12 – Religion Vs. Christianity

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Hello, I’m Chuck Smith.

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And I’m Carol Matriciana.

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Welcome to this edition of the Pagan Invasion.

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Today we will be talking about the major religions and philosophies of the world, contrast them with Christianity.

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We will be comparing the legitimacy of other sacred writings with the authenticity of the Holy Bible.

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And we will be examining the claims of some well known religious leaders and measure them against the claims of the historic person of Jesus Christ.

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A person’s worldview affects the way they live and the decisions they make.

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Therefore, it is imperative that each of us know what we believe and why we believe it.

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Today, the fastest growing world religion is Islam.

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In the last 50 years, it has grown at a rate of 500%.

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Hinduism, the religion of India, has grown at a rate of about 150%, whereas Christianity presently has the slowest growth rate of all major world views.

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These statistics will become all the more shocking as we begin to examine the foundations of each of these belief systems.

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70% of young people who have been raised in the church will reject their Christian faith during their high school and college years.

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That’s 70% evangelicals.

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That’s Bible believing young people.

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If the Christian faith is not true, then the rejection is as natural as coming to understand the truth about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

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However, if their Christian worldview is true, then they have departed from the truth into error and confusion.

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Our objective is to show that there are sound intellectual reasons for the faith our young people have made a commitment to.

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We want to stimulate them to think through their faith and to know what they believe and why.

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The Bible states that the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork.

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Yet the popular view from the academic community is, I’m a confirmed atheist because as an educator and science teacher, I find a rational basis for believing in God.

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Well, what about that? Is there a rational basis for believing in God? Before we answer that question, we have to decide what kind of God we’re talking about.

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There are three major views that are being promoted today.

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Atheism is the belief that no God exists.

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The universe is all there is.

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Though he claims to be an agnostic, carl Sagan, the astronomer and popular host of the PBS series Cosmos, would be a good example of one who promotes an atheistic world view.

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For him, the cosmos is all that is or ever was, or ever will be.

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Atheism and its offshoot secular humanism recognize man as the highest form of life that has evolved on Earth.

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Man then becomes the replacement for God.

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In this belief system.

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If man worships anything else, it would be the cosmos.

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Pantheism is the belief that God is everything and everything is God.

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God is not personal, but rather a power or universal energy of which everything is apart.

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While pantheism is primarily the basic theology of the religions of the east.

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Today, it’s being enthusiastically packaged and promoted to appeal to the JudeoChristian West.

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The concept of the Force in the Star Wars films, for example, presents a pantheistic view of God theism, which is the view of traditional Judaism, Islam and Christianity.

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Sees.

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God is the creator.

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He’s infinite and personal.

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He’s transcendent, meaning that he created the universe but is not part of it.

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A rough example that might clarify how a theistic God relates to the universe would be that of a painter to a painting.

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As CS.

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Lewis has stated, god invented and made the universe like a man making a picture.

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A painter is not a picture, and he does not die if his picture is destroyed.

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You may say he’s put a lot of himself into it, but you only mean that all its beauty and interest has come out of his head.

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So back to the question posed earlier about the possibility of a rational basis for believing in God.

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The God we will be arguing for is the theistic God of the Bible.

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I don’t care what names or labels the different religions call it.

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The only thing out there is the universe, and it’s always been around.

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Anything that has always been around doesn’t need a cause.

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That’s one of the major objections atheists throw at theist.

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Now remember, we’re going to use the term theist for those who believe in a personal God who created the universe.

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So what about the atheist objection? It makes sense that if the universe has always been around, then a creator God is sort of excess baggage.

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But has the universe always been around? Is there any scientific evidence that would pull a rug out from under that idea? The second law of thermodynamics indicates that just as this candle is burning down, the universe is doing likewise.

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The universe is like a giant VAT of actual energy that is being used up and not being replaced.

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It’s being transformed into unusable heat.

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Now, if the universe is winding down, it can’t very well be eternal.

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Eternal means without beginning or end.

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And if it’s ending, it’s reasonable to conclude that it had a beginning.

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If everything that exists had a cause, then God must have had a cause.

