Ravi Zacharias , of RZIM Ravi Zacharias International Ministries will be delivering two lectures at Trinity International University in February.
The first lecture on “What Does It Mean to Be Human?” will take place at 7 p.m. on Feb. 5 in the A.T.O. Chapel.
Zacharias said he chose to address this topic because so many questions are surfacing in our culture that are symptomatic of this issue, and we need to answer the foundational question of what it means to be human to be able to address these questions.
Zacharias will also give a lecture entitled “Chariots of Fire: The Moulding of a Preacher” at an 11 a.m. all-University chapel on Feb. 6. Zacharias said this message relays the story of Elijah and is relevant to young seminarians in their preparation.
When you’re talking tonight, or in the future, about living with the Word, and finding yourself equipped and strengthened for the future, to face the future, as it is rushing towards us at an incredible pace. How do we meet them? How do we challenge this generation?
In my 40 years of traveling and preaching, I have never seen the challenge more daunting than it is now. Incredible challenge, extraordinary distortions. And, on the one side you face a rabid, strident naturalism that wants to do away with God in all paradigms. And, on the other side you see a new spirituality- “so called”. The end result is the same in both of them. Because when you think about it, what does secularism really do, when it is taken out to its logical and systemic conclusion? It is the eviction of God. And what does the new, so called, spirituality do? That basically deifies the individual. Same end result. There is no transcendent, infinite, all wise personal being. It’s all about you, one way or the other, either in spiritual terms or rabidly naturalistic terms.
At such a time like this, you and I have been called to live. It is by divine appointment that we are here at this time. And, we’ve set our hand to the plow. And we dare not look back. And, as we are called to live for the word, and empowered for the future, I want to bring to you a message tonight, that I hope will stir your hearts, touch your minds, and ultimately bring a response from your wills to the honor and the glory of God.
Ravi’s message starts at the 5:45 minute mark.
In 2 Kings 21, the passage of Manasseh reads:
Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination,sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of theLord, arousing his anger.
I wonder if you caught one line there. A very simple line: “he basically destroyed everything that his father Hezekiah stood for“. You see, there is no guarantee in the next generation. His father had ushered in the greatest revival of that time. His father Hezekiah had done it, and now comes his son Manasseh who reigned for 55 years, and his son Amon for 2 years. And then comes Josiah. 2 Kings 22-
Josiah was eight years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem thirty-one years. His mother’s name was Jedidah daughter of Adaiah; she was from Bozkath. 2 He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and followed completely the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. (13:00)
You know the story of Josiah. Even as I am speaking to you, demagogues are being felled, hither and yon. Once upon a time they built busts and statues of themselves, fallen now, in some desert terrain. But, they thought of themselves as omnipotent, thought of them selves as all powerful, that they will never be brought down. History records again, and again for us people, who thought that once upon a time, as they came on the scene, that their ‘once upon a time’ will last forever, and that they never would be taken from their demagoguing aspirations. Coleridge said this: If men could learn form history, what lessons it might teach us, but passion and party blind our eyes, and the light which experience gives is only a lantern on the stern which shines on the waves behind us. But, the light which experience gives is a lantern on the stern which shines only on the waves behind us.
I want to take you tonight to the story of two kings, because we are living in turbulent times, we are living in times when we desperately need the wisdom of God. And, when you think of being empowered for the future. When you think of living with the mandates and precepts that God has given to you and me, it is important for us to understand lessons from history, to see what actually transpires. To see how these demagogues come and go, what builds a nation, what gives it longevity, what gives it sustenance. What gives it that power that comes from God, and what ultimately destroys and devastates them, no matter how rich or wealthy they may be at one time. (17:00)
Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah
I look at Manasseh 697-642 B.C. He takes on the reign, and he’s going to make history, he thinks. He makes 3 significant and definitive decisions. He made them willfully. And we must follow the plan in his mind and see the impact of what he did:
1. He repudiated the faith on which the nation was founded
The precepts that governed it’s instruction. The moral framework that gave it impetus from which to move forward. And in that divine impetus to move forward in the moral framework, one king after another came and faced the challenge. Now, Manasseh comes and he decides he’s going to repudiate and remove the moral framework of God. This is a terrifying decision he made. It’s the kind of decision we are making all over the world at this time. This entire monetary crisis, that is now upon us, is based upon a framework that defies the moral law of God- that you can live beyond your means, that you never have to pay back, that you can violate the rules, that you can cheat on paper. That you can build and build your own storehouses, while you are exploiting others in the process.
These are the governing ideas that have shaken the world to its boots right now. But, we’ve gone beyond that. We’ve not just desacralized our word, we have desacralized the very essence of human life. We talk so much about all the freedoms and human rights. Very seldom do we talk about the right to be human. These are the issues that are strangling us. (19:00)
The desacralization of our word, the desacralization of life, the desacralization of sexuality, the desacralization of the home and of marriage, and we think we can do all of this with impunity. G.K. Chesterton said, “Before you remove any fence, always pause long enough to see why it was put there in the first place. In the 10 commandments, you can sum it up in one word: Sacredness. The sacredness of your life, the sacredness of your marriage, the sacredness of your property, the sacredness of your worship, the sacredness of your time. That’s what it is all about. God brings all of these for the provision of your moral and your spiritual protection. They are there for a reason.
But, he (Manasseh) removed it. He decided to pull all of these down. That was the first decision he made. Then he made a second choice:
2. He accelerated the development of heathenism
Any time you take away the truth, nature abhors a vacuum and something else will come into its place. Chesterton went on to say, ‘The tragedy of not believing in God is not that a person ends up believing in nothing. Alas, it is much worst- He ends up believing in anything.” And that is precisely the nature we are encountering today, the kind of stuff that we actually end up believing, and the pronouncements we end up making. He led a reaction upon the faith of his father, upon the very structures on which the nation was founded, which resulted in the acceleration of heathenism and then the third result, which was natural:
3. He instituted a bitter persecution of the prophets.
Three things happened, removing the truth, allowing all kinds of beliefs to come in, and then his option was to persecute those that stood the righteousness, and stood for the truth. Don’t you see the analogy? Don’t you see what’s happening? You know, I have to be so cautious on campuses today. I have to be so cautious even of the invitations I accept, and where I choose to speak now. Because, someone has wisely stated at one point, that any stigma can lick a good dogma. And they will stigmatize you, brand you in certain ways. And when you get up to speak in certain settings, in a certain conference, all of a sudden- one wrong word and they will slay you, they will persecute you. They won’t only stop your thought, but, they will want to stop you from going anywhere to present your perspective. That’s exactly what’s happened. It comes under the false nomenclature of being liberal. Very few things are liberal when relativism holds sway. It becomes extremely illiberal.
