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Christianity IS Reasonable … So Don’t Be Afraid of the Questions

By Jeremy Myers
1 Comment

Christianity IS Reasonable … So Don’t Be Afraid of the Questions

questionsI am currently writing a book about faith, and in it, I briefly address the idea of blind faith, or taking a leap of faith. I show that faith doesn’t actually allow for blind leaps, but instead, our beliefs change as we are persuaded and convinced by the evidence presented to us.

And thankfully, there is strong evidence for the truth claims of Christianity.

Thankfully, Christianity is a reasonable faith.

Yes, many aspects of Christendom are not so reasonable, and can be safely discarded, but the core beliefs of Christianity as founded by Jesus and centered upon Him can stand up to any and all challenges.

This is why I always invite people to investigate any and all questions or challenges that come their way. I say that if what we believe is true, then the questions and challenges will only solidify that truth. But if what we believe is not true, then the questions and challenges will expose our beliefs as lies. Either way, questions and challenges are a “win.”

But you might need to do some reading and study to help answer the various questions.

I know I do.

Evidence that Demands a VerdictThat is why I highly recommend you get a book like Evidence that Demands a Verdict. There is a new updated and expanded version available which provides all the information from the classic volumes into one, along with several updates and new chapters that help respond to more recent challenges.

I first read Evidence that Demands a Verdict in the 1980s, and have benefited from the content of that book ever since. It not only provides a good basis for helping us know how we can trust that the Bible we have today is the Bible that was written by the original authors, but also shows how we can trust the historical claims of the Bible.

Using this knowledge, we can show that Jesus really did live, teach, die, and rise from the dead, as Scripture reveals. These events, of course, are central to Christianity.

So if you have questions about Christianity, I first say, “Good job! Keep asking!” and then I say secondly, “Buy and Read Evidence that Demands a Verdict. It will help answer some of the questions you might have.”

God is Redeeming Books Bible & Theology Topics: apologetics, Bible and Theology Questions, Books I'm Reading

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How much does a person need to know to receive eternal life?

By Jeremy Myers
4 Comments

How much does a person need to know to receive eternal life?

How much does a person need to know to receive eternal life? The answer is that it depends on the person! Yes, there is a minimum, but no one will ever believe in Jesus for eternal life if all they know is the minimum. So how much should you share? How much must a person believe? When you present the gospel, what do you need to say?

One of the greatest problems in presenting the gospel today is that people confuse “Preparation” gospel truths with “Purification” gospel truths. Then they confuse all these various truths with the one, simple “Presentation” truth of the gospel. With all this confusion, the gospel gets pretty muddied.

Let me provide you with some suggestions for clarifying your gospel presentation… I go into great detail on all of this in my course on the Gospel, but let me briefly explain for you here.

gospel truths for sanctification

The 1 Gospel Presentation Truth

The one, central gospel truth this:

Jesus gives eternal life to anyone who believes in Him for it.

That’s it.

I wrote more about this truth in this post: The Gospel Invitation

The problem with this one presentation truth, however, is that if this is all a person hears about the Gospel, they are unlikely to believe in Jesus. If they know nothing about God, Jesus, their own separation from God, or anything else, why would they believe in Jesus for eternal life?

This is where the gospel preparation truths come in.

7 Gospel Preparation Truths

There are likely hundreds (maybe thousands) of truths in the gospel which help prepare a person to believe in Jesus for eternal life. A person needs not know all of these in order to believe in Jesus for eternal life, but most people will need to know at least a few of them before they are ready to believe in Jesus.

I covered 7 of the more popular and persuasive gospel preparation truths in a previous post: 7 Gospel Preparation Truths.

But what happens after a person believes? Well, most Christians don’t realize this, but the gospel has more to say to a person after they believe than before. This is where the Gospel Purification Truths come into play.

7 Gospel Purification Truths

Again, much like the preparation truths, there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of truths in the gospel which help Christians grow into maturity and become more like Jesus Christ.

And yes, all these truths are part of the biblical gospel.

The gospel has more to say to believers than it does to non-believers.

christian purificationSo here are 7 of the more helpful categories of gospel truths that a new believer might need to know in order to be sanctified and grow into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ:

  1. Unconditional Love and Grace of God
  2. The Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ
  3. Repentance from Dead Works and Religion
  4. The Indwelling Work of the Holy Spirit
  5. The Future Resurrection and Judgments
  6. The Bible and Other Believers
  7. Christian Apologetics

I know that a simple list like that might not be super helpful, but again, this is partly why I created my online course on the gospel. By taking this course, you can learn more about the entire line of thought I have presented in this post, as well as more details about the 7 Categories of Purification Truths presented in the list above.

