Yes, Jesus Loves Me . . .

Many are familiar with the popular children’s song “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  .  .”   I have come to realize that I must take issue with this line in the song, because the way I know Jesus loves me is because I know His love and that is why I also believe the Bible.  The Bible testifies about Him and tells us what He did for us, but the way we truly know He loves us is because we experience His loving us.  We do not need to settle for reading that He loves us. 

It is by His Spirit awakening our spirits that we know He is real.  I hold the Bible in high regard as it is fully inspired by the Living God.  But I think the Church has often elevated the Bible beyond its intended position.  We treat it as if it were Jesus instead of the book that tells all about Him.  It is a book that points beyond itself to the heavenly One who gives it meaning. 

I don’t know that Jesus loves me because the Bible tells me so. I do not know it because I can give reasoned evidences of its veracity. I simply know the Lord loves me because I know the love of the Lord.  My heart is alive to His presence and I hear His voice.  This is why I love His Word, not vice versa.

The way to know His love is to know Him. The Bible is a great place to start learning about Him, but Jesus is the Way and there is no substitute for Him.  The way to Jesus is Jesus.  This is why we are to seek the Lord with all our heart. This is why those that seek truth shall find Him.  It is the heart that seeks and the mind is renewed by what the heart encounters.

Seeking the proof sometimes sends us in the wrong direction because we are looking for intellectual reasons when what we need is a God encounter.  Often no reason will suffice until one experiences Him for him or herself.  I think that is why most reasons only satisfy believers, because unbelief is not a condition of the mind, but of the heart. Only when the heart has found God do the intellectual answers make much sense. It really all boils down to Jesus. 

Following God

The nature of following God grows deeper in meaning the more one knows Him.  For many, following God is about believing and doing all the right things and not doing bad things.  It means reading your Bible, praying, and going to church on Sunday.  All the while there seems to be something missing, something that doing these things does not fulfill.

We try to circumvent that feeling of lack by heaping more spiritual activities into our lives.  We increase prayer, evangelism, reading the Bible. We attend more conferences, or serve more in our churches.  Still there seems like something ought to be different.  If anyone asked us if we were following God, we would vehemently affirm that we are.  The question offends us, but awakens an internal desire to know what is meant by this question. 

Too often, we equate following God with being a good church going Christian.  The thing is most of the Christian life as we commonly see it exemplified can be done without any supernatural strength.  Much can be done by natural effort. We do not need to have a supernatural relationship with Jesus to read our Bible, go to church, serve in the church, do moral things, and avoid immoral behavior.  The world is teeming with religions that do this quiet well. 

What then is the difference that comes from life with Jesus? If doing all these things is not the summation or even the essence of Christianity, how then do we follow God? 

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Kingdom Freedom

Everyone wants to be free. America was born on the shared value of freedom that ran deep in the hearts of the first patriots and Founders.  Most every nation in the world desires the freedom found between our shores.  A grassroots rally cry has been sounded in recent months for a return to greater levels of freedom while rejecting current policies that would restrict freedom. 

The Founders, and the philosophers that influenced them, had a very unique idea to build a nation where the people would be free.  Thus, they set out to build a limited government by the people and for the people.  A government that would not be the granter of freedom, but it's most ardent protector for this government would be elected and held accountable by the people. 

The Founding Fathers were very clear in their thoughts concerning the nature of such a free people. They encouraged, with great enthusiasm and urgency, that the education of the people always include instruction from the Christian Bible.  Now, in these days there were no public schools. There was no Department of Education. There were only community schools usually tied into the local church that shared the one room school house facility.  There were also home schooling and private tutoring depending on ones economic status. 

The Founders view on this is evidenced by these quotations by James Madison:

“It is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity toward each other.” 

“We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

The Founders saw it as instrumental to securing a free nation that the citizens of this nation govern themselves.  The only way they could be free, is if they did not need a governing authority to make laws guarding their conduct.  Thus they frequently wrote that people be instructed in Biblical morality and to make that and the law of nature (what they saw as the unwritten laws known in our conscious)  our external guide to maintaining our liberty.  In their opinion, if we behaved ourselves we would have little need of the government keeping us in order by excessive laws and punishments.

However, as good as this plan is it stopped short of the freedom that is available to people.  The Founders way would ensure a great deal of freedom never before established on a national level to this magnitude. They took it as far as it could logically go at the level in which they were speaking about it. 

To Read More Follow the LInk To My Helium Article

The Bible

The Bible is not THE Truth. How’s that for an opening statement? Let me explain, before some get upset and others get excited that I’ve finally seen the light.

The Bible is not, by itself, the essence of Truth. It is only bound paper with words on the pages that speaks of something greater than itself. When people believe that its words are the highest revelation of Truth they hold them so high that God and their neighbors come second to the words and the readers’ interpretation of them. Even in the day of Jesus, this was happening with the Torah. Jesus told them, “You search the Scriptures because you think in them you will find life, but it is I who these Scriptures are speaking about.”

