BEFORE YOU LEAVE - How To Best Use Your Last 3 Seconds!

LIFE HAS ONE CERTAINTY

We used to say that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. But life has only one certainty – we will all die. The death-rate is still 100%! Yet faced with this absolute certainty, too few people think about it and even fewer people take steps to prepare for it and what lies beyond it. And, as it turns out, not even many people who have become Christians have given much thought either! But I have something to say to those who think religion – and Christianity in particular – is (at best) irrelevant. Please give me just three minutes now – and just three seconds later!

WHY DO PEOPLE CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY? 

Christians have sometimes been accused of promoting a pie-in-the-sky message. But the social research reveals a pretty clear message about why people convert to Christianity. Here are the top three reasons why people become Christians-

1. I was raised in a Christian home.

2. I had a religious experience (answered prayer, dream/vision, etc.)

3.  I had a need that converting to Christianity met (drug/alcohol deliverance, marriage repair, loneliness, poverty relief, etc.)

Conversely, the top three reasons why people reject Christianity are – 

1. Science has now disproven Christianity.
2. Too many doubts about the Bible’s claims.
3. Too many Christians are hypocrites.

WHY AN HOMICIDE DETECTIVE WAS AN ATHEIST!

With all this in mind, why then would a highly successful Homicide Detective who was a comfortable atheist convert to Christianity? He tells people that he didn’t convert to Christianity because he raised in a Christian home – because he wasn’t! He didn’t convert because his friends were Christian. He didn’t convert because he wanted to know God. He didn’t convert because he wanted to go to heaven. He didn’t convert because he needed to change his life – in fact, he writes-

At the age of thirty-five, it seemed like I had everything I could possibly want. I’d graduated at the top of my class in my undergraduate and graduate programs, earned the honor recruit award at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Academy and was in an incredible job assignment, working as a member of a five man career-criminal surveillance team. I had been with my wife for eighteen years and we had a great family. We just purchased our second home in a community I had admired since childhood. Nothing could have been better. This was the status and condition of my life when I walked into a Christian church for the first time.

I wasn’t looking for answers; I thought I already had all the answers. In fact, most of my friends came to me for advice. I was the guy you came to if you wanted to ask a question about how to work an investigation, how to maintain a good marriage, how to raise your kids. I was happy, content, and full of myself. I definitely wasn’t the kind of person who thought he needed help or needed fixing. My self-confidence had grown into arrogance. I was opinionated, sure of myself and difficult to reason with. I was sure I was right, and my life seemed to confirm this at every turn. I was in control and my decisions seemed to be producing the life I wanted.

This Homicide detective who spent his life gathering evidence and became a Cold-Case specialist who had a perfect prosecution record throughout his entire career (!) states that there was only one reason why he became a Christian  – after having used his detective skills to investigate Christianity’s claims. This hard-nose Cold-Case detective used the same criteria that he had used to investigate an unsolved murder to investigate Christianity: what is the truth?

WHY AN ATHEIST HOMICIDE DETECTIVE BECAME A CHRISTIAN!

James (Jim) Warner Wallace (known as J. Warner Wallace) investigated the claims of Christianity and became convinced that it was true. This is despite the popular opinion that you could never tell which religion was true or not – or even the nonsensical notion that all religions are equally true! 

Religious claims are just like any other truth claims. They can be tested. Since every religion makes claims which are contradictory to each other, they cannot all be true. To determine which one is true may not be important to you now, but, I guarantee you, in your final seconds of life it will matter a lot to you (because dying has a powerful way of rearranging a person’s priorities!)!

	1. CAN THE TRUTH CLAIM BE VERIFIED? All truth claims can be verified in some way – but not necessarily in the same way. For example, historic claims can be verified by eye-witness accounts or even by those who have interrogated eye-witnesses.
	2. DOES THE CLAIM CORRESPOND TO REALITY? Truth claims can be tested as to whether they correspond to what we know intuitively, by experience, or by observation.
	3. CAN THE CLAIM BE TESTED? Truth claims, particularly experiential claims, can be put to the test. For example, when you doctor says, “Take this pill, it will make you feel better!” You can test this claim by taking the pill.

