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Questions and Answers | |
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| 1. How does anyone know God exists? | ||
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This
is a good question and needs to be resolved. If someone does not believe
in God nor miracles then it is fruitless to tell them about God
resurrecting Jesus from the dead. With
out the existence of a personal, moral God then there can be no sin
and no need for salvation.
Four
basic arguments for the absolute need for God to
exist: a) Creation 1) Since there is a universe
it had to have a creator.
2)You can not have a watch
without a watch maker 3) Paul uses this in Romans
1:19-20 4) Plato developed this as
the immovable mover. 5) Follow the Kalam
Cosmological Argument: b) Design–
all design implies a creator c) Moral
law–
describes what ought to be seen among men but is not always
there. It is a standard
of behavior that exists because of God. d) Being– The human concept of perfection exists, yet it is not seen in creation. Since we strive for perfection in all areas but have never seen it then perfection must exist. The concept of God encompasses the concept of perfection.
We
begin our discussion with the understanding that the
universe does exist!! The
Universe Exists Was
there a beginning?
No
beginning
There
was a beginning
-impossible
since it exists
- True
-impossible since everything
in universe has beginning
-if
universe is eternal then it
would have run out of energy
long ago
Was
the Universe Caused?
The
Universe wan not Caused
It
was Caused
-impossible since everything is caused
- True
What
was the Cause?
A
random
directionless force
A
Personal Agent
Impossible just like:
- True
A) Will shaking the parts of a watch in a
can put
the watch together?
No.
B) Could a tornado build a house when
it hits a lumber yard?
Never.
What
is this Agent like?
Limited
to Universe
Separate
from Universe
-
This would make the universe
- True. This Creator would
be:
self existent
1)
intelligent
-worship
creation or of
2)
powerful
things in creation is idol worship
3)
timeless -here god is found in things, nature, animals 4) capable of choice -many religions make it this far, but fail to 5) immaterial see the true holy God.
6)
causeless
Idol Religions are Illogical Three religions have a Logical God:
1.
Buddhism
1. Islam
2. Hinduism
2. Judaism
3. Ancient Religions 3. Christianity
| ||
| 2. How does anyone know the Bible is true and reliable? | ||
| Before
we can say the Bible is inspired from God and that it is the
revelation
from God, we must first show that the Bible contains authentic
documents. An authentic document
would be a written letter or book that is: A) Written by the person
who claims to be writing it B) Written at the time it
appears to have been
written C) Sent to or given to the
people who where to receive it The opposite would be a
writer from a later date writing a false document to be passed of as
supposedly being from someone else at an earlier time. The authenticity of the
Bible would be destroyed if someone where to go into the Bible and
add things under the pretense of making the additions seem to have
been there from the first writing. The
New Testament: 1) The is abundant and
accurate copies of the letters and books of the New Testament. Copies made by hand are
called manuscripts (MSS) 117-138 AD John Rylands Fragment John
18:31-33,37-38 200 AD Bodmer Papyri Jn., Lk., Jude, 1,2
Peter 325-350 AD Codex Vaticanus NT and most of
OT 340 AD Codex Sinaiticus NT and 1/2 of
OT 350 AD Codex Ephraemi
Rescriptus NT and part
of OT 2) There are 5,686 Greek manuscripts from 100-1400 AD. There is a total of
24,633 manuscripts of portions
of the New Testament.
Compared to: 20 manuscripts of Livy’s
Roman History 20 manuscripts of Tacitus’
Annals 3) The most of any writing
from the ancient world other than the Bible is 643 of Homer’s
Iliad. The New
Testament has 24,633. 4) Elapse time of ancient
texts with their manuscripts:
Author/Time Earliest MSS Elapse Time Julius Caesar, 50 BC 900 AD 950 years Tacitus, 100 AD 1100 AD 1000 years Aristotle, 350 BC 1100 AD 1450 years Gospel of John, 85 AD 117 AD 27 years 5) Effects
must have an adequate cause. Something happened in 30
AD that effected history.
After 30 AD history records that the synagogues were infected
with Christian teaching; by 40 AD it had spread to synagogues in
Rome; by 65 AD Nero was killing Christians; by 95 AD Christianity
was illegal; by 150 AD Christianity was in Africa, India, and Spain;
by 325 AD it was a legal religion in the Roman empire; by 350 AD it
had taken over as the religion of the Roman empire. All this happened before the
church ever formed an army or a denomination. 6) The
believers of the first century took the writings of Paul very
serious. In fact,
people died for the scriptures and for what they said. The chance of someone in the
church who was forging documents or changing the scripture was
highly unlikely. Peter
calls Paul’s writings scripture in 2 Peter 3:16. Paul knows he is writing the
rest of God’s revelation in
Colossians 1:25.
