Answering the unbeliever - Part 4a

SERMON TOPIC: Answering the unbeliever - Part 4a

Speaker: Ken Paynter

Language: ENGLISH

Date: 11 October 2020

Topic Groups: EVANGELISM, OUTREACH, APOLOGETICS

Sermon synopsis: Those who deny God’s existence must invent explanations for the origin of life on earth.
- Life on earth spontaneously willed itself into existence out of nothing.
- The inert elements that comprise the universe inadvertently spawned life on earth through a series of random events.
- Life existed elsewhere in the universe, blew to earth on cosmic winds, and subsequently evolved mindlessly.
- Life existed in a parallel universe and appeared on earth through a time or space warp.
- Someone other than God created life on earth, i.e., aliens.
- The world is unreal. We are living in a giant computer simulation created by aliens, i.e., a matrix.
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Answering the unbeliever Part 4a.

Sharing the gospel with someone who has genuine questions.

Q1. What about the heathen?

Missionary history reveals instances of missionaries led by the Holy Spirit to villages where people had been worshipping an unknown God, having realized that their idols were worthless because they were the creation of their own hands. When They heard about the Living God in Jesus they immediately responded and recognised that this was the God whom they had been seeking.

Romans1:20.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Q2. What about the sincere Hindu, Buddhist etc?

Don’t other religions worship the same God, just under a different name?

The first response to this question is the fact that sincerity does not create Truth.

The basic consideration is the validity of the object in which faith or sincerity is placed. If the object of faith is invalid, all the sincerity in the world cannot change the fact that one merely has superstition.

Jesus Himself said:

John 14:6.

“I am the Way the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but by me”

Q3. What about the trustworthiness of the Bible?

Because attacks and supposed contradictions, it is essential that Christians reaffirm the validity and authority of the Bible and get to know it.

1. Indestructibility of the Bible.

2. The Consistency of the Bible.

3. Fulfilled Prophecy.

4. Historical Reliability.

Q4. Can’t “Being a good person” save you.

Titus 3:5.

He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 2:8-10.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God not by works, so that no one can boast.

For we are God’s handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Q5. Why is there evil in the world if God is good?

In response to man’s question “Why God allows evil”, one can turn the skeptic’s argument on its head, by asking on what basis is something deemed evil?

If there is some moral standard the critic is basing their position on, then the problem of evil becomes an argument for, and not against the reality of God.

After all, in order to call something good or evil, there must be an underlying standard of right and wrong. Theists argue that this standard is rooted in God and His nature.

Without a moral standard, we have no real basis for calling anything good or evil.

Giving an answer for your Hope gently and gracefully.

Col. 4:6.

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.

2 Tim. 2:25.

Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth.

Common questions asked when a Christian is confronted by a staunch unbeliever.

What about the heathen who haven’t heard the Gospel?

What about the sincere Buddhist, Hindu etc?

Can the Bible be trusted?

Isn’t a good life sufficient enough to get to Heaven?

Why is there evil in the world if God is good?

Hasn’t science disproved the Bible (Evolution)?

6. Hasn’t science disproved the Bible?

The supposed scientific argument.

You want to have done some work ahead of time, so you’ll know where to start.

If you don’t know, say you don’t know, and promise to get back to them on that one.

Don’t just say what you believe, say why you believe it.

THE BIBLE

SCIENCE THEN

SCIENCE NOW

Those who deny God’s existence must invent explanations for the origin of life on earth.

Life on earth spontaneously willed itself into existence out of nothing.

The inert elements that comprise the universe inadvertently spawned life on earth through a series of random events.

Life existed elsewhere in the universe, blew to earth on cosmic winds, and subsequently evolved mindlessly.

Life existed in a parallel universe and appeared on earth through a time or space warp.

Someone other than God created life on earth, i.e., aliens.

The world is unreal. We are living in a giant computer simulation created by aliens, i.e., a matrix.

How did life on earth originate?

Believing one of these six explanations requires more faith than believing that God is the source of all life.

The evidence supporting God’s existence is significantly greater than the evidence supporting the viability of these alternatives.

There are an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the universe.

Scientists only recently accepted that the universe had a beginning and did not always exist, this is what is commonly known as the “Big Bang Theory”.

There is no way of knowing how this “Big Bang” supposedly came about, only speculation and theories.

The Earth is the perfect planet to sustain life.

What makes it possible for the earth to sustain life?

It has a sun which is just the right size and is just the right distance from the earth. Life is not possible on Saturn or mars. If the earth was further from the sun, all the water would freeze, any closer to the sun and the oceans would evaporate.

The earth’s magnetic field deflects harmful solar particles that are carried by solar winds, drawing them to the poles, thus protecting us from cosmic radiation. These particles are excited to luminescence, his is what causes the aurora Borealis or the northern lights.

The Earth is the perfect planet to sustain life.

Without the sun, life on earth would cease to exist. Within 3 days of having no sun, the temperature would drop to 150 degrees below zero.