True relativism, if they want to stand for it, to give perspectives and counter perspectives a chance to be spoken and shared. But, the truth of the matter is, what we have got today is a kind of a bigotry and a prejudice that blocks out somebody who holds to the sacredness of life, and to the sacredness of our commitments. Persecution takes place at all levels til they hope that you will ultimately be silenced. That’s precisely what Manasseh did in his time, as he led a reaction against the faith of his fathers, accelerated the development of heathenism, and instituted a bitter persecution of the prophets. He is the one who is credited with having murdered Isaiah. The book of Hebrews talks about how some of them were sawn in half, and if extra biblical narrative is correct, Isaiah went and hid inside a hollow bark of a tree, and Manasseh had that tree cut down, and literally had Isaiah sawn asunder. This (Isaiah) was the prophet who has spoken to us much about the Messiah.
I say to you, the analogy is inescapable, when you think of what is happening in society today. (24:51) Three results came of Manasseh’s choices:
The results of Manasseh’s choices
1. It is possible for one person to lead millions into untold evil
Think about the professors who have taken away the ideas of absolutes from scores of minds. The writings of some, that can influence thousands and thousands, and exponentially- millions.
I remember one day in the 1980′s, when I was speaking in Warsaw, Poland, and my host was a medical doctor. And he asked me, “Ravi are you free tomorrow, I’ll take you to see Auschwitz.” I said, “You know, I have already seen many concentration camps.” He said, “Which ones?” I said, “Buchenwald, Dachau…” He said, “Oh, no those were concentration camps. The death camps were in Poland, primarily. I want to show you a death camp.” I said, “Okay, we’ll go.” We got into his car early in the morning, on a cold and a damp day. We drove for a long time, and we arrived into the confines of what used to be called Auschwitz. I wasn’t emotionally prepared for what I was going to see. As I walked from room to room I was stunned into silence. In one room, behind glass, there was 12,000 pounds of women’s hair. As the women had been taken and scalped before they were sent in to stand in those showers, that they were told that it was nothing more than an ordinary shower as they saw the vents above them. But, they were gassed by the thousands. Over 12,000 every day, dying in Auschwitz alone. I saw little suitcases, little toothbrushes, pictures of men, women, and children as they had arrived there. And then, looking so emaciated and almost ghostlikeTheir cheeks sunken and their eyes looked deep inside their skulls. They had been dehumanized, brutalized, and ultimately exterminated. It came at the whim and the passion of one man who wanted to build a superman mentality in this world. (27:20)
One man. I remember speaking to the Lenin Military Academy several years ago. I remember speaking to the faculty there at the Center for Geopolitical Strategy, and then after the Lenin Military Academy, standing in front of a completely atheistic faculty that was so hostile to start with. I spent about 3 hours with them. My wife and a colleague of mine were with me. I sat alone at the table as they hurled their hostile questions at me. I remember telling one of the generals the story later on, after it was over. And, he sat there, about to put a fork full of food into his mouth and he stopped and his whole mouth started to quiver.
I started to tell him the story of Joseph Stalin, who used to be a man preparing for the ministry, and he abandoned his faith in God completely and clenched his fist to his own people. A woman once looked at Joseph Stalin and said, “How long do you expect to be torturing your own people and expect them to still follow you?” He was silent. He asked a waiter to bring a live chicken, and a chicken was brought to him. He clutched it fiercely under his arm and started to defeather that bird. And the chiken tried to squirm out of his arms, to jump out with pain. He clutched it tighter, completely denuded that bird. He put that chicken down, picked up a piece of bread and walked away. He faced the chicken and the chicken hobbled over to him, nuzzled between his trouser legs. He put his hand down with a piece of bread in it, and the chicken started to peck away at that bread. He said, “Madam do you have your answer? I have just tortured that chicken, but it will follow me for food, for the rest of its life. People are like that chicken, you torture them and they will follow you for the rest of their lives.That’s my answer to you.”
The general who had invited me there had taken my wife and I out for dinner. And, as we were sitting and talking, and as I told that story, I told him, “General, he murdered 15 million of your people on the basis of a philosophy that there was no God.” The general lifted up his fork, and his hand started to quiver, his lips started to quiver. I had the privilege of leading that general to Christ. And, before I left, the son of a political strategist there said to me, “Mr. Zacharias, I believe what you have spoken to us today is truth. But, it’s very difficult to change after 70 years of believing a lie.
With a lie. With a lie, he led his nation to horrors that we still continue to witness. See, it’s possible for one person to lead millions into untold evils. Don’t ever underestimate that. And the reason that it’s possible is the second result:
2. It’s true – most people do not know how to think for themselves
We think so pragmatically. We think momentarily. We do not even think with reason. We do not think with logic. We do not know the simple laws of induction and deduction, and we are led whimsically into patterns of behavior. And we see the rot of culture setting in because of an unthinking generation. And lastly, I say the result he brought about is this (31:30):
3. A nation has reached it’s lowest ebb & the ultimate test
of civilization will be in what it does to its children
A nation’s civility is tested by what it does to its children. I ask you to think about that today. What are we doing to our children? I was so thrilled to read that little one line, that Mark said to his children, that he would still be their father and be there for them. What a reassurance for a young mind, that your dad or your mom will be there for you. The ultimate test of any civilization will be what we do to our children.
If you read what one of the commentators described of what Manasseh did to them- he offered his own sons in the arms of a flaming idol. It says this: Night time seems to have been a special time for these awful immolations. The yells of the children bound to the altars are rolling into the fire from the brazen arms of the idol. Shouts and hymns of the frantic crowds, and the wild tumult of drums and the instruments, by which the cries of the victims were sought to be drowned. It rose in an awful discordance into the city, humming with the whole scene visible form the walls by the glow of the furnaces and flames. Such an ideal of transcendent horror that the name of the valley, became then and still continues in the form of Gehenna, the usual word for hell.
What was happening in the city was that the idol’s arms were set ablaze, as it were. Children were being brought and rolled into the arms of the idol. As the amber colored sky would reveal all the flames coming from below, the shrieks and the shrills would be heard. Manasseh was smart in all of this. He brought loud instruments to drown the shrills of the babies that were being burned to their death and that name was given at that time after Manasseh. They called it Gehenna- the place of hell. That name still stands to this very day, reminding us of the people who looked at what happened, at the loss of their next generation, at the sacrifice of their own children, and they cried out and said, “This is what hell must be like.” (34:00)
I am a father of three. And I have the extraordinary privilege of having all three of them working with me. It’s only the grace of God that has done this, because if I had to do my life all over again, I tell you the truth, I would do it quite differently. I would not have been traveling as much in the early days when they were so young and they needed me to be there. It’s a tribute to their mother that their lives were held together so well. I started in the days as a n itinerant evangelist, where you would move, literally, from city to city and live off love offerings- preaching Sunday night, Sunday morning, driving another 200 miles and getting down to start somewhere else that Sunday night. And you would go 5 weeks in a row, preaching 60-70 times and then coming back home totally exhausted. That’s the way it was when I started out in the 70′s. I was, and still am a licensed evangelist with the Christian Missionary Alliance for the last 40 years. But, if I had to start today, with them (kids) I wouldn’t do it that way. It is just too heavy a price. It is my loss, when you miss the thrill of watching those very tender and precious years. And now, God in His grace has kept all of them safe in His fold, and under His wings and I have all 3 of them working with me now, as our ministry builds in 10 different countries. I remember watching them grow up, and I would come back week after week, and saying, “My goodness, how they’ve changed.Their faces change, their stature changes.
