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Adrian Rogers: Why I Love Israel [#2349]
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Adrian Rogers: Is God Through with the Jews? [#2070] (Audio)
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4 Miracle Prophecies Christians Should Know about Israel
- Adrian RogersLove Worth Finding Ministries
- 20203 Aug
“Thou shalt arise and have mercy upon Zion, for the time to favor her, yea, the set time is come. For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones and favor the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord and all of the kings of the earth Thy glory. When the Lord shall build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory.” Psalm 102:13-16
People sometimes ask me, “Pastor, why do you keep going back to the land of Israel?” Because I love the land and I love her people.They are God’s chosen people, a people of destiny. I go to Israel for two reasons.
One, I love her past. I love to look back and see the land where my Savior lived and walked and talked. I love to study the Bible on location. It causes the Bible to burst aflame in your hands.
Two, I want help in understanding the present and the future, because there is Bible prophecy yet to be fulfilled. Keep your eyes on Zion, God’s holy land. As the Jew goes, so goes the world. The Jews are God’s yardstick, God’s outline, God’s blueprint, for what He’s up to in the rest of the world.
The land of Israel, I believe, is the most important spot on earth. The most important city is not Washington or Moscow, but Jerusalem. The most important land, believe it or not, is not America but tiny Israel, about the size of New Jersey.
Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/silverjohn
What Does the Bible Have to Say about Israel?
Israel: the geographic center. “See, I have set thee in the midst of the nations (Ezekiel 5:5). Israel, called “the navel of the earth,” is strategically located at the hub of three continents.
Israel: the revelation center. From this land, the land of Moses, the prophets and the apostles, came the Word of God.
Israel: the spiritual center. In Bethlehem Jesus was born. In Nazareth He grew to maturity. In Galilee He walked and taught on the mountainsides and beside the Sea. In Jerusalem our Lord was crucified, buried and rose from the dead. From the Mount of Olives He ascended. And to the Mount of Olives He will return; His feet will first touch down upon the Mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4).
Israel: the prophecy center. Prophecy is “pre-written history.” The land of Israel is the only land belonging to God’s people. The details of their future are minutely recorded in the Bible. If you want to know what God is doing, study Israel and her people.
Israel: the storm center. The Middle East, specifically Israel, is the world’s greatest trouble spot. The Bible says “Jerusalem will be a burdensome stone for all people” of the world[CAP1] [CA2] – (Zechariah 12:3), and indeed we see in the daily news the gathering storm clouds of Armageddon.
Israel: also the peace center. We’re told to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). There will never be peace on earth until there’s peace in Jerusalem, until Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, rules and reigns from Jerusalem. When we’re praying for the peace of Jerusalem, we’re praying, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.” We want our Lord to reign from Zion, to sit upon the throne of his father David.
Israel: one day will be the glory center. When our Lord returns, all nations of the world will come to Jerusalem to worship (Micah 2:3). Jerusalem will be the capital city not only of Israel but of the entire world, and the Word of the Lord shall go forth from Zion (Isaiah 2:3). Jesus will reign from Jerusalem (Luke 1:32). Israel is at the center of God’s plan.
As we look at Israel, I want you to see four miracle prophecies about this land.
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Generation (How Israel Came to Be a Nation)
In Genesis 18:18 God gave Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, the promise of a son—and descendants. He said, “Abraham, through your son all the nations of the world are going to be blessed” (Genesis 12:3, 22:18). When Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, God gave them a miracle child. Every Jew alive today is the direct result of a miracle birth. Therefore, our precious Jewish friends should have no difficulty believing in the virgin birth because every one of them is here because of a miracle birth. That’s the miracle of the generation of the Jewish people.
Then God promised Abraham a land for His people. God Himself gave Abraham the land we call Israel. And He gave it irrevocably. (Genesis 12:1, 15:16, 15:18-21, Deuteronomy 9:4)
Photo courtesy: ©Thinkstock/Matthew Brosseau
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Preservation – Part 1
Not only did God bring Israel into being as a miracle nation, but God keeps Israel as a miracle nation. Psalm 89 shows God’s heart on this.