Jupiter also acts to stabilise earth. It is 1000 times bigger than earth and 300 times heavier. Due to it’s mass, Jupiter acts as a shield for the earth attracting asteroids and comets that would have devastating effects if they crashed into the earth.

The earth has a 23 degree tilt, without which we would have no seasons and the poles and equator regions would be uninhabitable, due to the extreme cold at the poles and intense heat at the equator.

The Earth is the perfect planet to sustain life.

The moon keeps the earth stable on it’s axis, without the moon the earth would tumble. Once again it is just the right size and distance from the earth. If the moon was closer it would result in a prolonged rotation of the earth on it’s axis resulting in longer days and nights. It would be quite discomforting if a day lasted one month.

The earth has an atmosphere that has just the right composition of gases, which are conducive to life. For example, 20% oxygen content, which not only is necessary for breathing, but it also produces the protective ozone layer around the earth which protects the earth from harmful UV radiation.

The Earth is the perfect planet to sustain life.

Life on earth is also dependent on the type of electromagnetic radiation that reaches earths surface. Organic life is dependent on the small frequency range of visible and infra red light in the electromagnetic spectrum. This is vital for the photosynthesis of plants. The relevant bio molecules can absorb light in the infra red and visible light range and process its energy. Surprisingly the sun’s radiated energy peaks exactly in the required frequency range.

Many factors are fine tuned for the existence of life on earth, pointing to intelligent design and not some accidental occurrence,

The Origin Of All Things.

Where did humanity originate?

How did the universe begin?

Where did animal and plant life come from?

Did God create the universe for a purpose?

What was the origin of marriage and family?

How did the world get to be so evil?

Why is humanity now in an alienated relationship with God? All these questions are answered in the Book of Genesis.

Evolutionary view on death.

When Charles Darwin wrote his famous book On the Origin of Species, he was in essence writing his view concerning the history of death.

The Biblical view on death.

The battle between Creation and evolution is a battle between two totally different histories of death.

Adam’s sin did not result in only spiritual death (Separation from God) but also physical death.

Romans 5:12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.

Genesis 3:17, 19. Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat of it: Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. . . .

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return

What about the age of the Earth.

The assumptions of evolutionists rest on an old earth theory. The question of the age of the earth has produced heated discussions on TV, radio, in classrooms, and in many churches, Christian colleges, and seminaries.

The age of the Earth.

The primary sides of this debate are:

Young-earth proponents (biblical age of the earth and universe of about 6,000 years)

Old-earth proponents (secular age of the earth of about 4.5 billion years and a universe about 14 billion years old)

The difference is immense!

Let’s give a little history of where these two basic calculations came from and which worldview is more reasonable.

Where Did a Young-earth Worldview Come From?

Simply put, it came from the Bible. Of course, the Bible doesn’t say explicitly anywhere, “The earth is 6,000 years old.” Good thing it doesn’t; otherwise it would be out of date the following year. But Genesis 1 says that the earth was created on the first day of creation (Genesis 1:1–5). Adam was created on day 6, so there were five days before him, so working from Adam we get a pretty accurate date. Adding the dates from Adam to Abraham, we get about 2,000 years, using the Masoretic Hebrew text of Genesis 5 and 11.

Most scholars Christian or secular would agree that Abraham lived about 2,000 B.C. (4,000 years ago).

So a simple calculation is: 2000 +2000 +2000 = 6000

The Origin of the Old-earth Worldview.

Prior to the 1700s, few believed in an old earth. The approximate 6,000-year age for the earth was challenged only rather recently, beginning in the late 18th century. These opponents of the biblical chronology essentially left God out of the picture. Three of the old- earth advocates included Comte de Buffon, who thought the earth was at least 75,000 years old. Pièrre LaPlace imagined an indefinite but very long history. And Jean Lamarck also proposed long ages.

The Old-earth Worldview.

However, the idea of millions of years really took hold in geology when men like Abraham Werner, James Hutton, William Smith, Georges Cuvier, and Charles Lyell used their interpretations of geology as the standard, rather than the Bible.

The Old-earth Worldview.

Werner estimated the age of the earth at about one million years.

Smith and Cuvier believed untold ages were needed for the formation of rock layers.

Hutton said he could see no geological evidence of a beginning of the earth; building on Hutton’s thinking,

Lyell advocated “millions of years.” From these men and others came the consensus view that the geologic layers were laid down slowly over long periods of time based on the rate we see them accumulating today.. This viewpoint is called naturalistic uniformitarianism, and excludes any major catastrophes such as the flood.

The choice is between man’s wisdom and the Bible.

The age of the earth debate ultimately comes down to this foundational question:

Are we trusting man’s imperfect and changing ideas and assumptions about the past?

Or are we trusting God’s perfectly accurate eyewitness account of the past, including the creation of the world, Noah’s global flood, and the age of the earth?

The universal flood is denied by evolutionists.