Jesus is the One who is the full presence of Truth. It is He, not the Scriptures about Him that is life. Some may argue that the way we know what is true about Him is via the Scriptures that speak about who He is. However, this is not fully correct. It is true that the Scriptures are valuable and have an important role in revealing truth. The Bible does tell us true things, but it points beyond itself to the Truth itself which is not itself.

The Bible does tell us many things about Jesus, but a book illustrating a few years of His life, teachings, miracles, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension does little for us if we do not connect tangibly with the One it speaks about. The Bible is there to draw us away from natural earthly existence to open our awareness of Someone who can open our heart and spirit to a new world; a world we where we were always meant to have access.

The Bible does tell us true things about history, living, the future, and God Himself. But it was never meant to be idolized and revered over God Himself. This is why the words of Scripture without the Spirit of the Lord can be death rather than life. This is why someone can quote a Scripture that is supposed to be full of life and love and it feel like venom.

The Bible says that man without the Spirit cannot understand things that are spiritually discerned. There is a veil of sorts upon the wisdom of Scripture that only becomes unlocked when seen through ones relationship with Jesus. The Kingdom of God is then revealed and able to be experienced and released in a way that does bring life and love to others.

However, if people could access these things without the Spirit of God they would not be in a place where the things they find would help anyone because without the Spirit it would all be corrupt and damaging to the person and the world around them. Just the same, there is an understanding that comes from reading things at face value that can lead one to the path that unlocks the deeper understanding.

Sometimes, even believers, live from a place of naturally reading Scripture and by their own power and strength trying to live it out and that usually ends up hurting themselves and other people.

The Kingdom of God cannot be lived out by natural strength. It is impossible. Only by being in relationship with God, experiencing His Spirit, and in turn His power and love can the Kingdom of God be demonstrated. When this is happening the deaf hear, the blind see, the dead come to life, the crippled walk, and the love of God is experienced. When this happens people can speak and release peace to calm storms or freedom from bondages. Emotional wounds are healed. Dreams are realized and achieved. Heaven becomes a place on earth when a community of believers walks out the supernatural Kingdom of God in their lives.

Hearing God

Many people ask how does one hear God? How does He speak? To whom does He speak?

There are a variety of ways that God speaks to us that is often all expressed as “hearing God.” Almost always when one says he has “heard” God, he does not mean that he has audibly heard God speak. He means that God communicated to him in some fashion and he has received that communication to the point where he can articulate what was communicated by God.

A few of the many ways people commonly “hear” God is as follows.

Dreams: A person has a dream that they perceive to be a communication from God about something. It may be vague or specific. My husband had a very specific dream about starting the church we have started years before it was started.



Visions: This can be a daydream of sorts, or an actual seeing something play out before you as if you were truly watching it happen.



Pictures: This is when you see something in your minds eye. If you were to close your eyes and picture an Elephant—it would be like this sort of communication. Where you are thinking about someone or praying for someone and suddenly a picture of something comes to mind out of nowhere. Maybe you see this person crying and you call them up to see if they are okay and you find them troubled and yet very encouraged by your unexpected call.



Feelings/Impressions: This is when you think of someone or something and an unexpected feeling or impression about the person or place or event rises up within you. God might be trying to give you insight on whatever it may be. Ask him for more revelation of what He is showing you.



Words/Thoughts: This is when a thought comes into your mind that shouts out “louder” than the other thoughts and seems to demand attention. Sometimes it is more subtle, but is not knowledge you could have had otherwise. You might suddenly know a stranger’s name or where the person works or what their hobby or passion is. It is some kind of knowledge you could not of known other than by a supernatural mean.



Bible: God speaks through the Scriptures. He can bring a verse to mind for yourself or for another. He can illuminate a passage or a verse while you are reading the Bible and it can speak right to your heart. It is like the words come alive and penetrate you with clarity of meaning.



Manifestations: Sometimes people feel something physically in their body when God is speaking to them about something. They might suddenly feel a shoulder pain that was not previously there and ask if anyone has such a pain. If someone does, pray for them, God may be making you aware of it to bring them healing. I have had this sort of thing happen from time to time.


Audible Voice of God: Very rarely does anyone give testimony of having actually heard the audible voice of God. Those who do give testimony of this speak of an incredible experience of great magnitude. Most speak of it as physically unbearable because of the majestic power of His voice. That it just rocks you so completely you are unsure if you want to hear Him again that way. I have never had such an experience.

These are not the only ways God communicates to people, but other than the audible voice, they are common ways people receive from God. Typically, no matter which way the person “heard” God; they will call it “hearing from God.”

We are fallible and we will make mistakes. The Bible says that each person is responsible to take what is thought to be from God and check it out for ourselves to see if it lines up with His truth. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pastor or prophet telling you they heard God say such and such about you – it is your responsibility to take that and ask God about it yourself and not just take someone else’s word about it. When the Spirit of Truth inhabits you, He leads you in all truth personally and we do not need to depend on another person as a mediator for what God is saying.

We can encourage, comfort, and exhort one another by sharing what God is saying, but each person needs to take that before the Lord and see if they should accept it as true.