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Who or what caused God let’s back up a moment.

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Some atheists claim that the universe had no beginning, that it’s eternal.

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The only thing out there is a universe, and it’s always been around.

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And things that have always been around don’t need a cause.

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We agree that anything that’s always been around doesn’t need a cause.

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We pretty well covered the evidence that the universe did indeed have a beginning.

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But what about God? Since God is not part of the universe, he is not running down.

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Hence, he had no beginning, and so he needs no cause.

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I’m a confirmed atheist because as an educator and science teacher, I find a rational basis for believing in god.

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That’s what we already considered.

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Is there a rational basis for believing in God? And we came up with the following number one, everything that has a beginning as a cause.

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Number two, the universe had a beginning, therefore, number three, the universe must have had a cause.

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So atheists must believe nothing caused the universe.

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Theists believe something God caused the universe.

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Which of these two is more rational? Further, the universe contains living things which possess highly complex information and exhibit very complex design.

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But the only scientifically known cause for complex information and design is an intelligent creator and designer.

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Atheists believed it all happened by chance.

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But science isn’t based on chance.

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It’s based on knowing a regular connection over and over again.

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Which of the two is more rational? The famous German atheist Frederick Nietzsche best underscores the problem in his statement we deny God is God.

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If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in him.

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According to his biographer, Nietzsche spent the last ten years of his life in an insane asylum in anguish over such beliefs.

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In the book of Romans, it says that all men, without exception, know about God, yet they suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them.

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For God made it evident to them.

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For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

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Since the evidence is clear and many of the atheists mentioned our brilliant men, it becomes obvious that atheism does not result from any lack of evidence that there is a God there.

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It’s not a mental dilemma, but a moral one.

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Not a matter of the head, but a matter of the heart.

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The psalmist put his finger on the problem when he said, the fool has said in his heart.

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But there are other views of God besides the theistic one.

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What about the pantheistic or polytheistic views? I’m into yoga and meditation, so I read a lot in the Eastern religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and I believe God is the all and everything is God and God is everything.

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Since pantheists believe that everything is part of God and everything is God, all is one, all is divine.

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They would also say that all parts, no matter how different or how contradictory they may seem, lead to the same God or the same goal.

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In the end, biblical Christianity alone stands outside Hinduism’s attempt to draw all religious beliefs to itself, especially because Jesus himself said that he alone was the only way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes unto the Father except through him.

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Pantheon believe that God is an impersonal force and everything is part of the force.

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If that’s true, then everything that’s good is part of God, and so is everything that’s evil, like disease, depravity and death.

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But Pantheon, especially of the Christian Science variety, protests that disease sin are only the consequence of wrong thinking.

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Nevertheless, no pantheist has been successful to the extent of never getting old and living forever.

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Pantheist say that the whole of the material universe is not real.

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It’s an illusion.

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Like an imaginary oasis appears to a dehydrated man crawling through the burning desert.

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Nevertheless, a pantheist who drives his car into someone else’s car ends up with more than a smashed illusion and a good deal more than his imagination broken.

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Pantheon claimed that man is really God, but his problem is that he just hasn’t realized it yet.

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However, Pantheus also claimed that God is the unchanging absolute.

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However, if man has to change from not knowing he is god to realizing his own godhood, how can he be the unchanging god? It’s not reasonable.

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Pantheon pride themselves in not being rational.

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They believe mystical experience is the only basis for knowing god.

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Reason is part of the illusion that keeps one from knowing God.

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Yet if you cast off reason, how can you decide whether the mystical experience is real or an illusion? The pantheon claim that man is God has another problem.

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How did the pantheus ever come to such a conclusion without reasoning to it? Polytheism is the belief in many gods.

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Egypt was known for its many gods.

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Here at the pyramids and in the surrounding areas, there were temples and gods in multitudes.

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These are the gods that the Bible says that the plagues of Egypt came upon.

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The gods of the river, the gods of the sky, the gods of frogs.

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Actually, polytheism is not simply an ancient belief.

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But polytheism has resurrected in the 20th century and is now coming from east to west and is practiced even in the United States.