18 For the Lord is our defense; and the Holy One of Israel is our king…. 20 I have found David My servant; with My holy oil have I anointed him: 21 With whom My hand shall be established: Mine arm also shall strengthen him. 22 The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him. 23 And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. 24 But My faithfulness and My mercy shall be with him: and in My name shall his horn be exalted…. 27 “Also I will make him My first born, higher than the kings of the earth. 28 My mercy will I keep for him forevermore and My covenant [an unbreakable promise] shall stand fast with him. 29 His seed also will I make to endure forever and his throne as the days of heaven.”
God declares the descendants of David shall endure. Looking down through the tunnel of time, He foresaw (v. 30) that if David’s descendants 30 “forsake My law and walk not in My judgments [and by the way, they have forsaken God’s law and not walked in His judgments] 31”If they break My statutes and keep not My commandments,” [they have broken His statutes, they have not kept His commandments], then God says, “32 Then will I visit their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. 33 Nevertheless,” [highlight the word “nevertheless] “My lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer My faithfulness to fail, 34 My covenant will I not break nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips, 35 Once have I sworn by My holiness that I will not lie unto David. 36 His seed shall endure forever and his throne as the sun before Me. 37 It shall be established forever as the moon, even like the faithful witness in the sky. Selah.” [Selah means “pause and think about that.”]
God has said:
the Jews would be disobedient—and they were,
the Jews would be dispersed—and they were,
the Jew would be discredited—and they were,
but you could no more destroy the Jewish race than you could destroy the sun, the moon and stars. They may be chastised, they may suffer, but God said, “I will keep My word to David, his seed shall endure” (v. 29).
Jeremiah 31:35-37 confirms this.
35 Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for a light by day, the ordinances of the moon and the stars for a light by night, Who disturbs the sea, And its waves roar (The Lord of hosts is His name): 36 “If those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before Me forever.” 37 Thus says the Lord: “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done,” says the Lord.
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Preservation – Part 2
If you want to get rid of the nation Israel, you will first have to get rid of the sun, moon, and stars. In other words, God is saying, “I’ll tell you when I’ll cast off Israel: the same day you can tell Me how high is ‘up.’ I’ll cast off Israel the same day you can show Me what this earth suspended in space is resting upon. You’ll have to pluck the sun, moon, stars from My heaven before you can annihilate this nation.”
They exist as a miracle nation. They stand beside the graves of their persecutors. They live on. When they returned, the land was a rock-filled desert. Zion now is blooming as a rose.
Every Jew is here today because of God’s keeping, preserving power upon His chosen people.
Throughout history, Satan, Israel’s ancient foe, has tried to eradicate this nation and obliterate this promise, but he could not do it.
Egypt’s pharaoh could not diminish God’s chosen people.
The Red Sea could not drown them.
Jonah’s whale could not digest them.
Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace could not burn them.
The gallows of horrible Haman could not execute them.
The dictators of this world have not been able to annihilate them.
The nations of this world have not been able to assimilate them.
When other peoples have been taken from their homelands, when they have been scattered, soon they’ve been absorbed, assimilated—swallowed up, so to speak—into the culture of their new location and cannot be traced.
But for nineteen centuries the Jewish people, wherever they were found, kept themselves together, maintaining their traditions, laws, statutes and even language. God preserved them as a nation, an identifiable people.
God said He would “visit their iniquity with stripes” and indeed He has. They suffered unmentionable atrocities under Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Alexander the Great and the Greeks, Nero and the Romans, under the Turks, and Hitler. Under Russia they have and are now suffering. Under the Arab nations they have and are suffering. But they have endured because God’s Word prophesied they would endure.
Photo courtesy: ©GettyImagesfotofrankyat
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Restoration – Part 1
After centuries in exile, God once again brought His people back into their land. In my estimation the most amazing thing that has happened in recent history has not been the end of World War II or placing a man on the moon, but the day when Israel was reborn, reconstituted as a nation.
Through the prophet Amos, God said,
“And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the way cities, and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and drink the wine thereof; and they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them. And I will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more pulled up out of their land which I have given them, saith the Lord thy God.” (Amos 9:14-15)
God says, “I’ll bring them back and plant them there, and no one will uproot them.” God has brought them back to stay, regardless of what anyone says about it.
Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/Xantana
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Restoration – Part 2
May 14, 1948, Israel’s declaration day of independence, I was playing high school football. Little did I realize the impact of that moment—God’s fulfillment of Bible prophecy. At that moment, 650,000 Jews were surrounded by six Arab states and 40 million enemies who had sworn by Allah that they would exterminate Israel, drench the soil with Israeli blood, and drive them into the sea. With a fury, immediately five Arab armies swept down from the east toward the west and on to Tel-Aviv. But God miraculously preserved this little nation. Before that time, a Jew was subject to arrest for even carrying a gun. But by the time the UN called for an armistice, these people who were supposed to be “pushed off into the sea” were 150 miles into Egyptian territory. How did that happen?
The Israelis secretly took old automobiles and buses to sheds, where they welded boiler plates to the sides to make tanks. They took hoe handles and broomsticks and painted them to look like guns to appear better armed.
As Arab legions advanced through some groves, they encountered thousands of beehives. The Israelis are beekeepers. After all, you can’t have a land flowing with milk and honey without bees. And it just so happened in the attack, these hives were overturned. Millions of bees swarmed out and began stinging. They dropped their modern weapons in consternation and fled. Later, when the bees went back into their hives, the Israelis went out and picked up the much-needed weapons.
At the same time, coming from the north, others from Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq attacked across the Jezreel Valley. When they got to the middle of that valley, a strange sickness like dysentery disabled them. They were so weak they couldn’t fight. At that same moment, here came the Israelis with the weapons they had picked up from the battle of the bees. An American newspaper ran this headline, “The Bees Fight for Israel.” They captured those who were sick in the valley of Jezreel. The record reports that on one occasion, 20,000 Arabs were captured by 400 Israelis.
Don’t give Israel credit for that. God said, “I will bring them again into their own land.” I don’t think the Israeli cause has always been just. I don’t think the American cause has always been just. I don’t think the Arab cause has always been just. I don’t think you can say any cause is always just if man has to do with it. But God is over the affairs of men. God rules in the affairs of men. And God said, “I will bring them back.” God brought them back.
Similar things happened in the Six Day War in 1967. Again it seems God wasn’t neutral. Jordan, Egypt and Syria united with one stated goal: “Wipe Israel off the map.” But it was over in six days. Outnumbered 80 to one, God gave His ancient people victory.
The same was true in 1973, the Yom Kippur War. Israel’s enemies invaded on Israel’s holiest day, when no one would expect it. God again seemed to intervene when both Israeli and Syrian forces reported strange events that caused Israel’s enemies to surrender.
The Bible predicts that in the last days the same will happen when Russia invades the Middle East. Russia will be brought to her knees on the mountains of Israel. Ezekiel 38 and 39 relate this amazing prophecy.
When the battle of Armageddon is fought, when the forces of anti-Christ gather once more against Jerusalem, God will again come to the rescue of His people in that great, final war for Israel and her survival. What we see today is a foretaste of that.
“Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about when they shall be in siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. In that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people. All that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it.” Zechariah 12:2-3
When that battle comes, Zechariah says the LORD will fight for Israel.
In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them. And it shall come to pass in that day, that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. (12:8-9)
Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages
The Prophecy of Israel’s Miraculous Regeneration
Look what happens in their hearts after all this occurs.
“And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications, and they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him as one mourneth for his only son and shall be in bitterness for Him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.” Zechariah 12:10
What a day that will be! The eyes of God’s people will be opened. With deep mourning, they will recognize their Messiah as the one their forefathers pierced.
…there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness. (13:1)
God will remove the idols from Israel once and for all (v. 2). Then He will bring those remaining through the fire,
…and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried: they shall call on My name, and I will hear them: I will say, “It is my people,” and they shall say, “The Lord is my God.” (13:9)
One of the signs that Jesus Christ is coming soon is the sign that Zion is being built up.
We long for this day! This is Israel’s glorious future—and you may be sure, God is going to bring it to pass.
