Let the Wise Be Humbled

Psalm 8

LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
above the heavens.

Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
(TNIV)

Philippians 4:8

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.

How can we know what is real and true?

“You have no right to tell me what to do!” “That might be wrong for you but it’s not for me!” Statements like these are tossed around in our culture and sadly even in many churches. At the heart of such claims is a much deeper presupposition: there are no standards of right and wrong, further there is no standard of truth. Everything is relative. If someone would oppose the relativity of our day they must appeal to a truth that is sovereign over all people and for all time.

For the most part the word truth has lost its essential meaning. Relativists have confused and fudged the most basic understanding of the word that even children can fully comprehend. Truth is what corresponds to reality. To say that something is when it is not is non-truth, because it doesn’t match reality! For this reason truth cannot be defined as “what works” because some things “work” that aren’t true. For example if a man on the brink of divorce lies to his wife that he’s truly not cheating on her and she stays with him then the man got what he wanted but his statement didn’t correspond to reality. His lie worked but it didn’t represent truth i.e. the fact he was cheating on his wife.

There are two dangerous systems of thought which attempt to invalidate the reality of objective truth: skepticism and relativism and within each system there is a further disagreement on whether skepticism and relativism applies universally or only religiously. Universal skepticism claims that no truth is knowable. The problem in making that claim is that the claim itself is contradictory to the whole position of universal skepticism. If truth can’t be known then how do those who maintain universal skepticism objectively know that truth can’t be known? Religious skeptics profess that only religious knowledge can’t be known. At the core of this skepticism is the idea that God can’t be known. The problem with the statement, “It is impossible to know anything about God” is that one would have to know something about God, namely, the fact that he can’t be known in order to make this statement. How does the religious skeptic know so much about God that he knows God can’t be known? Their reasoning is flawed.

The universal subjectivist claims that all truth is dependent upon each person to decide for himself and that there is no standard or objective truth. The flaw in this argument is that even that claim “All truth is subjective” is subjective for the subjectivist (within the logic of their system). The subjectivist isn’t really trying to say anything! He can’t even convince someone else of his fundamental claim that all truth is subjective, since truth varies from one person to the next! The religious subjectivist holds that religious positions are relative and that there isn’t one objective truth concerning God. This idea doesn’t conform to facts because God has acted and manifested Himself in reality thereby validating only one objective truth about Himself. Religious subjectivism is disproved once facts are brought into the equation. Jesus Christ died, was buried, was resurrected. These are objective truths that can be verified through historical evidence. The foundational belief of Christianity is an objective truth claim that can be proved by evaluating solid evidence thus nullifying religious subjectivism.

The skeptics and subjectivist and those who deny the existence of God have a great dilemma. They place man at the center of morality and truth yet they then try to make a system of objective morality that all people should conform to. Based on their system this just doesn’t work! Maybe murder is wrong for you, but it may not be wrong for someone else! The skeptic and subjectivist can’t approve or rebuke one course of action over another because their opinion about “truth” doesn’t warrant that kind of “judgmentalism.” They are impotent to enforce any standard for right conduct over another person. What would this do to society? Chaos! The government or any other human wouldn’t have any right to convict child molesters worthy of the death penalty or any other heinous crime for that matter. Evil could be passed off as “true for me” while the most loving acts of kindness could be labeled as wicked. But this isn’t how the world really works. Governments do appeal to standards of right and wrong based on objective truth and pronounce judgment when those standards have been violated. Josh McDowell coined his own proverb in confronting this issue, “There are no relativists who expect to be treated relatively” (McDowell 78). In theory the skeptic or subjectivist might say that morality and truth is decided individually but the second their wife gets raped they scream, “Justice!” Though they want certain benefits from their skeptic or subjective beliefs they can’t stomach the consequences when other people live out the inevitable implications of the rationale that boasts, “Such and such is true for me!” If humanity adopted the belief that truth is relative the only fair answer one could give to someone who experienced such an atrocity is, “Tough! Get over it!” This answer doesn’t satisfy!

The heart of the matter is the question, “How can we know what is real and true?” Skepticism and subjectivism are inadequate and flawed arguments to defend the position that truth can’t be known or isn’t real. Modern thought has been so polluted with falsehood that we have forgotten how simple it is to know reality and truth. Subjectivists and skeptics have tried to replace the word belief or opinion with truth (Willard). This is irrational because you can’t make something true just by believing it! The next time you’re starving try believing that there really is food in your stomach. Even if the whole world agreed that there was food in your fridge or in your stomach it wouldn’t matter because belief doesn’t constitute truth; correspondence to reality does! “You can think of reality as what you run into when you’re wrong” (Willard 12). Only when something corresponds to the way things really are is it true. When we claim, “Jesus was and is the Son of God” we are stating an objective truth that either matches up with how things really are or it doesn’t. Since Jesus made an objective truth claim that he was God he can only be true or false. Since Jesus bodily rose from the dead we have a historic reason to believe that Jesus was speaking the truth.

Reality and truth isn’t something we make up or decide it is what really is.

