The Bible Breakdown

BBXtra: Chapter 11 of 12 Points that Prove Christianity is True

• Brandon Cannon • Episode 624

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Speaker 1:

Well, everybody, welcome back to the Bible Breakdown podcast with your host, pastor Brandon. Today is one of our Bible Breakdown extras and, if you were just now joining us, one of the things that we do is we take two days out of the month and we call them catch-up days, and on the 15th of the month it is a day just to just explore God's Word for yourself. And if something kind of really sparked your interest and you just want to go deeper into a particular chapter we've covered recently, it gives you an opportunity to do that without feeling like you're falling behind. But then on the 30th of every month we take a little while and we just work on it instead of in it. We kind of step back a little bit, because if we're not careful, what we can do is we can be reading God's word and all that good stuff. Because if we're not careful, what we can do is we can be reading God's Word and all that good stuff. But every once in a while we need to step back and go okay, how can I apply God's Word more broadly to my life? How can I prepare myself for opportunities that come along? And also how can I dig even deeper? Because reading God's Word and studying God's Word are two different things, and when we study God's Word, we really take the tools we're learning in our daily Bible reading and when we apply them to go even deeper. And that's what we are focusing on in our Bible Breakdown Extras on the 30th of the month, and over the course of this year we've been going through this book right here.

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It is entitled the 12 Points that Show Christianity Is True, and it was written by one of my mentors, dr Norman Geisler. And what he does is he systematically and philosophically starts from the very beginning of just really the basic outline of what truth is, and he goes all the way to point 12, which is Jesus is God. And what I love about this is, once you get your mind around this 12-point process, you can pretty much talk to just about anybody and you can talk from almost any different place, and I saw this just this past week or a couple weeks ago. I was talking to someone and they were someone who had been a Christian but walked away from their faith, and when that happens, as a pastor, I'm really not sure where to begin a conversation on trying to plant seeds that will lead them back to Jesus. I really have no idea what it was that caused them to walk away from their faith. I need to know have they just given up on the existence of God at all? Do they not believe in Jesus? Do they believe in God but they're mad at him, or just do they have a different idea of what truth is? And so, in my mind, what I will do is I will have all 12 of these points, as best I can, in my mind, so that, wherever the conversation takes us, I'm trying to figure out, okay, where are they? So I know where the conversation is, which is why I will even start with like they'll say something like how can you believe that God is real if you also believe in evolution? You know something like that and I will say well, if you don't mind, I want to go there. But first can I ask you a question? And what I'm doing when I'm asking those questions is I'm trying to figure out which one of these 12 points are we on. I want to read them to you because, really, now that we're at point 11, there's not really a lot of new stuff to cover, because it's almost like a pyramid you spend the longest amount of time on the bottom foundational steps and once you get to the top, things start just to fall together. But here's the 12 points, and what I want to encourage you to do is go to Dr Norman Geisler. That's G-E-I-S-L-E-R, and if you look up 12 points that show Christianity is true, you can see 12 different lectures that he does on each one of these points, and they're all so very good. But here they are.

Speaker 1:

Number one is truth about reality is knowable. Truth about reality is knowable, so it's possible to know what truth is. That being the case, that's the bottom foundation and we spent probably our most amount of time on what truth is Then. Number two is number one because truth is knowable. Number two is opposites cannot both be true. So you have the first principles Truth is the law of non-contradiction. Things can't be the same at the same time in the same situation. Number two the law of identity and the law of excluded middle. That's how you discover what truth is. And then, once you know what truth is, you realize that two opposing truths cannot be true at the same time, right? So number one truth about reality is knowable. Number two opposites cannot both be true.

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Number three it is true that a theistic God exists. Now, remember, there are people who believe in different ideas when it comes to God. You have atheists who believe there's no God at all, that never, never, never. And that's really the smallest group. I know they're the loudest, that's the smallest group. Then you have group number two, and that's agnostics. That's people who believe they don't know if God exists and they don't think you can know if God exists. In other words, we have no idea. Agnostics I think that that's a much larger group than atheists.

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Number three you have what's called deists. Actually, a lot of our founding fathers would have considered themselves to be deists. In other words, they believed in God, but they didn't necessarily know that God was personally involved in the lives of people. In other words, they think that Genesis 1-1 is true and the rest of it they're not so sure about. And that's not all founding fathers, just a few of them, but there were some there and there's people like that today. They think that God created the heavens and the earth and then he just stepped back and let it all run itself.

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But then you have number four, and that's what we believe, and that is the theistic God exists. In other words, not only is he God, but he's actively engaged, involved and interested in his creation. So let's do it again. Number one truth about reality is knowable. Number two opposites cannot both be true at the same time in the same situation. Number three it is true that a theistic God exists. Number four miracles are possible. In other words, if there is a theistic God who created everything, then that would mean he would have the ability to step into natural law and disrupt it as he sees fit. That just would follow right.

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Then, number five miracles performed in connection with a truth claim confirm the truth of God through a messenger of God. In other words, if God exists, then he would have the ability to step into time and space and then say something to us and prove it by doing something that only God could do. So in other words, I can tell you all day long something I could tell you I'm God all day long. But if I can't prove it by doing something that only God could do, you shouldn't believe me. Like I should be able to prove a truth, claim right, and that's what Dr Norman Geisler is saying. And he's building that foundation. Think of it as a pyramid. So here's number one, again, that truth about reality is knowable. Number two opposites cannot both be true. Number three it is then true that a theistic God exists. Number four miracles are possible.

Speaker 1:

Number five miracles performed in connection with a truth claim confirm the truth of God through a messenger of God. And then, if that's true, number six the New Testament documents are reliable. The reason why I believe that the New Testament is true is because they were eyewitness claims written during the lifetime of eyewitnesses. They claim supernatural events were confirmed by the message of God and they confirmed one another, and it confirms that what Jesus said was true. And also, once again, why it's so important to get the book and listen to Dr Norman Geisler. He goes in and he proves every one of these.

