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I want to
thank everyone for their questions in the worship service. I promised that
I would try to answer the ones I did not have time to answer in the
service. Below are the questions I received with my answers.
How would you
explain a nonbeliever’s experience close to death and seeing a bright light
of a Buddhist goddess?
We
may have had a faulty communication on the text messaging because as I
understand Buddhism, Buddhists do not believe in a god or goddess. However,
there have been a number of near death experiences where people who were not
believers in Christ reported seeing a bright light, often at the end of a
tunnel while they were dying, but then were brought back to life. What are
we to make of those experiences and do they in any way prove that
nonbelievers can go to Heaven?
Actually we
have no way of knowing what those experiences mean. They could merely be
the result of a dump of brain chemicals that occur as one is dying and thus
the light is “seen” by the brain but it does not actually exist. Or it
could be that the person actually saw a bright light, but we have no basis
for interpreting that light. God is often pictured in terms of light, but
the Scripture also says that Satan appears as an angel of light (2
Corinthians 11:14). It certainly would be in keeping with Satan’s plan of
deceiving the world to appear to nearly departed souls as a bright light to
mislead them about their fate, so that they can return and provide a false
hope to others. However, I really do not know what the source of the light
is. It is far better in these matters to trust in what God’s word teaches
about life after death rather than to try to determine the truth from near
death experiences.
How
do you know God is real when the Bible could be like a rumor with lies that
no one could know about?
There have
been whole books written to answer this kind of question so I will be
necessarily simple in my answer to what is a complex question. First,
although the Bible is a most significant witness to the reality of God, it
is not the only witness. Paul in Romans 1 says that creation itself
testifies to the reality of God. I would say that the eternal, all powerful
God is the only reasonable explanation of how the universe came into
existence or of how life originated. Without God a person is pretty much
left with trying to explain that the universe (something) was caused by
nothing. This explanation to me seems far less reasonable than saying that
an eternal all powerful God created the universe. Second, the incredible
complexity of human life, even the simplest cell, argues against any
naturalistic explanation that says that life came into existence by natural
processes alone. Since DNA contains roughly the information content of four
complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica, to believe in a naturalistic
explanation for life is tantamount to believing that by random processes
alone the Encyclopedia Britannica could have come into existence. Most of
us who would come upon a set of Encyclopedia Britannica in the forest would
conclude that it was written by one or more intelligent beings. I doubt any
of us would seriously entertain the idea that evolved by chance alone in the
forest over millions of year.
A second
witness that is more subjective is the personal testimony and changed lives
of those who have claimed to come into a relationship with the God of the
Bible. Now, granted other religious people claim that they have a
relationship with their “god” and may be able to point to some changes in
their life and some Christians may not have changed as much as they should
have; nevertheless, there are stunning examples of people whose lives have
been completely turned around by the power of Jesus Christ. The truth is
that God has become “real” to many of us in our personal experience and
although that is not an “objective” proof, it is nevertheless something to
consider. It is always worth asking the nonbeliever to simply test out
God’s word, to begin living out God’s word and see what happens.
The Bible is a
great witness to the reality of God. So how do we know that it is not full
of lies? The best way to answer this question is to simplify the scope and
focus just on the Gospels at the beginning and to ask of the Gospels the
same questions we would ask of any literature that claims to be history.
First, we ask if it is reasonable to believe that the writer witnessed what
is reported or had access to those who witnessed the events reported. How
many witnesses are there? Second, we ask, “What is the character of the
witness or witnesses?” Do they have a reputation for truthfulness or for
lying? Would they have motives to lie? Third, we ask whether other sources
can confirm their account. With history one often cannot deal with absolute
certainties because we cannot go back and observe the events ourselves, but
we can arrive at a reasonable certainty that something did happen as
described.
The Gospels
can be assessed according to the above questions. The Gospel authors
claimed to be eyewitnesses or to have interviewed the eyewitnesses. We have
multiple eyewitnesses of the life and death of Jesus. Their character
appears to be one of integrity based both on what they reported, but more
importantly on the fact that they were willing to suffer and die for the
testimony they presented. Some of the key events and facts they reported
have been independently confirmed by secular Greek and Roman writers as well
as by archaeological findings. In those areas where we can independently
confirm the reliability of their testimony, the gospel writers have proven
to be historically reliable. It is then reasonable to believe that the
things or words that they recorded which we can not independently verify are
also true. Their testimony concerning the events surrounding Jesus’ death
and resurrection provide a clear and understandable explanation of how the
Christian religion grew out of the heart of Judaism in the very presence of
those who had labored so hard to kill Jesus.