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Polytheists don’t believe in an infinite god beyond the universe.

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Their gods are limited in power and operate in certain domains of the natural world usually associated with natural phenomena such as the god of rain or the sun god.

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Some are also believed to be overlords of many aspects of life, from fertility to war to beauty to love.

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Some are made to cover whatever may be the problem of the day.

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Religions that worship more than one god may seem like a throwback to ancient times with little relevance to our modern Western culture.

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But actually, polytheism is a thriving belief system.

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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints, also known as Mormonism, has over 5 million members.

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They believe that God the Father and Jesus Christ are two separate gods and that numerous Mormon males will someday each become a god, the father of their own world.

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Many within the ecological movement believe that the only way mankind will be motivated not to destroy the natural environment we live in is to return to worshiping the gods of nature.

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Many within the Women’s Liberation movement have turned back to the female deities and goddesses of the past to underscore their total rejection of anything smacking of dependence upon a male figure, most particularly a chauvinistic father god occultism, which is growing at an alarming rate today, utilizes the idols of the gods and goddesses of past civilizations as points of contact with the entities of the spiritual realm.

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Many cults that are popular in the western world, there’s a polytheistic belief in an ascending masters of wisdom.

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There’s also a renewed interest today among kids for godlike characters, which we find in games like Dungeons and Dragons with its underworld deities and popular toys such as Heman and Shira.

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God and goddess of the masters of the universe.

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So what’s the problem with polytheism? Well, you’ve got lots of gods and lots of confusion.

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Some are supposed to be good and others evil.

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Some are a mixture of both.

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Some are more powerful than others, yet no one seems to be in charge of the entire universe.

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So while you certainly have diversity, you have no real unity, no one’s in charge of the whole show.

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So there’s no assurance that anything good will ever come about.

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In fact, as their stories indicate, most of the time the gods are the real problem.

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Life is one continual cat and dog fight among the goddesses and gods, between mankind and the gods.

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This is about as beneficial as worshiping a cast of today’s popular soap opera.

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Another difference between polytheism and theism is that theism’s truth claims are based on rational evidence that can be historically and scientifically verified.

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Polytheism, on the other hand, has no historic evidence to support it and therefore has to be accepted on the basis of a blind leap of faith.

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So although there are many ideas about god, if they are contradictory, they can’t all be true.

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Choosing a view of God that is false, whether in passive ignorance or an active rebellion, leads to destruction and death.

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The sobering consequences are clearly articulated in the first chapter of the book of Romans.

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They exchange the truth of God for a lie.

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So it was that when they gave God up and would not even acknowledge him, god gave them up to doing everything their evil minds could think of.

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Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip.

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They were fully aware of God’s penalty for these crimes, yet they went right ahead and did them anyway and encouraged others to do so, too.

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Hank Hannahf is the president of the Christian Research Institute, based in Southern California.

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I recently asked him to discuss the differences between Christianity and other major world religions.

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Well, all of the major world religions, in fact, all world religions and all cults, if you boil them down to their irreducible minimum, are always man’s attempt to reach up and become acceptable to God through their own goodness.

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There’s man’s attempt as a limited individual to understand the unlimited, the infinite.

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That is what religion is based on.

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Relationship or Christianity is completely different.

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It is based on revelation, god revealing Himself to us.

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Christianity is based on a relationship, an intimate, personal relationship that we can have with the Lord of the universe, the very one who spoke and the galaxies leapt into existence.

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Christianity says that we can know God not as simply the Creator of the universe, but we can have fellowship with Him, that we can know Him not only for time, but also for eternity.

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Christianity is based on a relationship with a living Creator who has come to this planet, who has lived the perfect life which we could never live, and who offers us his perfection in exchange for our sin as an absolutely free gift.

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This is the great exchange over which all of the scriptures were written.

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We can’t earn it or deserve it.

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Jesus Christ became perfection for us.

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Religion, we’re trying to become perfect through our own efforts.

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We are trying to reach up, become acceptable to God.

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God says, the only way you’ll ever be acceptable to me is to be perfect.

