Predisposed Faith

I read a piece the other day where the author said that, though he believes in God, he understands that for those who don’t believe to use the truth of the Bible as a basis of proof or an evidence of fact automatically shuts them off. He therefore chooses not to reference God or the Bible in conversation with those people. 

To his article someone commented something along the nature of, “I don’t mind someone claiming to believe in God. What shuts me down is when they insist upon believing something in the Bible that has been scientifically proven false.”

Here’s the thing, there is nothing in the Bible that has ever been scientifically proven to be false. 

Nothing in academia, outside of mathematics and some mechanical sciences has been proven true.{1} Nothing

• Not archeologically 
• Not anthropologically
• Not historically 

Nothing 

Not even evolution. Though evolution is almost universally accepted in the scientific community there is a great deal of disagreement in evolutionary theory. That is, as much as the atheist and agnostic hates to admit it, because there is no scientific proof for it. No one has ever observed or replicated an evolutionary process. 

Fact is, there is far more scientific evidence of the truthfulness of the Bible. The agnostic and atheist either refuses to accept the evidence or else, the thing that is much more common, they are ignorant of the evidence, choosing to listen to the theories of others rather than to search answers for themselves. 

To believe or disbelieve are both acts of faith. One faith is predisposed to accept those parts of the Word of God that has not been proven because God has proven Himself so many times before. The other faith is predisposed to disbelieve all of the Bible, most likely because they do not like the consequences of the reality of a living God. 

[1}  I’m sharing the link to an episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class today. This episode features Mohenjo Daro, an ancient city in the Indus river valley of modern day Pakistan. The entire program is fascinating but I chose to link it here specifically for the quote they give at the end of the show by George F. Dales in which are these words, “It is not uncommon to discover that yesterday’s fact is one of today’s discarded theories.”
Check it out at, https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts/mohenjo-daro.htm

Many Americans Prefer A ‘Higher Power’ To The God Of The Bible

A recent article in Huffington Post is entitled, "Many Americans Prefer A ‘Higher Power’ To The God Of The Bible, Study Finds." 

It goes on to say that only 10 percent of Americans do not believe in some sort of spiritual force. It’s just that they don’t want to believe He is the God who is described in the Bible.  

Many of those who reject the God of the Bible have an incorrect understanding of who God is. Some of them have rejected not the God of the Bible but a misunderstanding of the God of the Bible. Some have not rejected the God of the Bible but their own perceived terms of how a person comes to know that God. 

The article claims that this belief in something bigger exists even among atheists agnostics and “nothing in particulars.” (I kid you not. That is the title of this third group. Pew Research has labeled them, “Nones.”) They believe in a higher power but “a new study from the Pew Research Center shows that for a significant number of Americans, “God” is not the God of the Bible.”

Here is the thing. None of them can provide any evidence for what they believe. The God of the Bible, on the other hand, has provided that evidence in the Bible and proven it to be true through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is so much intrinsic and extrinsic evidence that the record of the Bible is true that it requires far more faith to discount it than to believe it. The key to all of this is that faith is something passed to us. We don’t just have it. 

The faith of the born again Christian was given to Him by God

The faith of the atheist, agnostic and “nothing in particular” - he got his faith from - “nothing in particular.”

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ae214d4e4b055fd7fc9af65

No Proof God Exists, Really?

It is a significant fact that the Bible begins with a pronouncement, In the beginning, God.

God did not explain Himself or prove Himself, He declared Himself. He is a fact. 

It is innate in mankind to believe in God. Various cultures have developed differing concepts about God, but the belief in God is universal, ubiquitous. 

True, there are, and likely always have been atheists or at least agnostics, but when one begins to look into the mindset of these, we learn that they too have a god. They are no different than anyone else, they merely attempt to define their gods in such a way that they appear to be no gods.

I cannot prove the existence of God. I do not believe I have to because I am convinced that everyone, absolutely everyone, even those who most loudly protest, believe in God.

The question that I think matters most is, which god? Of the multitude of religious systems and “non systems,” which is the true representation of God? I present a case for the God of the Bible.

There is the Bible itself

Though some argue that we can’t use the Bible to prove the Bible because it is one book proving itself, that is far from accurate. The Bible is, in fact, a series of books, independent of each other yet miraculously bound to one another. 

The Bible is composed of not one but sixty-six individual works. There are more than forty different writers working over a period of four thousand years. Each book expresses, to a high degree, the personalities, backgrounds and educational make-up of each writer. Yet they are remarkably unified. They serve as multiple witnesses testifying to the veracity and divine nature of the whole.

There is the character of the Bible

Nothing in the Bible has ever been proven to be false. It is not a book of science, but its science is accurate. It is not a book of history but its history is accurate. More than one quarter of the Bible was written prophetically, in other words, it predicts the future. More than three quarters of those prophecies have been fulfilled with absolute accuracy. There is no reason to believe that those prophecies that have not yet been fulfilled with not be fulfilled accurately in God’s time.

Most importantly is the resurrection of Jesus Christ

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is irrefutable. There is simply too much evidence that Christ lived, died and rose again to deny these events with any sort of credibility.

There is more contemporary evidence of the gospel of Jesus Christ than there is that Alexander the Great ever lived, yet no one questions the historical veracity of Alexander the Great. Why is that? I suggest that it is because there is no great consequence to believing in Alexander the Great. Whether he did or did not live makes no difference now or in the future. Not so with Jesus Christ.

If Jesus Christ lived, died and rose again as the Word of God says he did, then He is God. Jesus made astounding and substantive claims concerning Himself and eternity.

• He said that there is a literal hell and people go there

• He said that God the Father is real and that no man comes to God except by Him

• He said that God’s expectation is perfection

• He also said that whosoever believes in Him could have everlasting life.

Every man and woman has a right to believe according to the dictates of their own conscience. I only plead that, before anyone settles what they believe, they do so with eyes wide open. 

Jesus said that to deny Him was to be condemned to eternal torments, “...where the worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.” Jesus said that there is no other access to heaven except through faith in Him. I beg that you make a full and unbiased study of these claims (being led by one competent to help you) before you decide not to believe.

Marvin McKenzie

In the fields