Mar 04 2010
For Such a Time as This - 3
“And who knows but that you have come to royal position
for such a time as this?” Esther 4:14
The final bridge that must be built between ourselves and Godly understanding, between sinner and salvation, is the reliability of the Bible. Once we know that we can trust the Scriptures, we can then profess and defend our faith effectively based on the only reliable teaching we have, the Word of God. We are still responsible for reading and knowing the content of the Bible in order to build our witness before others, but first we have to know in our hearts that it can be trusted.
“For prophesy never had it’s origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:21. This applies equally to the inspired writings of the Bible as well. The words in the Bible are not made up out of some man’s head, they are the dictated truth of God as delivered by the Holy Spirit. But how can you take my word for it? If God, Himself, were to tell you that you could believe the writings of the Bible as absolute truth, if the mountain thundered and the voice roared through the flames and smoke, then we would have a good reason to be confident in what we read in the Bible. This is exactly what happened. The Apostle Paul, who received his learning by direct revelation from Christ, writes, “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:16.
What we now have is Christ, Himself through Paul, telling us that we can rely on the Word of God, but unless we can show that Jesus is God, who walked among men, we only have the assurance of man. So is Jesus God? He certainly claimed to be equal to God and made the case so effectively, that the Pharisees condemned Him to death for blasphemy. I think that the best case of showing Jesus of Nazareth to be the incarnate God was published by Dr. Peter Stoner in an issue of, Science Speaks. Dr. Stoner looked at the probability that anyone, other than God, could have fulfilled the 300-plus messianic prophesies in the Old Testament. 300 was too large a number to start with though, so he looked at only 8 to see what the odds would be that anyone could have pulled that off.
Things like being born of a virgin, entering Jerusalem on a donkey, having his clothes gambled for at his death, not a bone being broken, making the signs and wonders that were forecast by Isaiah more than 400 years before His birth; these were the types of things that were considered. How likely is it that anyone other than Christ could have accomplished 8 of these prophesies? For only 8, the odds were conservatively calculated at 1 : 100,000,000,000,000; one to one hundred million billion. This would be like covering the state of Texas 2 feet deep with silver dollars, marking one coin, mixing them all up and having a blindfolded man draw out the marked coin on the first try. And that’s for only 8 prophesy fulfillments; there were more than 300 that Jesus fulfilled and there were none that went unfulfilled. I find this compelling evidence that we can Believe that Jesus Christ was who He claimed to be.
So now, if we have God incarnate telling us that we can believe the Bible, then it’s a good bet that we can! The Bible tells us that man is fallen and estranged from God, that we need a Saviour to reconcile our sinfulness before God and that the ONLY way to accomplish that is to believe in Jesus. We must trust that the sacrifice made on the cross at Calvary was sufficient to cleanse us of our sin and cover us with the righteousness of Christ so that God, the Father, can find us acceptable at the judgment of the last day.
To be found unrepentant, and in our sin when we come up for judgment is to be condemned to Hell for eternity. C.S. Lewis, in Mere Christianity, explains that in the eternity that lies ahead for all of us, every person we encounter, in this life, will either be a being of angelic grace and beauty, the likes of which can not be imagined, or a gnarled monstrous entity of such gross proportions that we, even in our most hideous of nightmares, could not even begin to consider. There is no middle ground. The point of this article is to try to make each of us aware that our children, spouses, friends and perhaps even ourselves are at the precipice of a decision and we need good information to make good choices.
None of us want to consider that our children could end up as fuel for the fires of Hell because no one ever tried to share the Gospel of Christ with them. This is not something that we can afford to wait on thinking that when they get older, they can decide for themselves. I was confronted with this situation when my son announced that he wanted to study all the world’s religions and then he would decide what was right for him. I told him that it sounded reasonable but that if he was serious about it, that he should begin with Christianity. I reasoned that if he once heard the truth, then all the rest would show themselves to be lacking and unworthy choices.
In only a few short months he was so thoroughly convinced concerning the correctness of Christian faith that he, (on his own), decided to come forward and give his life to Christ. He never looked any farther than the truth, because once you hear the truth, there’s no need to look anymore. Now, whenever he encounters other theologies, he can find the lacking elements quickly and realizes that there is nothing that can compare with the truth of salvation by faith in Christ Jesus.
We are all watchmen and we are responsible for teaching our children about the single most important decision they will ever be called upon to make. They may make poor choices along the way, they may take the path of the prodigal, but the Bible tells us that if we raise up our children in the way they should go, that when they are old they will not turn from it. We must become kitchen table evangelists. We must prepare our children for the last day so that they do not look over from the goat pens asking, “Why didn’t you try to tell us?”
We must find the truth, and then dig until we can put into words the reason for the hope we have, we must learn to do it in love, do it to give the ones we love the most a chance of making the right choices. The blood of those who hear the warning and yet turn away will be on their own heads, but if we fail to sound the alarm, we will bear the responsibility for their blood for all eternity. We owe it to the next generation to give them a chance, a chance they can not have unless someone tells them the truth. We must be the ones who show the light to the little ones so that they might have the opportunity to serve as lives also given…
All for the Glory of Christ