GOD’S NOT DEAD: IS FAITH BLIND?
A. What sets a believer apart from a non-believer is our FAITH.
1. Hebrews 11:6- “Without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must
believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.”
ILLUSTRATION:
In the spring of 1991 I had the privilege of going with other ministers to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (now the capital of the Slovak Republic) on an eight-week mission effort. We established an English Bible Study Center in the city where we taught conversational English classes using the Bible as a text.
Since many Slovakians were eager to learn how to speak English more correctly, the English Bible Study Center served as an open door to teach these people the gospel. Most of the students who came to these classes were Catholics, and some from other RELIGIONS. Several of the students were atheists or agnostics who came only to sharpen their English speaking skills.
One young man in particular, a self-professed atheist and a former Communist sympathizer, was somewhat indignant about my using the Bible as a textbook to teach conversational English. He described it as a fairy-tale comparable to Mother Goose. He was satisfied to stay in the class as long as the discussion was about the English language.
When some of the students began asking more questions about the Bible story being read than they were about English, he became irritable. The last day he was in class was when we were reading about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. His last words as he stormed out the door were: “Only children would believe such a lie!”
2. So, is our BELIEF in God a LIE? Are we NAÏVE in our FAITH? Have we been DECEIVED?
COMMENT:
According to that young atheist in my class we have. He thinks that Christians are naïve little children who can’t tell the difference from Jesus Christ and Humpty Dumpty.
B. The problem with many UNBELIEVERS is that they think the FAITH that a Christian has in the Bible as
being God’s Word is BLIND—it is a FAITH that has no EVIDENTIAL BASIS.
1. They misunderstand passages like:
a. Hebrews 11:1- “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
b. 2 Corinthians 5:7- “We live by faith, not by sight.
COMMENT:
Now, it’s true that we can’t SEE God, and we certainly didn’t WITNESS God CREATING the UNIVERSE. However, our FAITH in God and His written WORD is far from being BLIND FAITH.
2. In the movie Josh Wheaten is having to defend his FAITH in God before his Philosophy class because he refused to write the words “GOD IS DEAD” and give it to Professor Raddison.
WATCH THIS VIDEO CLIP AS JOSH PRESENTS HIS OPENING ARGUMENTS.
C. I want us to take a look at the AUTHENTICITY of the Bible, as I attempt to prove that our BELIEF in God and His Word if not based on BLIND FAITH.
MESSAGE:
COMMENT:
We need to understand that Judaism and Christianity are historical religions. Therefore, the
Bible is more than a book about MORALS and ETHICS, it is a history book authenticated by:
I. RELIABLE HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS
-Matthew 5:18- “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of the pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything accomplished.”
A. There are literally tens of thousands of Old and New Testament manuscripts that have been
preserved spanning hundreds and thousands of years with minute variations of content.
1. This within itself is a miracle.
a. Think about this for a
ILLUSTRATION:
If I were to ask everyone here to get out a spiral notebook and a pencil and start writing word for word the book of Genesis, there will be MULTIPLE mistakes made along the way. Complete
sentences will be left out, words will be inverted. Punctuation will be missed and incorrect.
Yet we have thousands of complete and partial New Testament MANUSCRIPTS that were copied and re-copied by different people over centuries with a whopping 99.5% accuracy rate, according to EXPERTS.
b. The PROCESS was very simple.
COMMENT:
The churches that received a gospel or a letter from the original writers, would, in turn, meticulously copy it and send it on to the next church where it was painstakingly copied again and sent on to the next church and so on. Thus the manuscripts passed down from one generation to the next, all with very few differences in content.
The only explanation that I can think of for such ACCURACY is that God guided the hands of these SCRIBES to preserve His writings throughout the AGES.
2. Also the abundance of complete and partial MANUSCRIPTS of the New Testament is important.
a. The next closest ancient document in significant copies would be Homer’s Iliad with 643. That’s it. The New Testament trounces that by over 24,000 copies! And many of these copies are only 25 to 50 years from the ORIGINAL.
b. All the other major works of note from ancient history such as Plato, Caesar, Pliny, Euripides,
Tacitus, and Herodotus are 20 copies or less, and are hundreds of years from the
COMMENT:
Yet, these ancient manuscripts are overwhelmingly accepted as credible historical accounts, whereas the Bible’s authenticity is always in question.
B. There are also DOCUMENTED accounts by CONTEMPORARY HISTORICAL WRITINGS.
1. Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Lucian, Josephus, Thallus, Phlegon, Suetonius, and many other 1st and 2nd century historians wrote about Jesus Christ and his followers and their teachings, even though they were not disciples of Christ and some were adamantly against Christianity.
