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There are many views about truth Every human being has some concept of truth. Those who are religious and those who are non-religious, have all their peculiar views about truth. 1. All non-religious people believe their pure logic and critical thinking to be their source of truth. (While many of them propose there isnt anything like truth, yet they believe their own reasoning, making it their truth) 2. All religious people believe some ancient scripture, or sacred text to be their source of truth. In this lecture, we'll be examining these two groups in our endeavour to establish the premise for this series of lectures where we will study the Apocalypse in Depth. For our premise we must establish that truth does exist! Let start with the non-religious group:
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"There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy. All information is imperfect. We have to treat it with humility." Jacob Bronowski Agnostics, as you can see starts from the premise that there is no way you can know if God exists or not. That makes sense in a way. But as we'll discover, we can know that God DO exist! So this paradigm can't be correct. 3. ATHEISTS - What is an Atheist? Atheism: (According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary) 1. A disbelief in the existence of deity / 2. The doctrine that there is no deity To these 'thinking' people, and many of them sincere, they are atheists because they BELIEVE they KNOW that there is no GOD. We Brights dont believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny or God
Daniel Dennett
Amazing. This bright is bright because of his DISBELIEF in BELIEF of GOD. Atheist make fun of believing, but yet they belief in their so called knowledge of supernatural non-existence. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. Sam Harris Some atheists are very boastful like this popular guy, Sam, boasting that atheism is so sensible, that not much reasoning is necessary to convince those who believe. Another reasonable person, king of Atheism today is Richard Dawkins. And in his book, The God Delusion, he boils it down to: The whole argument turns on the familiar question Who made God?, which most thinking people discover for themselves." Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins IS a smart guy! This is the question (we'll see in lecture 2 and others there is yet one main question) we all must deal with, and get answered because it can be answered! But in this question Dawkins admit the there must be a beginnng. He beliefs it is the Big Bang, so my question is also simple: 'Who made the Big Bang?' This real question: 'Does God exist?', goes much deeper as we'll sum conclude in lecture 2. I must agree with CS Lewis! Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning.
CS Lewis
Can God be PROVED? Scientifically People believing in SCIENCE is telling us, religion and faith is unscientific and not provable. Such people tell us that for something to be provable it must be able to be tested empirically (information acquired by means of observation or experimentation), and in a controlled environment. If God is God, this is impossible to do with Him. Everyone knows (even if they don't believe in God) the very word 'God' means omniscience, almighty, omnipresence and all-knowing. It is IMPOSSIBLE to subject such a being to any physical test! If God can be proved (traditional science), He IS NOT GOD! God cannot be proved, (measured scientifically) HE IS GOD!
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Sir Osler summed it up well, Nothing in life is more wonderful than FAITH the one great moving force we can neither weigh in the balance nor test in the crucible.
To continue with proving God: For God to BE GOD, there must be EVIDENCE (SOLID PROOF) that HE IS GOD! God can be ProoFed "God never asks us to believe, without giving sufficient evidence upon which to base our faith. His existence, His character, the truthfulness of His word, are all established by testimony that appeals to our reason; and this testimony is abundant. Yet God has never removed the possibility of doubt. Our faith must rest upon evidence, not demonstration. Those who wish to doubt will have opportunity; while those who really desire to know the truth will find plenty of evidence on which to rest their faith. It is impossible for finite minds fully to comprehend the character or the works of the Infinite One. To the keenest intellect, the most highly educated mind, that holy Being must ever remain clothed in mystery. Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? Job 11:7, 8. . . . Call to Stand Apart, Christian Home Library, pg 46 There is ample Proof (evidence), that God exists!
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of the swallow and feeds the young ravens which cry, that brings the bud to blossom and the flower to fruit. The same power that upholds nature, is working also in man. The same great laws that guide alike the star and the atom control human life. The laws that govern the heart's action, regulating the flow of the current of life to the body, are the laws of the mighty Intelligence that has the jurisdiction of the soul. From Him all life proceeds. Only in harmony with Him can be found its true sphere of action. For all the objects of His creation the condition is the same - a life sustained by receiving the life of God, a life exercised in harmony with the Creator's will. To transgress His law, physical, mental, or moral, is to place one's self out of harmony with the universe, to introduce discord, anarchy, ruin."
