Tomorrow, February 21st, my dear sweet father would have been 65 years young. Since he passed away, September 2nd of 2010, I have been overwhelmed by how many hearts he touched, people he influenced, and lives he changed.
So many times, I come across things- questions, articles, verses, studies.. and my first impulse is to ask my dad. This is something that my dad wrote- I wanted to share it. For those of you who knew and loved my father, you knew how passionate he was about the Lord, about Creation, Health, Science, and learning. For those of you who did not know him, he was the one of the most intelligent people I've known. He had the quirkiest, goofiest sense of humor. He laughed heartily at his own jokes. He could talk for hours about nutrition or Intelligent Design. He loved his family. He treated my mom with tenderness and respect. He could build anything, fix cars, drive tractors, dissect frogs, put stitches in your knee, and make the world's best French Toast. He was and is, dearly loved, sorely missed, and neither months nor years will lessen the void left by his absence.
To my readers, I warn you, this is long. It is intense. But if you are struggling with your faith, if you don't know what you believe, or if you know someone who comes from a background of "science," I encourage you to read this.
DAVID WILLIAM JENSEN,
February 21, 1948 - September 2, 2010.
Dr. David Jensen earned his M.S. degree in physiology and biophysics from the University of Illinois. He then earned his PhD in Neurosciences at the University of California in San Diego. He served on the postgraduate research neuroscience staff at UCSD, on the faculty of the Baylor College of Medicine, and on the consulting staff of The Methodist Hospital, Houston, Texas. It was during his time at Baylor that he met his wife, Melinda, and also acknowledged and accepted Christ as his Lord and Savior.
With thirty years' research experience in mechanisms of neuro-plasticity and adaptation, he is published in professional journals, books, newspapers, and other media. He served as a reviewer for the national science foundations of the United States and New Zealand. And, until his death, was a faculty member of the Lone Star College - Tomball, and LeTourneau University.
Dr. Jensen also founded Whole Hearted Health - a non-profit educational and scientific corporation whose mission is to educate, investigate, and develop products and practices to improve health, health care, and performance. (www.wholeheartedhealth.org)
Aside from his remarkable professional life, Dr. Jensen also led the Men's Ministry at Believers Fellowship Church in Spring, Texas, and assisted in the home-schooling of each of his three children, Natalie, Benjamin and Joel. He was a Christ Follower, beloved husband, father, brother, son, friend, teacher and colleague.
The following are Dr. Jensen’s personal notes that he prepared for a Sunday School series. They have been minimally edited to preserve the original meaning and content.
Eight Reasons Why
this Neuroscientist is a Christian
David W. Jensen, Ph.D. (Neuroscience)
Why I Believe that the Bible is the true and infallible Word of God, that the universe was created by a holy, supernatural being worthy of my total honor and worship, that Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, and by His sacrifice made possible the only way for mankind to restore the relationship to God that humans once had at the beginning of creation.
Our belief systems are under-girded by two kinds of evidences: subjective and objective. A famous Christian apologist (CS Lewis) was once asked “What is the best, most powerful reason you are a Christian?” His response, “Jesus loves me, this I know, cause the Bible tells me so.” Someone who has written as many books, and has a reputation such as this person had, can get away with such a response. However, to rely solely on subjective evidence, which depends upon circumstance, mood, and emotion, brings up three kinds of difficulties:
1. Subjective beliefs are not independently and objectively valid; they are not necessarily valid for anyone except the individual holding the subjective-based beliefs. You are open to the charge, “That’s fine for you”, or “I’m glad that works for you, but I can’t believe like that.” In other words, your beliefs are perceived to be a working fantasy that’s valid for only you.
2. As the circumstances, moods and emotions change, the stability of the belief system may dissolve, and so too the bases for comfort, hope, and conviction in challenging times.
3. In terms of a society, circumstance-based or emotion-based beliefs do not provide sufficiently unifying principles upon which to base laws and rules to govern a nation.
Explaining why I am a Christian is an important part of my mission in life; and as I carry out that mission, it affects others and myself in extremely meaningful ways. It is an agent that is used to transform me from self-centeredness to others-centeredness; giving the evidence for my convictions prods people to question the assumptions behind their belief and find answers to 3 foundational issues:
These three questions:
· Who am I?
