True knowledge of the true God – John Macarthur

I am listening to this sermon ( true knowledge of the true God.) right now…

John Macarthur:

”In fact, like the Greeks, we have placed an idol in the place of the true God and we ignorantly worship him. I suppose the question can be asked, “Has God created man and revealed Himself, or has man created God and revealed himself?” I think the latter would be pretty much true of the popular God of our country and even of the so-called church. God has become a kind of projection of our own minds, of our own will, of our own tolerances. We have designed a God that is comfortable for us. We have violated Psalm 50:21 which says, “You thought that I was all together like you?” Well indeed that’s the case….”

Read the whole sermon here

Atheism – Part 7 (50th POST!)

For this 50th post, we’ll look at Phil Johnson’s recent post on American Atheist and Madalyn Murray O’Hair’s sad story.

It reads as follow :  

Atheism is a destructive belief that breeds immorality and wickedness.

If you’re 25 years old or older, you probably remember Madalyn Murray O’Hair. During my childhood and adolescent years, it seemed she was in the news all the time. She wasn’t an intellectual; she wasn’t even particularly likable. (And that’s putting it mildly. Usually she came across like a screeching, abrasive, angry old crone driven by intense hatred for God and an equally passionate craving for publicity.) She was indefatigably persistent—and completely committed to her cause.

Atheism was her god.

Mrs. O’Hair founded an organization, American Atheists, and for the past 45 years they have spearheaded a relentless campaign to eliminate God from civic life and public discourse in America.

Then suddenly Mrs. O’Hair vanished in 1995. Not a single one of her atheist “friends” even reported her missing when she first disappeared. Instead, they moved in and took over her home, her organization, and her assets. Six years later her body was discovered, alongside the bodies of her son Jon and a granddaughter, Robin. Their corpses had been burned and buried on a ranch in west Texas. A group of fellow atheists, led by an employee of American Atheists, had kidnapped the O’Hairs, tortured them for weeks, and finally murdered them in an act of revenge—apparently as payback for a mean-spirited article Mrs. O’Hair had circulated among employees of her organization.

Mrs. Murray was survived by her eldest son, Bill (Robin’s father), who had become a convert to Christianity years before his mother’s disappearance. He told reporters his mother liked to hire violent felons because “She got a sense of power out of having men in her employ who had taken human life.” It was one of those outlaw employees who orchestrated the kidnaping, torture, and murders. That man and his cohorts were simply acting out the logical ramifications of the amoral philosophy Mrs. O’Hair had always championed.

Thus the godless culture Mrs. O’Hair promoted destroyed her in the end. As Proverbs 1:29-31 says, “They that hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord . . . shall eat of the fruit of their own way.” “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man [or woman] soweth, that shall [s]he also reap” (Galatians 6:7).

Definitely a great post from Pastor Phil Johnson.

Praise to God for Mrs. Murray’s son who came to Christ even though his mother was an active and influent atheist. God is truly amazing!

Atheism – Part 6

 

Ever heard an atheist say ”I am against religion because too many people are forced to give up their money to priests, pastors or spiritual leaders. I want the abuse to stop.” ?

That’s really nice of you. Just to let you know, I am not in an abusive relationship with my church/pastor. I am not forced to give them money, they don’t even force me to go to their church. If I want  I am free to stay home on sunday morning. I appreciate your concern but not ALL religious people are victim of spiritual abuse, most of them do not need you to ”save” them from the ”evil” church they are ”trapped” in.

I was not brainwashed, I am not stupid, I do ask questions, I sometimes have doubts and have to do my own research if I am not convinced of the answer I am given.

Furthermore, if you  really are worried about me and other christians, why is it that most of the time I’ll get insulted and suffer ridicule from you? ( I don’t really suffer from it, but you get my point…) Do you do something to stop the abuse or are you only chatting on Facebook telling ”God jokes” and making fun of christians when they come by?

Atheists, where is the proof, the evidence that you DO care about christians…?