Laws of physics says: The velocity of a body remains constant unless the body is acted upon by an external force. To make it simple: An object that is at rest will stay at rest unless an unbalanced force acts upon it. Or in other words, NOTHING WILL MOVE WITHOUT SOMEONE OR SOMETHING MOVING IT. This law that was established by Isaac Newton, is accepted by ALL scientists. (Even though he was a firm believer in God). So who or what started the billions of matter in space to hurtle at such great speeds? And all the planets in their orbits? There must be a something there first to move them. THE first MOVER!
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should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us. Stephen Hawking
Richard Feynman
How is it that everything seems to have purpose and direction? Trees and plants grow upward. Swallows migrate to exact locations "I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama The existence of MIND in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly MEANT to be here. Prof Paul Davies (not a believer in a Creator-God)
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us even as we stretch our minds to the task of explaining the origin of thoughts, memories, feelings. After all, the brain is made up of mere matter molecules following the laws of physics and chemistry. So... How can a mental molecule inside our heads produce new ideas? How can it comprehend, understand, or know anything? Or develop and grow intellectually through learning? How can an atom awake to an alert awareness of itself? How can it happily recall nostalgic memories? Or dream either awake or sleeping? ..... Atheists tell themselves that everything in the universe, including mans mind, just happened coming about by natural means with no thanks due to God. But how ridiculous it is to contend that mans marvellous mental processes can be accounted for on a purely physical level as if life is pure chemistry, our brain just a piece of meat, and our conscious awareness merely the random firing of networking neurons! No one has ever been able to blueprint the architecture of intelligence. We cant explain even the nature of thought on a physical level. Consciousness, the key function of human brains, cannot be duplicated by computers, which is one reason computers cannot truly think, despite playing a game of chess. The world inside our skulls equally as vast as that outside remains a marvellous mystery. For the believer, the infinite inventiveness of the human mind is a great gift of God. Howard Peth, 7
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grim messenger of death. We might call to mind many instances where learned men have gloried in their unbelief, and have thought it a virtue to parade their infidelity upon every occasion. But when death claimed them, they have looked with horror into the starless future, and their dying words have been, "I have tried to believe that there is no God, no reward for the faithful, no punishment for the wicked. But how vain has been the attempt. Now I know that I shall meet the doom of the lost soul." Sir Thomas Scott in his last moments cried, "Until this moment I believed that there was neither a God nor a hell. Now I know and feel that there are both, and that I am doomed to perdition by the just judgment of God. Thus many testimonies have been borne. Men may think that they have succeeded in tearing the image of God from their minds and hearts; but when they are brought face to face with the king of terrors, the image of God remains, and the confession is wrung from unwilling lips that the boasted faith of a lifetime has been a delusion." The Youth Instructer
"I had a notion that somehow, besides questing, I was being pursued."
This is almost a haunting statement, but yet true. We know God is in search of us, but many of us are running. Listen how Lewis described this running which he at last gave up: "...night after night, feeling whenever my mind lifted even for a second
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from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England." CS Lewis All these non-religious people are NOT irreligious! I want to make this very clear. If one choose to believe in God's non-existence - one STILL BELIEVE! Fosdick said: "A mans real religion is what he puts his faith in and gives his devotion to. The consequence of that, however, at once confronts us. Faith is a capacity in human nature that we cannot get rid of; we exercise it all the time on something or other. One man in our New York Community we would call naturally irreligious. He certainly doesnt believe in God. I am, he writes contemptuously, for all religions equally, as all impress me as being equally hollow But just at the point where we begin to think, Here is really an irreligious man, he says this: To me, pleasure and my own personal happiness are all I deem worth a hoot. So that is what he has faith in! He does have an inner shrine where he worships himself. He does have an altar not to an unknown god but to his own ego, put first in this whole universe as all he deems worth a hoot. This is his religion." Dr Harry
Emerson Fosdick
Since we've established that there's no truth in this non-religious group, it must be somewhere in the religious group, since we already established that truth exists by the mere FACT that God EXISTS!