Therefore, when your body suddenly gets cold, your breathing becomes increasingly difficult, you lose your hearing because YOUR HEART IS POUNDING SO HARD, please REMEMBER THESE TWO THINGS:

1.  No matter what wrong you’ve done wrong, GOD offers you forgiveness for it all (because Jesus Christ took your penalty on the Cross).

2.  You can have all of your wrong forgiven forever by asking God to forgive you (because Jesus Christ took your penalty on the Cross).

This is based on what we know of Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity. In the Gospel of Luke, we have the account of Christ’s execution along with two capital-crime criminals.  

And when they came to the place that is called The Skull, there they crucified him, and the criminals, one on his right and one on his left.
Luke 23:33

And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!”
Luke 23:35

But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?
Luke 23:40

And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Luke 23:42

The central claim of Christianity is that every human being is a natural rebel against our Creator, God. Yet God offers us terms of peace if we will surrender to Him and accept the forgiveness He offers because Jesus the Christ, the eternal Son of God, came to earth and was born of a virgin girl some 2,000 years ago, and bore the penalty of our rebellion in His execution at the hands of the Romans. Even if this seems too incredible to you now, in your final few seconds of life on this earth, I guarantee you, your perspective on these things will change! And when it does, and you experience a hyper-awareness of your own rebellion against God, the above story tells us that even then – God can meet people at their death-beds and offer them His forgiveness! 

 

And in that moment, if you have never settled accounts with God, and you find that seconds seem like hours (which I believe is God’s grace toward every human being), I beg of you, receive His forgiveness by praying one simple prayer – “God, please forgive me!” Because how you respond to God in this life determines your standing before Him for eternity in the next!

Pastor Andrew Corbett

WHY WE FEEL AND WE MUST

WE FEEL

An ounce of experience outweighs a ton of argument! As much as I think that the claims of Christianity are reasonable, logical, factual, and true, there are some people who will never be persuaded to accept this. They have been hurt in the name of God. One of the trickiest aspects to reaching such people is that they often hide behind a façade of what they assert are logical and reasonable objections to God. If we are not careful, we might be tricked into thinking that their objections to the existence of God were actually intellectual. If you care, and want to help such ones, here’s some suggestions.

“They’re all hypocrites! All they want is your money!” someone said recently to one of our new converts in our church. “Besides, look at how many children they’ve sexually abused!” they followed up with. This rocked our church member and sowed some seeds of doubt into them. However, it didn’t take long for them to realise that these allegations were weak in the light of their experience. They recalled how people from our church had sat with them in their darkest hours and shown patient support. They remembered that church leaders and other members had taken them into their homes and shared meals and time with them, and offered a caring, supportive, listening ear to them without any sense that they were trying to get something from them. They considered that the church presented its financial accounts to everyone in and outside of the church in a very public fashion for all to see, query, and scrutinise. In those financial accounts were the records of hundreds of people who had been assisted in some way over the past year. And the allegations of sexual abuse of children had nothing to do with this church – and in fact, there were some very accountable guidelines in place for preventing even a hint of this. 

In one sense, such allegations could be seen as an attack against our church. (As it turns out, this person had never been to our church or knew anything about us.) Rather than seeing this as an attack against us, I feel we should see this as an uncurtained window into someone’s heart. It lets us see that they feel hurt by someone who was supposed to be representing God. Their objections to God are grounded in their emotional experiences where they were subject directly or indirectly to someone’s hypocrisy.

THE PHONE CALL

After one of our church TV ad campaigns (which we run every Summer on commercial television stations), a lady phoned our church to attack us. As she shared her anger at our audacity to publicly invite people to church and declare that God loved them, I gently said to her, 

“It sounds like you have a story.”   

“I do!” she replied. “And maybe one day when you’ve got the time, I could tell it to you.” 

