anything about anything
To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald
Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?
NO!
That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.
Take science as an example.
How can we know anything about the created material world around us?
How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?
We all see the same things in the material world,
but we don't come to the same answers.
Why is that?
How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches?
Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.
Why is that?
Same scientific facts. Different answers.
Same Bible. Different answers.
Why is that?
The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get
from what we can see through science
or what we can read in the Bible?
How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?
How do we analyze what we have seen and read?
How do we interpret what we have seen and read?
We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock.
That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation.
There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.
An example might help.
Question: Why do you believe in evolution?
Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.
Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?
Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.
Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.
If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.
When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered.
So where to the foundations come from?
There are three possibilities.
- things that we make up, pulled from the air
- demonic lies
- divine revelation
Question: Why do you believe in creation?
Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith
so that I could believe Him.
See how quickly we got to the foundation.
This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.
In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air,
are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan.
So these are one and the same.
Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ.
So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices?
Because God has revealed this truth to us.
The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God
and the lies of Satan?
The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.
Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"
The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem.
It is a moral problem.
Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you:
For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened."
*
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?
Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent?
If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?
Matthew 7:7-11 *
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe
those things that they don't want to submit to.
They have to want to obey God.
How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver
Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)
"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"
Lies appear to have no price upon them.
They seem cheap and they abound everywhere.
But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.
"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness.
And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him.
God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).
"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words;
that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)
That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus.
When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject.
Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.
"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)
Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university.
On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before
who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them,
but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.
In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning,
the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.
They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air.
When asked why he believed his basic assumption,
the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out,
"I guess I'm making the whole thing up."
It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions.
However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.
Welcome to SeekFind.net. God had a purpose for creating you. He designed you for a particular place in the Body of Christ. He designed you to be totally fulfilled in that place. This is your destiny.
This is not to imply that you can in any way reach your destiny by your own way. Only one way is possible. God's way. You must be born again by believing in Jesus and you must commit to grow to fullness by God's However, God will not force Himself on anyone. So, He puts a choice before you... actually, many choices. The making of these choices is generally quite quick, maybe a split second. Each choice comes down to this, "Will you choose the leading of God or the desires of your sinful flesh." When your flesh pulls you toward sin, the Holy Spirit is right there leading you into righteousness. The righteousness that God leads you into is the righteousness that God does. In other words, there is none good but God. If you have faith in Jesus, then Jesus is in your heart. The Holy Spirit is flowing through you. If you ever do any truly good work, then it is grace, the Holy Spirit, Who is doing the work. It is not your flesh. It is the ministry, Christ in you, doing the work. It is not your sinful nature.
So many people think that the Old Testament is about obeying the rules, but it is not. It is about loving God and God loving every man, woman, and child. In the relationship between God and man, it is very important to understand the difference between obeying a rule and obeying God. Human love toward God is expressed in submission to the Spirit of God. When you submit and surrender to the Spirit of God, you obey God. Then, you have a relationship with God and receive direction from God. Then God does His work through you. As this happens, you have a closer relationship with God, and God does more work through you, and you are transfigured from glory to glory, little by little. At the same time, and as a part of this process, you begin to be assembled, as God is assembling a wonderful organism known as the Body of Christ, into your particular ministry or place of service in the Body of Christ. And the Body of Christ is the very mechanism that brings you into your fulfillment in Christ. The Holy Spirit always leads you to do this according to the pattern that He has written in Scripture.
When you reject the leading of Christ, you follow your fleshly ways instead. Then, you begin to lose your closeness with Christ. You do this because you have loved a lie rather than the truth. Every sin is of this nature. You can begin to walk right out of the presence of God. In fact, your own mind is so wicked that it will convince you that you are doing the right thing. The only reason that there are divisions in the Church is because of this negative process. People have followed their own ways rather than God's ways.
This web site is dedicated to this simple process. It is a simple process, although there are many details.