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.
Sadly, many Christians worship democracy. Some Christians think that their hope is in democracy. They think that bringing democracy to the world will cause a fundamental change in human nature. How foolish!
What is called democracy in the U. S. is actually a very restricted form of democracy known as a republic. The benefit of being so restricted has been, in the past, that it was difficult to make laws to persecute any one group of people. Originally, it was difficult to engage in religious persecution from the Federal level of government. That has changed, however, and the U. S. continues to drift in the direction of raw democracy and even oligarchy through the courts.
Democracy is thought, by some, to be the saving grace of the Earth. It is not. The United States Founding Fathers were very much afraid of democracy. They did not worship democracy by any means. They didn't want a democratic government but rather set up a republican government. That is, they set up a government that would have certain principles built into it. The history regarding this has been all but obliterated by the zealots of Secularism. The reason that Secularists are so eager to change history is that the principles upon which the U. S. was established were Christian principles. The Founding Fathers understood the evil heart of all mankind, so they made it difficult to change the Constitution, which limited the power of the Federal Government. That has all changed.
Many people do not realize that the U. S. S. R. was a democracy. Democracies are not necessarily good. If you give one vote to each person, then you will have good government as long as at least 51% vote in a good way and no one cheats in the voting process by counting votes that never really happened. That means you need good people. As an example, it was thought that putting in a Democracy in Iraq would lead to a better life for the people. However, as soon as the Democracy went into effect, the Christians had to flee for their lives from Iraq because of the open persecution.
Most churches operate as either a democracy or else a monarchy. Neither a democracy nor a monarchy is the order of Scripture. There is specific information in the Bible that explains the Biblical order for the government of the Church. There are few who follow it, mostly because of temptation to follow that which allows for the pursuit of money, power, and prestige. God's order does not provide for these. In fact, the word, Laodicea, is a synonym for democracy. Laodicea is the lukewarm church of the Book of Revelations. It is the church that God would spit out of His mouth because they think they are rich, but they don't know that they are naked and blind. There are reasons that God set up the Church in the way that He set it up. All of this was lost during the dark ages, but it is being restored now. There are several reasons that the order of God is so important in the Church. One is that the Church was designed by God to be a living Body, and organism, not an organization. Each member is called and chosen to fit into this Body is a very specific way. The Body must be built according to the pattern or it cannot hope to function properly.