God is speaking. It takes time to learn how to hear Him and to learn what is Him and what are our own thoughts or what is some other spiritual force at work. Jesus said the sheep know the voice of the Sheppard. As you get to know the Lord more and more the better you will recognize Him speaking. He wants to reveal Himself to us in greater and greater measure the deeper we go into Him the greater we see how infinitely deep one can go. We can have as much of God as we want to, His door is always open.

More Than A System of Belief

I wonder sometimes if the reality of what I am trying to convey translates as more than a system of belief. I do make an incredible claim, or rather, accept an incredible claim. God incarnated Himself and walked the earth 2000 years ago as a man. The man, Jesus, who is both fully man and fully God, being Himself the eternal Son of God, lived amongst men teaching and performing miracles. He was crucified and buried in a tomb. Three days later, He arose from the dead, appearing to the disciples and 500 other witnesses leaving behind an empty tomb. Forty days later, He ascended bodily to heaven, for as He had descended from heaven, He must also ascend. Just as God once dwelt in a Tabernacle in the Ark of the Covenant, He dwelt in bodily form in the man called Jesus, and now He dwells with each of us who invite Him as Lord and Savior.


The nature of what I speak of isn’t just a proposition of a different way to see the world. It’s a proposition that this is really real and knowable. If I were merely advocating a set of doctrines, or dogma, as what everyone ought to believe there would be no way to prove them as better than another view of the world. However, what I am talking about, while a worldview, is more than a worldview, it is something one can experience as true.


The Bible isn’t a book designed to be dogmatically adhered to, but a book designed to point to something far greater than itself. If one reads it as only pointing to its contents as the end all of truth, one misses the point of the whole book. It is a story that points to a Story. It is a book that points to the Author. It is a narrative of the Narrator.


There is a scene in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader where these children are in a bedroom talking about the land of Narnia. As the two children who have been to Narnia explains it to the third child who disbelieves them they notice the painting on the wall has a ship very much like the ships in Narnia. They see the ship moving and the feel the moist ocean breeze. Looking closer they are swept into the world of Narnia and embark on an adventure on the high seas. The picture wasn’t just a picture of a ship as it was pointing to something greater than itself; a real ship, in a real place, with a real adventure.


Some will only see the Bible as a book of information; some will see it as factual information and others as myth while still sharing the commonality of it being simply informative. Others, however, have experienced it coming alive. Something takes hold in their being and they realize there is something more than information there is something greater being revealed. Then they will see there is another world to explore and they can find their place in the story for the story is more real then anything they have experienced. Moreover, this story doesn’t negate the world they were living in for it enhances it. It’s like seeing the world in HD for the first time.

Dimensions of Truth

The Bible has several levels of revelation and requires several levels of acquiring that revelation. There is the straightforward reading of the text that anyone can read as reading any other history or literature book. One can interpret things in context of the whole and in the context of the culture in which it was written. Furthermore, one can study it in its original language of Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. The principals therein can be helpful to a person even when only learning about them in this manner.

However, no matter how far one studies in this manner there will be a vital missing element to understanding the fullness of Scripture. The Bible says that there are things that are spiritually discerned and the man without the Spirit cannot discern them. It is like it is muddled to that person and makes little sense. There is a deeper revelation that is not contradictory to the surface exploration of the text that can only come from having the Spirit of God. For His Spirit witnesses with our spirit and reveals truth that is locked away and only revealed through that relationship with Jesus.

Why is this? It is because if it were even possible for us to know the truth fully without God’s aid it would not be good for us to have such knowledge apart from His life flowing through us. The Scriptures are to point us to Him and when we are connected to Him the Scriptures take on a whole new dynamic previously not available to the man without the Spirit. Even without the Spirit the Scriptures are sufficient to point to the truth of needing Christ, but once that truth is taken hold of and that relationship begins, deeper revelation begins to be made available. This deeper revelation is more than ethereal; it is more than intellectual for a third dimension opens up of experience. Once one experiences the truth through the person of Truth, Jesus, the truth of Scripture can be experienced in a whole new reality. The mystery begins to be unveiled and the seeker steps into more and more truth the more they seek it out for it is the glory of God to conceal a matter and the glory of Kings to search it out. We are those Queens and Kings destined to search out the truth and find and reveal the glory of God.

The path of truth doesn’t stop with finding God; it starts afresh with finding God. It’s like opening the wardrobe to another world complete with beautiful and fascinating things to explore. In the fantastical movie InkHeart, a few people have the special ability to read a book and bring what they read to life so that they are not just reading words on a page and imagining the story for the story is coming alive as they read. When a person reads the Scriptures without the presence of God breathing the life into them, it is like watching a 3D movie without the glasses. One can still see and hear the movie, but something is missing, something is cloaked until one watches through the 3D lenses. We need to see with Jesus so that we can experience greater depths of truth.

