Building on Rock or Building on Sand

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.

Everything that we believe either goes back to the Rock, Jesus, or else it goes to the sand, axioms. Axioms are just assumptions. They are deeply rooted assumptions. Axioms are made up and they are believed because they are believed. Even 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 there is the Rock, Jesus, at the basis. For Christians, there is 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 we ask, "Why do you believe that?" repeatedly, eventually we come to a point where we either say, because that is what I believe, the circular reasoning problem, or else we come to a point where we say, because God has revealed it to me. We can say this of anything we read in the Bible, if indeed God has revealed it to us. It is possible to read the Bible without having God show us everything, and it is plain that God does not show us everything just because we read the Bible.

The Atheist will say that "God revealed it to me" is circular reasoning. It seems circular to an Atheist, but that is because they don't believe that 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 is not material. According to the Axioms of the Atheistic worldlview, there is nothing that is not material. Based on this, the Atheist uses the presupposition of materialism to disprove anything that is not materialism. 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.

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 unto 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

Alien & UFO Cults (Go)
Agnosticism And Agnostics (Go)
Agnostic Christianity (Go)
Atheists And Atheism (Go)
At Ease Christianity (Go)
Baha'i Faith (Go)
Buddhism (Go)
Christadelphianism (Go)
Church Of Christ Scientists, Christian Scientists, Mary Baker Eddy (Go)
Demagogue Christianity (Go)
Democracy Worship (Go)
Denominational Christianity (Go)
Disconnected Christianity (Go)
Dogma-based Christianity (Go)
Eckankar, ECK, And Sugmad (Go)
Emergent "Church" (Go)
Emotion-based Christianity (Go)
Entertainment Christianity (Go)
Evil For Good Christianity (Go)
Evanjellyfish Christianity (Go)
Evolutionism, The Cult Disguised As Science, But It Is Not Science. Evolution / Evolutionism is a Cult. (Go)
Evolutionistic Christianity (Go)
Gnostics and Gnosticism (Go)
Hinduism (Go)
The Human Goodness Cult (Go)
Humanism Also Known As Secular Humanism (Go)
The Human Potential Movement (HPM) (Go)
Intellectualism. Leaning On One's Own Understanding. When Does It Become A Cult? (Go)
Islam (Go)
Jehovah's Witnesses (Go)
The Latter Rain Movement and the Charismatic Movement (Go)
Liberalism, A Human Goodness Cult of Totalitarian Coercion (Go)
Liberal Christianity (Go)
Materialism, The Cult That Is Based On Nothing Other Than A Bald-faced Lie (Go)
The Cult, Modernism (Go)
Mormons--The Church Of The Latter Day Saints (Go)
Native American Religions (Go)
Naturalism, A Cult Based On A Bold-faced Lie (Go)
The New Age Movement (Go)
Old-Earth Fairy Tales Have Destroyed The Faith Of Many (Go)
The Occult (Go)
Pantheism: All Is God--God Is Everything There Is. (Go)
Post Modernism, The Last-Ditch Effort To Defend Evolution And Atheism (Go)
Rationalism: Why Is It A Cult? It Makes The Human Mind Into A False God, Giving It God-like Qualities That Don't Fit Reality. (Go)
Rationalized Christianity (Go)
Redefined Christianity (Go)
Relativism Is One Of The Chief Precepts Of Many Cults Including Post-Modernism (Go)
Self-Christianity (Go)
Scientism (Go)
Scientology (Go)
Secularism (Go)
Sikhism (Go)
Socialism And Communism (Go)
Socialist Christianity (Go)
Statism & Statists (Go)
Theosophy (Go)
Transhumanism (Go)
Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon (Go)
What is Uniformitarianism? (Go)
Unitarian / Unitarianism / Universalism / Universalists (Go)
Unity School Of Christianity (Go)
The Way International (Go)
Wiccan / Wicca / Witches / Witchcraft (Go)

Building on Rock or Building on Sand

How can we know anything about anything

Deception

Ever Learning but Never Coming to a Knowledge of the Truth

Revelation

Contact Form