 

Atheism – Part 5

Is Jesus a myth? Did he really exist? It is more and more common to hear that Christ never even existed, that some ”fanatic Christians” invented Him.

We read in the Encyclopedia Britannica: ”These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries.”

There is a lot of ressources to answer that claim. Of course, it is not true but you sometime need to give something more than ”That’s not true!”

Here‘s a lot of info about the existance of Jesus-Christ. You’ll find information from both religious and secular sources.

Here’s a detailed article on the testimony of Flavius Josephus concerning the historical Jesus.

Need more details about Julius Africanus ?

Would like to read a book on the subject? Or would like to buy Lee Strobel’s Book on the subject?

Oh! You also have the 4 Gospels and the rest of the New Testament… But there is a good chance an atheist would not accept them as proof that Jesus did exist…

The lies about Christ are not new, they will always exist, you will always be confronted to them… We read in Matthew 28:12-15:

When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

Atheism – Part 4

Are Iron Chariots God’s ”weakness”?

We read in Judges 1:19, KJV: ”And the LORD was with Judah; and he drave out the inhabitants of the mountain; but could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron.”

This verse is often used by atheists as ”proof” that God isn’t almighty. It even inspired the name for Matt Delahunty’s Website, http://wiki.ironchariots.org/.

A good place to start would be Judges 4,  we’ll start at verse 12 : ”When they told Sisera that Barak son of Abinoam had gone up to Mount Tabor, Sisera gathered together his nine hundred iron chariots and all the men with him, from Harosheth Haggoyim to the Kishon River. Then Deborah said to Barak, “Go! This is the day the LORD has given Sisera into your hands. Has not the LORD gone ahead of you?” So Barak went down Mount Tabor, followed by ten thousand men. At Barak’s advance, the LORD routed Sisera and all his chariots and army by the sword, and Sisera abandoned his chariot and fled on foot. But Barak pursued the chariots and army as far as Harosheth Haggoyim. All the troops of Sisera fell by the sword; not a man was left.” ( Judges 4:12-16)

Apparently, Chariots of Iron are no problem for the Lord Almighty if it was then Barak and his troops would have failed miserably against the 900 iron chariots of Sisera…

Also note that this attack on the Bible is nothing new, it was addressed by C.H. Spurgeon more than a hundread years ago. Please read Pastor Spurgeon’s sermon on this passage to get a better understanding of it.

More information can be found here.

A good practical advice here would be to read the Bible daily ( not just the NT). Going through ALL of Scriptures every year would be a good excercice. That way when someone throws a difficult verse at you instead of creating doubts in your mind,  you’ll be ”Yeah, I know that verse, I read it before, I know what it means, I know what it says…”

Atheism – Part 3

Because The Bible is constantly under attack, I decided to post a link to an older post about biblical contradictions.

Hope you enjoy it!

”Improving the Gospel”

I am reading ”Proclaiming a Cross-centered Theology”, the 2008 Together for the Gospel conference, in a book!

A great book! As you can see in this short excerpt from page 105, Mark Dever on the ”Social Gospel”:

”May the local church be involved in good works? Yes, but it should be as a reflection of and an attraction to this gospel of Jesus Christ. If alleviating material poverty is taken as a responsibility of the congregation because doing so is part of the gospel, then many younger Christians may choose to serve there and not in evangelism. This could well be the choice of less mature Christians, more nominal Christians, those who would rather do things that the world around them recognizes and values instead of the evangelism that the world rejects and scorns. Your congregation may well continue to do both for a season, but I fear that those who follow you will not. Such a social gospel will slowly but surely lose its supernatural awkward corners and be smoothed to be acceptable to sinners all around. It’s the story of countless churches in our own land. Walter Rauschenbsch and his early twentieth-century followers are instructive for us here. Evangelism will never be appreciated by the world. It is our special task, pastors, to protect the priority of evangelism.”

I love that!