Photo courtesy: ©GettyImages/Jacek_sopotnicki
How Israel and the Jews Have Shaped History
As you study history, you learn that the indestructible Jew has left his indelible mark upon history. The Jewish people are not great in number. Of the world’s population, they are only 0.2%. That’s not two percent. That’s less than one-fourth of one percent. Yet did you know that 22% of Nobel Prize winners have been Jews? In 2013, six of the 12 laureates were Jewish. Think of that.
Abraham’s descendants consistently win high percentages not just of Nobel Prizes but other awards in medicine, health, music, and public life. What a mark they’ve made upon our world.
Did you know it was a Jew who financed Christopher Columbus when he set sail for the west? Of his crew members, the first to set foot on American soil was a Jew. Did you know that a Jew, Haym Salomon, financed General George Washington in our Revolutionary War?
Have you ever taken an aspirin? Friedrich Bayer, whose company developed aspirin, was a Jew. Were you vaccinated for polio as a child? The injectable and oral polio vaccines of Salk and Sabin were so effective, the disease has been all but eradicated.
Has the dentist ever deadened your tooth before he started to drill? Alfred Einhorn, who developed Novocain, was a Jew. If you’re an anti-Semite, the next time you go to the dentist, why don’t you say, “Just drill away, don’t deaden my pain.” Have you ever had local anesthesia? Its inventor, Carl Koller, was a Jew.
When you developed an infection, the doctor prescribed streptomycin, developed by Waksman, a Jew. Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, was a Jew. Are you a student of philosophy? Spinoza was a Jew. Do you appreciate the Salvation Army? Its founder, William Booth, had a Jewish mother.
It’s amazing to study the mark God’s chosen people have made on the world. Jews can be thanked for the discovery of electromagnetic waves, the transistor, the first laser, oral contraceptives, antihistamines, anti-leukemia drugs, the electron microscope, vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague, the camera phone, nuclear fission reactor, sound-on-film technology, the discovery of neurotransmitters, the process by which we do MRIs, the Hepatitis-B vaccine, the first exact map of the moon—and do you like American music? Thank George and Ira Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Irving Berlin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner and Lowe, and Stephen Sondheim, to name only a few.
All history has been dramatically impacted by six Jews: Moses, Paul, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, and above them all, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Photo courtesy: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/ Pontuse
Based on the articles Israel and Bible Prophecy What Does the Future Hold? Part 1 and Part 2, orginially published on OnePlace.com. Used with permission
Publication date: March 22, 2018
Francis Schaeffer
I remember like yesterday hearing my pastor Adrian Rogers in 1979 going through the amazing fulfilled prophecy of Ezekiel 26-28 and the story of the city of Tyre. In 1980 in my senior year (taught by Mark Brink) at Evangelical Christian High School, I watched the film series by Francis Schaeffer called WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? Later that same year I read the book by the same name and I was amazed at the historical accuracy of the Bible and the many examples from archaeology that Schaeffer gave and recently I have shared several of these in my current series on Schaeffer and the Beatles. The reason I did that was because many people in the 1960’s had taken non-rational leaps into such areas as communism, the occult, drugs, and eastern mysticism, but sitting right there in front of them was the historical accurate Bible which contained sufficient evidence to warrant trust.
(Adrian Rogers met with Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.)
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(This was the average sanctuary crowd when I was growing up at Bellevue Baptist in Memphis)
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Anyone who has read my blog for any length of time knows that politically Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan were my heroes. Spiritually my heroes have been both Francis Schaeffer and Adrian Rogers. An interesting fact about both of these two men and that is they both believed the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God. Both men defended the historical accuracy of the Bible even though both of the religious denominations they belonged to started to shift to the liberal view that the Bible contains errors in it.
| H. L. Mencken | |
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J. Gresham Machen
Francis Schaeffer’s battle on this issue came in the 1930’s when he got to know Dr. J. Gresham Machen was involved in a battle with the Presbyterian Church USA over their leftward shift in theology. Francis Schaeffer observed:
H.L. Mencken died when I was a young man and I read some of the stuff he wrote and he came at just the point of the total collapse of the American consensus back in the 1930’s or a little before. H.L.Mencken was very destructive to the American consensus and he was way out. It is he who said the famous thing about Dr. J. Gresham Machen. Dr. Machen was the man who was fighting the battle for historic Christianity against the liberals in the big denominations and expressly the Presbyterian denomination and the liberals were trying to laugh Machen out of court. But H.L. Mencken said a remarkable thing, “Well, if you really want to be a Christian there is only one kind of Christian to be and that is the Machen kind.” This is wonderful. This is exactly where the battlefield is. When you take Christianity and chip away at it like the liberals wanted to do then you don’t have anything left. This is no halfway war. If you are going to be a Christian you have to be a biblical Christian. Machen and Mencken understood this and this is my position too.