If you want to be empowered for the future, raise up the next generation with an example of a life that will be honoring to God. The irony is Manasseh came to God late. He repented, but so much damage had been done in the day of his clenched fist. Shortly thereafter, just a 2 year hiatus with Amon, and then came Josiah. Josiah just did 2 things:
1. Josiah gave them back the Book of the Law
The Word of God, that’s what he gave to them. Now, once you and I understand something, that the Word of God and the laws of God are given to us so that we might exult in life, and delight in life, and find out what life’s actual purpose is about. Then, we will say what David said: That His word is a lamp and a light, and that I will commit to be one that delights in your law.
About 3-4 weeks ago, I was invited by a man, who I can’t say too much about. I want to be very careful. He is a tycoon. Big successes in a country that I shall leave unnamed. And the first time I met him at a conference, he told me he couldn’t stand Christians and he didn’t much care for Christianity either. I said, “Why are you here?” He said, “My wife said to give her one week, and I guess you’re the speaker, and this better be good.” I said, “Look, you didn’t promise me anything, but, you promised your wife you would come and enjoy this week. If you don’t like the messages, that’s okay. Give your wife and your boys a good week. I’m glad you’re here, I’m glad you honored her with her request to give her one week of your life, and if you don’t like what’s going on when I’m speaking, you can get up and walk out. That won’t offend me, that happens quite often in audiences. I am quite comfortable with it, you won’t be bothering me. But, give your wife what you pledged her this week. He came the first day with his arms crossed. Second day with dropped hands. Third day he’s listening carefully. On the fourth day, his son comes forward and says to me, “Can I talk to you?” He’s 18 years old. Long story. He asked, “How can I become a Christian? The son’s life was transformed. The father looks at me and says, “What’s happened to my son?” I said, “Did he tell you what’s happened?” He said, “Yes, he’s become a Christian.” I said, “What do you think?” He says, “He looks different.” I said, “That’s only the beginning, a lot more different is going to happen.” On the last day, he sat down on an island with my wife and his friend and his family, looked at me and he said, “I like you. I like what I am hearing. He said, “I am going to help you in a significant way, but, I want you to make one commitment to me. I want you to fly into my country and I want you to meet our leaders. What you have preached is what my nation needs.” Three weeks ago he chartered this yacht and brought several people along and I was to answer their questions. Three days into it, this man he brought, who is 50 years old, sits down next to me and says, “Let me tell you a story. My life’s a mess, my marriage is broken, nothing’s gone right. I’m a very wealthy man, I don’t need anymore money, but my life is shattered and everything is wrong. As he was pouring out details form his life, I said, “Let me stop you and ask you a question: What have you got against Jesus Christ?” He said, “Well, for one thing, I don’t like this conditional love of His.All these conditions he lays out for us, if we don’t abide by them, he’s gonna toss us into an eternal hell.” And he went on and on. I said, “You know what, I find it fascinating. You begin your story by telling me you want your wife to come back, and you lay some conditions for her on which you ask her to come back. And, now you’re telling me the thing you don’t like about God is he lays some conditions for you. He stares and stares at me, gets off that sofa, on his knees. He covers his face and he sobs like a little boy, with drawn out, long heaves and sobs. I just didn’t know what to do at the moment. He sobbed and sobbed. I had the privilege of getting down next to him, putting my arm around him and praying with him, as he gave his life to Jesus Christ. That night, in a tiny little island in Sicily, at the end of the dinner he stands up and tells everybody, “Can I say something to you? Today, the 20th of June is my real birthday. I have found Jesus Christ, and I am a new person today.”
The man who invited him is the man I mentioned, that I met before.And he just looked at him and said, “Now you’re going to make me start crying.” And his 3 sons said to me that night, “I have never seen my father cry before.”
There’s a law of God. There are parameters. There are boundaries. You want to enjoy life- you honor His law. You do it His way. You wanna destroy life, you violate the laws of God. If there’s any young people sitting in the audience, let me tell you something. The world out there will try to provoke you to live in a total violation of God’s law. And you live that way and you will be on the path to total self destruction. You do it God’s way and you live a life of perpetual novelty. He (Manasseh) gave them the law of God and the second thing he gave them:
2. Josiah taught them the privilege of worship
How to worship the living God. You see, the Book of the Law had been lost in the house of God. He found it and he gave them the privilege of worship, teaching them that it is worship that absolutely binds everything together, all of your proclivities.
Archbishop William Temple defined it: “Worship is the submission of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of the conscience by His holiness; the nourishment of the mind with His truth; the purifying of the imagination by His beauty; the opening of the heart to His love; the surrender of the will to His purpose – and all of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which our nature is capable and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centredness which is original sin and the source of actual sin.” It is true to say, as another writer has it, “After all when everything else ceases, worship will remain.”
Now, I want you to follow me- that it is only in worship, that all of the inclinations of your heart come together to find an expression of the sacred, God Himself. It is only as you bring all of this together in worship, all of the inclinations of your heart, for which God has provided the ultimate expression in worship.
Let me ask you a question, and I want you to think very carefully. How can a culture like ours define anything that is of value, unless it first defines the very purpose of life? How do you define values, without first understanding purpose? What is evil? What is good? How do you define those? I was in Colorado Springs four day ago (video is from July 2012), speaking to a group of Chaplains at their annual conference. When we arrived I got the message that there had been a tragic shooting there in Colorado at one of the movie theaters. I turned on the news on the TV, and everybody starts talking about evil. What is it? You will never define good, you will never define evil unless you have also included the purpose of what your life is all about. That you are the creation of a holy God. A God for whom life is of value and sanctity. That’s why brethren, worship is so critical and I challenge you as leaders, and I challenge you as members of churches to make sure your worship retains theological integrity, not just pragmatic fulfillment.