Jesus told the religious leaders in his day that they search the Scriptures, because they think in them is life, but the real life was Him whom the Scriptures are about, and not the Scriptures themselves. They only point to Him and reveal Him further once He is connected with the reader. Even the Scriptures can be used to bring bondage and harm to people, if they are used without the life giving true revelation that comes from relationship with Jesus. When we use them solely with human reasoning apart from Jesus we enter dangerous grounds of harming people and stealing their life and only giving them empty religion and life-less doctrines. This is why a person, Jesus, is eternal life and not a belief in proper doctrines. Life is tangible and requires tangible experience to gain it, and does not rest upon intangible doctrines of the mind, for God looks not on the mind, but on the heart. The aim is our heart to be intertwined with His so that all the life that is He is also apart of us for He is where our hope rest secure.

Tenets of Basic Christianity

Just to clear up some confusion I adhere to the truth of the following: (there is no need to respond to each point, this is just for clarification and is not exhaustive)

• The Bible from Genesis to Revelation is true in what it covers.

• There is an eternal good God who created the universe including life on earth.

• He created man in His own image.

• He made woman to have relationship with man as we are designed for relationship just as God is a relational being.

• He said man and woman were good.

• He said all of creation was good.

• He gave man freedom.

• Man used his freedom for ill and took sin into his nature.

• Man now needed cleaning to restore his relationship with God to its perfect potential.

• Mankind began a journey that would bring man to the place where God comes down in the flesh to live the life of man, while still being God.

• Jesus is that eternal Son of God who showed us how to live life properly related to God.

• He took on his shoulders all the sin ever to have been or ever to be in this world and it was buried with Him once for all.

• He rose again with victory over all death, decay, and sin. That same victory was accomplished for mankind.

• He returned to dwell with God in heaven until the time of His return.

• He sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in us and empower us to live the life He lives.

• Anyone who puts their trust/belief in Jesus, the Risen Lord, they enter into the reality of their sins having been buried with Christ and they rise with Christ now cleansed from their unrighteousness.
  

• This includes all who died before Christ came and all who ever lived. Meaning that there were people who had this kind of relationship with God because of what Christ was going to do in time before it was done in our time.

• Scripture also tells us that Jesus preached to all the captives already dead in eternity so that none would be denied that opportunity to know the Lord.

• Those who are now in relationship with Christ are walking this out in process upon this earth as individuals and as a community of believers that encompass all who are united with Christ no matter the denomination or church affiliation.

• One day Jesus will return for His Bride, the Church and all sin and death and decay left in us will be no more and all of creation will be fully restored. All of the redeemed humanity and all of creation will live in the Kingdom of God a fully restored reality in abundant joy lavishing in the love of God for all eternity.

The Benefits of Divine Revelation

I was recently asked, what has religion offered to humanity’s knowledge about the world? In clarifying, this question was unpacked to ask how has divine revelation aided our knowledge about the world?

First I must explain that I don’t divide knowledge out to be the result of unaided man versus what is the result of divine revelation for I see the two are inseparable. All knowledge that lines up with truth is attained because God has given us the ability to attain it through a variety of means whether they are received through the scientific process or received through direct revelation. I would say that all true knowledge is either gained indirectly or directly from God.

To illustrate, consider that as a Christian I see God as being the Author, Creator, and Sustainer of life. Thus all truth is God’s truth for He is its author and its source. He wants us to learn the truth about the world because the way of truth is the way of life.

Now to be fair, I am not trying to skirt the question. I can still talk about direct divine revelation as long as it is understood that I don’t see the indirect as being somehow secular or merely human oriented.

As a Christian I see direct revelation from God coming in two mediums; the written word of God known as the Scriptures or the Bible or through God speaking to individuals consistent with the Scriptures. Thus, the individual doesn’t have license to run with something as being God that is in contradiction to the truth of Scriptures. Now the first is an unchanging objective standard of revelation and the second is a subjective relational receiving of God’s revelation, often referred to in many Christian circles and in Scripture as the prophetic.

Therefore to answer this question from the point of view of a Christian I am examining the contributions to human knowledge from the Bible and the contributions from prophetic experiences. Prophetic experiences come through a myriad of ways such as dreams, visions, impressions, feelings, hearing internally that “still small voice,” seeing internally or externally and sometimes angelic visitation or visitation from the Lord Himself.

The Scriptures have provided a wealth of information for many things in this world. John Locke, who supplied much of the foundational philosophy to form the American republic, quoted extensively from the Scriptures in developing his model for government.

William Wilberforce who was instrumental in ending the slave trade in England did so from his moral imperative from Scripture than man ought not to be treated thus as we are called to love one another.

Recently, in the last decade or so, Uganda’s President asked the faith community for their help in curbing the rampant aids epidemic that was infecting around 30-35% of the population. The church leaders explained to President Yoweri Museveni that he needed to campaign a three step program called ABC in response to the aids epidemic. The steps are as follows: Abstain until marriage, Be faithful to one partner, and lastly with the other two being met, Condom use to curb transmission of those already infected. Museveni opened up the media channels to campaign this message to his people. The infection rate dropped from 35% to around 5%. The United Nations took notice and asked Museveni how he accomplished this phenomenal shift in aids in his country. He explained the process to them, they didn’t like the abstinence part so they reversed the ABC’s and began to promote condom use as the first thrust of the campaign in other African countries and the results did not par with Uganda’s results. The President is still working with the United Nations to help them see the value of doing it this way. It is the principals of the Bible that the church leaders in Uganda gave to the President that had an amazing impact on their culture.

