Transcription
I am actually not a Christian. And uh, my question that I have for you guys today is, how can I trust God even though he created Satan? Because we know that God is omnipotent and all-powerful. And did the angels not know that too? Did they just start a rebellion even though that they knew it was futile? Or did they not know it was futile? Like, is he stupid? Like, what is this? But yeah, pretty much, he made this guy anyway, and he knew he was going to. Did God just create someone to just deceive us? Like, what is, what is this? Why? Why can't I trust God?
>> Okay. Did God create this shirt?
>> I guess he created everything by proxy, but I don't know if that means he directly made it.
>> Mhm. Okay. I would argue that God did not create this shirt. I think that Taylor did. Okay. I would argue that God did not create the Holocaust. Hitler, Adolf Eichmann, and the other Nazis did. I would argue that God did not create this building. God did not create the University of Georgia. Some human beings who were very sacrificial and hardworking, worked hard, and they built this great university.
Second point, God created us to love him and to love others. Let's say you've been dating a woman for the past month and she said, "I love you, man." How would you feel if tonight your father called you up and said, "Son, I've been paying her $1,000 a month to love you." I think you'd be really bummed out, right? Because love, in order to be real, has to be free. Otherwise, it ain't love. So, when God creates us to love him and to love each other, he's not creating us as his little robots. He's not creating us perfect. If you define perfect as a computer printout that's perfect. No, you and I are not perfect computer printouts. You and I are complex human beings with a rational mind, a conscience, and a free will. We've got instincts, but we don't have to follow all of those instincts. Does that make sense so far?
>> Yes.
>> Okay. So, God created Lucifer as an angel of light to do good. But because God created Lucifer to love him, Lucifer has a free will. Lucifer chose to rebel against God. That's his free will. But guess what? There's coming a day of judgment. And although you and I are free, we are not free to escape the consequences of our decisions. We will be judged by a holy, good God for what we've done wrong. And so will Lucifer.
>> If you're an angel, I guess I mean, I wouldn't know what it would be like to be an angel, but like, you would have this direct contact with God. I think a lot of the problem with being a human is you don't have God just actively engaging you all the time. So, it's easier to be more skeptical. But if you're an angel, if there's not really much room for skepticism, you would be dealing with God and be like, "Okay, this guy is omnipotent. Going against this guy would be futile." So, he did anyway. So,
>> now he's he's got Earth.
>> So,
>> yeah.
>> Yeah. And anthropology shows us that around the world, he's given more than enough evidence for any thinking person to believe in him. But I don't have to if I don't want to. And that's what it gets down to. It gets down to the will. Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." In other words, if there is no God, nature's an accident, and so is my rational mind. It's an accident. Which means how can this accident called the rational mind do good science in order to understand the universe? And Einstein was right. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it's comprehensible that we can understand it by doing good science, by using our rational minds well. But if it's an accident, if this is just a highly developed monkey's mind, and if the universe is just an accident, why is there this correlation where I with my rational mind can unlock the secrets of the universe by doing good science? So, you see, nobody has an excuse to be an atheist or an agnostic because the universe is not religiously ambiguous. Oh, I, I'm just not sure. No, it's, it's real clear. Some type of mind exists. What makes sense is that, yeah, the Big Bang makes sense and that something forming out of nothing doesn't make sense. So there was probably be something behind it. So great, there's probably something supernatural going on. And then that's where y'all take it and be like, "Okay, here's this big book called the Bible and it talks all about this God that made the heavens and the earth and did all these things and there's an Old Testament and a New Testament." And that just, that doesn't fall for me.
>> But the Big Bang and the supernatural, I can track on that. I just don't have any like connection with that, I guess.
>> Got it. Okay.
>> Great.
>> The Bible is simply this. It's God opening up and saying, "This is who I am." In other words, it's God revealing who God is. Now, watch this example. Hi, my name's Cliff. What's your name?
>> John.
>> Phillip.
>> John.
>> Harry. Okay. Not only am I being rude to John, I'm also being an arrogant twit. I think I know his name better than he does. No, your name is
>> My name is John.