· Why am I here?
· Where am I going?
Here are eight lines of reasoning why I believe there is one God who manifests Himself in three persons, The Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ. We’ll have time to cover ones where I can present to you a new perspective.
1. Logic. Where did matter, space, energy, and time come from?
2. Evidence from astrophysics. Measurements of what’s out there far, far beyond earth’s atmosphere. Evidence is that the universe is finite, finely tuned for life, and was formed to be that way.
3. Evidence from thermodynamics. General properties of matter and energy transfer help us decide between two possible interpretations of the astrophysical evidence.
4. Naturalistic creation of life. How probable is it that life could have arisen out of seas of chemicals? Life’s complexity makes it mathematically impossible to have arisen naturally.
5. Evolution to explain the creation of different interdependent, sexually reproducing species. Barriers to naturalistic creation of new species are impassible. Belief in naturalistic evolution comes from a prejudice that predestines the interpretations of six lines of naturalistic evidence. The same evidence can aim towards creation.
6. The special nature of human consciousness shows there is more to existence than matter, space, energy, and time.
7. The Bible and the five lines of evidence indicating the Bible was indeed written without error by men as moved by the Holy Spirit.
8. The reasoned and documented answer to the question, “Who is Jesus Christ?”
Here is a very brief summary of these eight points.
1. Logic.
Where did matter, space, energy, and time come from?
There are three possibilities:
a. They “popped into existence from nowhere, by chance, on their own.”
b. They have no beginning and are eternal.
c. They were created.
a. Regarding arising from nothing:
i. Chance is not a causal agent. It has no causal power; it is merely a statistical descriptor of the outward mathematical characteristics of a phenomenon.
ii. To have some thing come from no thing is a violation of cause and effect. It is illogical that some thing can be and then cannot be.
b. Regarding being eternal versus being created:
i. Everything investigated in the realm of matter, space, time and energy appears to have had a creation moment and a development. To be eternal, matter, space, energy and time would have to possess two contradictory properties: to assemble material that appears to be created and yet to have the building blocks which are uncreated.
ii. All things have an order, even an atom; such order leads to a naturalistic self-assembly.
iii. Can naturalistic self-assembly extend from lowest to highest possible levels of organization? Exceedingly doubtful.
iv. Evidence from astrophysics and thermodynamics differentiates between matter, space, energy and time being eternal or being created.
c. The Bible states that in the beginning God created matter, space, energy and time out of His own creative act.
2. Evidence from astrophysics.
There are two lines of evidence:
a. The universe is “fine tuned” to an astronomically precise degree so as to maintain conditions on earth adequate for life to exist.
i. Thirty-five astrophysical characteristics, (e.g., the numbers of electrons, protons, and neutrons, the fundamental forces of physics, the velocity of light), are exactly the right values to sustain life at any time at any place in the universe. The degree of precision of these values is honed so accurately, they reflect the degree of “engineering” skill far beyond anything known. They’re required to sustain systems of relationships needed for life.
ii. More than 120 physical characteristics of our solar system and galaxy have precisely the right values to explain the earth’s capacity to support life. Even if the universe had 10 billion trillion planets (an over-estimate), the odds of finding even one planet capable of supporting life: about 1 out of 10134, are a number so small as to be mathematically impossible. This would require a transcendent, supernatural creator.
iii. Arno Penzias, a physicist who shared the 1978 Nobel Prize for discovery of background cosmic radiation, says this about the precision of the universe: “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”
iv. Sir Fred Hoyle, a British astronomer, who earlier had argued that the universe’s precisely tuned constants and physical values that permit the making of chemicals, stars, and planets needed for life were just coincidences, changed his mind after seeing too many: “Such properties seem to run through the fabric of the natural world like a thread of happy coincidences. But there are so many odd coincidences essential to life that some explanation seems required to account for them.”
b. Evidence for an expanding universe: the “big bang”. This evidence rules out an uncreated and self-existent universe; it requires a transcendent, supernatural, one-time creation event. There are at least 30 lines of evidence that the universe is spreading out, or expanding. Extrapolating backwards in space and time from this expansion, we arrive at a singular creation event that would have required supernatural guidance beyond matter, space, energy and time to start and to infuse it with the power, order, and material required. There is no scientific answer to the question, “What happened to make the big bang happen?” Here are four straightforward evidences (out of more than 30 total) there was a “big bang”:
i. Light from galaxy clusters is red-shifted to an extent proportional to the distance away from us.
