QUESTION PEOPLE ASK
Part 2: How Do We Know We Believe In The Right God?
Last week we looked at evidences for God. But you know, there are many different religions in the world. There are many different people believing many different things. How in the world do we know that what we believe is right? How can we know for sure that we believe in the right, the real, the true God?
Some of you can remember the old game show, where some old stars tired to figure out between 3 contestants, who the real writer, or teacher, or whatever, really was. At least at the end of the show you knew who the real one was. In deciding about God, I am afraid that it is very important that we don’t wait until the end to figure out which one is real. The stakes are much too high.
Of all the religions, how do we know Christianity is right?
Now, first I would like to show why logically, it makes sense to be a Christian, above all other religions, and second I would like to show some evidences for Christianity.
I. WHAT RELIGIONS SAY ABOUT THEMSELVES
1. Hinduism - Started about 2000 BC. In Hinduism there are many gods. They believe the world is an illusion & the goal of humanity is to keep from being reincarnated so your soul can be absorbed into the ultimate principle. In others words, if you get it right, when you die you become part of “The Force.” Good Karma - absorbed Bad Karma - come back & do it again.
2. Buddhism - Started by Siddhartha Gautama who was born in 563 BC. He was a Hindu, but he was dissatisfied with the answers Hinduism gave to life’s problems. One day as he sat under a fig tree he suddenly found the answers to life’s problems through enlightenment. Later, he was called Buddha (Enlightened One). Goal in life is to become enlightened.
Some - no life after death
Others - Reincarnated until you get it right.
3. Islam - Began w/work of Muhammad who lived from 570-632. It began in what is currently Saudi Arabia.
Holy book - Qur’an. Salvation through good life, giving money to the poor, 5 time a day prayer, pilgrimage to Mecca.
Believe in some sort of heaven. Problem, the Qur’an, their own holy book teaches that Allah is a distant God, who doesn’t pay much attention to people, and who tries to trick people out of being saved.
4. Jehovah’s False Witnesses - 144,000 people go to heaven. The rest of the saved folk live on paradise earth. The bad, burn up & it’s over with.
5. Mormons - 3 choices - Hell, rebuilt earth, heaven - where good Mormon men become gods over their own planets. Their wives have to play their cards right so their husbands, after they are resurrected, will call their celestial names so they will rise as well. If they do, then they go have a bunch of children & populate their own planet.
You get another chance after this life.
6. Christianity -
> Hebrews 9:27 it is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment.
- Mark 9:43-44
II. HOW DO I KNOW OUR GOD IS REAL?
1. Fulfilled Prophecy -
Nothing can stop the Bible. It is useless to call it the world’s best seller, though it is because that term implies comparison - and there is nothing that even remotely compares with the Bible in sales and circulation.
The Bible, or parts of it, has now been translated into over 1,100 languages. It is estimated that there are over 200 million Bibles in the world today. Placed end to end, they would make a line 17,000 miles long.
The Bible contains over 2,000 prophecies, which have come true. Some related to events in the kingdoms of the world and most relate to the first coming of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The Bible predicted that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem (Mic. 5:2), born of a virgin, killed, betrayed for 30 pieces of silver, and that His garments would be divided. They were.
1000 years before the Romans invented crucifixion, the Psalmist prophesied in Psalm 22 that Jesus’ hands and feet would be pierced. How in the world could anyone predict such a thing if our God did not tell Him?
A number of years ago, a doctoral student in mathematics earned his PHD by figuring the odds of all the monkeys in Africa running over a single typewriter and typing every book in the English language without mistake. The odds were 1 to 1 with 64 “0’s” behind it and yet the odds of 1 man coming and fulfilling just 12 of the prophecies Jesus fulfilled are less than that.
My friends, I know our God is the real God because when His Holy Book says something is going to happen, it happens.
2. Changed Lives - I know our God is real, because of the way He has changed lives.
While in seminary, I volunteered as a chaplain in a prison in Memphis. While there, one of the other chaplains told me about a man he had given a Bible to. Most of the time, we give out Bibles in the prisons that have regular paper, and not the thin paper that many of our Bibles have. We do that, because some of the prisoners used the thin paper in our Bibles to roll cigarettes with. Anyway, this man told the chaplain that he wanted a Bible like ours. The chaplain agreed on the condition that before he tore a page out of the Bible, that he would read it. The man agreed. Some time later the chaplain saw the man again. The man told the chaplain, “I’m a Christian now.” When the chaplain asked him how it happened the man answered, “Well, I smoked Matthew. I smoked Mark. I smoked Luke, but I just couldn’t smoke John.” God had gotten a hold on the man’s heart and wouldn’t let go.
Some of you have had your lives miraculously changed because of your relationship with Jesus Christ.
The Bible says,
> 2 Corinthians 5:17 If any man be in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold old things are become new.”
I know our God is real because of fulfilled prophecies. I know our God is real because of the lives He’s changed. I know our God is real because of answered prayer.
3. Answered prayer -
Here I gave examples of answered prayer in my own life & ministry. You will need to do the same.
IV. YOU CAN KNOW AS WELL
- John 7:17