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Even as your Heavenly Father is perfect, we can’t be perfect.

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So there’s got to be another way.

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And that way is found in a relationship.

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It’s not a denomination, it’s not a creed, it’s not a set of do’s and don’ts.

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It’s not a world religion, it’s not a cult.

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It’s a relationship.

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And that relationship is established because God came to Earth so that we can know Him, fellowship with Him, and live with Him for all eternity.

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What about some of the claims of the major world religion’s, holy books or scriptures, versus the authenticity of the Bible? Well, the Bible is utterly unique.

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The Bible demonstrates that it’s the word through the manuscript evidence, through the archeological evidence, through predictive prophecy, and also through statistical probability.

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Now, predictive prophecy, every single city, for example, within one 0 mile of Jerusalem, had its entire history for told in the most minute of all details.

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For example, there were prophecies concerning Tyre and Siding and Babylon and Nineveh, on and on.

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All of these cities were prophesied about in meticulous detail.

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For example, interestingly enough, for years the skeptics laughed because the Bible talked about the Assyrians and about their great king Sargon and about Nineveh.

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And then a young man was digging along the Tigris River and covered a brick.

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And on the brick was the name Sargon, and he sent it to the Paris Museum.

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It was fourth with declared a fraud.

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Well, Leiaard the greatestyologist began digging along the Tigers River and he uncovered the entire city of Nineveh.

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And he found that the Assyrians were an actual race of people.

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Now, everybody believes in the Assyrians.

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So with every turn of the archaeologist spayed, we have more evidence for the fact that the Bible is indeed the word of God.

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Now, that’s only one of over 2000 examples that could be given, all of which collectively bear testimony to the fact that God has spoken and that God has indeed preserved His Word.

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We don’t accept the Bible as the word of God through blind faith, but through faith in evidence.

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The Bible is evidential and historical.

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In addition to that, what is the statistical probability of 40 different people writing over 600 years on hundreds, even thousands of different subjects in three different languages on three different continents, and yet with one central storyline god’s redemptive plan for mankind? How is it possible that this could have happened unless God inspired these men? So the statistics, the whole science of statistical probability demonstrates that the Bible has to be the word of God.

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And of course, the Bible is unique in the fact that it claims to be God’s words.

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No other religious writings claims in the same way that the Bible does to be the words of God.

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Over and over again, the Bible says, the Lord put his words on my tongue and I did speak.

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The Holy Bible is comprised of 66 books written over a period of almost 1600 years and was authored by 40 different persons.

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It is divided into two sections the Old Testament, which is a collection of laws given to the Jewish people, their history, poetry, and writings by their prophets, and the New Testament, which records the life of Jesus Christ, his miracles, his death, his resurrection, and the beginnings of the Christian church.

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To date, not one archeological find has ever contradicted a biblical reference.

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In fact, over 250 archeological sites have unearthed evidence supporting the Old Testament references alone.

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It is much more difficult to authenticate sacred writings of other world religions.

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For example, Mormon and nonmorman archaeologists alike have failed to produce one piece of archaeological evidence to support the Book of Mormon.

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In fact, archeologists frequently discover proof which contradicts the claims of these so called sacred scriptures.

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Hindu scriptures insist that the moon is 500 leagues higher than the sun and shines with its own light, a notion that has obviously been disproved today.

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It also claims that the earth is flat and triangular, has seas of honey, sugar and wine, and is carried on the backs of elephants, who, when they shake, cause earthquakes.

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Even the Muslim’s Quran is rife with chronological and historical inconsistencies.

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The Bible claims to be the word of God.

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No other avowed sacred writings have dared to make such a presumptuous claim, and none have, withstood the constant test of aggressive critics and survived faultless through the ages, as has the Bible.

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Out of all ancient literature, the New Testament is the most well authenticated document.

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There are more manuscripts of the New Testament, plus earlier and more reliable copies of original manuscripts or autographs of the New Testament than of any other work from ancient times.

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Some copies or portions of the New Testament can be dated as little as 100 years from the date the autographs were composed.

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The New Testament survives in over 5300 hand copied manuscripts, while most other classical works survive in fewer than two dozen.