These things happened:
Josiah built a conviction of safety for his people. Isn’t that the longing of your heart and mind? That you send your children out, or you go out, and you have that sense of safety about you? The famed Korean evangelist, Billy Kim, tells of the time during the Korean war. A young man was ordered out of the trenches to go and rescue his fallen mates. And, he said he would do it, but, he looked at his watch and ducked for cover, and the commander came by a few minutes later and he was still in the trenches and he said, “What on earth are you doing?” I told you to go and rescue your fallen mates, there’s an awful lot of them just lying wounded out there.” He said, “I will do it sir,” and again he looked at his watch and he crouched again til the commanding officer fled elsewhere. The commander comes again and asks, “What on earth are you doing? Go and rescue your fallen mates.” He keeps looking, looking, looking at his watch, jumps out of his trench and goes and rescues his fallen mates all night long. In the early hours of dawn, as he is sitting back, tired and exhausted, somebody looks at him and says, “What is the matter with you? You were told 3 times to go and rescue your fallen mates and all you would do is look at your watch and cower and hide.” He said, “I’m embarrassed to tell you this. I don’t know God, and I’m afraid of dying. But, my mother knows God. And when I left, she gave me a Bible to put into my bag. And she said, ‘Son, every day, at the following hour, I will be on my knees praying for you.’” He said, “I was waiting for that hour to strike, when I knew my mother would be on her knees, and I was ready to go out at that time.” When all the firepower in the world doesn’t give you hope, but your mother on her knees gives you the confidence that you are secure. That’s what Josiah did for his people.
Josiah satisfied them with the power to change, by giving them the word and telling them they could change. Anyone here that needs to make some changes? Do you know that where you’re headed is the wrong direction? Are you in a relationship you ought to never have begun and been in? Are you in a habit that is breaking you and tormenting you? Are you a person of your word, or are you constantly breaking it and living a lie? I know of the only hope for somebody like that. It’s when the Holy Spirit of God will transform you, after convicting you and telling you He will give you the power to change for the future. Yes, the days are dark. Yes, the world is broken. And we tend to look at the immediate and say, “It’s not gonna work.” God is sovereign, God is in charge, God holds the threads. God will honor His word. God will lead the believer in the path of righteousness. He will be there in every fearful situation.
Martin Luther: “History is like a drunken man reeling from one wall to the other, knocking itself senseless with every hit.”
What is history really all about? Is it really an accumulation of multiple biographies? Or is it, like Henry Ford said, “Just a lot of bunk?” What is history all about?
Here’s a sample quote Ravi gives in this discussion- ”for the scientist who has lived by his faith only in the system, it is going to end like a bad dream. He is going to climb higher and higher and scale the mountains of knowledge and when he reaches the top he will find that he will be greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (from Robert Jastrow- an American astronomer, physicist and cosmologist. He was a leading NASA scientist, populist author and futurist and author of God and the Astronomers)
Dr Louw Alberts: There is a term coined in Dutch philosophy called evolutionism, where you strip the model of all its problems, you just jump over difficulties. You start out with nothing, nothing goes to life and life ultimately ends up with man. That is not science, that is a worldview called evolutionism. That is the problem Christianity will always have with evolutionism, I don’t think it lies with the origin; it lies with the fall because in evolutionism man is the ultimate product of a climbing curve. According to the Bible man is fallen and needs a Redeemer. In evolutionism you have no room or need for a Redeemer. That’s why it can never come to terms with the Christian Gospel.
Moderator Ellis Andre – Questions about the Christian faith from the perspective of the thinking person:
What were Paul’s views on ethnicity?
In Hawkings book “A brief history of time” he concludes with a question: What then, place for a Creator? Your comments please?
A question on the fall of man; man today is not how he was originally created in the beginning of Genesis
The ultimate question: What is the meaning of life?
It is often said of the Bible that there was an element of socialism. Did free enterprise coupled with capitalism really work in the Christian congregation in Jerusalem, especially because the church in Jerusalem became really poor (min 26)
If the arguments for the faith are so strong why is it that so many people, who are intelligent don’t actually come to God?
If there is such demonstrable fine tuning in the universe, is it not reasonable to assume that there could be some validity in astrology linking our fate in some way to the stars and to the movements of heavenly bodies? (min. 35)
On the New Age movement, is it wrong as a Christian to use the techniques of eastern origin religions (two in specific- reflexology and acupuncture)? min 36
Justin Martyr said he had tried various systems of philosophy… and ultimately discovered Christianity, what he called the chief, the supreme philosophy. He found the answer, as far as he was concerned. Someone may be in that position today (having heard all the evidences in the day long conference Ravi Z. was part of) wanting to know the ultimate meaning. If there was actually someone like that and they wanted to be a Christian, where would he have to start? How does one actually become a Christian?
Ravi: “Faith and reason interplay. God has put enough in this world to make faith in Him a reasonable thing, but left enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone. There is an interplay: It is not faith in nothing or subjectivity; it is the systematic reasoning that God gives to us that says, ‘You’re the one whom I want to lean on’
Ravi: *Robert Jastro in his book “God and the astronomers” says that “for the scientist who has lived by his faith only in the system, it is going to end like a bad dream. He is going to climb higher and higher and scale the mountains of knowledge and when he reaches the top he will find that he will be greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.
Dr. Louw Alberts: The essence of life is to discover the fullness of God and His interest in me as a person and how that ultimately relates to my family and my fellow man. If someone could convince me there is no God, life would lose all meaning for me immediately.
Dr. David Block: The meaning of life is the yearning to know Him.
Ravi: What I think it takes to find meaning. Every person who says they have meaning has these 4 components- (1)You must have a sense of wonder (2) You need to have the knowledge of truth…just because I find meaning it does not mean it is meaning. It should be within the confines of truth, otherwise LSD in my veins could give me meaning too (3) You have to have the experience of love and (4) The confidence of security. The older you get the more it takes to fill your heart with wonder and only God is big enough to fill that heart with wonder and meaning. God, the perpetual novelty who is the truth, who shares His love and gives you the confidence and victory of hope beyond the grave
Ravi: Who is the God that you are going to in theism? The struggle comes, I think with the multiplicity of options that are both intellectual and emotional. There are millions of people who believe different things. How do we just brush it aside and say it’s wrongheaded? There are 2 or 3 things that need to be interjected here- (1)You can be sure that if God had given 10 different ways to choose, we would have wanted 11. Like the student at Cal Tech who said, “I prefer reincarnation because it gives you a million opportunities against Christianity which gives you one. (2) Second, man does not want to surrender his autonomy. The moment you realize this is the truth, you need to give it (autonomy) up- to give up your own autonomy and self centeredness. The task of the evangelist and the apologist is then is to go proclaim the Gospel and to remove the intellectual obstacles and they can see the problem as being moral and not intellectual. By patience and love we continue to do that.
The tremendous harmony that occurs in this universe, you just can’t conceive of an accident when you hear and see the design that there is.