“I’ve got the time now,” I said, “if you’d like to share it with me.“

For the next two hours she shared how she had attended church with her family as a little girl and was all the while being secretly molested by the priest. This took place from the age of 6 up until the age of 17! She was now in her late 50s. She had tried to bury all this pain in her past and forget it, but the recent Royal Commission Into The Sexual Abuse of Children had brought it all back up for her. She told me how she actually longed for a spiritual connection with God, and knew that this necessarily involved being in a community of sincere believers. But her trust had been so egregiously violated that she suffered from involuntary physical reactions even setting foot outside of any church building. This had prevented her from attending family weddings and even funerals. I felt her pain. It was deep and almost incurable. This is not the kind of story that invited a reasoned argument as a response. It required a sincere pastoral response.

¶ “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea.
Mark 9:42

HURT PEOPLE OFTEN BEHAVE LIKE HURT PEOPLE

I recently heard the story Prof. Rosaria Butterfield. She was the Professor of English & Women’s Studies at Syracuse University, in the USA. And, by her own admission, she was also a strident atheist, feminist, and practicing lesbian. She wrote a piece for the New York Times titled, “Why Promise Keepers Is A Threat To American Democracy” (Promise Keepers was a Christian Men’s Movement striving to encourage men to be more godly) in which she attacked “right-wing Fundamentalist Christians”. Her article drew quite a reaction. But one response caught her by surprise. It was from an elderly Presbyterian minister. She later described it as, “The kindest opposition I had ever received.” She found Pastor Smith’s manner very appealing. They began to dialogue. The pastor invited Rosaria over for a meal with him and his wife. Rosaria was keen to publicly dismantle Christianity and was pleased to have this contact with Pastor Smith whom she regarded as “a research assistant”. These dinners became a weekly event, sometimes at Pastor Smith’s home, sometimes at Rosaria’s home. This went on week by week for the next two years. Professor Butterfield fired her objections to the Bible at these dinners and Rev. Smith patiently and reasonably answered each of them. In this time, the Professor read the Bible through from cover to cover seven times – looking for its glaring inaccuracies and fallacies. She couldn’t find any. But this wasn’t the tipping point for her being converted to Christ. It was kindness she received from Rev. Smith and his wife. Several times over those two years one of them would call her after a snow blizzard and ask how she was and whether they could help her in anyway. 

She observed that during their meals together, people would just drop by. Often they would make their way into the Smith’s kitchen and fix themselves a cup of coffee and make themselves at home. This sense of community was something she had come to value among her LGBT friends. Now she was experiencing it firsthand among Christians! She said, “Around this time the Word of God got into me. It was no longer an outside book – it was now inside me!” She was converted to Christ. She came to realise that her “attractions were not her identity”, yet her feelings of same-sex attraction did not disappear with her conversion to Christianity. She became more involved in her new community of fellow believers and the kindness, acceptance, and grace she received from them was transformational over the coming years. Today, she is married to Rev. Ken Butterfield, is a mother, and a home-schooler, who lives with her family in North Carolina. 

but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious…¶ Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.
First Peter 3:4, 8

The Gospels repeated describe Christ as “having compassion” for the people He was with. I suspect that if we could do the same, some of the people who feel hurt by those they expected to more accurately honour God, would eventually come to see that God is real because they can see Him in us as we care for each other and for them. It might take two years of dining each week with them in our homes or theirs, but then again, when the hurt is deep, it might take even longer.

Amen.

Ps. Andrew

APOLOGISING FOR ATTRACTIVE CHRISTIANITY

Christianity can be presented attractively if it is presented 'Apologetically' (reasonably) with gentleness and respect (1Peter 3:16-17). Many people have never heard a well-reasoned defense of the claims of Christianity. I have briefly introduced five categories of evidence. In another article I have presented five proofs for the existence of God. In yet another article I respond to the five main objections offered against the existence of God. This article assumes the next logical challenge: But why Christianity and not any other religion? It is my hope that as an ambassador of Christ you might be able to use the points raised in this article to more attractively respond to this challenge...