Here, if you are still wondering who Walter Rauschenbsch is…

”Yes, but they are well-intentioned…”

This morning, I was thinking about this, you know when you share the Gospel with non-believers and they give you their idea and opinion on God, Origins and all of that. Often, the question of sincerity will come up, they say that if they have a sincere heart, God will understand them and save them because they were sincere…

We would answer that we’re not questionning their sincerity but their beliefs. We tell them that they should know and accept the truth of the Gospel of Jesus-Christ.

We proclaim the truth of the Word. We share what God teaches in the Bible and what He has done in our lives.

We do not leave them thinking that as long as they are sincere they will go to heaven when they die.

That would be false and unbiblical…

I hope that this is still true of evangelism but I am not even sure…

Notice the shift in evangelism in the past few years? Diluted ”feel-good” Gospel or, sometimes, no Gospel at all, business-like churches led by ”CEO Pastors”, questionable doctrines and methods, ect…

And let’s say you notice some of these issues and try to share your concerns, what happens?

They listen? They change? They tell you that they want to focus on people and not doctrine? They tell you that they are missional and don’t have time to argue about methods?

In other words, truth of the Word is not important anymore, because they mean good…

But, do they really mean good when they do evangelism without sharing the Gospel and, in the end, people are not exposed to the Truth of the Word and they don’t get saved because they do not hear the Word of Christ? ( Rom. 10)

They are well-intentioned…  But that’s not the point…

You’re not even a Christian…

Here’s John Macarthur on Doug Pagitt:

”He’s not a pastor; he’s not a Christian; that’s not a church. When you call yourself a Christian and you call yourself a pastor and you say you have a church, all of that has to be—to be legitimate—defined biblically. And if it’s not, that’s not a church and you’re not a pastor and you’re not even a Christian.” Read the rest…

I certainly agree on Pastor Macarthur on this one. If you are going to call yourself a christian, you have to define what you mean biblically.

You can pastor a christian church only if the Word of God is your only authority and if Christ is the Lord and Savior of it.

Moving away from that is, indeed, very dangerous…

Ask yourself, is it the Word of God that we’re studying at church? or a ”christian book” labelled as a ”tool”…

Ask yourself, are we proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus-Christ and the salvation through Him alone? Or was that Gospel replaced with social works as a mean to ”reach people”

Ask yourself, when preaching ( or listening), are you exposing the full truth of the Word? Or did you ignore passages that are more difficult for the hearers, because you didn’t want to ”offend” the congregation?

This is serious stuff, you might see your church moving from ”Christian church” to just being a ”church” and then, eventually, to just be a ”group of people” with no Christ, no Lord, no salvation, no Bible…. No God…

”Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.” – Heb. 10:23

Don’t we have the ”same God”?

I heard that phrase very often in my life.

It is a sort of call to unity between religions…I guess. I speak with a muslim, it’ll come up, with a catholic, same thing.

We have the ”same” god, yet he told the muslim to believe in Muhammed and to do good to obtain salvation and he told the catholics to pray Mary to get to God and to do good works to get to heaven.

And in the Bible, He said that the only way to God is Jesus-Christ. He said that salvation is not something you can earn, but it is the result of grace and mercy from God.

How can we have the same God? How woud the same God tell different things to different people? Is God trying to adapt His message?

The Bible clearly states that there is only ONE God:

”… even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior.  I have revealed and saved and proclaimed— I, and not some foreign god among you. You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “that I am God. Yes, and from ancient days I am he.
       No one can deliver out of my hand.When I act, who can reverse it?” ” – Isa. 43:11-13

”For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” - 1 Tim. 2:5

There is only one God. He’s revealed Himself in creation, in Christ and in Scriptures.

”In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.” – Heb. 1:1-2

”For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” – Rom. 1:20

We can clearly know the God in the Bible, His Word is clear.

Do not accept any compromise with other religions, we do not serve the same God, at all! Nothing is further from the truth.

Simply put, other gods… Don’t exist! 

There is only one, God the Almighty, the Father of Jesus-Christ! To Him all the Glory forever and ever! Amen!