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Even if the biblical texts are accurate and reliable, that doesn’t prove that what’s in it is anything more than the drivel of some deluded holy men.

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Pure mythology, as far as I’m concerned.

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Men such as American founding father Thomas Paine and British mathematician and philosopher Bertram Russell, and even the famous missionary Albert Schweitzer all argued that the historical Jesus never existed.

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Some critics believe that the events could have been mythologized, yet that would have been difficult because the New Testament writers were contemporaries of Jesus, which means that there are plenty of eyewitnesses around to object to any distortions of the facts.

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Although Thomas Payne and Bertrand Russell and Albert Swezer were brilliant men, it seems that history was not their best subject.

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Early first century historians abound with references to Jesus of Nazareth, who is called the Christ.

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Tacitus, a Roman historian, wrote christus, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procreator of Judea, in the reign of Tiberius.

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The Jewish historian Josephus wrote at this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, was known to be virtuous.

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Many people from among the Jews and other nations became his disciples.

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Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die.

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Those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship.

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They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive.

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These secular historians wrote at the very time that Christ lived.

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Even the Christian writer Justin Martyr, who lived in the second century Ad.

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Referred to secular historical documents to support the historical acts of Jesus.

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He wrote, and that he did those things.

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You can learn from the acts of Pontius Pilate.

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In actual fact, if we lost the very New Testament documents, it could all be reconstructed except for eleven verses from the manuscripts of early writers.

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So what can we conclude? Well, if you reject the historical basis of the New Testament, then you’re going to have to throw out all of classical history.

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The New Testament is the best attested historical and biographical work we have of any classical period, event or person.

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Skeptics say the Bible cannot be trusted.

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And one of the reasons for this is that some of the Old Testament was written before 1000 BC.

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But the earliest major manuscripts of the Old Testament came from 1000 Ad.

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So we have 2000 years gap.

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And they say during those 2000 years many corruptions and changes occur.

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So the Bible we have in our hand today can’t be trusted.

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Well, back in the 1940s, in these caves behind me here, were found fragments of manuscripts of every book in the Old Testament except Esther.

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Some whole books like the Book of Isaiah were discovered.

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Scholars decipher these manuscripts.

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And here’s what they discovered the Bible we have today has been accurately copied down through the thousands of years, because after 1000 years of copying they found in Isaiah 53, for example, that there was only one word different, the word light, that didn’t change the meaning of the chapter at all.

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The skeptics were wrong.

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Highly respected archaeologist Nelson Clark made the following claim it may be stated categorically that no archeological discovery has ever contraverted a biblical reference.

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Scores of archaeological findings have been made which confirm in clear outline or exact detail historical statements in the Bible.

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There are no other books of other religions that compare with the Bible with regard to historical substantiation of its miraculous claims.

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In fact, most religious books have little historical basis whatsoever.

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I still say that the writers of the accounts of Jesus concocted the whole thing.

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They put in just enough historical information to make it so.

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One of the problems with the idea that the Gospel writers perpetrated fraud in what they wrote is that among those early recipients of the Gospels were actual eyewitnesses of many of the events of the Gospels.

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With all their detail, it hardly seems reasonable that such writings would have been accepted by the hundreds of eyewitnesses, many of whom no doubt subsequently held leadership positions in the early church.

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In other words, the New Testament would never have gotten off the ground if either historical inaccuracies or significant inconsistencies were found in the text.

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Given then, that the Gospels are historically accurate, their detractors argue that what is claimed by Christians is not supported by the evidence found in the New Testament.

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Some objections would be that Christ did not actually die in the cross, that he never claimed to be God in the flesh, et cetera.

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However, the documentation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as detailed in the four Gospels contains enough evidence to convince any actual court in the land.

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Even if I can see that what’s in the Gospels is everything you tell me and everything sort of makes sense, you still haven’t convinced me that the writers, the apostles and even the so called eyewitnesses didn’t conspire to sell this hoax to the gullible of their times.

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Either they were self diluted, or they did it for the same reasons people propagate religions today prestige, power and money.

