How many are born again? How many notional Christians are there?

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 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 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 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.

Barna Research has found that four out of ten adults (40%) say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in my life today, and also contend that after they die they will go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. Barna classifies this group as born again Christians.

The Barna Poll shows that numbers have not changed much over the years regarding those who do all of the following: In addition to meeting the born again criteria [described above] evangelicals also meet seven other conditions. Those include saying their faith is very important in their life today; contending that they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Christ with non-Christians; stating that Satan exists; maintaining that eternal salvation is possible only through grace, not by being good or doing good deeds; asserting that Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth; saying that the Bible is totally accurate in all it teaches; and describing God as the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today. These individuals, Barna classifies as evangelical, and they constitute 7% of the adult population. Barna indicates, That number [percentage] has not changed since the Barna Group began measuring the size of the evangelical public in 1994. To avoid confusion regarding the various meanings of words, Barna states, In this framework, being classified as 'evangelical' is not dependent upon any kind of church or denominational affiliation or involvement.

Four out of ten Americans, 39% of the nation's adult population, Barna calls notional Christians. These may be attend churches, live a life according to Christian principals, read the Bible, or even be very religious. They probably believe in the Ten Commandments. They just do not meet the criteria for being born again: They have NOT made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their lives today OR they DON'T believe that after they die they will go to Heaven because they have confessed their sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as savior. They carry some of the beliefs of Christians, but have not been born into the Kingdom of God.

Barna further states that when all of the Atheists, Agnostics, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Secular Humanists, and others associated with non-Christian faith groups, are put together, the total comes to 21%.

This confirms a recent Time poll that says that 82% of Americans identify themselves as Christians.

Garlow and Jones, in Cracking Da Vinci's Code, speak of the nominal church. What Barna calls, "notional" Christians, have generally been known as nominal (in name only) Christians. Here is how Garlow and Jones state it regarding the the church of the dark ages:

<"" />Constantine set out to form a union between the Christian church and the Roman Empire. He gave land and money to the churches to rebuild what previous emperors had destroyed. The church began to depend on the Roman government for money not only to finance its buildings, but also to pay its leaders.

By A.D. 380, Christianity was the officially established religion of the entire Roman Empire. This declaration resulted, not in authentic conversion by which people willingly and knowingly embraced Christianity, but in a redefinition of what it meant to be a Christian, thus compromising authentic Christianity. Thousands simply declared themselves (or were forced to declare themselves) to be Christian, with no understanding of what that declaration meant. Brown's character [in the novel, The Da Vinci Code] Robert Langdon has it wrong. Rather than Christianity crushing paganism, the paganistic influence within the church caused great confusion among the believers.

This huge influx of pagans, now calling themselves Christians, created what we are calling the nominal (in name only) church. The church that The Da Vinci Code generally presents is this nominal church, made up of people who called themselves Christian but who had no idea what the term meant.

Cracking Da Vinci's Code goes on to explain how Christians without Christ brought about many disorders and even violence. That is not to say that Christians don't sometimes get into the same type of rationalized speculation that causes problems for non-Christians. This type of rationalized speculation can lead to violence as it did, at times, in the inquisition, and as it does in Atheistic Socialist countries such as Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Fascist society, North Korea, Vietnam, U.S.S.R. and Red China. Some people apply the name Christian to themselves when they are not Christians. They are totally disconnected from, Jesus Christ, the living Head of the universal church. These are nominal or notional Christians.

How many are born again? How many notional Christians are there?

How can we know anything about anything

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