whY cHriStiAnitY?

In this post I want to take a look into some very hard subjects, they require thought and time to work through. I hope with that those who would take the time to read this would be prevoked to think through what they read and if what I say in here makes sense and choice they might need to make in response to what they read. with that said lets hit the road running...

There is no doubt that with what we hear from the world it is very hard to understand if there is really anyway that one can know anything for certain. We are told that everyone has truth within them and thus we must not squelch their “truth”. We are also told that we cannot trust history because it is tainted by the one writing it. Put this altogether alongside many other reasons people (very smart people) give for why one cannot know what is really true and thus, all are correct from any one point of view. This leads us to where we are right now in mass states of confusion, seeking for anything solid. Asking the question; “is there anything solid that I can sink my teeth into?” this is a hard question mainly because of the view that we have been trained which to look through. But, though all of this does represent where we are at in our world today I believe we can come to a solid point to which we can stand firmly. This is the purpose of the information which I include in this article. I do not want to make this seem simple when I know that there is a great deal of difficult barriers we must break through in order to come to the solid place to which I hope one can come to after reading this article, but I do think that when one is honest with ones self. Looks at information and facts with a unbiased eye you may not come to the conclusion I have, but I believe you will have to make a choice. Knowing that I caution you, if you wish not to have to make a choice and simply believe blindly what you do now then read no further. However, if you wish to make a choice for yourself what you think than I hope that you would read the following facts and thoughts with a critical eye and make your choice.

CAN WE TRUST CHRISTIANITY TO BE TRUE?
As we begin to look into the evidences for this thing we call ‘Christianity’ I believe that there are three main topics we must cover. In my opinion as one looks at these three aspects or topics of Christianity, one is left with one decision to make. That decision being, either you accept these as truths and live in the recognition of those truths, or you reject the evidence and live in recognition of that rejection of the evidence. There is no middle ground of accepting part or parts of these, there are simply two options: accept or reject. My prayer would be that you and whoever else reads this would come to the conclusion that I have: Christ, the Bible, and God are all real and reliable. In view of this, my life must represent that, in the way I talk, act, and believe. Let’s now look at the first of our three questions: Is there even a God? Or one True God?

IS THERE EVEN A GOD? OR ONE TRUE GOD?

INTELLIGENT DESIGN:
I first want to say, as we begin this we must both agree that if and when we do come across the truth we will admit it and live it. It does us no good to look for something and yet when one of us finds it, do nothing about it. I want to share a thought from a clever and yet extremely wise man named; Winston Churchill, he tells it this way: Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. Winston Churchill ...man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but usually manages to pick himself up, walk over or around it, and carry on. Winston S. Churchill, quoted in: Irving Klotz, Bending perception, a book review, Nature, 1996, Volume 379, p 412 (1). Let us not do this, if we find or simply stumble over the truth let’s do ourselves a favor and take a moment to understand it and then gather ourselves and from that moment on change the way we live in view of our new found truth. With that said let’s get this thing started of with another question. If a divine being does not exist and if we are all there is, we will be left with an answerable question: where do we get the morals that we seem to live by? What I mean is where did I or you get the idea that it was bad to kill a man in cold blood? Where did we get this strange idea that if I steal I am doing wrong? These are questions we must ask and answer if we are to answer the bigger question of is there a supremely Divine being.
One answer I have been told is that; “we simply get together and ‘reason’ our way to morals”, meaning that humans get together and decide what is wrong and what is right. If we accept this, then we have to ask where we got that ability to reason? There must be a cause or an effect if you will. Perhaps a designer?.
Let me give you an example that has been given to me which you may have heard before. I want you to take your nice watch, take it apart, throw it into a blender, come back in 70 years and tell me if your watch has put itself together and is working. Now as you hear this you may say “that is totally obscured, how could that ever happen!” Yet that that is the very thing we must believe in if we reject this person we call God, Jehovah. You see as any honest scientist will tell you as you look at the universe, even if you are not a believer in the God of the Bible, you must at least believe that there is some sort of designer to this universe. As we have come to discover, for every effect there is a cause. As we look at the world, the complexity of our bodies and minds, and the extent of the universe, we must ask; “where did I and all of this come from?” As many non-Christian scientists are beginning to admit, the complexity of the universe strongly indicates an intelligent designer as being the cause. But - if there has to be an intelligent designer who is it? In other words how can we know that it is the God of the bible? For the answer to this we must delve into our next topic to tackle, the reliability of the Bible as being the Word of God.