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Both history and tradition tell us that those leaders who might have had something to gain in promoting a lie live lives that were mostly impoverished.

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They were imprisoned, scorched, banished and persecuted while maintaining their so called deception.

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All but one of the apostles, tradition says, died of martyrs death.

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They were either so incredibly diluted by their own lie as to continue the charade through the worst of consequences without one of them breaking ranks and denying it, or they were telling the truth.

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There have been many religious leaders of major world religions.

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How do they compare with the leader of christianity, Jesus Christ.

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All of these leaders of world religions point to a way to God.

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Jesus Christ said he was the way.

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He used the definite article.

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In fact, he went beyond that.

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He said, I am God.

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He said, I and the Father are one that is the most important distinctive.

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But he backed up his claims.

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Through the immutable fact of the Resurrection, jesus Christ demonstrated that he was God because he had the power to lay down his life and to take it up again.

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In fact, the Resurrection is the singular doctrine which elevated Christianity above all of the pagan religions of the Mediterranean world.

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It is the very capstone in the arch of Christianity.

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When it is removed, all else crumbles.

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Through the Resurrection, Jesus Christ demonstrated that he does not stand in a line of peers with Bahai or Buddha, or Latei or Confucius, or Zoraster, or any other religious leaders.

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He demonstrated through the Resurrection that he was in fact God.

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Jesus Christ not only died to be our Savior, he lives to be our Lord.

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And he demonstrated that he was Lord to the undeniable fact of the Resurrection.

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The Resurrection is the most well attested fact of ancient history.

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Fact, Dr.

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Simon Green Leaf was an atheist and a Jew.

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He denied the Resurrection.

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He didn’t believe that Jesus Christ was even a historical being.

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One of his students at Harvard goaded him into looking at the evidence for the Resurrection.

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They said, Dr.

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Greenley, you are the greatest authority who’s ever lived in the history of the world.

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When it comes to legal evidence, those evidence is admissible in a court of law.

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Yet you deny the resurrection.

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Wouldn’t it be more intelligent for you to first look at the evidence, then accept it or reject it based on what you find, thus goaded.

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Dr.

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Simon Greenley began to look at all of the evidence for the Resurrection, and after an exhaustive study, Dr.

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Greenleaf said this there is not a single unbiased jury in the world who would look at the evidence and ever deny it.

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It is incontrovertible.

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And Dr.

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Simon Greenleaf became a Christian.

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The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, god raised him from the dead, you will in fact, be saved.

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And the two steps it takes to be saved boil down to this number one repentance means that you turn on the road of life.

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It means no longer living by the dictates of your own will, but turning and following Jesus Christ, making him the Lord and Savior of your life.

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It means repentance.

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Jesus Christ himself, when he walked this earth, said, Repent and believe the good news.

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Now, to demonstrate that you believe means that you are willing to receive.

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It means more than having knowledge in your head.

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It means more than agreeing that the knowledge you have is accurate.

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It means to trust and depend in Jesus Christ.

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Alone for salvation.

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Let me make that tangible.

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You could be sick and have a medicine in your hand.

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You could believe that that medicine could cure you.

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In fact, you could know it could cure you.

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You could agree it’s cured other people, but until you take it, it won’t do any good.

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In comparing world religions, we should also compare their leaders.

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A look at religious leaders show that all were ordinary men with many flaws.

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All lived and died and left their dead bodies behind.

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Jesus Christ, however, claimed to be God in the flesh.

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During his public life, he was constantly under heavy scrutiny and was ultimately found to be a man without fault.

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During his life, death, and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled 333 prophecies, many of them made hundreds of years prior to his birth.

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No religious leader before or since Jesus died for the love of his people.

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No one voluntarily suffered cruel agony to forgive the sins of their followers or ever claimed that they had the power to do it.

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No other religious leader performed the quality or the quantity of miracles that Jesus performed.

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And yet, by far his most astounding and significant miracle was that of his resurrection.

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There were numerous prophecies in the Bible which were fulfilled in the life of Christ which show that he was the Messiah, the Son of God, in order to blunt the force of this supernatural fulfillment of prophecy.

