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.
You look into the royal law of liberty, and you see reality. (James 2:8) You see the Kingdom of God. (James 1:23)
When you see yourself in this royal law of liberty, what do you see? You need to see reality. In reality, you are a new creature, created in righteousness. (1Cor 5:17)
Do you think that the Christ in you can sin? Of course not. (1 John 3:9) Jesus is that spiritual man. (1John 3:5) Jesus is the ministry within you, and He does not sin, but your flesh does not see Christ nor does it know Him. (1John 3:6) Your flesh is of the devil and cannot do righteousness ever. (1John 3:8) The flesh is not born again and cannot be reformed, and we must die to the flesh. (1John 3:9, Rom 8:13) So make no provision for the flesh. (Rom 13:14)
If we see ourselves in the royal law of liberty, we realize that we are joined to our brother and sister in Christ, that we are part of the same person. We know that we have no meaning or purpose outside the Body of Christ. Real righteousness is by grace through faith.
If I had a machine that would keep my finger alive outside of my body and I separated my finger from my body, that finger would not have a purpose. That is how we are without the Body. When we see reality, we realize that we have no purpose if we are in disorder or not functioning properly in the exact ministry to which we were called. That would be as if I were able to connect my finger to my forehead. It would not only look strange, but it would be useless. This type of uselessness can develop in Christian lives. This is what happens when there are disorders in a local assembly. It happens when a member tries to emulate someone else’s gift, ministry, or office.
There are many false prophets and false apostles who lay hands on people and prophesy lies over them, making them useless to the Body of Christ through their lying spirits. When the Church is divided and separated from those who have been called as the foundation of the Church (Eph 2:19-22), they are like a part of the Body, perhaps and arm or a leg, consisting of many members, who have been cut off from the headship and the covering that exist in the true Body of Christ.
Here, we may have to deal with the lies of the ungodly counselors. In the New Age religions and in the Positive Mental Attitude counselors, there is a teaching about self-talk. They teach their adherents to speak to themselves in positive terms. "I feel great!" "I am the best at what I do!" This does plant seeds into the garden of the heart, but these sayings are not by the Spirit of God. To hear God’s voice, we must listen to God. When we generate our own voices or speak a vision out of our own hearts we try to do the work of God by the human spirit. We can lean to be a hypocrite this way, but we cannot come into the manifestation of the sons of God. It is the planting of counterfeit weed seeds that look a lot like the real thing but are fake. These ways are more similar to magic and witchcraft than to the functioning of the Body of Christ. The flesh cannot be reformed. It must die. The Christ must be built to the fullness. This is done by preparing the soil and planting seed from God.