Adrian Rogers also was that type of Christian too. Recently a relative told me that his Bible Study Teacher at the church he started attended recently started a series on Genesis and he said on the front end that evolution is true. I encouraged my relative to ask the simple question: DO YOU BELIEVE IN A LITERAL “ADAM AND EVE?” I sent him the sermon on Evolution by Adrian Rogers and here is a portion of it below:
H.G. Wells
H. G. Wells, the brilliant historian who wrote The Outlines of History, said this—and I quote: “If all animals and man evolved, then there were no first parents, and no Paradise, and no Fall. If there had been no Fall, then the entire historic fabric of Christianity, the story of the first sin, and the reason for the atonement, collapses like a house of cards.” H. G. Wells says—and, by the way, I don’t believe that he did believe in creation—but he said, “If there’s no creation, then you’ve ripped away the foundation of Christianity.”
Now, the Bible teaches that man was created by God and that he fell into sin. The evolutionist believes that he started in some primordial soup and has been coming up and up. And, these two ideas are diametrically opposed. What we call sin the evolutionist would just call a stumble up. And so, the evolutionist believes that all a man needs—he’s just going up and up, and better and better—he needs a boost from beneath. The Bible teaches he’s a sinner and needs a birth from above. And, these are both at heads, in collision.
What is evolution? Evolution is man’s way of hiding from God, because, if there’s no creation, there is no Creator. And, if you remove God from the equation, then sinful man has his biggest problem removed—and that is responsibility to a holy God. And, once you remove God from the equation, then man can think what he wants to think, do what he wants to do, be what he wants to be, and no holds barred, and he has no fear of future judgment.
Actually Francis Schaeffer’s good friend Paige Patterson talked Adrian Rogers into running for President of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1979 and the liberal shift was halted. In the article “Francis Schaeffer ‘indispensable’ to SBC,” (Thursday, October 30, 2014,) David Roach wrote:
The late Francis Schaeffer was known to pick up the phone during the early years of the Southern Baptist Convention’s conservative resurgence. Paige Patterson knew to expect a call from Schaeffer around Christmas with the question, “You’re not growing weary in well-doing are you?”
Patterson, a leader in the movement to return the SBC to a high view of Scripture, would reply, “No, Dr. Schaeffer. I’m under fire, but I’m doing fine. And I’m trusting the Lord and proceeding on.”
To some it may seem strange that an international Presbyterian apologist and analyst of pop culture would take such interest in a Baptist controversy over biblical inerrancy.
But to Schaeffer it made perfect sense.
He believed churches were acquiescing to the world, abandoning their belief that the Bible is without error in everything it said. A watered-down theology left the SBC with decreased power to battle cultural evils. To Schaeffer the convention was the last major American denomination with hope for reversing this “great evangelical disaster,” as he put it.
Thirty years after Schaeffer’s death, Baptist leaders still remember how he took time from his speaking, writing and filmmaking schedule to quietly encourage Patterson; Paul Pressler, a judge from Texas with whom Patterson worked closely during the conservative resurgence; Adrian Rogers, a Memphis pastor who served three terms SBC president; and others.
By the early 1990s, conservatives had elected an unbroken string of convention presidents and moved in position to shift the balance of power on all convention boards and committees from the theologically moderate establishment. But at the time of Schaeffer’s annual calls, the outcome of the controversy was still in doubt.
(Paige Patterson)
“I strongly suspect that he was afraid I would not hold strong,” Patterson, now president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas, told Baptist Press. “He had seen so many people fold up under pressure that he assumed we probably would too. So he would call and ask for a report.”
Schaeffer’s interest in engaging culture made him particularly appealing to Southern Baptist conservatives. He helped provide them with a “battle plan” to fight cultural evils and what they perceived as theological drift in their denomination, Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, told BP.