Jesus Christ was attractive. But He wasn't attractive for many of the reasons we normally associate with attractive people. In fact, Isaiah the Prophet foretold that the Christ would have "no form or comeliness (beauty) about him" (Isa. 53). Yet, thousands of people were attracted to Christ from the early days of His public ministry. Something made Jesus Christ attractive. It should therefore by no surprise that He gave principles and instructions for His followers which would present Him and His message attractively. Christianity is meant to be attractive. This involves being socially attractive, intellectually attractive, spiritually attractive and aesthetically attractive. One such example of Christ promoting attractive Chrisitanity is the parable He told about the sower.

[Read the full article]

THE EASTER QUESTION

William was a handsome young man who was proud of his physique. Before commencing university, he and a buddy agreed to have summer holiday at a popular beachside tourist location with the one intention of, as he put it: “scoring”. He met a very attractive young girl, who was also holidaying there with her friend. But William’s hopes of “scoring” were dashed when he discovered that she was a Christian. William was also intelligent and thought the easiest thing way to win this girl was also a very simple exercise: show this girl why the claims of Christianity were untrue. This presented him with an immediate problem however. 

In William's circle of friends, none of them gave ‘God’ or Christianity a second thought. He realised that although he was raised by very nominal church going parents, he didn’t actually know what the claims of Christianity were. 

Upon returning home he maintained contact with this girl and he maintained his quest to disprove Christianity. To do this, he reasoned, he needed to go to the source documents. Consequently he bought a Bible and began to read about the life of the founder of Christianity, Jesus the Christ. He was struck by what he read. 

It wasn’t what he had been told or even thought about Jesus previously. He was somewhat shocked by the accurate historical account of Jesus in the Bible and stunned by what Jesus actually said. The Jesus of the Bible was authoritative, fearless, not swayed by popular opinions. 

William was challenged by the one Christian he now knew to "try church". But William's sporting commitments clashed with church services - until he injured his shoulder. During his time off sport he decided to attend a nearby church. He saw people worshiping Jesus. He was moved. He heard people praying who honestly believed that there was a God who was listening. He describes this first time in church as a shock to all his senses. As soon as his first church service was over he dashed out of the building but involuntarily stopped in the doorway. He says he was gripped by an overwhelming urge to return into the building and talk with the pastor. He did. They agreed to meet through the week. William also decided that since he couldn't join his sporting team on Sunday mornings, due to his recovering injury, he would give church a couple more goes. The more he went and the more talks he had with the pastor, the more the claims of Christianity began to make sense. 

But he had one question. 

“Why did Jesus die?” 

Shortly after this question began to weigh on his mind, he increasingly became aware of his own shortcomings. William said, "As I started reading the Bible, attending church, and talking with the pastor, without them directly raising the matter, it was as if my previously numbed conscience suddenly began working again. And I felt guilty. Very guilty." William then had an epiphany about the connection between his question and his guilt. He realised that Jesus Christ died in his place to pay the price for William' guilt and sin. 

This discovery of the answer to this supremely important question resulted in his life being transformed. William became a committed Christian. 

Why did Jesus die? This is the question that is answered every time we celebrate Easter. It is the most important question you could ever hope to answer because its answer has both a lifetime and an eternity of immense impact. Have you found the answer? Like William, many of us have also discovered why Jesus died. The answer has defined our lives - but the same answer is far too extravagantly good not to share. That's why we love the opportunities that Easter provides because it allows us to share its answer with people just like William. And in our city, there are thousands of Williams who need to know why we celebrate Easter.

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

(Romans 5:8)

Andrew Corbett

* This story was adapted from an account told by STR's Greg Koukl. 

I DOUBT The Nature of Doubt

By Andrew Corbett

I DOUBT. (Part 1) The Nature of Doubt

The fact that we all doubt to some extent suggests that each of us shares in the universal human craving to not be deceived and that we all intuitively want to know the truth. Even when it comes to Biblical spirituality, rather than seeing doubt as spiritually negative, it can actually be a positive. After all, appropriate doubt can protect us from injury and even galvanise our worthy convictions.