Ravi Zacharias on astrology: To go to an astral object as somehow controlling my destiny is to attribute rational thought or a sovereignty of will or power independent of you in your own destiny of spiritual progress. There are aspects of eastern thought that are good and true, but they are not true and good because they are eastern, they are true and good because they come from God. That’s the epistemological base of how you arrive at truth, now applying it to things like yoga and so on… If you go to things like yoga, the discipline of quiet and solitude and reflection are very important, but yoga a la hinduism is assuming your identity with the divine and the chanting of the mantras are an instrumentally efficacious way of bringing you to that point. So the yoga that is eastern in its presuppositions of who you are IS dangerous to dabble with. In fact, they will tell you to start by emptying the mind. There is nothing worse that you can do to start off with your own spiritual journey. Meditation is important: “Upon Thy law will I meditate, o Lord, all day and night I will meditate upon His word”. Things like acupuncture, reflexology, going to the marshall arts and so on, be sure in your mind as you talk to the one giving the treatment, “What is the basis of the healing that he is giving?” If it is just the massage aspect of a muscle in reflexology, then sure there is something innocuous about it. But, if it is built upon the fact that parts of your body are reflective of the parts of the essential divine being and there this communication established in that, then that is false. It is important to establish the rationale for the treatment. And, let us never forget that Saul was staggered to his socks, as was the witch herself, when she was able to retrieve Samuel from the dead. She herself wasn’t expecting it. The Bible is moot on that point, how she was able to bring Samuel back from the dead. I encourage people, stay away from anything that has a hint of a danger intermixed with a lie. The Bible reminds us that we are fulfilled in Christ and satisfied in Him and I believe He has ways of keeping you cleared and to use methods that are biblically sound.
To become a Christian- The first step is honesty. If you’re not ruthlessly honest with your search, you will become smothered with your own deceit. Second step is to take to the Bible and study the Gospel of John. The third encouragement I give you: Each one of us comes with our own baggage. I encourage you along with reading the bible to find a book that will answer these questions for you.
from Godworkstv – blip.tvBethel AG International Worship Centre is headed by Rev. Johnson Varghese. It is located in the garden city of Bangalore; India. Worship Services are conducted in languages, English and Kannada (20 minutes) Mentions a conversation with Francis Collins (who spear headed the project to to locate and map every gene in human DNA by 2003) at minute 17.
Ravi Zacharias who is considered to be Christianity’s top, most brilliant apologetics mind, speaks on the Existence of God
Make time and listen to this man who loves Christ and teaches and lectures in the Ivy League Universities and to leaders and dignitaries of foreign countries. He is a joy to listen to. More posts to follow.
Ravi Zacharias speaks on Jesus’s contrariety (2 paradoxes brought together in a qualified fashion) – one example – He dined with sinners but scorchingly condemned sin. Based on Ravi Zacharias book titled ‘Has Christianity Failed You?’ You can read the first 40 pages of the book here on Scribd.
One worthy mention in the lecture (among the many useful illustrations), is when Ravi recounts his trip to Albania where he was shown the Chrysostom hand written New Testament which has been in Albania’s posession for over 900 years.
Ravi Zacharias presents these 2 short videos (approx 20 minutes each) through his ministry RFZIM: Alvin Plantinga is John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy University of Notre Dame and author of (among other books) ‘Warranted Christian Belief’.
Rodi: Ravi Zacharias is called the modern C.S.Lewis because of his apologetics. Here he speaks to University of Hong Kong students for 1 hour and then has a 45 minute question and answer session.
From the Ravi Zacharias organization:
An Evening with Ravi Zacharias (Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University)
Moderated by Prof Daniel KL Chua (School of Humanities, HKU)
Date: Thursday, March 18, 2010
Time: 7:00pm-9:00pm
Venue: Loke Yew Hall, The University of Hong Kong
Ravi Zacharias is presently Visiting Lecturer at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University in Oxford. He has spoken in numerous universities, notably Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford University, and has given talks at the White House, the Pentagon, and the British Parliament. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president’s cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. He has authored or edited twenty books, including Walking from East to West:(Zondervan, 2006), The Grand Weaver (Zondervan, 2007), and Beyond Opinion (Thomas Nelson, 2008); his Can Man Live without God (Word, 1994), was awarded the Gold Medallion for best book in the category of doctrine and theology.
Adapted from a message by Ravi Zacharias based in part upon a chapter from his most recent book, The Grand Weaver: How God Shapes Us Through the Events of Our Lives (Zondervan: 2007).
I want to look at the theme of God as the Grand Weaver. When I was a teenager growing up in Delhi I was really not doing very well. I was failing at everything. For those of you who have read my story in Walking from East to West, you’ll know failure was writ large on my life. My dad basically looked at me and said, “You know, you’re going to be a huge embarrassment to the family—one failure after another.” And he was right given the way I was headed. I just was looking for an escape. I wanted to get out of everything I was setting my hand to, and I lacked discipline.
During this time, India was at war with a neighboring country and the defense academy was looking for pilots to be trained. They were calling them general duties pilots—G.D. pilots. So I applied and I went to be interviewed for this. It was an overnight train journey from the city of Delhi. It was wintertime and it gets quite cold then in the northern part of the country. We were outside freezing in the cold air for about five days as we went through physical endurance tests and all kinds of other tests. There were three hundred applicants; they were going to select ten. On the last day they put their selection of names out on the board, and I was positioned number three.
I phoned my family and said, “You aren’t going to believe this. I’m going to make it. I’m number three. The only thing that’s left is the interview. The psychological testing is tomorrow, and I’ll be home.”
The next morning I began my interview with the chief commanding officer, who looked to me like Churchill sitting across the table. He asked me question after question. Then he leaned forward and said, “Son, I’m going to break your heart today.” I wondered what he was going to say. He continued, “I’m going to reject you. I’m not going to pass you in this test.” “May I ask you why, sir?” I replied. “Yes. Psychologically, you’re not wired to kill. And this job is about killing.”
You know, inside of me I felt that I was on the verge of wanting to prove him wrong right then and there. But I knew better, both for moral reasons and for his size! So I went back to my room and didn’t talk to anybody, packed my bags, got into the train, and arrived in Delhi. My parents and friends were waiting at the platform with garlands and sweets in their hands to congratulate me. No one knew. I thought to myself, “How do I even handle this? Where do I even begin?” They were celebrating, and yet for me, it was all over.
Or so I thought.
Had I been selected, I would have had to commit twenty years to the Indian armed forces. It was the very next year that my father had the opportunity to move to Canada. My brother and I moved there as the first installment, and the rest of them followed. It was there I was in business school and God redirected my paths to theological training. It was there that I met Margie; there my whole life changed. The rest is history. Had I been in the Indian Air Force, who knows what thread I’d have pulled to wreck the fabric.
Thankfully, our disappointments matter to God, and He has a way of taking even some of the bitterest moments we go through and making them into something of great significance in our life. It’s hard to understand it at the time. Not one of us wants that thread when it is being woven in. Not one of us says, “I can hardly wait to see where this is going to fit.” We all say at that moment, “This is not the pattern I want.”
After a series of miracles, Moses audaciously said to the Lord, “How will I know it is you who’s calling me here?” And the Lord, if you will, with a little grin on his face, probably said, “When you get there, you’ll find out. You will worship me on that mountain.” Moses essentially replies, “Wait a minute. I’m not asking you what I’m going to feel like when I get there because it’s too late then to say I’ve done the wrong thing. I want to know now: what is it you’re really asking me to do and why?”