ii. Light from galaxy clusters is broadened in spectrum proportional to the distance away from us: signature of having traveled enormous distance.
iii. There is a cosmic background radiation, a kind of ultra low level heat in the universe left over from the “big bang” with the physical characteristics predicted from a creation event around 15 billion years ago.
iv. Decrease in galaxy crowding with time and distance from the big bang. Hubble Space Telescope images show that the farther away in the cosmos you look and hence, the farther back in time, the more closely packed the galaxies are. Looking back to when the universe was one-third its present age, galaxies are packed so tightly they are ripping spiral arms away from one another – something that does not occur in our galactic neighborhood owing to our greater spacing, and longer time from beginning of matter, space, energy and time.
3. Evidence from thermodynamics.
To avoid implications of creation from the overwhelming evidence that the universe is expanding, some have devised an eternal big bang, big crunch scenario, making matter, space, energy and time eternal. Such a line of thinking goes like this:
We exist presently in an expansion phase of an eternal series of big bangs, when matter compacted by gravity gains a critical compaction and explodes, then spreads out and expands until the force of gravity (that all matter has) attracts all the matter back into a massive ball and explodes again.
Evidence from the laws of thermodynamics rules out the possibility that matter, space, energy, and time (m,s,e & t) are eternal.
a. According to the second law of thermodynamics, randomness of the universe cannot decrease; it can only increase. Furthermore, the “big bang” event was supernaturally extraordinary:
i. There is no way to study or show through natural means how it began or what caused it.
ii. In natural terms, even if you leave aside the cause of all the mass, all the universe’s mass compacted in one point should have created a super-massive black hole with gravity so strong that nothing should have escaped; yet it did escape.
iii. It was not a random event, but a highly ordered event.
b. The “big bang, big crunch oscillation” scenario requires cycles of decreasing randomness that violate second law of thermodynamics and black hole behavior.
c. Evidence indicates that the universe, or a “big bang,” was created in a transcendent one-time event; that the universe is finite.
i. An entity beyond and greater than matter, space, energy and time, had to have caused MSE & T.
ii. Also, there is a continuing cosmic expansion, and there is a continual increase in the amount of randomness in the universe, with relatively miniature pockets of decreased randomness at the expense of furthering an overall increase in randomness with time.
iii. The characteristic of the universe mentioned the most frequently in the Bible is that it was and is being “stretched out”. Five Biblical authors in 11 places: Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:13; 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12; 51:15; Zechariah 12:1
iv. The cause of matter must be immaterial; the cause of time must be timeless; the cause of energy must be all powerful; and the cause of space must be omnipresent. These are transcendent: beyond MSE & T.
4. Naturalistic creation of life.
The degree of order of chemicals required to have life is so astronomically high, that it is mathematically impossible to create that order by any unguided, naturalistic process.
a. The one unifying theme of all life & all levels of life is relationships.
b. The specificity of the relationships of life are so finely-tuned that naturalistic processes acting billions of times longer than the time since the “big bang” are insufficient to bring them about.
c. Seven key characteristics distinguish life from non-life. All characteristics are required: take one away, and life cannot exist. These characteristics deal with the organization, control, and expression of information in physical units.
d. The odds of creating one small protein by random, unguided naturalistic processes, is 1 chance in 1060. In math, < 1 chance in 1050 is deemed impossible. In the simplest cell, there are many hundreds of proteins. Perspective on these numbers: There are 4.7 x 1017 seconds in 15 billion years since “big bang”.
e. In order to create protein, DNA and RNA need to exist in specific relationships. The probabilities of creating DNA and RNA, and creating the relationships between DNA, RNA, and protein by unguided, naturalistic processes, are impossible.
f. Physical conditions on earth are optimum for life. But there are no known physical characteristics or laws that explain a naturalistic origin of life.