John Maxwell is a proliferate author in the business world writing to business executives about leadership principals to aid the growth and health of their companies. His books are found in the business section of major book stores, however, he is a Christian, and his principals of leadership are all Biblically based. His books are also on the shelves of Christian bookstores.

These are just a few of the many examples of how Biblical revelation is aiding the world and not just the church and the private lives of individuals. I am going to pause at this point and not continue on to discuss the subjective revelation through prophetic means because if the former is not received the latter certainly will not be for it is much more subjective in nature. Now, of course, if you don’t accept the Bible as revelation then my examples will not aid your understanding of the aid of direct revelation to the world. At least, maybe, it will give food for thought of the value of the Bible.

New Testament Manuscripts

There are more ancient manuscripts of the New Testament than any other ancient text. There are 5,700 handwritten Greek copies of the New Testament with another ten to fifteen thousand manuscripts in other languages including Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Georgian. In addition to that there are approximately 10,000 more written in Latin. While some of these manuscripts are certain books or compilation of books from the New Testament there are 60 full Greek New Testament manuscripts.

However, if all of these manuscripts were lost we could still reconstruct an accurate New Testament from the writings of the Church fathers. According to Dr. Daniel Wallace, who is a renowned expert of New Testament criticism the world over, there are more than one million quotations of the New Testament in the early church fathers’ writings dating from the 1^st century all the way until the 13^th century.

Therefore, there is an overwhelming amount of documentation to sufficiently render a New Testament that accurately reflects the original versions. This is an amazing collection of historical documents which is not found with any other ancient texts. All of which have been well preserved.

Dr. Wallace relayed to Lee Strobel in an interview that, “The quantity and quality of the New Testament manuscripts are unequalled in the ancient Greco-Roman world. The average Greek author has fewer than twenty copies of his works still in existence, and they come from no sooner than five hundred to a thousand years later. If you stacked the copies of his works on top of each other, they would be about four feet tall. Stack up copies of the New Testament and they would reach more than a mile high—and, again, that doesn’t include quotations from the church fathers.”

In comparison, the Illiad and Odyssey together have less than 2,400 copies surviving. These books are the second most abundant to the New Testament while not coming close to the number of manuscripts still in existence. Dr. Wallace commented “At bottom, textual criticism for virtually all other ancient literature relies on creative conjectures, or imaginative guesses, at reconstruction the wording of the original. Not so with the New Testament.”

Furthermore, fragments of papyrus have surfaced dating back to within at least one hundred years of the original manuscripts and match up succinctly with the later handwritten manuscripts. There are at least 117 of such documents and some of the “fragments” are quiet long, as one is nearly the complete Gospel of John.

Thus we have a very good historical record of the events of the life of Jesus that far surpasses any other historical records of antiquity.

Responding to Ebon Muse Questions (Part 1)

I was browsing through Ebon Muse website Daylight Atheism and I found Ten Questions to Ask Your Pastor. I am a pastor’s wife and I decided to provide my answers to these questions. My answers are brief, but I hope that they get to the essence of each question in a way that is fair and respectful to the question. If anyone would like me to elaborate on a point or a question later please ask me in the comment and I will try and accommodate you. I will post my answers in two post dividing them five questions at a time due to cut down on the length of doing it as one post. I welcome you to read and to think about my answers, some are repetitive of topics I have addressed before, but are readdressed for the sake of answering this particular list of questions.


1. Why is God called loving or merciful when, in the Old Testament's stories of the Israelite conquest, he specifically orders his chosen people to massacre their enemies, showing no mercy to men, women, even children and animals?


The Old Testament shows us the natural consequence of sin. It shows us the severity of sin and the problem of sin. God physically gave them laws for their protection. These laws were not His whims, but rules to protect their heart and life. They needed to know these things and they needed external enforcement of these rules so that they could taste the goodness of life instead of taking on the weight of sin. God did not at this point co-habitat with man in our hearts for that was going to be made available once Christ came and fulfilled the requirements of the law and showed us and enabled us to live a new way a better way.