2. Yet, their writings REVEAL and CONFIRM certain EVENTS found in the New Testament.
II. FULFILLMENT OF PROPHECY
A. These are INTERNAL PROOFS of the AUTHENTICITY of Scripture. (Here are a few.)
1. There is the historical fulfillment of the prophecy of a young king named Josiah who, some 300
years before he was born, would be used by God to overturn the pagan alters of Baal.
a. 1 Kings 13:2b- “…A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David. On you he will sacrifice the priests of the high places who now make offerings here, and human bones will burned on you.”
b. As was written, the prophecy was fulfilled some 300 years later as recorded in 2 Kings 23:15.
2. Another example is the prophesy of a man named Cyrus and the nations of Babylon and the Medo-
Persian Empire.
a. The prophet Isaiah vividly describes how God would destroy the powerful kingdom of Babylon,
by the hands of the Medes and the Persians in Isaiah 13, 21:1-10.
b. The prophet then named the conquering king of the Medo-Persian Empire as being Cyrus-
Isaiah 44:28, 45:1-7. (This is a remarkable prophecy, especially since Cyrus was not even born until almost 150 years after Isaiah penned these words.)
3. There were MESSIANIC PROPHECIES that were fulfilled centuries later in the person of Jesus.
a. His virgin birth- Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:21-23
b. Born to the tribe of Judah- Genesis 49; Luke 3:23ff
c. Born in Bethlehem- Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1
d. His betrayal of 30 pieces of silver- Zechariah 11:12-13; Matthew 26:14-15
e. Bought potter’s field with the 30 pieces of silver- Zechariah 11:13; Matthew 27:7-10
e. Casting of lost for his garments- Psalm 22:18; John 19:23-24
f. No broken bones- Psalm 34:20; John 19:32-36
g. Buried in a rich man’s tomb- Isaiah 53:9; Matthew 27:57-60
h. His resurrection- Psalm 16:10; Mark 6:16 and Acts 2:31
COMMENT:
This is just a sampling; there are actually well over 100 PROPHECIES in the Old Testament
that found their FULFILLMENT in Christ centuries later.
Now, some historians say that Jesus MANIPULATED and perpetrated these events to SELF-FULFILL the Old Testament prophecies since he was under the DELUSION that He was the Messiah. But most of these events could not have been PERPETRATED by Jesus nor anyone else; especially since many of these events happened while Jesus was either dying on the cross or after His death.
B. There are so hundreds more of Biblical examples of God FULFILLING the PROPHECIES of the
PROPHETS that He inspired them to WRITE, that we cannot possibly talk about today.
ILLUSTRATION:
I want you to understand how AMAZING these PROPHECIES are. If Russ Mathis would have told me on my very first Sunday here on July 4, 2010 that I was going to have a HEART ATTACK and be rushed to EMERGENCY SURGERY two years later on the very same morning that he was going to have SURGERY . . . I would get the next LOTTERY NUMBER from him.
That’s exactly what these PROPHETS did, and they ALL came to PASS years later.
III. ARCHEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES
A. Archaeology, over the past 150 years, is able to verify some of the history contained in the Bible.
1. For instance, two of the cities mentioned solely in the Bible and in no other historical writings of
antiquity, “Sodom and Gomorrah,” have been for many years considered mythological.
a. Genesis 19 “reveals how God utterly destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah along with other cities
because of their godlessness and sexual perversion.”
b. Jude, the brother of Jesus, mentions “Sodom and Gomorrah to remind us how God will punish
the ungodly for their sins”- Jude 7.
COMMENT:
Since the Bible is the only writing that refers to Sodom and Gomorrah, skeptics believed that these CITIES never EXISTED—they were a MYTH. But in 1975 there were excavations of a town called Tell Mardikh, now known as Ebla, that uncovered 15,000 tablets dating back to 2500 to 2250 BC. On some of these tablets are names of cities mentioned in the Bible including Sodom and Gomorrah, confirming their EXISTENCE.
2. Other archaeological findings have verified Bible accounts:
a. There was a ruler of Babylon named Belshazzar.
b. The Hittites not only existed but also had a vast empire.
c. King Sargon ruled over Assyria.
d. When the walls of the city Jericho were excavated by Professor Garstand in the 1930s, it was determined that its walls fell outward not inward as it would have been if an army ATTACKED and knocked down the WALLS. This confirms the Biblical account recorded in Joshua 6 “that it was by an ACT of God and not an ARMY that brought the WALLS down.”
e. The historical references found in the Book of Acts have proven to be accurate.
f. There are countless others findings that you can research.
