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Why are you here on Earth? What is the purpose of your life? Is life just a glorified Monopoly game? Get a bunch of stuff now, because when the game is over, it’s all just going to go in the box? I mean, if the Atheists are right, then one day you are just going to die and become worm food, and there’s no ultimate meaning to anything.
In fact, one preacher put it to his congregation this way, he said, “One day, you are going to die. And they’re going to dress you up in your best suit, or your best outfit. They’re going to put you in a box, they’re going to dig a hole somewhere, they’re going to lower that box into that hole. Then there going to throw dirt into your face, and go back to the church, and eat potato salad.” Is that it? You just take a dirt nap for all eternity? If the Atheists are right, that’s it. There is no ultimate meaning to anything. One day we all die, and it’s over.
But I actually think there is a real purpose to life. And I think you can find that real purpose, in fact everybody living can find the real and true purpose, in this ancient collection of documents we now call the Bible.
Now when you say this on a college campus, where I spend most of my time, people look at you like you have three heads. “What are you nuts? You think this book is true? First of all, it’s full of miracles, and we don’t believe in miracles anymore. In fact, miracles don’t occur. It was written by religious people! Who were biased, they embellished it, they made it up. You can’t trust it. Besides, it has contradictions in it, you can’t believe this thing.”
I actually think you can believe this book, and there’s really only four questions you need to answer in the affirmative to say this book is true. If you say yes to these four questions,you can say beyond any reasonable doubt, that the Bible is true. What are the four questions? Here are the four questions:
- Does truth exist?
- Does God exist?
- Are miracles possible?
- Is the New Testament true?
Why, are these the four questions: Truth, God, miracles, and the New Testament? Well first of all, if there is no truth, if it’s just truth for you and not for me, or all truth is relative, or there are no absolutes, then obviously, this book can’t be true right? Of course, if there is no truth, any book written by an Atheist can’t be true either. Right? So obviously, we’re going to answer yes to question one, of course there’s truth.
Second question; Does God exist? You can’t have a word from God if there is no God. If there’s no God, then throw the Bible away, and any other book that talks about God. I hope to show you that there is a spaceless, timeless, immaterial, powerful, moral, personal, intelligent Creator out there. We are going to talk about three arguments two of them are scientific, one is philosophical. These arguments are taught in the Bible, but you don’t need the Bible to know them. In fact, we’re not even going to be referring to the Bible, we’re just going to look at these two scientific and one philosophical arguments. And then we’re going to say, that this being, God, actually exists.
Third point – are miracles possible? Obviously, if miracles are not possible, the Bible can’t be true. I hope to show you that not only miracles are possible, but the biggest miracle in the Bible, has already occurred, and we have scientific evidence for it.
Then we can get to the key question; Is the New Testament true? The New Testament doesn’t have a prayer if truth doesn’t exist, God doesn’t exist, or miracles are not possible. But, if truth exists, God exists, and miracles are possible, then we can see if we have an accurate and historically reliable account of miracles occurring in the first century to a man named Jesus and His apostles in the 27 hand-written Greek manuscripts we’ve collected under one binding that we now call the New Testament. Do those documents tell us the truth, or were they written down much later by religious people who were biased and made it up?
I’m about to show you that they really did tell us the truth.
Now, some of you may be wondering: Well, what about the Old Testament? Do you believe that the Old Testament is true?
Well, if the New Testament is reliable, you get the Old Testament thrown in. Why?
Because Jesus Christ is in the New Testament and can authenticate the Old Testament. You see, if Jesus really is God, as the New Testament documents claim He is (and, admittedly that’s a big “if”), then whatever God teaches is true, Jesus taught that the entire Old Testament is the Word of God, so if the New Testament is reliable, you get the Old Testament thrown in.
So, let’s get started with the first major point of all this:
Does truth exist?
Now, whenever you start talking about truth, you always have to start with Jack Nicholson. Right? I mean, Tom Cruise had old Jack up on the witness stand and he said, “Colonel, I want the truth!”, to which Nicholson replied, “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!”
There are a lot of people in our culture today who cannot handle the truth. They are saying: There is no such thing as truth; or you’ve got your truth and I’ve got my truth so truth is relative. So, before we go any further, we need to define what we mean by “truth”.
It’s an easy definition: Truth is telling it like it is.
Or, truth is what corresponds to what is referent. If I am referring to the Bible while pointing to a Bible, then it’s true. If I refer to something as the Bible while pointing to a copy of the Qur’an, then it wouldn’t be true.
This seems so obvious, so simple, so why are we starting here?
Because our first duty in today’s culture is to state the obvious in the face of a lot of people denying the obvious. They deny that there is truth.
So, we must hold that there is truth and that it corresponds to reality.
Also, all truth is absolute. Something that is true for all persons at all times in all places. There are no relative truths.