In the Old Testament, God was showing them His power. He demonstrated His authority. He gave them leaders to show them how to live in a way that was not going to lead to their destruction. He spoke to the people through Prophets and he gave them warning after warning. He was patient with them. Consider Jonah. God sent Jonah to Nineveh to warn the people that their ways were going to cause their destruction and they needed to repent. (Repentance means change the way you think turning around away from the path of destruction. It doesn’t mean being really sorry.) The people did just that and were saved from destruction. It wasn’t God’s desire to destroy them for their actions, if it were He simply would have done it without sending Jonah to warn them. Jonah is actually dismayed that God saved them; he says “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.” (Jonah 4:2) He says this is why he didn’t want to waste his time warning the people, because he knew God could relent. He didn’t understand why he had to go through the trouble of warning them when God wasn’t going to end up destroying them. His selfishness was showing through. God tells him, “Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city?” (Jonah 4:11)

If you pull these stories often cited by atheists out of context of the whole of what the Bible reveals to us about God it will look like God is a vindictive annihilator. I am not sure how you can read through Scripture and miss the warnings, the mercy, the compassion and see that all acts of judgment were few and far between and very slow in coming. But when you learn more and you see His holiness in context of His love and goodness and His justice in context of His goodness you will see more clearly. When Moses is working with God to free the Israelites, God sends these plagues as warnings to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. He doesn’t come sweeping in and destroy them all and have Moses leave with his people. He is patient. More patient than the Israelites wanted Him to be. He gives ample time for Pharaoh to do the right thing and when Pharaoh remains resolute in the face of all the demonstrations of God’s power, the consequences of His rebellion are brought to fruition.

Also many who are adamant about God having done something unjust the few times He exacted judgment must consider if they believe there is ever a just war? Is there ever a just reason for bloodshed on a human level? If so, why do you not see that there could also be a just reason that God had for doing what He did? We who can’t see the whole picture of the outcome of a war, or the outcome of a battle can see good reasons for going to war and taking lives even when some of those lives will be innocent lives of citizens and not soldiers. Yet God sees the big pictures, He knows the complete ramifications of His actions and He knows the hearts of man to know what the eternal consequences may be and what choices they would make if left to their own ways. Do you not think a perfect God capable of making such a choice and it be good? We have this idea in our minds that good always means pleasant and that just isn’t correct.

2. Does it make sense to claim, as the Bible does, that wrongdoing can be forgiven by magically transferring the blame from a guilty person to an innocent one, then punishing the innocent person?

Does this question forget about question one where it is proposed that God is wrong to punish a guilty person? One can’t have it both ways.

God shows us the severity of sin and then shows us the One who will take the pain of sin for us so that we can be redeemed and free from the judgment. It is a loving act. It isn’t a logical act. Is it logical for any person to die so another can live simply because of love? Yet this happens all the time. One person takes the bullet for another protecting the other by their love and sacrificing themselves. If a created person can act in such a way, why are we confused by a perfect person, Jesus, doing so?


3. Why does the Bible routinely depict God as manifesting himself in dramatic, unmistakable ways and performing obvious miracles even before the eyes of nonbelievers, when no such thing happens in the world today?


How do you know no such things happen today? I’ve seen them happen today. I’ve read countless stories of them happening today. I’ve met many people who can tell me example after example of it happening today. His miracles are a sign of His existence, His love, His kindness, His authority and the power that He gives to those who walk with Him through life. He demonstrates His love through us by healing the sick. We live in an age of an increase of miracles happening in and outside the Church. Many are happening in the malls, on the streets, and in daily life as we Christians are out about our business. Many Christians are actively going out and seeking the sick and injured and physically handicap to bring healing to them and many are seeing results, not every time, but enough to know God’s still doing miracles.


4. Why do vast numbers of Christians still believe in the imminent end of the world when the New Testament states clearly that the apocalypse was supposed to happen 2,000 years ago, during the lifetime of Jesus' contemporaries?


The Bible does not state that it was going to happen 2,000 years ago. Jesus said before this generation passes away you will see the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is here now and is demonstrated in the lives of each believer. Moreover, I do not believe the world will end. I believe the corruption of the world will end, but not the world. The Bible says that what can be shaken will fall away but what is unshakeable will remain. It also said the corruptible will put on incorruptibility meaning that what is now corrupted will be restored to something not-corrupted. The earth isn’t going anywhere because God gave humans authority and dominion over the earth. The earth will be made new and sin and corruption will be gone from it one day, but it’s not going to be destroyed.


5. Why do Christians believe in the soul when neurology has found clear evidence that the sense of identity and personality can be altered by physical changes to the brain?


The soul is something spiritual, not physical. I’m not sure science could find something metaphysical. I have not researched this area of science so I really can’t say more than that.

Bible's Treatment of Women

It is stereotypically asserted that all religion usurps the rights of women and makes them second class citizens. Only a gross misinterpretation of Scripture can lend itself to supporting this idea with regards to Christianity.

When God created Adam and Eve and in the Garden of Eden, He vocalized that what He had created was good. Differences in attributes do not equate to differences in equality. Some schools of thought try to equate sameness to gender differences to promote equality. However it is not necessary to stifle diversity to create unity.

(read more)

Q & A by Ravi Zacharias: Atheism, Feminism, and the Bible

True Freedom

Does a fish in a fish tank have true freedom? It may not know its habitat is not natural. It has water and food. But is it free? In the Pixar movie Finding Nemo, Nemo gets plucked from the ocean and sold to a dentist with a fish tank full of exotic fish. Nemo, having known freedom, is now trapped with these other fish. His situation worsens when he is to be sold to a spoiled child that would cause the demise of Nemo. His fellow captive fish aid him in obtaining his freedom.