Bibliography:
Groothuis, Douglas. Truth Decay. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000.
Kreeft, Peter and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics. Downers Grove:
Intervarsity Press, 1994.
McDowell, Josh and Bob Hostetler. Right From Wrong. Dallas: Word Publishing, 1994.
Willard, Dallas. “Truth: Can We Do Without It?” Christian Ethics Today. Vol. 5. Number 2,
April 1999: 12-15. .

The Cyclical Nature of the Book of Revelation

Revelation. The Greek word from which we get "revelation" is the word "apokalupsis" (αποκαλυψις) which means "to unveil" "to uncover" or "to disclose." The unveiling of a mystery (a reveleation) is not how we typically feel when we think of the book of Revelation. No doubt this is the most controversial and confusing book of the entire Bible! I invite and beg you to try on a different perspective or "pair of glasses" for reading through the book of Revelation. If you do I believe that you will be blessed as the book says (Rev. 1:3) and you will have a new appreciation for the message that is in the book.

First, understand that Revelation was not written to the "end times" generation, it was written to the persecuted Christians of the 1st century. What encouragement would a suffering Christian back in that time receive from reading a book that could only be understood by the "last generation?" NONE!

Further, I need to clarify what the Bible is speaking of when it talks about the "last days." When we hear that phrase our mind immediately jumps to a picture of calamity and the end of the world, but that isn't what Paul or Peter meant by that phrase. Examine these Scriptures for yourself:

2 Timothy 3:1-5 "But mark this: There will be terrible times in the LAST DAYS. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM" (EMPHASIS MINE).

The foundational principle of interpretation is "what did the writing mean to the original audience?" So now I ask you, who was Paul writing to in this letter? Paul is giving his pupil Timothy instructions as a minister. Paul in he last sentence commands Timothy to "have nothing to do with them." Who is "them" ? They are the people of the last days who are disguised as Christians! The most important thing I want you to see is that Paul is instructing Timothy about the kind of people that will mark the "last days" and commanding Timothy back in the 1st century to avoid those people, the people of the LAST DAYS!

Read 2 Peter 3:3. Peter warns the church that in the "last days scoffers will come." Now turn to Jude 1: 17-18. Jude is quoting 2 Peter 3:3 and is stating that what the apostles (Peter) foretold has taken place in the 1st century!

Read Peter's sermon in Acts 2. Peter was responding to the scoffers that were mocking the apostles by saying that their speaking in tongues was a result of their supposed drunkenness. On the contrary Peter told the scoffers that the speaking in tongues was a fulfillment of Joel's prophecy that said, "In the LAST DAYS, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people..." (EMPHASIS MINE). Indirectly we can see that Peter knew that he was living in the Last Days.

So what are the Last Days? The "Last Days" is the entire period of time between Jesus' first coming and Jesus' second coming. This is in contrast to the "Last Day" mentioned in Scripture which is the Day of Judgment.

One theory which has been suggested in order to understand Revelation is that it is cyclical (which I believe to be correct). What this means is that the book describes the present age and then ends the cycle with a picture of final judgment and then circles back and repeats the process of describing life in the present age and then ends again with a picture of final judgment, and then repeats yet again. The process repeats itself 7 times throughout the book. There are many trusted scholars who hold this view to name a couple, William Hendriksen and Boise Bible College's very own, Professor Dale Cornett who wrote a 250 page master thesis on "The Cyclical Nature of the Book of Revelation."

Again you must see this for yourself. I ask you to try and come to the book with a blank slate as though you never had been given someone else's interpretation of the symbols. The cycle generally gives a picture of the world in the present church age and then ends with a picture of final judgment (except for the first cycle 1-3 which is directed to the seven churches of Asia).

The cycles are as follows:
Chapters:
1-3
4-7
8-11
12-14
15-16
17-19
20-22

Try not to get discouraged about not understanding every symbol, rather try to get the big picture of the book and it's major flow of thought. The number 7 in the book isn't accidental and I also don't believe that the 7 cycles are merely accidental. God bless you in your pursuit of understanding, I am also on that same pursuit.

Conversion of a Famous Atheist to Theism

In my philosophy class we have been studying theistic proofs. These are various evidences that support the existence of God (DNA, Design, etc.). The interesting thing is that one of the world's most renowned atheists has converted to theism, not Christianity, because of the evidence produced by the Intelligent Design movement. This is exciting and if you are interested in hearing the report from Antony Flew's own mouth you can go to the interview at this site:

http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/flew-interview.pdf

Truth and God

I had some interesting questions come up in response to my blog on truth. Pablo I will get to all of your questions but because of business I will have to answer them over a period of time. I would like to focus our thinking on your question concerning God. How do we come to knowledge of the true God? Is there one God or many gods? Is God a person or is he a force? I would like to make something very clear. In asking these questions we are asking for a true answer. Something is true when it corresponds to reality. When we say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not, this the definition of truth (Aristotle). This is called the correspondence theory of truth. I won’t get bogged down in the other theories concerning truth but with a few examples I believe it is reasonable to believe that the entire world lives by the correspondence theory of truth.
When you get into your car in the morning and you see as you are driving down the road that your gas gauge is on empty you can choose to believe that your car doesn’t require gas to operate but then truth will quickly inform you that your car truly does require fuel to perform because your car will slowly sputter and cease to go anywhere.
In 1st or 2nd grade we learned in basic mathematics that 2+2 = 4. It is true that 2 +2 =4 always and no matter how much you want to believe that 2+2=5 you would be wrong. Our world has confused the word “believe” with the word “truth.” You hear this all the time when someone says, “Sex before marriage may be wrong for you but not for me.” Well what is the truth? Is sex before marriage really wrong or really right?
One last thing about truth. Things that are true are true regardless of how we may feel about it.