>> Now, if I'm gonna get to know John, I'm gonna have to have the humility to allow John to reveal himself to me. I can't just sit here and say, "Oh, yeah, you're John." No, he's got to reveal that to me. And obviously, in terms of building a friendship with John, I'm going to have to have the humility to allow God, allow John to reveal to me who he is. Okay? You do that all the time. Every friend you have has opened up and told you the truth about herself or himself. Now, what the Bible claims is, what Jesus claimed is, I am God opening up and revealing to you who I really am. Now, the majority of people who claim that, we lock up in mental hospitals. They're off-balance emotionally, right? They're a messiah complex. They're deranged. But when you read the Gospels, you notice Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount is ethical genius. Whoever put that together, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, was an ethical genius. Why? Because all the writings on ethics over the past 2,000 years are simply footnotes to the Sermon on the Mount. Secondly, you watch the way Jesus treated people, the depth and quality of his friendships. And you notice, not a fanatic, not an idiot, you notice, gosh, this guy understood people and knew how to connect and build meaningful relationships. Thirdly, you watch him die on a cross, forgiving those guys who nailed him to the cross, and the respect just grows as you say, "Oh my goodness, if I was in that position, I'd be cursing my enemies." But fourthly, and most importantly, three days after he dies, he physically, bodily rises from the dead. And over a period of 40 days, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, he appears to over 500 people who see him risen from the dead. You die and rise from the dead. I promise to listen very carefully to everything you have to say. So you see, it's this resurrection of Christ from the dead that points to him being totally credible, totally trustworthy, which is why faith in him and trusting him to reveal God accurately. Like, I'm meaning to trust John to reveal himself accurately to me is such a wise decision.
>> It's just the, I guess understanding like, I guess the the evidence with Christ is always the the thing that gets you. It's like, okay, if I believe that Christ died and there's all these witnesses, therefore I can believe everything in the Old Testament and be like, okay, so now God never changes, right? Cuz he's all
>> just the same always cuz he's God. He's perfect.
>> Yeah.
>> But then you just see all this crazy stuff going on in the Old Testament. Like, I think something that there's a story that I don't like in 1 Samuel where there's the guy that tries to catch the altar and God just strikes him dead instantly because you're just, you're not allowed to do that. That's God's altar. You can't touch it. But
>> God should have understood that he was
>> maybe trying to honor him or I'm not sure if that's exactly how the story went. But like
>> that kind of freaks me out that
>> Sure it does.
>> Yeah. He could just, if he's, there's the potential for me in trying to honor him, he'll just strike me dead. And that doesn't sound very loving. And
>> and I think there wouldn't be a good reason to believe this otherwise if it weren't for this evidence of the New Testament and Jesus's ministry, which he was certainly a real person that was crucified. But then the evidence for the resurrection is where things get fuzzy. But uh, yeah, that's pretty much what's on my mind.
>> Okay. And that's a great issue. It's a hard issue. Thank you for raising it. It's this whole idea of God judging that turns me off, turns you off. All right, but let's think about the alternative. God doesn't judge. So, I get a little kid here. I beat him to a pulp. The police officer comes over to me and says, "Cliff, what did you do?" And I say, "Well, officer, I just beat the little kid to a pulp." If the officer looks me in the face and says, "Let's go to Starbucks. Do we have a problem?" Yeah.
>> Probably hit the kid in the head. We got a big problem. You know what the problem is? That little kid doesn't matter to the police. I can beat the little kid to a pulp. When the police confront me with my action, they don't do anything but just say, "Let's go get something at Starbucks." That kid doesn't matter to the police. Same way with God. If God doesn't judge us for evil, it means it doesn't matter what we do. And according to God and Christ, it does matter what we do. Does that make any sense?
>> Yes.
>> Good. Excellent. Now, let's be real honest. The bloodiest book in the Bible is not in the Old Testament. The bloodiest book in the Bible is in the New Testament.
>> God in Revelation, right?
>> You Okay, man. You're thinking, great. The blood flows more in Revelation than in any other book in the Bible. So, the Bible's very consistent. God loves you and God judges evil. And guess what, sir? Almost everybody here has a problem with the problem of suffering and evil. Every atheist that I know has a problem with the problem of suffering and evil. And almost every Christian has a problem with the problem of suffering and evil. Okay, we all have a problem with it. On the cross, Christ took the judgment that we deserve for our evil that messes up this world, thereby offering us forgiveness. Which means God knows there's a difference between good and evil. And God is willing to absorb the penalty that we deserve for our participation in evil. Which means God is a suffering God who just doesn't say, "Suck it up and here comes my judgment." No, he's a gracious, forgiving God who says, "I offer you forgiveness for real evil and I'm going to judge the world one day and evil is going to lose." I just think about it, sir. If there is no God and no day of judgment, evil wins. Powerful, wealthy, evil people get away with murder. It's tragic. It happens. And Jesus says, "No, it's not going to ultimately win." Stuart, anything to add?