Errant worldviews can make one as trapped as a fish in a fish tank. People can think they have freedom and swim all around enjoying life in a tank. Or they can bust out of their unnatural habitat and truly taste freedom. If Christianity is such a tank of entrapment then I am not free, but if Christianity is the river of life and I am in that river I am the most free. The more I become transformed to the proper habitat of life the freer I become.

We all need to test the walls of our worldview to see if it is entrapping us or truly freeing us. Had Nemo not been endanger of being given to the child he may have lived a happy life in the controlled environment of the tank. But he would have missed the exciting freeing life of the ocean where he belonged. He also grieved the loss of his father for he was now separated from him in his tank while his father was free in the ocean. However his father came to save him, risking his own freedom and life for that of his son’s. His father didn’t stop pursuing him even though they were an ocean apart.

The Bible says truth sets us free. Living in truth will always be a greater freedom than living outside truth. No one can fully get outside of truth for we all live in the real world. But we can live in the false habitat like a fish in a fish tank or we can live in the real habitat that we were designed to live in.

Some of us are fish in fish tanks. Others are fish out of water altogether. But let us strive to be the ones that are not content with that sort of life and who want to experience truth to its fullness.

I Can't Help But Believe In God

I can’t not believe in God. My life has been inseparable with His for as long as I can remember. Somewhere around the age of 15, my belief in Jesus transformed from childhood obedience to an adult reality. Most of my life, my relationship with Christ has been one of knowing Him not one of simply believing things regarding Him. In high school I began to study a little about the evidences for the claims of the Bible. However, in college I found myself surrounded by much opposition to my worldview. I had professors who used their classroom as a place to promote their worldview more so than the subject they were paid to teach. I was faced with English and History professors who did not believe in facts, absolute truth, and the knowability of history. Many of the worldviews I was being exposed to were postmodern and pluralistic in nature. Some professors lamented against Christianity and some against any meta-narrative construct. Most denied there was any true way of looking at the world. All of this drove me to want to know more about the evidences, logic, and reason supporting the Bible as well as to know more about the ins and outs of other worldviews. Throughout my college years and beyond I consumed books, DVD’s, CD’s, attended conferences, and sought to interact with real people who believed things differently from me. I do this so that I can learn and to communicate what I learn to others to hopefully be of aid to those who are searching.


I have fed my intellectual foundation of my belief in the Christian God for over ten years. However, in the last few years my experiential relationship with the Lord has grown by leaps and bounds.


I have become experientially and intellectually aware of the supernatural aspect of my faith like never before. I have tangibly felt the presence of God upon me on multiple occasions. I have tangibly felt His power surging through me like an electrical charge of sorts. I have reached out to touch another and transferred this manifestation of His power to them by the laying on of hands. The first time I experienced sharing it, it was unintentional, I merely stumbled and touched another to steady myself and they felt the power of God enter them from where my hand touched and spread throughout their body. I have experienced instant healing of a severe sinus and upper respiratory infection upon receiving prayer. I literally went from hacking up a lung of asthmatic proportions to feeling the heavy congestion leave my lungs to where I could breath deeply and freely through my lungs and sinuses. The infection that had plagued me for days on end left in an instant through the power of God, which I also felt upon me at the time of healing.


I have prayed for a woman with glaucoma and cataracts clouding her eyes and saw them clearing before my eyes as she shouted that she could begin to see me and my husband standing before her. I have prayed for a woman with partial deafness and not only was her hearing restored, her friend told me that she too felt the healing in her ear even though she had no problems with her ears. She felt the experience of her friend.


I have had many people who I had never met come and tell me things about myself impossible for them to know save God telling them on many different occasions. For example, I had a girl walk up to me recently, at an event I was attending, who I didn’t know and tell me I loved to write and that God had given me a passion for writing that He wanted me to use for Him. That’s the third time I have been told that from someone I had never seen before and who knew nothing about me.


Everything my husband and I are doing in our lives right now is a direct result of doing what God has shown us to do. Everything from the church we started last year to the place we live, and our employment choices are a direct result of hearing from God. The church was birthed out of a dream from God my husband had one night that was confirmed by many independent sources who did not know us and some who did. Over the last year prophetic words, dreams, impressions and other amazing revelatory things have continued to confirm that we are doing what God has called us to do. Moreover, things are happening in our ministry that is of an incredible nature. Some of the divine connections that are taking place are blowing our minds. God is giving people in another country visions about our ministry and gave them knowledge of how to contact us (our website is not in the search engines – we’ve looked). The e-mails that are coming forth from the other country are testimonies of the goodness of the Lord. The goodness and reality of God is abundant and evident in my life in such a way I cannot conceive of His absence.


If Christ is not the Son of God and if the Bible is merely a book of fairytales, I must be living in a fairytale story and should be confined to a mental institution. I am seeing the reality of Scripture in my life and in the lives of countless others in amazing ways.