THE RELIABILITY OF SCRIPTURE:
Now, as we go into this next question I hope to answer both this and the previous. The reason we must go into the reliability of the Bible is because this topic and the existence of God are completely linked. You see, if the Bible is true then what it says about God and what He has done has to be true. Much like in a house of cards when you remove one card and the whole thing collapses, so it is with each one of these three basic topics we are talking about. If one is proven wrong than we must rethink the whole of our beliefs. However, with that knowledge I am sitting here typing to you with great conviction and peace about these very things. This in no way proves what I am about to share with you. However, it does I hope show you a little of it’s reliability. If I were uncertain of these things I would not share them with you, for fear that I would be found to be wrong and more importantly that what I believe and hold to is wrong.
Now, about that thing we call the Bible, can we trust it as infallible? To answer this we must go to some of the evidences for the bible: i.e. fulfilled prophecy, the uniqueness, and the testimony of history.

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE BIBLE:
The internal evidence test reveals the Bible's amazing consistency. The Bible was written by over 40 authors, in 3 languages, on 3 continents, over a span of 1,500 years, and covers hundreds of controversial subjects. Yet, the authors all spoke with agreement; there are no contradictions. And the few supposed contradictions that are brought up (that are worth the time to refute) are easily cleared up with an understanding of the original text, or reading and correctly understanding the context. (my wife and I in our studies have come across an extensive list of the supposed contradictions in the Bible, and as we have gone through the list we have seen this to be true.) Also, from Genesis to Revelation, there is one unfolding story--God's redemption of mankind through His Son Jesus. The supposed contradictions in Scripture are just that - supposed. As one honestly evaluates the many supports for the bible and honestly looks at these supposed contradictions we find they are in most cases brought to us out of ignorance, or in some cases, a deep desire to get rid of something that could and does convict people of wrong.

FULFILLED PROPHECY:
The external and internal evidence tests do not prove the Bible's inspiration, but do reveal that the objective evidence is consistent with and supports the Bible's claims to be a divine book (because any book from God that claims to be inerrant should be reliable and consistent with itself). As Carla and I have studied other so-called divinely inspired books such as the Book of Mormon, the Jehovah Witness’ Bible, the Qu’ran, and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, to name a few, it became clear very quickly that these books were humanly written and could not possibly be from God.
For example, the Book of Mormon holds a great deal plagiarism taken from the King James Bible, and includes an identical translation mistake that was first made in the King James Version. (There are many books on the subject, one that we have used and that is very extensive on the study of other religions is “The Kingdom of the Cults” by Walter Martin).
Getting back to biblical prophecy, there are hundreds of specific prophecies in the Bible which have been literally fulfilled - in many cases they are fulfilled centuries after the completion of the Bible. Any attempt to late-date these prophecies is impossible--there is a copy of every Old Testament book but one from before 150 BC, and hundreds of these prophecies were not fulfilled until years later. For a detailed discussion of this area, see the book “Evidence that Demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell. [Also see attached file “fulfilled prophecy” for specific fulfilled prophecies.]
Norman Geisler explains Ezekiel's prediction that the city of Tyre "would be destroyed and its ruins cast into the sea (26:2)”. In the past this prophecy provoked much scoffing, because when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Tyre, he left the ruins right where they fell--on the land. However, 200 years later, Alexander the Great attacked Tyre and the inhabitants withdrew to an island just off the coast for safety. In order to reach them, Alexander threw all of the debris, stones, timbers, dust, and everything else, into the sea to build a causeway that would reach the island." [6] If events so far in the future can be accurately predicted, certainly the events of the past have been accurately recorded!