Thinking biblically, we can see that the global flood in Genesis 6–8 would wipe away the concept of millions of years, for this Flood would explain massive amounts of fossil layers.

Many Christians fail to realize that a global flood could rip up many of the previous rock layers and redeposit them elsewhere. This would destroy any evidence of alleged millions of years anyway.

So the rock layers can theoretically represent the evidence of either millions of years or a global flood, but not both. Sadly, by about 1840, even most of the Church had accepted the dogmatic claims of the secular geologists and rejected the global flood and the biblical age of the earth.

Uniformitarianism.

In the modern era, the argument for uniformitarianism was popularized by Charles Lyell in his book The Principles of Geology.

This idea assumes that the processes we observe in our present world are the way they have always been.

This is a common assumption among old-earth creationists. However, if conditions have not always been the same as we observe today or at the same rate, then this philosophy fails, as does the idea of an old earth and universe.

So at the foundation of the uniformitarian view are assumptions.

Bible believing Christians say that God’s revelation, and not the present, is the key to understanding the past.

Uniformitarianism is not based on evidence.

Scoffers believe in uniformitarianism to avoid interpreting catastrophic processes such as the Flood.

Accepting that the world has not always operated under uniformitarian assumptions also informs our understanding of the age of the earth.

The reason that different dating methods sometimes give long ages is that they to start with assumptions:

THESE ARE ASSUMPTIONS AND NOT FACTS

The decay rate has stayed constant.

The initial conditions are known.

The amount of parent and daughter element is known to have not been altered by other processes in the past.

What about carbon 14 and other dating methods.

There is growing scientific evidence that radiometric dating methods are completely unreliable.

Christians who have felt compelled to accept the millions of years as fact and try to fit them into the Bible need to become aware of this evidence.

This wood embedded in limestone that was dated to be "110 million year old“ was Radio carbon dated at 890 years old!

Mt. St. Helens.

The new lava dome (dacite) from the at Mount St. Helens was formed in 1986. In 1997 five specimens were taken from this dome at five different locations and subjected to conventional Potassium-Argon dating. The results indicated ages of less than one half to almost three million years old, all from eleven year old rock

The sceptics.

2 Peter 3:3-4.

Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, . . and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.”

What is the motivation of the scoffers? Immorality. Peter uses the Greek word

epithumia to encapsulate the scoffers’ ungodly sexual desires.

The sceptics.

Peter points out that the scoffers come ridiculing the idea of the future coming of Jesus Christ in judgment and salvation. They deny the second coming of Christ not because of their intellect, but because it fits their immorality since they do not want to be held accountable for their sin.

Scoffers are wilfully ignorant of Creation and the flood.

2 Peter 3:5–6.

For this they wilfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

Christianity and evolution are incompatible.

Instead of standing on the authority of Scripture, certain Christians have bought into the ever changing and flawed claims of evolutionists who do not have science as a foundation for their claims, but mere far fetched claims that go beyond the scope of probability to the extent that they are ludicrous.

Hasn’t science disproved the Bible (Evolution)?

A. The Creationist believes in one miracle working God who is the designer of all we see

B. The evolutionist does not only believe in one miracle, but countless miracles of how nothing became something, and exploded 13.6 billion years ago, and the miracles did not stop there, life was created by a very fortuitous lightning bolt that stuck a primordial pool resulting in the creation of a single cell bacteria (The DNA content of which would fill two 500 page books) To explain this miracle, without a designer is absolutely impossible, as in the so called simple single cell there are millions of motors that are responsible for the manufacture of the proteins that are the fuel for the cell.

Hasn’t science disproved the Bible (Evolution)?

If a cell, which cannot be seen with the naked eye, by the way, was 20 km in diameter, then one of these motors (Which spin at 600 rpm) would stand 1 meter high. Adding to this, each motor consists of 31 separate parts. Each one of these parts have to be present simultaneously for the motor to function.

But still the miracles carry on, and with the magical wave of the million year wand, life progressed through so called lucky mutations that added information to the DNA (Something that has never been scientifically observed, all mutations observed, even beneficial ones have led to a loss of information)

Hasn’t science disproved the Bible (Evolution)?

Then finally, even more amazing than the kiss of a princess turning a frog into a prince, you have a man, and with another injection of “Richard Dawkins luck” a woman as well, to procreate and keep the species going.

Then to add the finishing touch to this wonderful fairy tale, they have the earth as a home, with just the right size and gravitational pull that we can walk, and just the right amount of oxygen in the air to breathe, without any poisonous gases to spoil this evolutionary paradise, and an endless water source to sustain and nourish their lucky planet. And they lived happily ever after.

I DON’T THINK I’M THE ONE WITH BLIND FAITH

AUTHOR: Ken Paynter

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NOTE 1: Biblical illustrations by Jim Padgett, courtesy of https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bible_Illustrations_contributed_by_Sweet_Publishing

NOTE 2: Illustration from http://www.freebibleimages.org

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