Complex Questions
Regarding our disappointments, there are two critical points I want to make before I get into the heart of my response. (Those of you who pick up the book, there’s a study guide at the end of it addressing this in detail. I hope this response will become meaningful for many of you as it was for me.) The first thing is this: when you speak of disappointment, it is impossible to think of it outside of the philosophical issue of suffering itself. That is, it is not just that you’re disappointed in a job interview. It is not just that you’re disappointed that you went on a journey and it turned out to be something other than what you thought it would be. It’s not just that you bought a car and found out it was a lemon.
Rather, it is the fact that life itself sometimes has the word “disappointment” writ large all across it. Despair, for some, is not a moment—it is a way of life. I remember reading the story of a well-known baseball umpire at the peak of his career. Everything was seemingly going well. Then his wife comes home and finds him in the garage, and he’s poisoned himself with carbon monoxide. He’s gone and there’s no note left.
Over the years I have discovered that pain, like despair, comes not in one package or one expression but in different measures and spares nobody. In the process it shapes us uniquely.
I have a very basic philosophical response, and I’ve written on this many other ways. It runs something like this: the philosophical problem is actually far more intense than the skeptic actually thinks it is. The philosophical problem, or the problem of pain, is actually more complex and complicated than the philosopher actually thinks it is when he or she raises the question. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens attempt to hit God with both fists. Their biggest problem is the problem of evil. How can God allow all of this?
In fact, Harris actually showed his true colors in an interview with The Sun magazine in September 2006. He said, “If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology.” I shudder to think, if he has a daughter, whether he’d say that after she was raped, possibly by an irreligious man.
They raise the question of evil, and I’m telling you, it is more complex than they think it is. Why? Because one must question the questioner. If there’s such a thing as evil, you assume there’s such a thing as good. If you assume there’s such a thing as good, you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. If you assume there’s such a thing as a moral law, you must posit a moral law giver, but that’s whom they are trying to disprove and not prove. Because if there’s not a moral law giver, there’s no moral law. If there’s no moral law, there’s no good. If there’s no good, there’s no evil. What is their question?
Now you may question the last jump: why do you actually need a moral law giver if you have a moral law? The answer is because the questioner and the issue he or she questions always involve the essential value of a person. That is, you can never talk of morality in abstraction. Persons are implicit to the question and the object of the question. In a nutshell, positing a moral law without a moral law giver would be equivalent to raising the question of evil without a questioner. So you cannot have a moral law unless the moral law itself is intrinsically woven into personhood, which means it demands an intrinsically worthy person if the moral law itself is valued. And that person can only be God.
Second, the question is not only more complex philosophically; the question’s more complex experientially. You see, most people end in despair not from disappointment through pain but disappointment with pleasure. The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced what you thought would deliver the ultimate—and it has let you down. That’s the reality. Oscar Wilde once suggested, “There is no passion that we cannot feel, no pleasure that we may not gratify, and we can choose the time of our initiation and the time of our freedom.” He was the quintessential hedonist, yet he confessed that “desire at the end was a malady, madness, or both.” He said that he had become numb to feeling; he’d lost the capacity to feel pleasure. At the end of his life, he sent for a minister and admitted that only Christ was big enough to forgive his sin. This was the definitive man on sensuality. Thus, the question is far more complex philosophically and experientially.
Finding Balance
So where do we find some answers? By way of introduction, let me suggest that we must put our own disappointments in balance. I have seen so much as I travel, and I think we, particularly in the West, are spoiled. That is, we take up issue with God about a cold. Now I understand that colds can be horrible, but while people are being martyred in the Middle East for the sake of the Gospel, we need to put our problems a little more in perspective. I’m not saying not to be disturbed by such troubles; I’m just saying don’t lose your faith over them.
When I was finishing writing my book, I went to the kitchen early in the morning to make myself a cup of coffee. All of a sudden I heard some crunching. My daughter was visiting us and she brought her puppy. The previous night, in front of the kids, I presented my wife, Margie, with a necklace I bought overseas of semiprecious and precious stones and zircons. The colors were so beautiful that everyone I showed it to wished I were giving it to them. Yet there was that necklace on the floor, and the puppy was having a ball. I started crying. I said, “What do I tell this dog? You’ve just ruined a beautiful necklace.” And of course, the puppy just looked at me. When Margie came down, she was horrified and said she would see if she could find a jeweler to fix it. I was thinking more of somebody that could take care of the dog!
But sometime later it dawned on me as I was mourning this loss that the previous night Margie had talked with one of her very close friends from childhood. They’d grown up together, and within eighteen months she had lost her father, her husband, and her son. She commented, “It has put all of life in perspective.” Yes, I mourned the loss of that necklace—it was something I really wanted to give. But one can always replace a necklace. So we ought to put our disappointments in balance.
The First Step
How do we do this? Every journey requires deliberate steps. I believe there are three distinct steps before the pattern becomes visible and the work of God is displayed. The first step is a commitment of the heart. Your commitment to God is first and foremost a thing of the heart. To “trust in the Lord with all your heart and to lean not on your own understanding and in all of your ways acknowledge him” (Proverbs 3: 5-6a). Nobody understood this better than the man who wrote those words, Solomon. If you look at the book of Proverbs you’ll find the word “heart” again and again. Solomon talked about the heart because he lost his heart to many women. But he reminds us, “My son, give me your heart” (Proverbs 23: 26). This is because your entire spiritual journey and the threads that God wants to pull together will be determined by who owns your heart.
Now I’m an apologist; we deal with the things of the intellect. Some of my closest friends are apologists and we work together. William Lane Craig, probably the finest Christian philosopher around today, was a classmate at graduate school. Norman Geisler was my professor and I know him well now. I remember once being at a conference with them and two other apologists. We were having lunch together when a man nearby joked, “I hope a bomb doesn’t fall in this place; apologetics is finished for a few years.” But you know what? Every one of them will tell you it gets tiresome. After some time, it gets tiresome to just give intellectual answers to people because life has to find a bridge from the mind to the heart. It was a famed archbishop of Canterbury who said that the longest journey in life is from the head to the heart. The problem with these hatetheists is that for many it has never gone into their hearts. It is all a cerebral thing.
However, the work of God is not displayed in abstract terms. It is concrete. Here is my point. At the end of your life, one of three things will happen to your heart: it will be hardened, broken, or made tender. These terms are not clichés; they are real. Nobody escapes. Your heart will become coarse and desensitized, be crushed under the weight of disappointment, or be made tender by that which makes the heart of God tender as well. God’s heart is a caring heart. As the writer of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us, He is deeply touched by our infirmities (see Hebrews 2:14-18; 4:14-5:3).