Doubt is not incompatible with Christianity. Scripture encourages us to doubt, especially dubious claims. We are not to be nîave 'children' in our thinking (1Cor. 14:20). Neither are to simply accept any claim blindly - rather we are test all things.

but test everything; hold fast what is good.
First Thessalonians 5:21

¶ My dear friends, don't believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
First John 4:1

The main reason that doubt is compatible with Christianity is that it is grounded in reasons for believing. Thus, sceptics doubt because they won't believe an unverified claim. In this sense, all Christians should be genuine sceptics! All too often Christians believe things too easily. The best reason to believe any claim is because it is true! Naturally, the opposite is equally true - any claim that is demonstrably false should not be believed. This then might lead to the question: How can we test whether a claim is true or not?

Down through the ages, philosophers have studied the nature of truth (this branch of Philosophy is calledEpistemology).  Certain tests were progressively developed to discern the difference between the truth from the false. For any claim to be reasonably considered as true, it needs to pass these tests-

• Does it comport (agree) with reality?
  For example, the claim, "There was a time when lions and tigers were herbivores." This claim does not comport with reality because the digestive system of lions and tigers can not sufficiently process a vegetation-only diet.
• Is it testable?
  For example, the claim, "There was a time when lions and tigers were herbivores." This claim can be tested by seeing whether the fossil remains of lions and tigers from this particular era provide any evidence for them being herbivores.
• Is there consistent evidence supporting it?
  For example, the claim, "Anyone could win a Gold Medal in the Olympic 100 metres Men's sprint if they work hard enough." The consistent evidence demonstrates that there is usually only one winner of the Olympic Gold in the Men's 100 metres sprint (with often as many 7 other finalists and thousands who tried to qualify for it - despite their incredible hard work.
• Could this claim be proven false? ("Falsifiability")
  For example, the claim, "There is a pink porcelain tea-cup and saucer orbiting Mars which disappears every time someone looks at it." This claim can not be tested and therefore cannot be proven false. With no supporting evidence for the claim, and no way to test it to prove it to be either true or false, a claim like this deserves our doubt.

There is a difference between a sceptic who exercises doubt until there is sufficient evidence to believe, and a cynic who refuses to believe despite reasonable evidence to adequately appease their doubts.

When it comes to beliefs, most people have not really taken the time to consider precisely what they believe or more importantly why they believe what they believe. The art of thinking is probably more scientific than most people realise. It's a shame that Philosophy is not generally taught in Primary/Elementary Schools so that students are helped to gain basic thinking skills. Instead, we have the vast majority of the population holding a belief because -

• It's a popular view to hold (truth, however is not subject to a vote or democratic testing)
• Some high-profile / intelligent person holds it (This is known as the "Professor's Ploy")
• It is morally convenient for them (Moral truth is usually unpalatable to those who live immorally!)
• They harbour some hurt which has shaped how they believe (Perhaps a priest sexually abused them and therefore they are now an atheist.)
• They had a very subjective experience (such as a dream

None of these 'reasons' are particularly good reasons for believing a claim. Often what most people consider to be a 'reason' for their belief is little more than an opinion, or even, an assertion. Other beliefs fall into the category of a priori beliefs. These are beliefs which are assumed to be true before any evidence has been considered. Arguably, Darwinian Evolution falls into this category (Darwinian Evolution may be true, or it may be false, but it is fair to say that many people believe it to be true for some of the reasons given above and especially in an a priori fashion).

The Bible welcomes the investigation of its claims. He is famously known as "Doubting" Thomas. He wasn't present when the resurrected Christ appeared to several of His apostolic colleagues. And when told about the post-crucifixion/resurrection appearance of Christ, he refused to believe it unless his demands for appropriate evidence were satisfied. Eight days later, Christ appeared to His disciples again - including Thomas. Jesus invited Thomas to fulfil his demands for evidence. Thomas's doubts were then allayed. Jesus never condemned Thomas for requiring evidence. Neither did the author penning the sacred inspired account.