So how do we know the true God? I believe we must come to a knowledge of the true God on the basis of trustworthy evidence. To this I am fully confident that the God whom Jesus told us about is true because of the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection is the ultimate witness to the truthfulness of his testimony. I would challenge you to examine the evidence:

If the resurrection were not true then why did the belief that Jesus was resurrected start in the very city it would’ve been easiest to disprove? On the contrary the church began in Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified and buried and if Jesus’ body were still in the tomb it would only take 15 minutes to go to his tomb and see that he was truly dead. But within weeks the church had grown to easily over 15,000 people in Jerusalem alone.

If I wanted to convince people that 9-11 never happened I wouldn’t be able to spread that lie in the very city where people saw the planes crash into the buildings with their own eyes. They would put me in a psychiatric ward because everyone knows that the world trade centers were truly destroyed by terrorists.

The most reliable kind of historical evidence is called “hostile eyewitness testimony.” Concerning the tomb that Jesus’ body was placed in we have this historical evidence. The Jewish leaders who were the very ones who killed Jesus never told the disciples, “You fools, Jesus is dead and we can show you his body in the tomb where we buried him. He isn’t alive!” No! They never argued that Jesus wasn’t in the tomb they always explained WHY the body wasn’t in the tomb (they claimed his disciples stole his body).

All the apostles of Jesus the Christ eventually died as martyrs for the sake of their testimony that Jesus had risen from the dead. They never recanted. If Jesus hadn’t been truly resurrected why did those closest to him give their lives for the sake of their testimony? People will not die for something they know is not true, yet all the apostles were tortured and killed because they held to their conviction that Jesus had risen from the dead! Not only that but during their earthly lives they lost everything for the sake of telling others that Jesus was God and that he was resurrected! They lost their security, social standing, families, jobs, etc.

I have just written briefly but I do hope this provokes you. Christianity isn’t the faith of fools. It is solidly grounded in evidence and truth. Truth bears investigation. What I have written I have written from my memory and these evidences aren't exhaustive. There are many more convincing evidences which point to the truthfulness of Jesus and his words.

Understanding the book of Revelation

Wow I never knew that Osama Bin Laden was a tree! Oh gosh look at that! I never knew that Saddam Husein was a turkey. The tree and turkey with human heads, now that's amazing! I didn't know that George W. Bush actually rode a donkey! I wonder where the road "Common Sense" is in the world I would like to travel there someday!

If you don't know me you're probably thinking that I'm off my rocker, but I give you these to illustrate how ridiculous it is to interpret symbolic pictures literally! We all know that there is a true literal meaning behind the symbolic pictures but to look at these symbols and think they are true in reality would be a great mistake. For example, someone obviously thinks that George W. Bush is not using common sense in his decision making.
Many people interpret the book of Revelation the exact same way and it doesn't work! First and foremost we must understand that Revelation wasn't written to us 21st century Christians it was written to persecuted Christians of the late 1st century. The letter that was circulated in the ancient world had a message for the people whom the letter was originally written to. This is a foundational principle with regard to all Biblical interpretation. Most popular theories about Revelation would leave the original audience scratching their heads with no message. But that isn't the truth! This letter was a strong encouragement to the believers to persevere in the face of suffering for Christ and the message still applies today.
I just want to point out the fact that John (the writer of the book) gave clues as to how to interpret the symbols in the book. In the very first verse John writes,
"The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John..." (NKJV).
I chose the New King James because it translates the word σημαινω (semaino) as "signified." The greek word semaino is related to the noun "semeion" which is a "sign, or a distinguishing mark." The angel put the message of Jesus into "signs" for John to write down. Don't forget that John didn't just write down things that he was told to write he was told to write down what he "saw."
There are several clues throughout the book that further support the fact that John's visions were symbols of reality but not reality in themselves.
Revelation 1:12, "And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands..."
Revelation 1:16 "In his right hand he held seven stars..."
What in the world is Jesus holding in his right hand? What are the golden lampstands? Jesus explains the symbols to John at the end of the first chapter! Revelation 1:20, "The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches." Wow! That was simple enough. These aren't the only glimpses we see of symbolic language though. Look at these passages: Rev. 5:8 (what are the bowls of incence?), 12:9 (the dragon?), 17:9.

I will tell you right now with complete honesty that I am clueless when it comes to much of the imagery in Revelation but I am learning more and I believe that this is the correct approach to understanding the book of Revelation.

Sarah and I

My Girl

This is my girl! Her name is Sarah and we have known each other for about a year. She is beautiful, funny, kind, amazing, and most importantly she loves God will all her heart! I am so happy and richly blessed by my Father in heaven!