>> The very end of Matthew. So you're looking at Jesus's resurrection and then his ascension. Talks about in the 40 days between his resurrection and ascension, he did many proofs to prove that he was God. But this gets back to your very fundamental first question, which I really like. Not on the angels one, it was the second one on, well, the angels clearly had this incredible connection with God. So why didn't they just believe? Well, this gets at the very heart of the gospel, which is so many people knew him, but the text says at the very end of the Gospel of Matthew, many doubted and some even turned away. They were with him at the resurrection. They were with him for 40 days and before that, getting all these endless amounts of proofs. Why didn't they? Why didn't they have the strongest faith? They should have had tremendously strong faith, but they turned away. They they turned away in some way. Well, they definitely turned away in a way that's more of a head-scratcher than why in the world are there so many Christians here who haven't turned away? Are they just a lot more gullible or psychologically ill than Christians here? I would say no. I think it's more of a heart matter. And this is why the great, great mathematician from the 1600s, Blaise Pascal, strong Christian, said that God gives those who have an open heart enough evidence to believe in him. But those with a closed heart, not enough evidence to believe in him. And so a lot of those who doubted and turned away said, this walk is a little too tough. I don't like not having my own identity. I have to give my identity over to Christ. That sounds a little restrictive. I want to sleep around as much as possible or be unfaithful to my wife or I want to cheat on that exam. I don't want Jesus telling me how to live. And so I've seen many people sadly come into my office as a pastor and turn away from the faith because of stuff like that. Does that make sense? Because another part of that fascinating passage at the end there of the Gospel of Matthew, why would, if this was not true that some many doubted and all of a sudden disbelieved and fell away from the faith. If that was not true, why would the gospel writers have included that? Why would Matthew have included that? Any text critic would say, "No, he would not have included that. He would have glossed over it." But because he included that, it shows that it must really have happened. It's kind of like Peter denying Christ to a seven-year-old girl. Why would the gospel writers, Mark especially, why would he have included that? He's Peter's biographer. Peter knew that was going in and he said, "Keep it in there." Okay? You don't have that in any other ancient document from that time period with these great heroes. Alexander the Great, find me a story like that. Find me a story like that in the Iliad. They're just not in there. So, it shows that this is written as historical evidence that is kept intact because it really occurred.
>> What happens to someone who commits suicide? Do they go to heaven?
>> What happens? What?
>> When someone commits suicide.
>> Yes, your life was created in one sense by mom and dad. But ultimately, life is a gift from God.
>> So, you didn't create yourself. Don't take yourself out of this world. God ultimately created you. There will be a time you die unless Christ returns. But put your faith in Christ and he promises you eternal life. So, suicide is wrong in the sense that it's self-murder. Second point, no. Just because a person commits suicide does not mean that they go to hell. False. Why? If I'm driving down a highway and experience road rage and die, I ain't going to hell. I put my faith in Christ. You going to heaven, me going to heaven is not based on in the last moment that we drew our last breath, we were doing a good deed. No, our going to heaven is based on what Christ did on the cross. So even if a person does commit suicide, if they've put their faith in Christ, I'm convinced they will be in heaven. That does not mean that suicide is good. It's not good. It's basically saying, "God, when you gave me my life, you did a mistake." Third point, why would a person want to commit suicide? Because life has gotten so painful that they view death as a relief. Okay, so let's get some help. Let's go and get some help physically from a doctor, emotionally from a therapist and from friends, and most importantly, spiritually from Jesus Christ. Let's remember Christ loves us. He's with us. Therefore, we don't have to commit suicide because he has a future for us. The best is yet to come for all who put their faith in Christ. Stuart, what do you think?