Some well-meaning Christians claim that faith in God is not a matter of having sufficient evidence to do so. It seems that they have accepted the false notion that a belief is based on either faith orreason. Biblical faith is not unreasonable faith - on the contrary, it is faith which results from trustworthy evidence. Jesus' rebuke of Thomas was not brought about because of his demand for evidence, but that he actually did have sufficient evidence (the eye-witness testimony of at least seven reliable, credible, and trustworthy men). The prominent atheist of the first half of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell, once famously said in response to a question about dying and discovering that he was wrong about there being no God, and then what would say to God- "You didn't give me enough evidence!" But, it will be shown over this series, no one can right state this. The Apostle John winds up his Gospel by saying the accounts that he recorded as an eye-witness, were written as evidence so that people would believe and thereby willingly receive the forgiveness and eternal life which God offers.

There are many examples of modern "Thomas's". Like him, they doubted. Like him, they required adequate evidence before they would believe in God, the Bible, and Christianity.  People like, Josh McDowell who was an aggressive atheist. He was then challenged to rebut the central claim of Christianity: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He initially believed that this would be an easy conquest. But as he investigated the evidence for the resurrection of Christ he eventually conceded that it was indeed true. He became a Christian and wrote several books giving hundreds of reasons to believe in the God of the Bible.

If you are struggling with doubt - put your doubts to the test! Even a simple prayer, "God, if you are real, please reveal Yourself to me. Amen."

Next: "I DOUBT." (Part 2), I Doubt God.

© January 5th 2014, Andrew Corbett, Legana, Tasmania, Australia

HOW CHRISTIANITY IS DIFFERENT FROM RELIGIONS

By Dr. Andrew Corbett, President of ICI College Australia, and Pastor of Legana Christian Church, 5th May 2013

Experts in Religious Studies will tell you that there are 11 "living" religions. Of these, there are 5 global religions including: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Of these 5 global religions, 4 of them are missionary religions (Judaism is exception). This article is in an introduction to how Christianity is different from these three other "missionary" religions.

FACTS ABOUT THE FOUR GLOBAL MISSIONARY RELIGIONS

It is estimated that there are 2.1 billion people who identify themselves as Christian. (Source: "Major Religions of the World Ranked by Number of Adherents". 2005. Retrieved 19 Jun 2010.)

It is estimated that there are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world.

It is estimated that there are around 400 million Buddhists around the world.

It is estimated that there are 1 billion Hindus around the world.

WHAT IS A RELIGION?

Religion is generally considered to be (1) a system of worship which has a set of beliefs and rules expressed in certain rituals with varying degrees of devotion ranging from nominalism to devotee. Most usually, religion involves (2) worship of God and a set of beliefs about God and His will for mankind. It provides (3) a way of looking at life, mankind's condition, God's relationship to His creation, the appropriate way to respond to God, and how people should treat each other. This is called "worldview".

According to the CIA's Factbook, published July 2012, the world's population (7,021,836,029) by religious affiliation is -

31.39%	Christian(Roman Catholic 18.85%, Protestant 8.15%, Orthodox 4.96%, Anglican 1.26%)
22.74%	Muslim
13.80%	Hinduism
6.77%	Buddhism
0.35%	Sikhism
0.22%	Judaism
0.11%	B'hai'ism
10.95%	Other
9.66%	Non-religious
2.01%	Atheism

Interestingly, despite Atheism's claims against "religion" it goes about its quest in a very religious fashion. It makes claims about God, mankind, the after-life, and the identity of Jesus Christ. This ironically makes it quite religious. Added to this, Buddhism is fundamentally atheistic and it universally considered a religion.

AREN'T ALL RELIGIONS BASICALLY THE SAME?

We hear this all the time, that all religions are basically the same. It is variously expressed with glaikit expressions such as, All religions worship the same God ... All religions promote the same values ... Any religion will get you to Heaven. These opinions are at best uninformed, they are at least insulting to each of these religions, and at worst dangerous. To show why, we will consider the four major claims of each religion and then compare them with each other...[read the full article]