These 7 types of gospels truths will give Christians a firm foundation on which to purify their lives and become more like Jesus every day. This process is not automatic and is not guaranteed, but growing in the knowledge of these gospel truths will help a person build their lives on Jesus Christ.

But notice what happens…

When we Confuse the Gospel Truths

gospel confusionIf you confuse purification gospel truths with the presentation truth, then you might think it is necessary for a person to repent of their sin or believe in the future judgments in order to receive eternal life. (But the Bible never teaches this.)

The same goes for a commitment to other believers, or various works of the Holy Spirit, or even having all their questions answered about the Trinity, the authority of Scripture, or the origin of the universe. But again, all these sorts of things can be discussed and studied after a person believers. They are still gospel truths, but they are purification truths, not presentation truths.

When you keep your preparation gospel truths and purification gospel truths separate from the one presentation truth, you will then be able to share the gospel clearly with others.

The Gospel According to ScriptureWant to learn more about the gospel? Take my new course, "The Gospel According to Scripture."

The entire course is free for those who join my online Discipleship group here on RedeemingGod.com. I can't wait to see you inside the course!

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: apologetics, believe in Jesus, gospel according to Scripture, Holy Spirit, judgment, love of God, purify, repentance, sanctification

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Is Genesis History?

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

Is Genesis History?

I was given access to preview the documentary, Is Genesis History? It is a movie which provides positive, evidence-based arguments for the reliability of the Bible as history. It is showing on February 23 in select theaters, and you can learn more here.

Is Genesis History

No matter what you believe about the Bible or about account of Creation and the Flood, this is a great movie for you to watch. If you believe that much of the Bible is fiction, this documentary will challenge you to consider some facts you might not have encountered before. If you believe the Bible is historically accurate, then this movie will provide you with further evidence to support your view.

Is the Bible True? Of course!

As for myself, I believe the Bible is 100% accurate and true, but (if you have read my blog or listened to my podcast for a while), I have a somewhat different approach to this belief than is commonly taught. For example, in my One Verse Podcast episodes on Genesis 1, I go to great length to show how this creation account was not written to provide a scientifically accurate account of how the world began, and so it is a mistake to read it that way. But this doesn’t mean Genesis 1 is in error. Far from it! Instead, when we understand the point that the author is making, Genesis 1 becomes “more true” than ever before! The critical truths that Genesis 1 is actually teaching are way more important than just to provide an historical account of how the world began.

Is Genesis History?

Anyway … this is not really the point of the documentary, “Is Genesis History?” The point of this documentary is more focused on events in the Bible like the flood account of Genesis 6-8. And on this event, I agree that what we have in the Bible is historically accurate.

Now, personally, I don’t care too much if someone reads Genesis as literal history or as literal theology. It is true either way.

What does bother me, however, is when someone rejects the historic reliability of Genesis based on “scientific evidence.” As much as I love and value science, I sometimes find that scientific evidence is based on cherry-picking scientific facts to prove a pre-determined scientific conclusion.

What about the Flood?

The flood is the perfect example. Many reject the historicity of a worldwide flood based on questionable scientific presuppositions. For example, the idea that there is not enough water on earth to cover all the mountains of the earth ignores the possibility that maybe not all the mountains of the earth were always as high as they are now, nor the oceans as deep. Scientists have pointed out that if all the mountains were thrown into the sea so that all “land” was of equal altitude, the water of the earth would cover all land by a distance of 1.7 miles. Therefore, we don’t need water high enough to cover Mount Everest, we just need some geological plate shifting so that mountains rise up and ocean floors drop.

Similar arguments can be made about where all the water came from (and where it sent), how Noah and the animals fit in the ark, and other related questions. Places like the Grand Canyon also receive a much simpler explanation than the theory (which is rapidly losing favor) that the Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years by a small trickle of water. Is that what happened? Maybe. Maybe not. But the fact that the Mount Saint Helens canyon, which is hundreds of feet deep, formed over the period of a few weeks in 1980 makes thinking people wonder about the formation of the Grand Canyon. Yes, the Grand Canyon is much deeper and larger, but the water and sediment from a worldwide flood is also much deeper with higher volume.

Look, I am not a scientist, and I don’t claim to be one. I am a theologian. In theological studies, however, I frequently encounter people who read a text of Scripture that seems difficult to them and their preconceived ideas of what should be in the Bible, and when they read these troublesome texts, they jump straight to the conclusion that best fits their current theological system. They say, “It’s an error! This is an error in the text. The Bible is wrong.”