g. In the mid 1970s as a PhD candidate at UCSD, I attended a talk at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA by Sir Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate and co-discoverer of DNA’s structure. In that talk, he announced his theory about how life started on earth. He prefaced his talk with the admission that he was extremely frustrated with trying to come up with a reasonable scenario for a naturalistic creation of life, and vowed not to publish any more on the subject because “there is too much speculation chasing after too few facts.” In that talk, he speculated that life was delivered on earth from an outside source. He admitted he has no idea what that source is. Called “Directed Panspermia”. [Another example of escape from God – astrophysical theories viz., universe of universes, are “astrobabble” -- directed panspermia = astrobiobabble, or bioastrobabble.]
h. Argument by analogy: “A” and “B” are similar. The cause of “A” is known but not for “B”. We can infer that the cause for “B” is similar to the cause for “A”. Examples:
i. Iron in air gets covered with red scaly material; copper in air gets covered with green scaly material. If we know the cause of the red rust is reaction with oxygen, then we can infer the cause of the green material is reaction with oxygen as well.
ii. Consider something written, and a DNA molecule. An intelligent being caused something written. DNA contains a language written with a four-letter alphabet with sequences and order that define words, sentences, and paragraphs to define and guide the structure and function of cells, tissues, organs, and a person. We could infer, then, that the cause of the DNA molecule is an intelligent being.
i. The Bible says that God created life from non-life, and it also states how life in a human is different from all other forms and levels of life.
5. Naturalistic evolution to explain the creation of different interdependent, sexually reproducing species.
First, what is a species? A group of individual organisms that interbreed with each other and with no other group.
a. In a nutshell, the naturalistic creation of a species from a previously existing species happens this way:
i. By and large, each successful mating produces more offspring than what can survive to a mating stage of development, given the limited amount of environmental resources. This mismatch between the number of individuals and the number of individuals the environment can support has two consequences
ii. There is a struggle for existence to acquire adequate resources to survive.
iii. The most fit organisms are the ones who survive; the least fit die off. = survival of the fittest.
iv. The demands of the environment act to determine or select what characteristics favor survival. = natural selection.
v. Meanwhile, there is a random series of mutations that alter the nature of the genes, the units of the inheritance of structural and functional traits of each individual.
vi. Also meanwhile, from time to time for a variety of environmental events, a relatively small number of individuals in a population become geographically isolated from their original group.
vii. The isolated, small “founder population” of individuals experience over a period of time sufficient kinds and numbers of genetic mutations concerning reproductive requirements to become a different species.
viii. If the new combination of structures and functions in the new species is robust and a good match to the environment, the species will remain and increase until an overwhelming series of events wipes them all out and makes them extinct.
ix. The frequency of mutations is extremely rare. The frequency of improvement mutations or mutations that confer a new and better function is so rare, it has never been observed.
x. The rarest of rare improvement mutations must accompany or progress to mutations that make it impossible to mate with the ancestral species.
xi. The same kinds of mutations have to occur in both sexes in the same litter or in offspring that can meet and mate and produce at some point offspring that could not mate with their ancestral kind.
xii. The probability of this series of contingencies is preposterously improbable
b. Another argument analyzes the six lines of evidence purporting to support evolution. It shows that those six lines of argument are for evolution when biased in a naturalistic direction, and are argument for supernatural creation when biased in a supernatural direction. It is a matter of faith either way. The six lines of evidence are:
1. biogeography
2. taxonomy
3. comparative anatomy: reasons iii – v are different levels of patterns of biological information
4. comparative embryology
5. comparative genetics, or biomolecular biology
6. fossil record
c. The Bible says that humans will never be able to unambiguously prove God exists, and what He has done, or how He did it. It is a matter of faith. It is as if God requires faith, an immaterial thing that natural people can exert, as a bridge from the natural to the supernatural, which is immaterial.