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Critics have said that Jesus force fulfilled or manipulated events in order to fulfill these prophecies.

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This view was popularized in a book by Shonefield entitled The Passover Plot.

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Just to show how ridiculous critics can get, let me point out that there were a number of things that Jesus could not possibly have manipulated.

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Right behind me is a classic example the old town of Bethlehem.

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Michael 52 said that Jesus would be born in this town.

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Now, how do you force fulfill or manipulate where you’re going to be born? So the event of Christ’s birth was not manipulated.

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It was a divine confirmation of his claim to be the Son of God.

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Along the shores of Galilee, Jesus entered into the city of Capernaum.

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There he entered into a house, and a throng of people had followed him to the house.

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In this house, he made one of his claims to be God.

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On this occasion, Jesus looked at a man whom they had let down through the roof because they couldn’t get in or the crowd, and he said, your sins be forgiven you.

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The scribes who are standing around said, who can forgive sins but God? Only recognizing his claim to be God, perceiving that they had said this, jesus said, which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or arise and walk? In order that you may know that I’m the Son of Man, I’m going to say to the man, Arise and walk.

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He did, and the man walked away with his palate.

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Jesus claimed to be god, but he proved it by performing supernatural acts.

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Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, and he left overwhelming evidence.

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In fact, the New Testament records that over 500 people saw Jesus Christ after the Resurrection.

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He showed them his hands with the scars.

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He showed them his side.

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He said, Give me fish and I can eat.

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Jesus Christ proved Himself alive by many infallible proofs.

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The Scriptures tell us that he was the Son of God that he claimed to be.

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Some years ago, I was sharing with the skeptic, and he didn’t believe that God existed.

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And so I gave him a brief argument for the existence of God, that if the universe had a beginning, it must have a beginner.

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If the universe showed design, it must have a designer being convinced that there was some kind of God, and therefore that miracles were possible.

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I gave him a book by a converted skeptic named Frank Morrison, who moved the stone.

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The author narrates how he started out to disprove Christianity, but in the process of doing it, he wrote a book in Confirmation of the Resurrection of Price.

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I shared this with my friend and he read the book.

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And as I talked to him again, I said, what do you think of the evidence for the resurrection of Christ? He said, I think it’s very convincing.

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And we bowed our heads together and prayed.

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And he received Christ as his living Lord and savior.

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Some years later, he visited this very tomb.

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He was overcome with emotion and broke out in tears of rejoicing that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead and who vacated the tomb permanently on Easter morning.

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It is really difficult to classify true Christianity as a religion.

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For in religions you have man’s endeavor to reach God.

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You have man starting with an earth base, trying to reach up to the infinite God, and starting with an earth base.

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It’s impossible to reach to the infinite.

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In Christianity, you have the infinite God reaching down to the finite man.

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For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son.

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Where I can see the absolute impossibility of reaching from the finite to the infinite, I can see where it would be no problem at all for the infinite to reach to the finite.

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And so we have in Christianity god reaching down to touch lost man in order that he might redeem Him, in order that he might bring Him into fellowship with the living, eternal God.

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Christianity is a relationship rather than a religion.

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And the question is, do you have a meaningful relationship with God today? This is only possible through Christianity and Jesus Christ.

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He said, I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man cometh to the Father but by me.

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We pray that you might find the way to God through Jesus Christ.

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Within all of us, there is a God shaped vacuum.

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Throughout the ages, man has attempted to fill that void with the things of the world.

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But it is only through a relationship with our Creator that we can be truly satisfied.

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His Holy Scriptures revealed the way in which we can be reconciled through God, and that is through the provisions of his Son, Jesus Christ.

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I’m Chuck Smith.

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And I’m Carol Matriciana.

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Join us again for another edition of the Pagan Invasion.

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The Pagan Invasion is an explosive new 13 part video series providing a thorough behindthescenes examination of today’s new age movement and neopagan revival.

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Each superbly produced volume features rare footage from around the world, along with expert analysis by noted Christian leaders and authors.

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For more information, contact your local Christian bookstore or call California residents.

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Call 1806 33086 nine.