THE TESTIMONY OF HISTORY:
External evidence from both archaeology and non-Christian writers confirms that the Bible--both Old and New Testaments--is a trustworthy historical document. Archaeologist Joseph Free has said that "Archaeology has confirmed countless passages which had been rejected by critics as unhistorical or contrary to known facts." Renowned Jewish archaeologist Nelson Gluek confidently said that "It...may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference. Scores of archeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible." Christian apologist Josh McDowell tells us that "After personally trying to shatter the historicity and validity of the Scriptures, I have come to the conclusion that they are historically trustworthy." Some scholars once said that Moses couldn't have written the first five books of the Bible (as the Bible says) because writing was largely unknown in his day. However, years later archaeology proved otherwise by the discovery of many other written codes of the period: the code of Hammurabi (ca. 1700 B.C.), the Lipit-Ishtar code (ca. 1860), and the Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1950 B.C.). Critics used to say that the biblical description of the Hittite Empire was wrong because the Hittite Empire (they thought) didn't even exist! Then - archaeologists unearthed the Hittite capital in 1906 and discovered that the Hittite's were actually a very vast and prominent civilization. Archaeological and linguistic evidence is increasingly pointing to a sixth-century B.C. date for the book of Daniel, in spite of the many critics who attempt to late-date Daniel and make it a prophecy after the detailed events it predicts. (Most of this info found in A Ready Defense by Josh McDowell, and is an excellent book to read for a detailed overview of proofs for scripture, historical and archaeological evidence, evidence for Jesus being the Son of God, and some answers to difficult questions people ask such as, “Why does God allow evil?” and “Can the Bible be proved scientifically?”.

CONCLUSION:
With all this information that we have just looked at, and after the detailed study that I have done, there is in my opinion one conclusion we can and must come to: God and His Word are true, and thus must be followed and believed. You see as you begin to stack up all these evidences you begin to see that there is something supernatural to all of this. I for one cannot believe that all of the above evidence can come to no certain conclusion.
I will now try to tie up the above and the first question we asked (is there a God and if so is it or does it have to be the God we read about in the Bible). I believe that as we look at those testimonies, fulfilled prophecies and the uniqueness of Scripture we come to know that there is an all knowing supreme being and it is the God of the Bible. it is true, beyond all critics and attacks it is true! When we look into the Bible to see what is said about God or the possibility of more than one god, many verses such as Deuteronomy 6:4, John 1:1-2, Exodus 20: 1-3, Isaiah 43:3, 1 Corinthians 8:4, and Ephesians 4:6 state clearly that there is only one true God.
As I have looked at the many evidences for God and the Bible, I have come away with these conclusions; there is an intelligent designer and the Bible is truth. With this we went to the above verses and discovered some of what Scripture had to say about who that intelligent designer was and is. As one looks at those verses it becomes clear there is no room for any other god other than the one true God of the Bible. We know this from the many evidences for the Bible, showing it is reliability.
Now as I said before this is all much like a house of cards, however, I may have been a little off as I said that. In a way, yes these two and the next factor that I want to look at are like a house of cards in that they are interlinked, or building upon each other. However, they are not even as close to being as flimsy as a house of cards. As we have looked at the evidences for these, and upon further and more in depth study, I believe we have and will discover an indestructible house of cards. Or, if you will, we have uncovered the house of cards to be in fact a house of solid stone carved over time and with great care.

Sites you may want to check out
Regarding fulfilled prophecy
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/prophecy.shtml
http://www.bprc.org/topics/fulfill.html
http://100prophecies.org/
also see Acts 1:16; 2:16-21; 3:18, 21-24
If I don’t get time to cover the deity of Jesus and the truth of who he was (the third aspect I wanted to cover), hear are some sources concerning this.
http://www.greatcom.org/resources/areadydefense/default.htm
See specifically chapters 17-22. (This site holds the majority of the book, A Ready Defense.)
Also, these books address much of the topics we’ve been studying as well.
Anderson, J.N.D. Christianity: The Witness of History. London, England. Tyndale Press. 1969.
Habermas, Gary R. The Historical Jesus: Ancient Evidence for the Life of Christ.
Joplin, MO. College Press. 1996. (Church of Christ)
Montgomery, John Warwick. History and Christianity. Minneapolis, MN.
Bethany House Publishers. 1964.
Montgomery, John Warwick. Where is History Going? Grand Rapids, MI.
Zondervan Publishing House. 1969.
Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ. Grand Rapids, MI. Zondervan Publishing House. 1998.