6. Special nature of human consciousness and its relationship to the openness of matter, space, energy, and time, and the conscience.
a. What is consciousness? Although there is a way to measure the degree to which it is impaired following head injury [15 point E+V+M; Glasgow Coma Scale] consciousness has no generally agreed upon definition!
b. From Dorland’s Medical Dictionary: consciousness is the responsiveness of the mind to the impressions made by the senses. The mind is that functioning of the brain by which an individual becomes aware of his surroundings and of their distribution in space and time, and by which he experiences feelings [sensations and perceptions], emotions, and desires, and is able to attend, remember, reason, and decide.
c. Reject that human consciousness is a link to animals, plants, etc.
d. Consciousness exists in relatively impoverished degrees in higher animals. If human consciousness is an extension or increase of that possessed by dolphins, apes, whales, etc. it is qualitatively and quantitatively different.
e. Reject presence of consciousness that is distinct from higher levels of arousal in lower animals (invertebrates, fish, amphibia); rudiments in reptiles, somewhat more in birds, more in mammals.
f. It is not demonstrable scientifically whether consciousness is completely accounted for by the physico-chemical operations or states of the brain, (materialist view of consciousness), or whether consciousness is a blending of physical with some kind of non-physical entity, (dualist view of consciousness).
i. A brain is needed to have dreams and consciousness, and qualities of consciousness are both affected by the physical operations within the brain (e.g., electrical stimulation of brain can affect consciousness) and affect the physical operations within the brain (e.g., persistent experience of consciousness can change the structural & chemical microstructure of the brain’s circuits involved).
ii. Materialists, or reductionists, say that the brain state that occurs with consciousness or a subjective experience is the same as or accounts for the consciousness or subjective experience. But, materialists cannot show how the physico-chemical activities of the brain and its structure are related to or produce the different qualities of conscious experience (qualia); or, why electrical stimulation in e.g., the auditory cortex of the brain evokes a sensation of sound while the exact same kind of stimulation delivered to the visual cortex evokes a sensation of light.
g. Jesus had conscious awareness of thoughts of others e.g., Matthew 12:25.
i. Jesus’ awareness of the thoughts of others transcends MSE & T (materialism).
ii. This is a picture of how our consciousness has access to that which transcends MSE & T: interaction of physical with transcendent non-physical.
iii. Humans have a kind of deep intuitive knowledge of God (Romans 2:14-15). There is a universal sense of what is bad and what is good, even across many different kinds of natural circumstances.
iv. In an as-yet-to-be-explained way, it appears that there is an interaction amongst materialistic higher brain mechanisms and some kind of immaterial mechanism that accounts for consciousness.
v. I conclude that human consciousness is special, unlike any other natural thing, and that it is open to a realm beyond MSE & T. i.e., MSE & T is open.
h. Conscience, human’s sense of what is right vs. what is wrong, our scruples, principles, and ethics, transcends culture in that there are core features common to all peoples in radically different cultures
i. Conscience governs decisions made by conscious operations of the mind. Conscience is not “sub-consciousness”. Conscience transcends individual survival, mind, and is the closest we come to identifying a human spirit.
ii. Characteristics of human conscience are the same for all humans in all kinds of cultures
i. The Bible says that humans have a human spirit, given by God (Genesis 2:7, on tripartite nature of man); Malachi 2:15, 16; Romans 8:16; others. Human spirit is outside MSE&T
i. The Holy Spirit communes with our human spirit Romans 8:16; 9:1-2 to inform our conscious mind.
ii. There is here an openness of MSE&T by the communion of spiritual things with mental things.
iii. It is only when our conscious thoughts are in accord with God’s as documented in the Bible that we experience a deeply significant, or content-producing event or moment: an event affirmed in our conscience.
7. The Bible and the five lines of evidence indicating the Bible was indeed written without error by men as moved by the Holy Spirit.
These five lines of evidence are:
a. Resurrection: The central doctrine of Christianity; that Jesus was killed on a cross, then buried in a guarded and sealed tomb, and then 3 days later made Himself come back to a glorified physical life, then revealed Himself at least 10 times to many people, then left the glorified physical realm and returned to a purely spiritual realm. Resurrection is not resuscitation, coming back to physical life from death.