Writer Calvin Miller says in his book Spirit, Word, and Story,
“The sermon and the Spirit always work in combination to produce liberation. Sometimes the Spirit and sermon do supply direct answers to human need, but most often they answer indirectly…. The sermon, no matter how sincere, cannot solve these unsolvable problems. So if the sermon is not a problem solver, where shall we go for the solutions? Together with the Spirit, the sermon exists to point out that having answers is not essential to living. What is essential is the sense of God’s presence during dark seasons of questioning…. Our need for specific answers is dissolved in the greater issue of the lordship of Christ over all questions—those that have answers and those that don’t.”
It is your heart in close communion with God that helps carry you through the pain, beyond the power of mere words. We went through a very tough time as a family over the last two years, and one of my daughters said to my wife and me, “Sometimes I wonder if God’s plan is a little bit like these GPS systems in our cars. You get off route and a voice tells you you’re on the wrong road—make a U-turn or make a left—and somehow it prompts you to get you back onto the main route. You might take the long way there but your destination is the same, and like the GPS, God calculates the way back.” I think it’s a brilliant analogy.
The children of Israel wandered around for forty years. It should have taken six weeks. God said, “Wrong route—get back here. Wrong route—get back here.” Our stiff-necked belief tells us we have it all together and so we don’t hear God’s direction. But in God’s grace He leads us back. My purpose here is simply to note the appointments God makes with each of us individually in the disappointments of our lives—both the threads that He brings in and the ones that He leaves out. That is where we will find the distinctive shape and imprint of the Grand Weaver.
I was talking to the chief of intelligence of a Middle Eastern country recently who said, “I give this part of the world no more than five years. And maybe the whole world no more than five years if nothing changes.” We have all these minds working on solutions but we don’t have any answers because our hearts are not in tune with the mercy and the grace and the love of God. We want to solve it all our way. And so problems of five thousand years old, we are settling on the battlefield. One man we met who lives on his country’s border takes his ten-year-old son to the top of the hill every day and tells his boy, “Your whole goal in life should be to kill as many of them on the other side as you can.” When he’s sixteen and has these bombs strapped on him, he doesn’t know any better because that’s all that’s been pummeled into his brain. We don’t have the brains to solve everything we see.
My question to you today is who owns your heart? To whom does your heart belong? How will you know the answer to the question? It is what Solomon said: “In all your ways acknowledge him.” It is the path that you choose, the decisions that you make, the way that you live. If you do not acknowledge God, then your heart belongs to something or someone other than to Him. So the first step is a commitment of the heart.
Faith Is a Mindset
Second, it is a discipline of the mind. When you have faith in God, it is not credulity; it is not foolishness. Neither do you emerge into some kind of a cerebral individual. In fact, I have known some highly cerebral, driven individuals who spent most of their lives defending the Christian faith and then ended up with some very deep questions of the soul. Such a life is unlivable. Yes, faith is a thing of the mind. But the mind is more than the brain. What the brain is to the body, the mind is to the soul. Faith is the way you view things. If you do not believe that God is in control and has formed you for a purpose, you will flounder on the high seas of purposelessness, drowning in the currents and drifting further into nothingness.
Let me give you a simple illustration of this. One of the things I love about the Christian faith is that we have some wonderful questions that we’ll have time to interact with and see brilliantly unfold for us in eternity. Think of the ones walking on the Emmaus road with all of these questions. They look at this stranger and ask, “Are you the only one in Israel who doesn’t know what’s happened?” when the irony was Jesus was the only one in Israel who did know what had happened! And then after explaining everything, he broke a piece of bread and their eyes were opened. Then he was gone. They wanted to ask a few more questions, but instead they had to trust what they had received from him already.
Noah’s another fascinating character. Read his story again. Genesis 6 describes every detail of the ark: how high, how wide, what kind of wood, the whole blueprint. Take your family: your wife, your children, and their spouses. So Noah gets in, locks the door, and the flood is on. Notice that everything is described except for two vital details: there is no sail and no rudder. Imagine preparing to be on water for that many days with nothing to control the direction of the ship! The very two things he needed to have some control are missing. Just when you think you’ve got everything in control, you’ll find out you don’t.
It’s like the comical story I read about a very nervous elderly flier. It was her first flight and the aircraft was bouncing its way through “moderate” turbulence, which is a euphemism for the last rites and you wonder if even the pilot is still in his seat. The woman was panicking and began to scream. After they cleared the turbulence, the pilot stepped out of the cockpit and knelt beside her. He asked her, “Madam, do you see that light on the end of the right wingtip?”
“Yes,” she stammered.
“Now look out of the other window at the left wingtip. Do you see the light on the left wingtip?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“You know what, Ma’am,” the pilot continued, “as long as we stay between those two lights you have no reason to worry.”
In other words, the lights are a guide but they a self-referencing beacon. Such self-referencing guides are supposed to make us feel better, and we think that if only we were in control everything would be fine. The sail and the rudder. We want to control it all. I know a friend who is terrified of flying because he says he cannot handle anything in which he has no control. I did not want to offend him by saying, “Welcome to life.”
God says to us, “No, I am in control.” Remember the chapter on faith in Hebrews 11? Here’s what it says at the end: “These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (verses 39-40). Even these great people of faith did not see the end of the story. But there was a mindset they had, and it is this: God has made it imperative in the design of life that we become willing to trust beyond ourselves. Walking by faith means to follow Someone else who knows more than we do, Someone who is also good. If you do not have the mind of faith you will be in peril repeatedly and the one who will get the blame will be God. This discipline of the mind is the necessary second step when we wrestle with our disappointments.
Ultimate Purpose
The third step is recognition of your ultimate purpose. You have to define what your ultimate purpose is. Pascal said in his famed Wager that you have to define life backwards and then live it forwards. He wrote, “For it is not to be doubted that the duration of this life is but a moment; that the state of death is eternal … [and] that it is impossible to take one step with sense and judgment, unless we regulate our course by the truth of that point which ought to be our ultimate end.” Where are you going, and what is your goal and destiny? On the basis of your answer, then, you plan the route accordingly.
I was asked to speak at the United Nations for their prayer breakfast for a second time, and they gave me a tougher subject than the first one. I was to speak on “Navigating with Absolutes in a Relativistic World”—at 6:30 in the morning! I was asked to do this in twenty-five minutes and given one other requirement: don’t talk much about religion because people from all faiths will be there. I said, “I’ll do it, but on one condition. Eighteen minutes, your talk; seven minutes, why my belief in God answers these questions.” I spoke on the search for absolutes in four areas: evil, justice, love, and forgiveness.
“We all want to define what evil is,” I said. “We have people here calling other nations evil. We all want to know what evil is. You’re a society that’s supposedly looking for justice. You’ve left your families, and you miss them because you love them. And some of you are going to blow it big time with ethics; you hope the rest of your peers are willing to forgive you, and you want to know on what basis. Evil, justice, love and forgiveness.”
They’re all nodding. I said, “I want you to think for a moment. Is there any event in history where these four converged in one place? It happened on a hill called Calvary, where evil, justice, love, and forgiveness converged.”