Luke knew legends and false stories where spreading that
where not true so he “carefully investigated everything from the
beginning. . .to write an orderly account” around 60 AD. John writes at the end of
the New Testament in 96 AD “if anyone adds to them. . .if anyone
takes words away. . .” and adds a curse to them. No one in the first century
would have tampered with them or tolerated someone doing
so. 7) By
85 AD we have letters with the New Testament being quoted by men
like Clement who quotes from Matthew, Mark, Luke, Acts, 1
Corinthinas, 1 Peter, Hebrew and Titus in a letter to the Corinthian
church. This continues
for the next two centuries until there are preserved 32,000 New
Testament quotes written before 325 AD. In fact, if we did not have
any Bible manuscripts we could reconstruct the entire New Testament
just from the quotes of church writers between 85–325
AD. 8) There
were too many people watching and coping the New Testament letters
for a false document or an alteration to occur with out someone
taking note of it.
Indeed there where false books written during the first and
second century: Gospel
of Thomas, Acts of Peter, and more at http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/noncanon.stm The
Old Testament: 1) The
biggest attack on the Old Testament is that the first five books
were not even written until 700 BC instead of by Moses around 1400
BC. The reason for this
is from the school of liberalism that states: a) Writing was unknown in Moses
day b) Cultural evolution does not
line up with the Old Testament c) Miracles come from mythology
because they are impossible d) Prophecy is always a forgery
because it can not happen
Each of these is wrong. First writing has since been proven to have
been around long before Abraham. B-D are based on philosophical presuppositions
and not on archeology,
anthropology, history, or any other
facts. 2) If
the first five books where not written until 700 BC but where forged
documents at this time then all these things would have had to have
been passed of onto an entire generation who had never heard of
Moses, the Law, the priesthood, the temple
ect: a. A priesthood b. A system of
worship c. A temple d. Power of the
priesthood e. A national history f. A legendary leader named
Moses g. All the Bible stories h. Tithes, offerings to support
priests i. Holy Scriptures j. Circumcision of all
the men k. An annual Passover
instituted to remember something they had never heard
of. 3) Archeology: a. Hittites from Genesis 15:20
discovered in 1906 b. Walls of Jericho from Joshua
6 discovered in 1950 with
burnt grain and walls that fell from the inside
out c. Belshazzar from Daniel 5:16
found on an inscription f. More at http://www.christiananswers.net/archaeology/
or go to generationword.com
and select
Bible school then scroll
down to the web sites under
“apologetics. e. The Flood is recorded not
only in scriptures but in legend form in over 200 different
ancient cultures. See more at:http://www.seekgod.org/links/noahsark.html Below
is a copy from Institute of Christian Research of the variety of
ancient cultures and their stories of the Flood
©
Copyright 2004 Institute for Creation Research. All Rights
Reserved. One
of the strongest evidences for the global flood which annihilated
all people on Earth except for Noah and his family, has been the
ubiquitous presence of flood legends in the folklore of people
groups from around the world. And the stories are all so similar.
Local geography and cultural
aspects may be present but they all seem to be telling the
same
story. Over
the years I have collected more than 200 of these stories,
originally
reported by various missionaries, anthropologists,
and
ethnologists. While
the differences are not always trivial, the common essence of the
stories is instructive as compiled below: Is
there a favored family?
88% Were
they forewarned?
66% Is
flood due to wickedness of man? 66% Is
catastrophe only a flood?
95% Was
flood global?
95% Is
survival due to a boat?
70% Were
animals also saved?
67% Did
animals play any part?
73% Did
survivors land on a mountain?
57% Was
the geography local?
82% Were
birds sent out?
35% Was
the rainbow mentioned?
7% Did
survivors offer a sacrifice?
13% Were
specifically eight persons saved? 9% Putting
them all back together, the story would read something like
this: Once
there was a worldwide flood, sent by God to judge the wickedness of
man. But there was one righteous family which was forewarned of the
coming flood. They built a boat on which they survived the flood
along with the animals. As the flood ended, their boat landed on a
high mountain from which they descended and repopulated the whole
earth. Of
course the story sounds much like the Biblical story of the great
flood of Noah's day. The most similar accounts are typically from
middle eastern cultures, but surprisingly similar legends are found
in South America and the Pacific Islands and elsewhere. None of
these stories contains the beauty, clarity, and believable detail
given in the Bible, but each is meaningful to their own
culture. Anthropologists
will tell you that a myth is often the faded memory of a real event.
Details may have been added, lost, or obscured in the telling and
retelling, but the kernel of truth remains. When two separate
cultures have the same "myth" in their body of folklore, their
ancestors must have either experienced the same event, or they both
descended from a common ancestral source which itself experienced
the event.
The
only credible way to understand the widespread, similar flood
legends is to recognize that all people living today, even though
separated geographically, linguistically, and culturally, have
descended from the few real people who survived a real global flood,
on a real boat which eventually landed on a real mountain. Their
descendants now fill the globe, never to forget the real
event. But, of course, this is not the view of most modern scholars. They prefer to believe that something in our commonly evolved psyche forces each culture to invent the same imaginary flood legend with no basis in real history. In |