Best discussion of objections to Christ’s resurrection in the New Bible Dictionary, 2nd Ed., Tyndale House, pp 1020-1022.
i. Stolen body theory. Tomb guarded by Roman soldiers, sealed with 1 – 2 ton rock. Penalty of death to guards if fell asleep. Disciples didn’t believe resurrection at first, so they weren’t plotting to steal body; disciples were cowardly during trial – wouldn’t have suddenly gained gumption to steal a dead body, for what?
ii. Swoon theory. Severity of beating + crucifixion enough to kill; thoracic cavity pierced, blood had undergone sedimentation (“water” = plasma) effused from wound, could only occur after death. Professional executors. Pilate released Jesus body to Joseph of Arimethea only after confirmation of His death. Jesus’ body wrapped in about 75 lbs of embalming ointment and cloths.
iii. Hallucination theory (post-resurrection sightings were hallucinations) – Sightings at 10 different times to hundreds of different people. Genuine hallucinations are peculiar, yet these sightings are the same. Thus, a hallucination theory requires a miracle that all these hallucinations are made the same. Jesus verified His flesh and blood nature after His resurrection -- Luke 24:39-43. Disciples were skeptical at first, viz., Thomas in John 20:25
b. Archeology and historical documentation, both internal and external
i. Of all the ancient writings, none comes remotely close to the Bible’s textual reliability in terms of the time interval between the original and the earliest copy; and the number of manuscript copies available.
ii. According to professional historians, every book in the New Testament was written between the 40s and the 80s in the first century A.D. The Bible is the most reliable document ever written, based on internal, external, and bibliographic evidence.
iii. Non-Christian historians of 1st century (Tacitus of Rome, A.D. 55-117; Josephus of Israel, A.D. 37-100) confirm substance of several Biblical accounts.
iv. Dead Sea Scrolls verified that a thousand years of hand copying of Old Testament produced only variations in spelling of 5 percent of words – and no variation altered the meaning of the text.
v. Some said King David was a mythical figure – in 1993 an excavation unearthed a 9th century B.C. tablet referring to “house of David”
vi. Up until 1961, there was no external evidence for existence of Pontius Pilate; but in 1961 two Italian archeologists uncovered a Latin inscription referring to him as a Roman governor.
c. Miracles .
i. Virgin birth of messiah was prophesied by Isaiah (Isaiah 7:14). In Luke 1:31 the angel Gabriel says to Mary, “ you will conceive in your womb, and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High … and His kingdom will have no end. (33)”. Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?(34)” Gabriel said, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.”
1. Conception naturally occurs in upper third of fallopian tube, not in the womb -- the egg cell cannot survive trip to uterus (womb) without fertilization.
2. The most High will overshadow you: God will take total control of your reproductive system -- He will create and control completely.
3. Therefore, egg cell of Mary not used. Egg cell of Mary was not fertilized supernaturally by Holy Spirit.
4. The blastocyst was implanted in womb, in usual manner – but the blastocyst formation and the origin of 100% of its mass was 100% supernatural. That is what makes Jesus the “second Adam”: there were only two human creatures to have a 100% supernatural origin: Adam, and the second Adam, the man Jesus. But Jesus was in some supernatural way also fully God while He allowed Himself to be temporarily shown as a human. Jesus was not created; Jesus is eternal.
ii. Other miracles performed by Jesus validate that He is God’s Son. John 10:25, etc.
d. Prophecy -- Jesus fulfilled 60 major Old Testament prophecies, made over 400 years before His birth.
i. Chances of one person fulfilling just 8 prophecies is 1 in 1017. Take 100 quadrillion silver dollars spread over state of Texas – two feet deep. Mark one of those coins. Now blindfolded, find that one marked coin.
ii. Chances of fulfilling 60 prophecies is much, much less likely!
e. Scientific confirmation of statements in Bible.
i. Spherical shape of the earth -- Isaiah 40:22
ii. Earth suspended in nothing -- Job 26:7
iii. Stars are innumerable -- Genesis 15:5
iv. Existence of valleys in the seas -- 2 Samuel 22:16
v. Existence of springs and fountains in seas -- Genesis 7:11; 8:2; Proverbs 8:28
vi. Existence of ocean currents -- Psalm 8:8
vii. Water cycle -- Job 26:8; 36:27-28; 37:16; 38:25-27; Psalm 135:7; Ecclesiastes 1:6-7
viii. Livings things reproduce after own kind -- Genesis 1:21;6:19
ix. Nature of health, sanitation, & sickness -- Genesis 17:9-14; Leviticus 12-14
x. Concept of entropy, (that it is increasing) -- Psalm 102:26
xi. Humans made of substances in ground -- Genesis 2:7
xii. Ingredient list for complete protein from plant source -- Ezekiel 4:9
xiii. Universe is expanding -- Job 9:8; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 40:22; 42:5; 44:24; 45:12; 48:13; 51:13; Jeremiah 10:12; 51:15; Zechariah 12:1
These lines of evidence lead me to believe that the Bible is what it claims to be: the Word of God, written without error by God’s Holy Spirit through people. What it says is therefore true.
