|
|
|
Studies
Subjects
|
Presuppositional Apologetics and Proof
God Exists: There is Proof, Proof, Nothing but Proof
The Bible reveals to humanity that the Earth hangs on nothing
(Job 26:7) and is a sphere (Isaiah 40:22). Scripture declared this
thousands
of years before telescopes and modern science discovered those
facts. God’s word teaches us the proper function of the water cycle
(Job
38:12-14), the existence of ocean currents (Psalms 8:8), the solar
cycle, and the expansion of the universe (Isaiah 40:22) centuries
before
modern science found these truths. These evidential facts are
consistent with the authority of the Bible. These and other
evidences do not
give the Bible authority; it is endued with it because it is God’s
word. All science, testing, and examination presuppose God and His
word.
Testing utilizes a number of dynamics such as logic and induction.
A materialistic worldview cannot justify the existence or the use
of the
laws of reason. They are nonphysical and abstract dynamics that can
only come from the nature of the one true God. We have certain
knowledge that the God of scripture lives. We do not think He
probably exists. Our faith is not just reasonable or plausible. It
is impossible
for the true and living God not to exist because without Him, we
cannot know anything at all. He is the precondition for all
knowledge. God
must be presupposed as the basis of every element of mankind's
experience, knowledge, and value.
God Aone is the Perfect Forecaster
Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD
of hosts: “I am the First and I am the Last; besides Me, there is
no God.
And who can proclaim as I do? Then let him declare it and set it in
order for Me... Let them show these to them. Do not fear, nor be
afraid;
have I not told you from that time, and declared it? You are My
witnesses. Is there a God besides Me? Indeed there is no other
Rock; I know
not one. I have declared the former things from the beginning; they
went forth from My mouth, and I caused them to hear it. Suddenly I
did
them, and they came to pass ... Even from the beginning I have
declared it to you; before it came to pass I proclaimed it to
you... You have
heard; see all this. And will you not declare it?... Come near to
Me, hear this: I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from
the time
that it was, I was there. And now the Lord GOD and His Spirit have
sent Me. Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel:
I
am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by
the way you should go. Oh, that you had heeded My commandments!
Then your peace would have been like a river, and your
righteousness like the waves of the sea... Declare, proclaim this,
utter it to the end
of the earth...” (Isaiah 44:6-8 and 48:3-20).
1. 333 Predictions about Christ:
The messianic prophecies that were fulfilled by Jesus Christ.
The Tenach (Old Testament) foretold the coming of the Messiah in
exact
detail. The text was written centuries before the coming of Jesus,
and it predicted over three hundred prophecies about Him. No other
founder of any religion can provide a similar prophetic record of
his life written down centuries before his birth. Joseph Smith,
Mary Baker
Eddy, David Koresh, Muhammad, and Buddha cannot supply a widely
transmitted, preexisting written record that accurately predicted
the
details of their life.
The three hundred clear prophecies of the coming Messiah were
predicted and predestined by God. The Lord forecasted events and
historical facts about the coming of Jesus prior to His birth. All
these predictions came true in the birth, life, death, and
resurrection of
Jesus of Nazareth. No other leader or prophet had predictive
material written about their life recorded before they were born.
Jesus had
over three hundred predictions about His life that were fulfilled
in exact detail.
Christ’s virgin birth was predicted about seven hundred years
before He was born in Isaiah 7:14: “So the Lord Himself shall give
you a
sign. Behold, the virgin will conceive and shall bring forth a son,
and they shall call His name Emmanuel.” His place of birth was
forecasted
in Micah 5:2: “And you, Bethlehem... out of you He shall come
forth to Me, to become Ruler in Israel, He whose goings forth have
been...
from eternity.” The exact date of His entry in Jerusalem was
predicted by Daniel in chapter nine. God prophesied the Palm Sunday
event
recorded in Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is
just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt,
the foal of a donkey.”
Christ’s death on the cross was foretold before that form of
execution was even invented by Persia. Psalms 22:1-16 announces the
crucifixion hundreds of years before it happened: “My God, my God,
why have You forsaken me... But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach
of men, and despised by the people. All who see me laugh me to
scorn; they shoot out the lip; they shake the head, saying, He
trusted on
the LORD; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue him, since He
delights in him! I am poured out like water, and all my bones are
spread apart;
my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels and
You have brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have circled
around
me; the band of spoilers have hemmed me in, they have pierced my
hands and my feet.” This evidence is overwhelming. But the truth is
even more certain and compelling than compiling great blocks of
evidence to prove the facts of Christianity. The argument for Jesus
Christ
is certain. Without God, one cannot provide the necessary
preconditions for truth and certainty.
The Overwhelming Evidence for Christianity
"Present your case," says the LORD, "Bring forth your strong
reasons," says the King of Jacob. "Let them bring forth and show us
what will
happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we
may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us
things to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we
may know that you are gods; yes, do good or do evil, that we may be
dismayed and see it together" (Isaiah 41:21-23).
Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no
other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from
the
beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done,
saying, "My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure"
(Isaiah 46:8
-10).
There is overwhelming evidence that God exists. But the
evidence alone will not convert a pagan into a saint. The bare
facts of the three
hundred-plus messianic prophecies of Christ are astounding and
convincing to me as a Christian. I love the evidence that God has
given
us. The prophecies that foretold the birth, life, and death of
Jesus are found in Genesis 3:15, 49:10; Psalms 2:6-7, Psalms 22;
Micah 5:2;
Daniel 9:25; Zechariah 9:9, 12:10; Isaiah 7:14, 9:6, 53:1-8; and
many other passages. These were written down before the birth of
Christ
as recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the ancient Jewish Targums.