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The God of the Bible is not scared to challenge any other religion's God. His acid test that is logically the only test to see where God's Truth is, is the Text wherein He shows He is God by foretelling the future accurately - a 100%! This is called PROPHECY. The text with absolutely accurate prophecy, shows itself to be True. Buddhism's Sacred Texts 1) Buddhist Suttas; 2) Vinaya Texts 3) Dialogues of the Buddha 4) The Buddha's Way of Virtue 5) The Jataka, Vol. I-VI 6) Yin Chih Wen - The Tract of the Quiet Way I've searched Buddhism. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Buddhism. Confucianism's Sacred Texts 1) The Confucian Canon 2) Mencius 3) Confucian Analects (Lun Y) 4) The Great Learning (Ta Hseh) 5) The Doctrine Of The Mean (Chung Yung) I've searched Confucianism. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Confucianism. Islam's Sacred Texts 1) Qur'an 2) Hadith 3) Sufi Texts In the Qur'an Mohammed is asked why prophecy (sign) is not in the Qur'an, listen to his answer: "Why has no sign been given to him (Mohammed) by his Lord?" "Signs are in the hands of Allah; my mission is only to give plain warning. Is it not enough for them that we have revealed to you this book for their instruction?" Qur'an, Sura 29 50/49 I've searched Islam. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Islam. Jainism's Sacred Texts 1) Jaina Sutras, Part I&II I've searched Jainism. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Jainism. Shinto's Sacred Texts 1) The Kojiki I've searched Shinto. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Shinto. Taoism's Sacred Texts : 1) Tao-te Ching - of the most widely read sacred texts 2) Taoist Texts, Part I&2 Page 9
3) Lao-tze's Tao Teh King - The Canon of Reason and Virtue 4) The Book of Lieh-Tz 5) T'ai Shang Kan-Ying P'ien 6) Yin Chih Wen - The Tract of the Quiet Way 7)Tao, The Great Luminant - Essays from the Huai Nan Tzu I've searched Taoism. There's NO REAL PROPHECY within Taoism. Yes there are here and there very vague foretelling. But it is just like Nostradamus, it's so vague, everyone interprets it different. Friend, the only religion left that will be shown to have the only Standard of Truth, is Christianity with its Sacred Text the Bible. Before we go to the question about PROPHECY in the Bible, let's just weigh some other evidence: Evidence that the Bible is True: Timelessness There's no few sentences like the next, just showing even if ancient it is still applicable to today: "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me..." Bible: Psalms 23 High Ethical standards The highest ethical standards in the world is found in the Bible, "Honour your father and your mother: that your days may be long on the land which the LORD your God gives you. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour..." Bible: Exodus 20 Honesty in describing behaviour even of its Heroes "It is one of the best evidences of the authenticity of the Scriptures that the truth is not glossed over nor the sins of its chief characters suppressed. . . . How many biographies have been written of faultless Christians, who, in their ordinary home life and church relations, shone as examples of immaculate piety. . . . Yet had the pen of inspiration written their histories, how different would they have appeared. There would have been revealed human weaknesses, struggles with selfishness, bigotry, and pride, hidden sins, perhaps, and the continual warfare between the spirit and the flesh...
Its indestructibility "If we would destroy the Christian religion, we must first of all destroy man's belief in the Bible." Voltaire The French philosopher Voltaire, a sceptic who destroyed the faith of many people, boasted that within 100 years of his death, the Bible would disappear from the face of the earth. Voltaire died in 1728, but the Bible lives on. The irony of history is that 50 years after his
death, the Geneva Bible Society moved into his former house and used his printing presses to print thousands of Bibles. Is not my word like as a fire? said the LORD; and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces? Jeremiah 23:29 Power to change lives Josh McDowell was a man who was sure Christianity was worthless and who focussed his energies on discrediting the resurrection of Jesus. In the process of trying to destroy the faith of Christians, he came to see the New Testament was an accurate history book. Even my own life is totally transformed because of this book, the Bible - an no-one can argue with my personal experience. Unity of the Bible If just 10 people today were picked who were from the same place, born around the same time, spoke the same language, and made about the same amount of money, and were asked to write on just one controversial subject, they would have trouble agreeing with each other. But the Bible stands alone. It was written over a period of 1,600 years by more than 40 writers from all walks of life. Some were fishermen; some were politicians. Others were generals or kings, shepherds or historians. They were from three different continents, and wrote in three different languages. They wrote on hundreds of controversial subjects yet they wrote with agreement and harmony. They wrote in dungeons, in temples, on beaches, and on hillsides, during peacetime and during war. Yet their words sound like they came from the same source. So even though 10 people today couldnt write on one controversial subject and agree, God picked 40 different people to write the Bible - and it stands the test of time. Confirmation by history History confirms the Bible over and over again, here just one example that show who put Christ to death, "The persons commonly called Christians ... Christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea for the reign of Tiberius..." Cornelius Tacitus, Roman historian, 112 A.D. Archaeological evidence Watch the lecture... discoveries today show the Bible TRUE. AND GODs Challenge? Only the Bible has REAL PROPHECY!!! Predicting the Future exactly!!! IN this series we will look at this in depth! As we will delve in to the Apocalypse, The Book of Revelation!!!