8. Answer to the question: Who is Jesus Christ?
a. Possibility of being a hoax or of never existing. However, there are many extra-Biblical references to Jesus. Presented with a “trilemma”:
b. Possibility of being a liar. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, making Himself equal with God (John 5:18); He claimed to have no beginning, to be eternal (John 8:56-59); He was crucified for making this claim. But He is not a liar because of His fulfillment of messianic prophecies; virgin birth, miracles, and resurrection, which show that He transcended humanness and matter, space, energy and time.
c. Possibility of being a lunatic. His speech is not of lunacy, but the opposite – genius of insight; also same reasons He wasn’t a liar argue against being a lunatic.
d. Possibility of being Lord. Reasons given that He isn’t a liar or lunatic argue that He is who He said He is: the God-Man, God-in-the-flesh.
i. In the entire history of man, every person ever executed by a government or authoritative body was executed for something that the person was accused of having done. Except for the most famous execution in the history of man. Jesus Christ was the only person in history executed for claiming to be someone. (See Mark 14:60-64). Jesus Himself gave the earthly authorities His claim in His trial before the National Council of religious leaders, the Sanhedrin, when He answered this question put to Him by the chief priest, “Are You the Christ, Son of the Blessed One?” Jesus responded, “I am; and you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.” In response to Jesus’ answer, the chief priest of the council tore his clothes, a symbol of having witnessed a public blasphemy. Then the priest said, “What further need do we have of witnesses? You have heard the blasphemy; how does it seem to you?” And then the council condemned Jesus to die. Jesus was crucified for blasphemy, for claiming to be equal to God.
9. How do these reasons why I am a Christian relate to the three core issues I mentioned at the beginning?
I can answer confidently, with a peace of mind, 3 questions:
a. “Who am I?”
i. I know who Jesus is and His relationship to me lets me know I am loved, significant, and accepted.
ii. It lets me know I am a child of God, and He’ll never let me go.
iii. Also, the “I” that is me is not just my body and brain – it is the innermost part of me which is my human spirit. My human spirit is not shackled to my physical body.
b. “Why am I here?”
i. It is not to eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow I may die.
ii. To point others to Jesus Christ while I am being
iii. I have been transformed from self-centeredness to others-centeredness, thereby showing others what Jesus is like, and to prepare me for an eternity with God.
c. “Where am I going?”
i. I know my physical life is not all that there is to life. I have a human spirit that is beyond matter, space, energy, and time.
ii. There is the fact of Jesus’ resurrection: The Bible calls Jesus’ resurrection the first resurrection. I know Jesus stepped in to humanity, experienced what humans experience, yet never did anything wrong and lived a perfect life, and paid my sin penalty, sacrificing Himself so that by my trusting in the truth of that I am given eternally all the rights of being a child of God.
iii. The Bible says that after my physical life is over, my human spirit will be given a physical body, i.e., I will be resurrected and have an eternity with God in a second resurrection.
10. Conclusion
Everything Jesus said is true. There is only one way to God, and that is by a trusting belief that Jesus is Lord, which is to accept a free gift of reconciliation to God for an eternity after your physical life expires.
God is not a man from another planet (Mormonism). Nor is Jesus a created angel (Jehovah's Witnesses). Jesus is not a mere prophet (Islam). He is not a man in tune with the divine consciousness (New Age). No! Jesus is uncreated, eternal, God the creator, redeemer, and the lover of our souls.
Therefore, trust in Him and in Him alone in all things. Trust Him to be faithful to you. Look to Him in all that you do and in all that you experience, even when it is difficult. Remember, faith is only as good as who you put it in. Since we Christians serve the true and awesome God of the universe, our faith, our trust, will not be wasted.