B. So far, the findings of ARCHAEOLOGY have VERIFIED, and in no case DISPUTED, historical
points of the Biblical record.
COMMENT:
Dr. William F. Albright, renowned archaeologist and former skeptic of the authenticity of the Biblical record writes in his book The Archaeology of Palestine and the Bible, “The excessive skepticism shown toward the Bible [by certain schools of thought] has been progressively discredited. Discovery after discovery has established the accuracy of numerous details.”
IV. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
A. Over the centuries many THEORIES about the EARTH and UNIVERSE have been disproven by the advancement of technology. However, the Bible discredited these THEORIES long before modern day SCIENTISTS did.
1. In the movie, God’s Not Dead, Professor Radisson, referred to Josh and other believers as “FLAT
EARTHERS.”
a. This, of course, has reference to those who once believed the EARTH was FLAT, and if on sailed the OCEANS far enough his ship would fall off the FACE of the EARTH.
b. Long before Fedinand Magellan proved once and for all that the earth was round when he sailed around the world in 1519-1522, the Bible spoke of the earth as being a “circle” in Isaiah 40:22.
2. Also various cultures had their theories as to what held up the earth, from the Greek mythological giant named Atlas who held the earth on his shoulders to the Hindu myth of elephants or a turtle carrying the earth on their backs.
a. Yet, the Bible teaches that God “suspends the earth over nothing” (Job 26:7); which science
has proven to be true.
b. How did ANCIENT MAN know this? Lucky guess?
c. No other ANCIENT CULTURE stated this, only God’s Word.
3. Hipparchus, the father of astronomy, believed there were only 1,080 stars in the sky.
a. Some 300 years later Ptolemy said he counted 1,056 stars in the sky.
b. It wasn’t until the invention of the telescope that it was discovered that the stars in the sky are
innumerous.
c. Yet, Genesis 22:17 and Jeremiah 33:22 already stated that the stars are “countless” and
“measureless.”
4. During the early 20th century, most scientists (including Einstein) believed the universe was static.
a. Then in 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that distant galaxies were receding from the earth, and the further away they were, the faster they were moving. In other words, the UNIVERSE was EXPANDING.
b. However, in Job 9:8, Isaiah 42:5, Jeremiah 51:15, and Zechariah 12:1, all state that “God stretches out the heavens.”
5. Starting with Einstein in the early 1900s and continuing today, science has confirmed that the
UNIVERSE had a BEGINNING.
a. Science was at one time dominated by the theory of uniformitarianism, which stated that the
universe was ETERNAL—no BEGINNING and no END.
b. Yet, most Christians can quote the first verse in the Bible- “In the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth”- Genesis 1:1.
c. Hebrews 1:10- “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.”
B. There are many more PROOFS.
1. Matthew Fontaine Maury, the father of oceanography and author of the book Physical Geography of the Sea, was able to chart the ocean currents, including pathways for ships at sea. He later charted the migration of whales. Maury attributed his discovery of ocean paths to the Scripture found in Psalms 8:8b: “…the fish of the sea, and all that swam the paths of the sea.”
2. It wasn’t until the 1970s, with the help of deep diving research submarines, that oceanographers
discovered springs on the ocean floor. Yet, Genesis 7:11, 8:2; Job 38:16; Proverbs 8:28, all speak of
the “springs and fountains of the DEEP.”
3. In 1925, soundings of the sea floor were taken to get a picture of the TOPOGRAPHY of the sea bed. They were astonished to discover that there were not only mountains on the sea floor, but there were mountain ranges longer than any mountains on land. When “Jonah took a ride in a big fish into the depths of the OCEAN, he wrote about MOUNTAINS under the sea”- Jonah 2:5-6
COMMENT:
Once again, SCIENCE proves the BIBLE. Or is it, SCIENCE catches up with the BIBLE?
CONCLUSION:
A. Our FAITH in God and His written Word is not based on BLIND FAITH, but abundant EVIDENCE.
1. Therefore, the Christian faith, as it is revealed in Scripture, is not a collection of moralistic fables and ideals, but rather something that God did for us upon this earth in history.
2. Our choice is either to ACCEPT it by FAITH or REJECT it as a LIE.
a. “If we ACCEPT it by FAITH, we PLEASE God and will be saved”- Hebrews 11:6.
b. If we REJECT it as a LIE? Well, this is what the Bible says about that:
-Psalm 14:1- “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”
B. Obviously there are skeptics who will disbelieve the authority of the Bible despite all the evidence presented.
1. One day they are going to FACE God on the DAY of JUDGMENT.
2. They will BELIEVE then, but it will be too LATE.
