What is the real answer?
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.
The Real Answer
When human reasoning is stretched over the framework of math, science, or any 'ology, including theology, its substance is more fragile than tissue, and, if we poke at it, it dissolves into nothingness. Human reasoning, in the final analysis, is nothing more than assumption. Theologians and Scientists who have put their trust in unsupported assumptions need to come back to something they, no doubt, long ago rejected. They rejected what was solid because it didn't fit in with their assumptions.
There is a solid substance, a supernatural faith, that humans cannot generate. Be careful not to confuse Spiritual faith with what the ungodly call "faith." The ungodly misuse the term, faith, to mean "believing in something that cannot be proven." Unlike Spiritual Faith, make-believe "faith" is just assumption and presumption. Spiritual faith is substance. It is the substance of things hoped for. It must be received from God. Pseudo-science, a science that is based on the assumption that there is no God and the assumption that there is no spiritual existence, is based on made-up and unsupported claims that are opposed to spiritual faith and cannot co-exist with spiritual faith.
Just as a microscope allows a biologist to verify many things, so faith and the accompanying relationship with Jesus Christ allow a Christian to verify things that can be verified in no other way. Those who have received the real spiritual faith from God need no further verification: they have intimacy with God. For those of us who have found it, God's hope gives us eyes to see the vision of what God chooses to reveal to mankind. Faith and hope, like all good and perfect gifts, come down from God. God offers us these gifts of faith and hope to bring us to trust in and have a personal experience with Him through Jesus Christ.
God loves and desires to commune with every person, but He never forces His gifts on anyone. He shines His light on every person, but many reject the light and turn from it. If you accept His light, now, God will forgive all of your past and give you everything you need to begin the journey to the fulfillment that He has always desired for you. Once you have accepted the light, God is willing and able to give you progressively more light, providing that you are willing to ask for it and receive it. He hears every thought you have. Ask Him for this personal experience with Jesus; He will provide everything you need for the rest.
There are only three sources of understanding. We may observe the world around us, but only three sources are available for understanding what we are seeing: human reasoning, revelation from God, and doctrines of demons. Human reasoning is hopeless since the fall, and doesn't really differ at all from the doctrines of demons. The only real hope of understanding anything at all is in that revelation which is imparted from God. Those who hate God have little hope of ever understanding what's going on. Their conclusions are based on that which pops into their reprobate minds, and they will always end up at the wrong result.
Those who have been reconciled to God through the blood of Jesus do have hope, but, sadly, often depend on the same old natural human mind, ending in a terrible result. This is the cause of most of the denominational divisions in the church. Rationalized speculation, greed, thirst for power, pride, and the flesh all worked together to cause the inquisition. The crusades were the acts of a church body that had long separated itself from a real relationship with Jesus Christ. Man-made religion is destructive. The religion of Scripture, being filled with the Spirit and walking in the Spirit, is what God desires from us.
God is concerned about a relationship. He wants a relationship with you. He wants that relationship to grow. The purpose of the church is that the relationship will grow to the point that we reach full maturity in Christ. The gifts, ministries, and offices in the church are the means that God will use to bring about this full maturity, and what a day that will be!
Jesus is the only Truth that matters. John 14:6
He's the only Truth that can withstand the test.
In His presence all my arguments are shattered.
In His presence is the only place of rest.
chorus:
I will seek Him and know Him. Psalm 119:2
I will walk in all His ways yielding to His grace.
I will seek Him and know Him.
Pressing on to know the Lord, until I see Him face to face.
The intelligence of men just doesn't matter.
As they analyze, their thoughts are sadly vain.
All their reasoning is so much empty chatter,
When the Lord's the only Truth that will remain.
Reasoned dogma cannot test the True Foundation. 1 Cor. 3:11
Jesus is the Truth and Doctrine I embrace. Eph. 2:2
All the ramblings of my interpretation,
I will disregard and I will seek His face.
© 1995, Bob and Kathy
Ephesians 4
11 And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;
12 For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ:
13 Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ:
14 That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;
15 But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ:
16 From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
Only Christ can do any edifying. In understanding Ephesians 4:12-16, you must go back to the main verb, edoken, in verse 11. Christ gave the gifts. He gave the office of apostle. He gave the four ministries. Those gifts are not the persons but the Christ in those persons, as another passage says, "Christ in us, the hope of glory." The text cannot be read any other way than to understand that these gifts are performing all of this work as the gifts proceed from Christ. Grace means, literally, free gift. This is grace, and we know from Scripture that it is grace that does any work that is done. In fact, God could give no greater gift, so He gave us of Himself. He chooses to do it through apostles, ones sent. He chooses to not use those who send themselves or who are sent by men. It is plain from the Greek that it is not gifted people who do any of this work, but rather the Gift Himself does the work through the members. This is true whether it is the apostle who is totally equipping and completing the member or the member who is now also moving in the power and authority of the same gift. When any member comes into submission to the apostle, that person carries the same anointing and authority of the apostle just as long and to the extent that they are in submission. They are not submitting to a man but to Christ Himself. If you can discern the Body of Christ, you will see this. If you see this, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but your Father in Heaven has revealed it.
You can go many places on the internet, on Christian radio, or in the religious world where you will find people twisting this Scripture. They will twist "apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers;" into "teacher/pastors", or "pastor/teacher", or "evangelists, pastors, teachers", or some other misquote. It is evil to twist the traveling elders and deacons, the apostles, into locally abiding pastors. Nowhere in the Bible does it talk about locally abiding pastors. There are locally abiding elders who pastor (care for the church as a shepherd does sheep) the members, and those men receive no money for what they do. They receive a double measure of honor. The Bible says what it says. The Scripture cannot be broken. Satan hates the Bible and he hates God's church and the orders of God's church. If you see someone doing this, run, do not walk, away.
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Evolution isn't science.
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Last updated: Nov, 2011
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There is so much more for you.
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Don't let anyone deceptively keep you from fulfilling your destiny and God's purpose for your life.
God has established the pattern of Scripture, for life and for the Church.
You can feel free to use the Contact Form further down on this page to ask any question regarding this pattern of Scripture.
The Church, the Body of Christ, and discernment of this Body, is the method that God is using to finish the work in His Body.
The Body of Christ, God's Temple, is built up by that which every joint supplies, building each other up in love,
and the Temple must be built according to the pattern of Scripture.
We believe the Holy Scriptures teach:
- The 5 apostolic ministries (Ephesians 4:11)
- The nine gifts of the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:8-10)
- Local congregations overseen by elders and deacons (Titus 1:5)
- Every member having and being a ministry in the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:11)
- Being led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14)
- The gathering together of the Body of Christ (Genesis 49:10, John 17:21)
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