There are over three hundred predictions of the coming Messiah and
they were all fulfilled by Jesus.
Peter Stoner calculated the odds as ten to the one hundred and
fifty-seventh power that forty-eight of these predictions could be
fulfilled
by blind chance in the life of Jesus. In the Probability Theory, it
is agreed that odds smaller than ten to the fiftieth power are the
same as
zero. And ten to the one hundred and fifty-seventh power is much
larger than that. Hence the predicted life of Jesus was ordained by
God
Almighty. There are lots of self-styled prophets and claimants
bouncing around in our world today. The tabloids have prophecies and
predictions that they share with the world for a fee. Recently, the
National Enquire forecasted fifty-five prophecies. None of them came
true. But we incorrectly use these failures to validate the
prophecies in the Bible. Just because one source gives false
prophecies, does not
mean that the biblical prophecies prove the claims of Christ. The
messianic prophecies are wonderful “proof” built upon the Christian
worldview. The accuracy and specific detail of the events that the
Bible forecasted are astonishing to the believer. They are not vague
generalities. The messianic prophecies are bold, startling,
detailed, and specific. But a sharp skeptic will not affirm them as
proof.
All things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of
Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms concerning Me (Luke 24:44).
. God is the precondition for all argument, proof, evidence, and
reason. It is impossible for God not to exist for He is the
precondition for
all intelligent thought. All human thought requires the employment
and assumption of the universal and invariant laws of logic. Only
the
transcendent, nonphysical, and unchanging holy God provides the
necessary preconditions for the use of nonphysical, universal, and
unchanging laws of logic. To argue at all, you must presuppose that
the true and living God exists.
The Evidence is Glorious
Evidence is wonderful. The Christian faith has tons of evidence
that supports its claims. In reality, there is nothing but evidence
for the
God of the Bible. Every star and every atom declares the majesty of
God. We see evidence of God’s finger prints in every corner of the
universe. Mankind discovers the proof and affirms the facts that
the Bible records and announces. The greatest miracle is the
resurrection
of Jesus. Jesus Christ is alive! He is the only religious leader in
history to rise from the dead. He is the only one who promised a
resurrection, and He kept His promise. You can visit the tombs of
all the deceased religious leaders and find their remains still in
the grave.
The great grandson of Gandhi took the revered man’s ashes to the
Ganges river as thousands of onlookers sang and chanted. He opened
the copper urn and dropped Gandhi’s ashes in the river. This proved
Gandhi died, and stayed dead. Recently in Israel, the Muslims and
the
Jewish people have fought over the control of the tomb of Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. You can visit their occupied graves just as you
can
the heterodox leaders: Mary Baker Eddy, Joseph Smith, and Muhammad.
All these allotheists died and stayed dead; their occupied
sarcophaguses attest to this. However Jesus is alive. His grave is
empty, no bones about it.
Jesus thundered, “All power on earth and heaven has been given
to me.” No force could keep Him down. The Romans killed Him. He was
put into a cave tomb, and a huge boulder was rolled at a downward
angle in front of the cave. Then they pasted Caesar’s seal on the
crypt
and posted Roman guards to protect the tomb. They were only trying
to prevent the inevitable. Jesus had all the power to rise, and
nobody
could stop Him. Can you imagine, after the resurrection, what the
men thought who had Jesus executed, as they are walked down the
street and saw the risen Jesus. What do you say when you see Him on
the sidewalk? They must have been stunned. God used this, and the
preaching of the Apostles to win many of Christ’s enemies to
salvation. The Book of Acts reports in chapter six verse seven:
"Then the word
of God spread, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly
in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient to the
faith.”
Even many Pharisees came to believe in Jesus (Acts 15:5).
Men do not die willingly if they know they have been deceived.
The followers of Jim Jones, the people who knew that he was a kook
and a
fraud, tried to escape Jonestown. Once they knew Jones was an
impostor, and that he whipped up a batch of poison Kool-Aid, they
ran and
hid in the jungle. Many others tried to escape and were shot. They
knew Jones was a charlatan and they did not want to die for him.
However the Apostles and hundreds of others in the first century
died for Jesus because they knew Jesus was alive.
The first century followers of Christ died believing that He
was perfect and sinless. Many of them spent day and night with Him
for over
three years. And they believed He was sinless. If you spent sixty
minutes with any other human, you would soon find out that they
were not
perfect. You would not lay down your life declaring that they were
sinless. You would not die for what you know is a lie. Koresh
understood
this problem since he was a cunning deceiver. Knowing that his
followers would observe him sinning every day, he devised a crafty
way to
avoid the problem of claiming to be the Messiah as a sinner. Koresh
called himself the “sinful Messiah.” The antithesis to Koresh is
Jesus.
He had all His friends and enemies confess that He did not sin. The
disciples, His betrayer, His religious enemies, and His Roman
enemies,
were all in agreement on one subject: Jesus never sinned. No one
could accuse Jesus of sin. Jesus is alive as the sinless Messiah.
That is a
fact. It is not a brute fact that stands by itself and awaits the
judgment of man. It is true, and it is impossible for it not to be
true.
|
|
$17.25 plus 3.50 shipping
ISBN 1-4208-2762-6
|
|
|
|