Speaker 1:

There are so many proofs that the New Testament books, or the books of the Bible, especially the New Testament, are reliable that we really don't have time to go into it. I'd encourage you to go back to that Bible breakdown extra where I will give you resources on where to go. But one of the greatest things I learned during my crisis of faith I had several years ago was how much information there truly is about being able to rely on the books of New Testament. I had no idea. I had no idea how reliable they really were, and it helped me so much in my journey with God. So let's do this again. We're getting close to the end.

Speaker 1:

We'll start with number six, that the New Testament documents are reliable. And then, because of that, number seven building the pyramid, as witnessed in the New Testament, jesus claimed to be God and you can see that throughout the New Testament he said he was God. Number eight Jesus claimed to be God was proven by unique convergence of miracles, no-transcript. And he did that by doing these different things over and over and over again, by raising the dead, by healing people, all these different things that he did, proving that he was God. Therefore, number nine Jesus was God in human flesh. Jesus was God in human flesh. Number 10, whatever Jesus, who is God, affirmed as true is true. And then number 11, that says today, jesus affirmed that the Bible is the Word of God. Jesus affirmed the Bible is the Word of God. The reason why we believe the Bible on the foundational point is because it's trustworthy. Historically we can prove that the Bible is accurate. And then we believe the supernatural qualities of the Bible, because Jesus said it was supernatural and Jesus proved that what he said was true because of the Bible, because Jesus said it was supernatural. And Jesus proved that what he said was true because of the miracles he was able to perform and he rose from the dead. So they all work together to prove the same thing.

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Now some would say where did Jesus say that? Well, jesus did this in Matthew 5 through 7, when he was doing the Sermon on the Mount. He said you may think that I came to abolish the law, which will be the Old Testament, but I didn't come to abolish the law. Instead, I came to fulfill the law. He even said until heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle will not pass away. Now, what in the world is a jot and a tittle? It is the smallest markings you can make in the Hebrew language. If you speak English, it would be. Not one period, not one apostrophe will ever pass away until the whole thing is fulfilled.

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Then there were other places where he fulfilled, or he ratified God's word by talking about where Moses had written certain things and he talked about Jonah and different places where there had been some controversy as to. Well, did Moses write the five first books of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch. Well, jesus said that he did by quoting, saying Moses said this and then he you know some people would say well, did the story of Jonah actually was it? Is it inspired? Did it actually happen? Well, jesus uses Jonah to talk about what his journey was going to be, as far as him being in the heart of the earth for three days. And so, throughout Jesus' ministry, he alluded to the Old Testament and ratified its authenticity. And that's so very important because when we realize that God's word is supernatural because God says it is, that God's word is supernatural because God says it is, that gives an amazing example for us to then follow, because we realize we can look at God's word to discover the truth of what God is trying to say. So, once again, as we get ready to end this time together, why is this important.

Speaker 1:

This is important for two reasons. Number one the reason why it's been so much of a great thing to journey through the 12 points that show that Christianity is true is number one, for our own benefit. We live in a world that wants to constantly either relativize, in other words, just explain away the Bible, or downright disqualify our true belief in God. There are so many different things that want to either water down Christianity or just excuse it away completely, or you have the progressive Christian movement who just adds so much. It's not even Christianity anymore, it's just all those different things that's going on. We need to know what we believe, and we need to know what we believe in a systematic way for our own good, that way, as we're reading through commentaries about people that want to try to explain the Bible to us, or if we're watching YouTube videos or our TikTok stuff or whatever, we have this systematic thing in our mind where we know what to keep and what to throw away. But then also, it's good for when we talk to other people, just like I was telling you.

Speaker 1:

A few days ago, I was talking to someone who claimed that they used to be a Christian and walked away from their faith. Instead of being intimidated, instead of not knowing what to say, I was immediately able to go okay, let's figure out where we are and let's move through this list. And I can't tell you how many times it has helped me to be able to not only know where to begin, but also know where I'm headed, because if someone tells me, oh, I believe the Bible is the word of God. I just have this issue or that issue, well, I can automatically go to okay. Well then they believe number six. Let's go to number seven. Or if they say, I believe God exists, I just don't believe God cares about us, okay, well, that means they believe number three. Let's go to number four and start talking about miracles. And let's go to number four and start talking about miracles. And as we do that, it's amazing what it can do. Because here's what I believe. I believe that God has put you.

Speaker 1:

If you're a Christ follower, you are God's first line of defense, his first strategy to reach everyone around you that doesn't know God. There's a reason why you work where you work. There's a reason why you are related to who you're related to. There's a reason why you have the friend circle that you do and it is not just so that you can have those things in your life, but so that you can make a difference in those areas but just like if you were to show up on a job site without any tools. That's what we do a lot of times.

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We get in these environments the reason why the Holy Spirit may have not opened doors for you to talk to your lost friends and family is because if he did, you wouldn't know what to do with it.

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So I want to encourage you, I want to challenge you and I want to dare you to get these things in your heart. It doesn't mean you have them all memorized, but get a basic idea and then watch what happens. When you are properly equipped, you will be amazed at how many open doors God will give you, and you'll be amazed at how not intimidated you are to walk through those, because you're ready to step through those doors. Let me pray for you, father. Thank you so much that, lord, you don't just want to make a difference in our lives, you want to empower us to make a difference in the lives of others. And God, as we put these 12 points into our heart, I pray that not only will it encourage our faith, but it will give us the courage to reach out to others. In Jesus' name, we pray amen and amen. Well, I love you. I'll see you tomorrow as we get back into the book of Isaiah.

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