Fourth point would be how seriously do you take the brain? Do you look at the brain as just hey, you know, it can't really get that sick and it's all my free will. Okay, I don't look at the brain that way. I'm sorry. The brain is the biggest organ in the body. What is it? Three and a half pounds. The brain can get sick. All fMRI scans show this. And so if you look at the brain as tremendously sick, then I think dying by suicide is the same as dying by cancer in a lot of cases. Not every case, but in a lot of cases, the brain gets the neurochemicals, the amygdala, the prefrontal cortex gets so mixed up that I don't think this whole committing suicide is committing suicide. Because you hear committing suicide and you think committing a crime. You're not committing a crime. You're dying by suicide. You're dying by cancer. Now, yes, there is a level of free will. I think oftentimes with somebody who commit, who dies by suicide, more so than somebody who dies by cancer. There's more of a choice in it. Sure, but in a lot of cases there isn't. A lot of cases your brain gets so sick that I don't know what's up from down and I could pass away that way. So suicide is the heart disease of the 50s. Heart disease in the 50s, we didn't know all anything about it. Today we don't know anything about the brain really when it comes to suicide. What, what happens in terms of the haywiring? We will know way more in 50 years from now. I can promise you. So remember that. Number one, you got to get help for your brain. Number two is don't live by your emotions. See, people live by their emotions today when it comes to faith and they don't feel God's love. So, all of a sudden, hey, I don't feel God's love. If I don't feel God's love, why why exist even? Because it was all about God's love. It was all about the joy I felt in it. Okay, don't forget the weeping prophet Jeremiah. Don't forget David eating his tears day and night. Don't forget Elijah. Take my life, oh Lord. There are a lot of people who are suicidal in the Bible. But at the end of the day, it was, I'm not going to base my relationship with God primarily off of emotions because my emotions are capricious. They'll go up and down, up and down. So, I need to base my life off of the promises of God. And also that God says, "It's not your life to take because I created you. Not only did I create you, I went to the cross and died at a price for you. So honor me with your life even when your thoughts get so darkened." I had one woman who came to know the Lord and then at the age of 75, she came up to me one night and said, "Steuart, I don't feel his presence anymore and I'm depressed and suicidal. So I don't feel the wind in my back anymore, so I don't believe in him anymore." Do you see the danger in basing your faith off of emotions? When I feel the wind at my back, now I believe in God. When I don't, God, you're not. You don't exist. So I think somebody with depression, for example, why is it that I can only feel God's true love and joy when I take a pill? Well, at times that's going to be the case because we get sick. Our brains get sick. And so go about and find that type of medical help, relational help, spiritual help, and that's the whole ball of wax. But you got to do all of that in order to get healthy.
Um, a lot of these are like answers are just like operating under the assumption that the Bible is true.
>> So, um, what can you say to like, be like, yeah, we know that we know that we know that the Bible is true?
>> Well, I can never prove that the Bible is the word of God. So, go firstly to Jesus Christ. Who was he? And we get eyewitness testimony, ancient documents right out of the Gospels. So you get four of them. And what was historical pay dirt even for historians today is if you get one manuscript. So you look at, for example, Alexander the Great, I mean, one manuscript for him, and we get at a minimum four for the Gospels. So the amount of testimony is incredible. So land on Christ first. He's talked about in those, but also outside Josephus, Tacitus, endless amounts of people outside of the Bible talk about Christ. So who is he? What did he say about the Bible? And then look into, is this written as fiction or not? Because many people will say, "Oh, it's like Aesop's fables." Well, hold on here. That's impossible. Look at all the details. Look at all the embarrassing testimony. Look at all of the footnotes and sources within it. Go talk to this person, this woman, that guy. I mean, Malchus. Why is Malchus the guy who Peter cut his ear off? Why is he mentioned in one Gospel and not the other? And why is his name there? That's kind of random, right? It's because he was a source. He was named. Or Luke chapter 24, for example, Road to Emmaus. Why is one person named and the other not? Footnote source, go talk with him. See if this really happened. So impossible to say that this was written as fiction or legend. Any good literary critic would say that. Then you go to manuscript evidence. 25,000 manuscripts. 25,000. No other book comes even close. And then you go right to the dating. These go up to 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. You get who Jesus was and what he did. Just days after what occurred at the resurrection. No other book comes even close in terms of the dating of what occurred with the earliest creeds, the earliest preaching that spread throughout the whole Roman Empire. And then lastly, why did so many thousands, our friend over here who was pushing the Judaism piece, why did so many thousands of Jews become Christians overnight after the resurrection? You have to have an answer for that. But people don't have an answer for it other than he really rose from the dead or something crazy happened. Maybe everybody was drug tripping. Thousands of people were all of a sudden drug tripping. I don't know. Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. So Jesus ultimately is the airtight argument. You can't prove it, but look at all the sources. Look at the dating. Look at how it's written as fact, not fiction. And then you got to make the decision for yourself. Okay. Does this book also really speak to the human dilemma, the problem of our sinful condition and the breakdown of society, and also that there might be an eternity out there, and does it fill the God-shaped hole, this God who's in the Bible or not? So, a lot of it comes down also to your experience in reading this word of God. So, the combination of the two.
