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.
Interestingly, the people who like evolution also tend to reject the laws of God, such as, "Thou shalt not kill," which is a major issue in current events (e.g. abortion, euthanasia).
They reject, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." When caught in the act, they may openly repent, but only if the repentance itself can be used as a manipulation tool to control the masses.
Rather than reaching into their own pockets to help the poor and needy, they hypocritically violate, "Thou shalt not steal." and take the money of others by force to try to help the poor and needy. That gives the ungodly Liberals a good feeling as if they had done something, but all they did was to steal.
It also gives them political power, because many people want a free handout. As we have witnessed, they usually hurt the needy more than they help them. The handouts give the ungodly Liberals money and power, but money and power without wisdom is dangerous. In fact, most of their so-called social justice programs are based on the covetousness that God forbids in the ninth and tenth commandments. They reject, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," but rather put every form of idol in front of the one living God. In fact, they try to make it illegal to obey this first commandment.
These ungodly Liberals are the same people who doubt the ability and the authority of Jesus Christ to forgive and remove sin. They believe and hope that there will be no resurrection and final judgment. It's no wonder they reject God's commandments. They do have a form of religion, but deny the power of God.
These are the people who believe in pseudo-logic and speculative rationalism, the idea that the human mind is the source of all knowledge rather than God. The speculations of rationalism, they label as "science." These are the exact same people who believe in the post-modern idea that everything is relative. That is the idea that there is no ultimate truth, only opposing sides of an issue. Under their post-modern philosophy, there is only power. There is no right. There is no wrong. To the ungodly Liberal, the concepts of right and wrong are simply tools to be used to win and to control others. To control is most important. For this reason, it is necessary to control education, entertainment, and news media to make sure that their ungodly Liberal story is the only story told. That is the reason they press to control the judges, because the judges can create laws from the bench, as if they were dictators, to promote all forms of evil. In the pseudo-world called post-modernism, the winners get to declare themselves right, and, since, in their mind, there is no right or wrong, they think that there can be nothing wrong with any methods or means used to become the winner. It's no wonder that they consider lying as a legitimate tactic, and they give such honor to their favorite liars. The former impeached President is given much praise is a very talented liar. Shame on anyone who has the support of these people.
Just a side note: isn't it comical that these people want us to make a choice between believing them or believing those people who think that lying is a sin. Isn't it amazing that some people think that this is a difficult decision to make? "Who can you believe?" they say. Duh!
So the anti-God, anti-Christ lobby likes the so-called theory of evolution. Ungodly Liberals hate it when we have a Christian President. They like the kind of President who has no morals, that is, one who follows the new morality. The new morality is, of course, the old immorality, now relabeled "Political Correctness."
In all of this, the triad of the ungodly Liberal news media, the New Age/Secular Humanist schools, and the New Age/Secular Humanist entertainment industry, act as if they constituted the false prophet of the apocalypse. They continue to speak forth their lies and produce lying wonders through image manipulation. They have depended on a Babylon of confused voices, and love of money, power and prestige that is, unfortunately, in the Christian world to divide and conquer the poor, apostate church. New Age Humanism has raised it's head to declare that man is god and to exalt the human mind, the human soul and emotion and the human spirit. All the time the attempt is made to draw more Christians into a prostituted and compromised condition.
But there is a remnant of God's people who are resisting steadfast in the faith. These are the ones who are seeking God with all of their might and are not stuck in speculatively rationalized doctrines. They are experiencing Jesus in their lives and growing in Him.