There was pin drop silence. With five minutes left, I spoke on the cross of Christ and how the cross shows the heart of man, how the cross came because of the justice of God, how the cross demonstrates to us the very love of God, and how we find at the end of the day that without his forgiveness we would never make it. At the end one ambassador confessed, “My country’s atheistic. I don’t even know why I came here. Today I have my answer. I came here to find God.” That is the power of the cross.
The hill of Calvary is at the very center point of the Gospel. All the suffering of the world converged there in that single act of sacrifice when the One who was without sin took the penalty of sin and accepted the ultimate in suffering—separation from his Father—so that we might be brought to Him. It was the lowest point of the incarnate Christ; he was separated from the Father while still in the center of the Father’s will. There the threads converged in a pattern that seemed so disparate from the world’s point of view, yet they were the crimson threads of our restoration to God. This was Jesus’ ultimate purpose: “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
Through the Eyes of Jesus
There’s an incredible story told from Scotland. My wife and I were visiting there with our colleague Stuart McAllister. Stuart is from Scotland and I often joke with him about needing an interpreter when he speaks English because he has a rich Scottish accent. I asked Stuart to take us to Glencoe. In 1692 the Campbell clan was sent there by the king to eradicate the MacDonalds completely. The Campbells came to Glencoe posing as friends and then slaughtered the MacDonalds in the middle of the night. The story is immortalized by a song titled “The Massacre of Glencoe.”
Oh cruel is the snow that sweeps Glencoe,
and covers the graves o’Donald.
Oh cruel was the foe that raped Glencoe,
and murdered the house of MacDonald.
They came in a blizzard, we offered them heat,
a roof o’er their heads, dry shoes for their feet.
We wined them and dined them, they ate of our meat
and they slept in the house o’ MacDonald.
They came from Fort William with murder in mind.
The Campbells had orders, King William had signed.
“Put all to the sword,” these words underlined,
and leave none alive called MacDonald.
They came in the night while our men were asleep,
this band of Argyles, through snow soft and deep.
Like murdering foxes among helpless sheep,
they slaughtered the house o’ MacDonald.
Some died in their beds at the hand of the foe.
Some fled in the night and were lost in the snow.
Some lived to accuse him who struck the first blow,
but gone was the house o’ MacDonald.
What is fascinating about this historic incident is that three hundred years later it is still remembered in Scotland as if it were yesterday. As you arrive in Glencoe, a lone bagpiper slowly paces back and forth playing the haunting melody. The story is tragic and the song always leaves me heavy-hearted. But what is more, when Stuart spoke of the massacre, his Scottish accent and the mournful sounds of that distinctively Scottish instrument amid the ruins of the setting where it all occurred almost made me feel that I had been there when it happened.
It was three hundred years ago, but hear the bagpiper and the story unfolded with a Scottish voice, and the reality of the tragedy becomes even deeper for a stranger. If an accent, the location, and music can put the reality within reach even though we are separated by three centuries, how much more can we understand suffering when we see it through the eyes of the One who defines good and evil, justice and forgiveness, and who went to the cross to deal with it? Is that not the only way we can understand and cope with our own suffering? When you see the Son of God and he explains Calvary to you, you will understand it like you’ve never understood it before. You’ll hear it in his voice; you’ll see it in his body. He is the One who cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Yet again, at the very moment Jesus uttered that prayer, he was at the center of his Father’s will.
We must see our world of pain through the eyes of Jesus, who best understands it not merely as pain but as brokenness and separation. In the solitude of reflection, the heart and the mind come together to think of the cross. The hymnwriter said it well:
I sometimes think about the cross
And shut my eyes and try to see
The cruel nails and crown of thorns
And Jesus crucified for me.
But even could I see him die,
I could but see a little part
Of that great love, which, like a fire,
Is always burning in his heart.
I want you to understand that we have a Shepherd who leads us through, who takes care of us, and your disappointments do matter. How many times I’ve thanked God that I was not wired to kill. But you see, He wired me differently because he had something else in mind for me. Have there been some deep, deep valleys? You bet. But have I always sensed that He’s been with me and never doubted it.
You may have heard this commentary on Psalm 23:
“The Lord is my shepherd”: that’s relationship.
“I shall not want”: that’s supply.
“He makes me to lie down in green pastures”: that’s rest.
“He leads me beside still waters”: that’s refreshment.
“He restores my soul”: that’s healing.
“He guides me in the paths of righteousness”: that’s guidance.
“For his name’s sake”: that’s purpose.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”: that’s testing.
“I will fear no evil”: that’s protection.
“For you are with me”: that’s faithfulness.
“Your rod and your staff, they comfort me”: that’s discipline.
“You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies”: that’s hope.
“You anoint my head with oil”: that’s consecration.
“My cup overflows”: that’s abundance.
“Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life”: that’s blessing.
“And I will dwell in the house of the Lord”: that’s security.
“Forever”: that’s eternity.
Your disappointments do matter because the Shepherd of your soul will put it all together for you and has an eternity for you to revel in the marvel of what God has done. Our Father holds the threads of the design, and I’m so immensely grateful that He is the Grand Weaver.
Trace Jesus Passion Week Google Maps Isus- Saptamina Patimilor cu harta Google
Filmul Isus (vizionati in limba Romana / choose any language to watch the ‘Jesus’ film)
RICHARD WURMBRAND – English/Romanian
Global Persecution Watch
Christian movies & Beautiful nature shots – Filme crestine si Filmari din natura pe Youtube Channel
PREDICI – Florin Ianovici
PREDICI – Vladimir Pustan
PREDICI – Nelu Brie
Cristian Barbosu Arad – PREDICI
Biserica Gloria Arad Bujac Transmisie Live
Pagina – Predici
Faceti click pe poza pt. site – Administrat In Romania
PREDICI de la A 44-a Conventie USA/CANADA la Seattle, Washington 2012
Predici de la Congresul Bisericilor Baptiste USA si Canada 2012 Cleveland Ohio
Biserica Baptista Speranta Oradea
Vasile Oprea Interviu, Cintari – Nou: Serviciul de Florii 2012
NEW PAGE – All family related articles and videos – on being single, marriage, intimate relations, on raising kids…
Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?” Matthew 16:26. Isus a zis: “Si ce ar folosi unui om sa cistige toata lumea daca si-ar pierde sufletul?”
The Word of God, that’s what he gave to them. Now, once you and I understand something, that the Word of God and the laws of God are given to us so that we might exult in life, and delight in life, and find out what life’s actual purpose is about. Then, we will say what David said: That His word is a lamp and a light, and that I will commit to be one that delights in your law.
Here’s a sample quote Ravi gives in this discussion- ”for the scientist who has lived by his faith only in the system, it is going to end like a bad dream. He is going to climb higher and higher and scale the mountains of knowledge and when he reaches the top he will find that he will be greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (from 
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