Do you grapple with the changes over time with translation and, you know, how it, the Bible is sometimes moved to serve our purpose more than the original intent? I have very few struggles with the reliability of the Gospels because the Gospels in English today are based on over 5,800 Greek manuscripts or pieces of manuscript dated from the 1st to the 10th century, all agreeing to an infinitesimal degree. The manuscript wealth is incredible. Then you've got 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, all agreeing to an infinitesimal degree. And you've got 9,300 manuscripts in Syriac, Slavic, Gothic, Ethiopic, Coptic, and Armenian. So, you've got about 25,000 manuscripts. Are there discrepancies between the manuscripts? Yes, sir, there are. But they are so small, they're so insignificant, they don't change anything of any importance. So, I'm not so concerned about the reliability of the Gospels of the New Testament. I am deeply concerned about the misinterpretations of the New Testament. You know, Jesus the Republican.
>> No, he did not start the Republican party. No. No. Jesus the Democrat. No. Jesus did not start the Democratic party. You know the Jesus who was wrapped in an American flag and laid in a manger. No, he was not wrapped in an American flag to be laid in a manger. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes. You know Jesus the blond-haired blue-eyed guy who asserted white supremacy. False, totally lying, deception. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus is for all races. Let me ask you, what's the demographic in the world that has the highest percentage of Christians? Women of color. And in the United States, what's the demographic with the highest percentage? African-American women. Okay. So around the world, those dumb women believe in Jesus, who was a sexist pig. Bologoney. You're so insulting. It's incredible. Jesus elevated the role of women. Oh, you know, the the the racist Jesus, he he's the one that, you know, I'm struggling with. No, no, no. Jesus did not have a racist bone in his body. In his first sermon in Luke chapter 4, he made a direct frontal attack on racism. And he told a synagogue filled with Jews, "Hey, guess what guys? God loves Gentiles just as much as he loved Jews." And they were irate. And they grabbed him and they bring him to a cliff to throw him to to his death. For anybody to think that Jesus justified sexism or racism, they're misinterpreting the text in a very grievous way. So yes, sir. I'm deeply concerned about the misinterpretations of the New Testament. Then we'll go a little further. I have to debate religion professors. If I want a good debate on a campus, I don't go to the science department. I go to the religion department. Why? Because a majority of the religion professors have knocked the supernatural out of the Gospels. They say, "You can't expect educated 21st century students to believe that Jesus actually walked on water." No, he just knew where the stones were. He just went from stone to stone to stone. Baloney. He walked on water. Why? Because he's a supernatural God revealing himself in human form. And he didn't just spiritually rise from the dead. He bodily, physically rose from the dead. And over four period of 40 days, he appeared to over 500 people. So yes, I'm very concerned about the misinterpretation of the Bible.
Stuart, what do you think? But this is why I'm so thankful for something called textual criticism. Not to insult any other religions, but I'm thinking specifically of one, I'm not going to say the name, that has really just one earliest manuscript. And so, you can't do textual criticism on one manuscript. What is textual criticism? It's taking endless amounts of manuscripts that you have. So, for example, for the Gospels, we have over 5,000, closer to 6,000. And if you look at other languages over 25,000, and you're saying, "Okay, based off of these different manuscripts, how can we get back closest to what the original manuscript wanted to communicate?" But other religions again, we'll only have one or we'll only have 15. Very hard to get back to original audience, authorship, and what really took place. But the Gospels are unlike any other. Faith proclamation through oral testimony first and then the written word second. We have so many manuscripts that this is a crazy study. We have we have this many manuscripts for the Gospels. If you were to pile all of them up together, it would be three and a half Empire State buildings high. So, we're near the great Empire State Building back in New York City. Let me just tell you right now, if you haven't seen the Empire State Building, that is very high versus all other ancient manuscripts from that time period, about 40 high. Okay, that's a lot of dissecting you can do, scholars can do to look at, all right, who were they writing to and who ultimately did they have in mind when they were writing? And so remember, the Bible is not written to us. It's written for us. So, not to us, it's written to, whether Palestinians, whether even Babylonians were around, different people groups at different time periods. So we got to be very careful not just to read a Bible verse. You have to read numerous Bible verses to get ultimately the context and the real message, but know that it's written for you in the sense of it's God-inspired and he is trying to tell you something. It's really his ultimate love letter for