If Jesus was
indeed raised from the dead then it is relatively simple to go from that
truth to believing that Jesus is God and that God exists. From there one
needs only to study Jesus’ teachings about the Scripture to conclude that
they are the Word of God. There is always an amount of faith involved
because we are believing in something supernatural and miraculous; however,
our faith is reasonable once you accept the possibility of God’s existence.
If a person assumes before hand that God cannot possibly exist then pretty
much anything we say will not convince them. But if a person is open to the
possibility of God’s existence, then the Bible makes a compelling case for
God’s existence.
The other
evidence that the Bible presents of God’s existence apart from the
resurrection of Jesus is the presence of fulfilled prophecy. There are
about 200 specific fulfilled prophecies of Jesus’ first coming recorded in
the Old and New Testament. Fulfillment of prophecies that were made 400
years and more before the fact is strong evidence that the Bible is a
supernatural book.
What is Hope
Fellowship’s Stand on Eternal Security?
As regarding
doctrinal issues, the only official Hope Fellowship position is what is
found in our statement of faith. Our statement of faith does not address
the doctrine of eternal security so officially Hope Fellowship has no
position on this doctrine. That is how statements of faith operate. They
state the minimum you are required to believe in order to be a member of the
church. Personally, I do believe in the doctrine of eternal security and
indeed quite passionately, but a person can be a member of Hope Fellowship
without believing in that doctrine.
If there is a
change in everything that has no explanation why would God be the only
explanation?
I am assuming
that this question relates to the issue of the origin of the universe. If
the universe has come into existence and there is no explanation at this
point for how the matter of the universe got here, why would God be the only
explanation? That is a good question because you could always ask why
invisible aliens might not be the creators of the universe or maybe a
parallel universe somehow caused our universe, etc.
I don’t think
we can say that God can be the only explanation of our universe. There is
always the smallest probability that there is some other unforeseen cause of
our universe. The real issue is: given everything we know, “What is the
most reasonable explanation for our universe?” What we consistently observe
in nature is that nothing does not cause something and when you have a cause
and effect relationship the effect cannot be greater than the cause. The
latter observation has actually been stated scientifically as one of the
laws of thermodynamics: The sum of the mass plus the energy in the universe
is constant or the sum total of energy plus mass is neither created nor
destroyed. That means that we cannot explain by natural means how the
universe came into existence because everything in our experience suggests
that it is impossible for something to come into existence out of nothing.
However, when
we consider God as an explanation for the origin of the universe some of the
barriers to an explanation imposed by naturalism (the belief that everything
can be explained by natural processes alone) suddenly disappear. Since God
is eternal we do not have to solve the problem of a first cause. We assert
that God is outside of time and has always been. He had no beginning. When
we assert that God is all powerful we solve the problem of cause and effect
because we are saying that the effect (the universe) is actually less than
the cause (God). So we do not run into the problem of denying the law of
cause and effect when God is the creator of the universe. When we hold to
naturalism alone and try to explain the existence of the universe we
invariably have to deny one or more of the key tenets of naturalism in order
to explain the universe’s existence. Relying upon naturalism alone to
explain the universe involves us in an irresolvable contradiction. However,
when we accept the possibility of God’s existence then we do not have to
deny the validity of the law of cause and effect.
Other
“natural” explanations tend to send us into an infinite regression. If we
say that aliens created the universe, then who created the aliens? If you
say they evolved from another universe, then how did that universe come into
existence? The only way to get away from the nothing causing something
impasse is to start with something eternal. If you say the aliens are
eternal and they created our universe, really how much different is that
from a belief in God? You have an eternal personal being or beings who are
all powerful and who created something out of nothing. At that point you
might as well just believe in God.
Not
surprisingly, atheists like Richard Dawkins fall into the trap of the
infinite regression. When pressed by Ben Stein in his documentary to
explain where life on the Earth came from he fell back on the explanation
that life was seeded on the Earth by extraterrestrials or by some other
mechanism. That just pushes the problem one step back. From where did
those extraterrestrials or that life come? You have not solved the problem
with that explanation. You have simply swept the problem under the
proverbial carpet.
Once you
accept the possibility of God’s existence, then the Bible’s explanation of
the origin of the universe is entirely reasonable.