Along with theologian Carl F.H. Henry, Schaeffer was the key intellectual influence on leaders of the conservative resurgence, Land said. When conservatives started to be elected as the executives of Baptist institutions, Henry spoke at Land’s inauguration at the Christian Life Commission (the ERLC’s precursor), R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky and Timothy George’s at Beeson Divinity School in Alabama.
“If Schaeffer had still been alive, we would have had him come,” Land said. He noted that Schaeffer was “close” to Rogers and “admired” by Bailey Smith, two conservative SBC presidents. Edith Schaeffer and Patterson’s wife Dorothy were close friends and traveled together in the early 1980s speaking on the importance of the home.
Clark Pinnock, a former New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary professor who mentored conservative resurgence leaders before taking a leftward theological turn in his own thinking, served on Schaeffer’s staff at L’Abri.
BP Photo
Paige Patterson and Adrian Rogers share a time of prayer in the early moments of the Conservative Resurgence movement within the Southern Baptist Convention.
Ron Dunn with Adrian Rogers above
Dr. Francis Schaeffer: The Biblical Flow of History & Truth
Whatever Happened To The Human Race? | Episode 5 | Truth and History (20…
Mount Sinai is one of the most important sites of the entire Bible. It was here that the Hebrew people came shortly after their flight from Egypt. Here God spoke to them through Moses, giving them directions for their life as newly formed nation and making a covenant with them.
The thing to notice about this epochal moment for Israel is the emphasis on history which the Bible itself makes. Time and time again Moses reminds the people of what has happened on Mount Sinai:
Deuteronomy 4:11-12New International Version (NIV)
11 You came near and stood at the foot of the mountain while it blazed with fireto the very heavens, with black clouds and deep darkness. 12 Then the Lordspoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form;there was only a voice.
Moses emphasized that those alive at the time had actually heard God’s voice. They had received God’s direct communication in words. They were eyewitnesses of what had occurred–they saw the cloud and the mountain burning with fire. They saw and they heard. Moses says, on the basis of what they themselves have seen and heard in their own lifetime, they are not to be afraid of their present or future enemies.
On the same basis too, Moses urges them to obey God: “Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen…” (Deuteronomy 4:9)
Thus the people’s confidence and trust in God and their obedience to Him are alike rooted in truth that is historical and open to observation…The relationship between God and His people was not based on an upward experience inside their own heads, but upon a reality which was seen and heard. They were called to obey God not because of a leap of faith, but because of God’s real acts in history. For God is the LIVING GOD….”Religious Truth” according to the Bible involves the same sort of truth which people operate on in their everyday lives. If something is true, then its opposite cannot also be true.
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The Story of Francis and Edith Schaeffer
John 21:1-14New International Version (NIV)
Jesus and the Miraculous Catch of Fish
21 Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Galilee.[a] It happened this way: 2 Simon Peter, Thomas (also known as Didymus[b]), Nathanael from Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples were together. 3 “I’m going out to fish,” Simon Peter told them, and they said, “We’ll go with you.” So they went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
4 Early in the morning, Jesus stood on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
5 He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
6 He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.
7 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” As soon as Simon Peter heard him say, “It is the Lord,” he wrapped his outer garment around him (for he had taken it off) and jumped into the water. 8 The other disciples followed in the boat, towing the net full of fish, for they were not far from shore, about a hundred yards.[c] 9 When they landed, they saw a fire of burning coals there with fish on it, and some bread.
10 Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you have just caught.” 11 So Simon Peter climbed back into the boat and dragged the net ashore. It was full of large fish, 153, but even with so many the net was not torn. 12 Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” None of the disciples dared ask him, “Who are you?” They knew it was the Lord. 13 Jesus came, took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. 14 This was now the third time Jesus appeared to his disciples after he was raised from the dead.
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The resurrected Christ stood there on the beach of the Sea of Galilee. Before the disciples reached the shore, He had already prepared a fire with fish cooking on it for them to eat. It was a fire that could be seen and felt; the fire cooked the fish, and the fish and bread could be eaten for breakfast.