I hope by my sharing this, you will see why I desire to write about the God I love because He is too overwhelmingly real and good to keep to myself. I believe being connected to Him in a real tangible relationship through Jesus is the way to transform the world to a place that reflects the goodness of heaven instead of the corruption of sin. The Kingdom of God is not about what happens in the walls of a church, but the reality of transforming earth to the truths of heaven. Embarking on a journey with God in bringing His Kingdom to earth is an incredible adventure of a lifetime and beyond.

Moral Framework

A response to http://godlesswoman.blogspot.com

I will now respond to your second objection on the topic of morality. I asserted that there is a moral law at work in humanity and that for there to be such a construct there must be a moral law giver, God.

To set it up as a syllogism it would look like this:

• If there is a moral law, then there is a Moral Law Giver.
• There is a moral law
• Therefore there is a Moral Law Giver

Let’s unpack the idea of the existence of a common moral framework in all of mankind. In use of the term “moral law” I am merely claiming there to be a moral framework at work in mankind.

There is a difference between agreement on specifics of right and wrong and a basic understanding that there is right and wrong. The specifics can be subjective at times; however, the framework is objective. For instance, you give the example of slavery.

Throughout history slavery was not always seen as wrong by all people. Even today, slavery continues in parts of the world such as in Sudan. If morality was subjective to a culture or a person, one could say that the English slave trade or the American slavery was not wrong to those who didn’t believe it to be wrong. However, I think the reality is that it was always wrong even when people justified it to be right. Also, just because a community justifies something to be right, doesn’t mean deep in their souls they know it to be right.

When someone is on trial for murder, they can submit a plea of insanity if they have no understanding between right and wrong. One of the key things the prosecutor must prove is that the Defendant not only committed the act, but that the Defendant was cognizant the act was wrong. For if the defense attorney proves through a physiologist that the Defendant has no moral understanding he is able to present the defense of insanity. So even if someone does something wrong and is convinced that it is not wrong, even in a court of law, it is still wrong and the person is seen as insane.

If morality is subjective then we have no right to judge another culture or community for doing atrocities to people such as the holocaust. However, if it is objective and all people really do know right from wrong somehow then the Nuremburg Trials were warranted. However, if moral truth is merely what a community agrees upon there could never be any justice for the millions of Jews exterminated in the concentration camps. Was this historical event evil? Or was it merely Hitler, to quote Richard Dawkins, “dancing to his DNA.”

[Regarding the Bible condoning slavery, it does not. Jesus didn’t come to force political change; that was not His mission. He knew that the heart change that happens from knowing Him would change the world and force would never produce love which was what was needed to treat people the way He designed them to be treated]

The second part of the syllogism proclaims God must exist because there is a moral framework. How else could a standard of morality exist in humanity if it were not for a conscious designer placing it there? The objective nature of a moral standard that man kind experiences guilt when he breaks it and demands justice when it is broken against him is not explained by evolution. Again that is why I maintain that non-Christians must borrow from the Christian worldview regarding these things to even posit questions about good and evil and how to differentiate between the two. It’s the only worldview that gives a good explanation about how this all works and is the most viable in corresponding to reality.

To Be Continued: Last Response Blog will address the matter of how God sees mankind in light of moral failures

God's Justice & Love

God’s justice does not conflict with his love or his goodness. He does not love less because He is just. He is perfectly just and loving at the same time. It is the human view of love that is distorted. We think of acts of love as always being blissful when in reality the same love employed by a parent that bestows a child with good gifts is also employed when spanking the child when he misbehaves. The parents love is not diminished by spanking the child, but affirmed by the discipline. The Bible says that if you spare a child from a spanking you do not love the child. So if God put forth this standard for parents and if He is the ultimate Father, why then do we judge God as being unloving when His justice brings about unpleasant consequences?

From the time of Adam our very nature has been fallen and separated from God because of our unrighteousness. A chasm of division separates man from God. Yet God sent His own begotten son to live as one of us surrendering his divine rights to even die a tortuous death on a cross for the payment of the sins of all mankind. Christ who never sinned substituted himself to pay our price for reconciliation back to God. He sits with God, one with God, being God himself, as our mediator. Due to His redemptive sacrifice, man kind can be restored to relationship with God. Now if man refuses this restoration which only comes by the finished work of the cross, he remains separated from God and life on earth and after is completely severed from relationship with God. Not because God cast him out, but because man refused life with God. So why now does modern man sit in the judgment seat and judge God for being unloving because of the existence of eternal separation from God which is a very real place called hell? Man would judge God all the more if God forced himself upon man and effectuated a relationship that man did not want or if man had no choice in the matter.

Could it be that man has misplaced his blame and only shakes a finger at God to avoid facing his own need for God?

“The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge; and God is in the dock.” C.S. Lewis – God in the Dock

“. . . as the real meaning of the Christian claim becomes apparent, its demand for total surrender, the sheer chasm between Nature and Supernature, men are increasingly ‘offended.’ Dislike, terror, and finally hatred succeed: none who will not give it what it asks (and it asks all) can endure it: all who are not with it are against it.” C. S. Lewis – God in the Dock