Is Genesis HistoryI have found, however, the most valuable of jewels lie under the hardest of rocks. With some hard work and creative thinking, I have found reasonable explanations for nearly every troublesome text in the Bible. And some of these explanations have led me into new insights and deeper understandings of God, Scripture, Jesus, sin, salvation, and humanity, that I never would have found if I had simply gone with the flow and said, “Oh! An error!”

In Scripture and theological pursuit, those who resort too quickly to “Error in the text” often miss the deepest truths of Scripture.

So also with science. I am not “anti-scientific.” Nor am I a fundamentalist Christian. I want all people to consider all the evidence with an open mind.

Many people have been taught the theory of evolution as the method by which we got the world as we now see it. If that’s you, consider some other lines of evidence as well. Watch “Is Genesis History?” and see what you can learn.

In this documentary, Dr. Del Tackett talks to experts in geology, biology, astronomy, archaeology, the Bible and more—seeking answers to centuries-long questions surrounding the book of Genesis:

  • Was the universe created in six literal days?
  • Did humans evolve?
  • Were Adam and Eve real?
  • Was there a global flood?
  • What happened to the dinosaurs?

“Is Genesis History?” presents a positive, evidenced-based case for the Bible’s historical reliability.

Below is the trailer for you to get an idea of what is in this great documentary. After you watch the trailer, you can learn more about the movie and get tickets here: Is Genesis History: The Movie.

God is Redeeming Scripture Bible & Theology Topics: apologetics, flood, Genesis

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If you believe in God, life makes more sense

By Jeremy Myers
9 Comments

If you believe in God, life makes more sense

Sometimes I get asked why I believe in God.

In the past, I used to say that I found it harder to not believe in the existence of God than to believe in His existence.

To put this another way, I found it easier to believe that everything came from God than to believe that everything came from nothing.

believing in GodAnd yet … let’s be honest … saying that “everything came from God” only pushes the logical causality of everything further back one step. If I have trouble believing that everything came from nothing, and so say that everything came from God, the question is then, “Well then, where did God come from?” The Christian answer is that He didn’t come from anything; He just always was.

So really, the choice is between believing that everything came from nothing, or believing that God has always existed. Neither choice is easily understood or comprehended by the human mind. However, even with these two options, I still prefer to believe in the existence of God, for at least with God, there is the recognition of a mystery that cannot be understood by human finite minds, whereas without God, the idea that something came from nothing is just pure nonsense.

But recently I have come to realize something different.

I don’t necessarily believe in God because I can prove the existence of God.

No, I believe in God because through this belief, the world makes more sense.

Belief in the existence of God is the organizing principle of everything. Without a belief in the existence of God, everything is simply random meaninglessness. But with a belief in the existence of God, many of the dilemmas and confusing things of life suddenly make sense.

C. S. Lewis once said something like “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” I mentioned this in my recent podcast on Genesis 1:4.

belief in God - CS Lewis

As usual, C. S. Lewis is right on target.

Believing in God is like believing in light.

While light can be seen, you only really see light itself when it shines directly into your eye, like when someone shines a flashlight into your eye, or when you look at a light bulb or the sun. But you don’t need to have a light shown into your eye to know that a room has light. You know that a room has light because you can see the room. When you look at the walls of a room, and the items that are in the room, you are not seeing light, but are seeing things by the light. When light hits something, it allows you to see that thing. It diffuses, scatters, or reflects.

When we look at things and see them, we can know that the light is on them, not because we see the light, but because, by the light we can see.

As I have come to see the world through the light of Jesus Christ, the crucified God, this crucivision lens has helped me understand life, Scripture, and theology more clearly, and it has helped me grow in love for others more deeply.

So also with the existence of God. Believing in the existence of God helps us see ourselves, other people, this world, and our purpose more clearly.

Of course, you have to believe in God as He is revealed in Jesus Christ, or else you may end up believing in a god that acts like Hitler, and seeing the world through that lens will not be helpful for anybody. But that’s a subject for a future time.

Do you believe in the existence of God? Why? Do you think that this belief helps you understand life and live your life better than if you didn’t believe in God?

God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: apologetics, CS Lewis, existence of God, Theology of God, Theology of the Church

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Sometimes the Bible is our own worst enemy

By Jeremy Myers
51 Comments

Sometimes the Bible is our own worst enemy

The Bible

Be careful not to quote too much Scripture to an atheist… because he or she may start quoting Scripture right back! There are a lot of verses in the Bible that seem downright, well, anti-biblical. Or at least anti-christ.

You know… verses about killing babies, marrying girls you raped, and slaughtering all your enemies (including their cows and sheep).

Would Jesus command such things? I don’t think so…

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: apologetics, atheists, Bible study, Discipleship, humor, violence of God

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