When the fire died down, it left ashes on the beach; the disciples were well fed with bread and fish and Christ’s footprints would have been visible on the beach…
Thomas, Christ tells us, should have believed the ample evidence given to him of the physical evidence of the resurrection by the other apostles. Christ rebuked him for not accepting this evidence.He at that time and we today have the same sufficient witness of those who have seen and heard and were able to touch the resurrected Christ and were able to observe what He had done.
Because Thomas insisted on seeing and touching we have a more sure witness than we otherwise would have had. In the testimony of those who saw and heard we have a sure witness and this includes Thomas’ doubt and his personal verification which removed that doubt. WE SHOULD BOW BEFORE THE TOTAL WITNESS OF THE RECORD WHICH WE HAVE IN THE BIBLE, OF THE TESTIMONY OF THE EXISTENCE OF THE UNIVERSE AND IT’S FORM AND THE UNIQUENESS OF MAN. IT IS ENOUGH! BELIEVE HE HAS RISEN.
John 20:24-29New International Version (NIV)
Jesus Appears to Thomas
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed;blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
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Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?
Tim Brister — July 26, 2006 — 6 Comments
In the appendix of his book, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Francis Schaeffer wrote a little piece called “Is Propositional Revelation Nonsense?” Schaeffer explains that, “To modern man, and much modern theology, the concept of propositional revelation and the historic Christian view of infallibility is not so much mistaken as meaningless” (345). The 20th century came with many challenges to theological formulation, not the least of which was the assault on propositional truth and revelation. Such camps as existentialists and logical positivists attempted to remove religious truth from the reason and revelation while others sought to justify meaning, reality, and truth with other criterion of verification such as experience and perception. However, center to the Christian faith is the belief that God has spoken and revealed himself in the written Word of God. In this revelation, God used language as the medium to carry and convey biblical truths and realities. This is not to say that God has revealed himself exhaustively, but it does mean that he has revealed himself truly and definitively. Schaeffer makes two points which I would like to mention here:
- Even communication between one created person and another is not exhaustive; but that does not mean that for that reason it is not true.
- If the uncreated Personal really cared for the created personal, it could not be thought unthinkable for him to tell the created personal things of a propositional nature; otherwise, as a finite being, the created personal would have numerous things he could not know if he just began with himself as a limited, finite reference point.
Schaffer makes some salient points here that deserve to be brought up in the 21stcentury. While we do not disagree that revelation is also personal, we cannot flinch on the assault on propositional revelation. God has revealed himself to us, his nature and his acts, through propositional revelation (i.e. the Bible), and the implications of this truth is that we do not have the rights to reinvent or rename the God Who Is There. If we do not begin with God and his revelation, Schaeffer is correct to conclude that there are many things we could not know about God based on such a limited, finite reference point as ourselves. It is no coincidence that, at the time of Schaeffer’s publishing of this book (1972), John Hick was advancing his pluralistic hypothesis which argued for the ineffability of the “Real” which argued that one cannot know anything about God as he is (ding an sich).Adapting the Kantian model of the noumenal and phenomenal worlds, Hick argues that God (“Real”) has not and cannot reveal himself truly and definitely; furthermore, it is impossible to know anything at all about the Real (except that it is ineffable and that it exists which is something he claims to know). The result when God is not the beginning, the reference point, the apriori grounds of knowledge and revelation, then knowing and defining God is a free-for-all to anyone who wants to postulate their phenomenological interpretations as religious truth. Schaeffer concludes his little article with this important paragraph in which he said:
“The importance of all this is that most people today (including some who still call themselves evangelical) who have given up the historical and biblical concept of revelation and infallibility have not done so because of the consideration of detailed problems objectively approached, but because they have accepted, either in analyzed fashion or blindly, the other set of presuppositions. Often this has taken place by means of cultural injection, without their realizing what has happened to them” (349, emphasis added).
In the days ahead, I hope to share how propositional truth is foundational to personal truth and give a few examples of the redefinition of revelation in contemporary contexts.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
Hebrews 1:1-2
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The Bible and Archaeology – Is the Bible from God? (Kyle Butt 42 min)
You want some evidence that indicates that the Bible is true? Here is a good place to start and that is taking a closer look at the archaeology of the Old Testament times. Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,
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