Apologetic Overview
Can you think of any item (non-living) that can reproduce itself? Start really small. A screwdriver can’t make another screwdriver; it needs something more complex to make it. Then think really complicated. A computer can’t make another computer. Even a 3D printer (something made to manufacture other things) can’t make another 3D printer. The 3D printer is made up of steel shafts, molded plastic, wires, etc. This would take a system of several large machines that would easily fill up a large room. And still that system of machines couldn’t make another room of large machines (by themselves, without human help). See, the more complex you get the more complex the machine needs to be to make it. But some people not only believe in a machine like this, they think it came about by accident: life. One living cell makes a computer look simple but then the cells have to reproduce to form an organism, which has to fit into a complex eco system. So that is by far the world’s tallest tale if you believe it happened without a designer. We believe your life is a miracle & your Creator loves you. Trust him.
What do you believe? Our beliefs are a powerful driving force; they determine who we are and what we do. And sadly they are often wrong and easily manipulated. We need to be careful and not just go with the flow of the masses. But what we believe about God’s truth is far more important because it will determine our eternal destiny. The “church” has been wrong many times too (killing Jews, racism, slavery). Only the Bible can be trusted. Be careful to get your truth straight from the Bible not from man’s interpretation of it. And don’t be afraid to follow God. He wants your best.
Another big lie “There is no God”. The Bible actually says God does not usually want to prove himself to people but He is looking for sincere people willing to seek the truth by faith. (See Jeremiah 29:13, Acts 17:27, Heb 11:6). Creation and our conscience point to a creator but a sinful man will not seek Him: Psalms 10:4 In his pride the wicked does not seek him
So God has hidden Himself, that’s why it’s easy for people to believe this lie. But they have to come up with some crazy ideas for how we got here, which take far more faith. They see similarities in creation and extrapolate to absurdities. It’s like thinking an IPad evolved naturally from an IPhone. The ultimate origin is a real mystery so it’s actually by faith. Some even propose aliens (and who knows where the aliens came from).
“No one knows how it got started” Richard Dawkins (2008 “Expelled” documentary)
“That’s a great mystery” Bill Nye, the science guy (debate with Ken Ham)
“[that] is an unanswerable question” Carl Sagan (Cosmos) SEE IT’S BLIND FAITH!!
It does take effort, but IF you sincerely seek the truth you’ll find the Bible is easy to believe in. Since Satan is such a deceiver it’s not surprising to find so much deception in various religions. But there is no other book like the Bible. Usually religions are created by a few people making claims and telling stories. There is no compelling evidence at all. They are spread by deception, cultural traditions or force.
The Bible is very unique in these ways:
Verifiability. Unlike any other book, the Bible has been accurately recording world events since 4000 B.C., which are regularly verified by archeology and history as true events. It was oral at first and written in 1400 B.C. as written languages developed. It continued for the next 1400 years to the coming of the predicted messiah around 0 A.D. (five times longer than the age of the US) by over 40 different people on 3 continents. Other religious books have bogus stories and no real history.
Prophesy. The Bible has many specific prophesies that were fulfilled 100’s of years later. The book of Daniel (written 600 B.C.) predicted the next 400 years of world kingdoms. It has information that was only known in 600 B.C. (more about that in a minute), but critics still try to say it was written later to avoid explaining these exact prophesies. But even if you read Isaiah 53 or Daniel 9 knowing they are proven by critics to be written before at least 153 B.C., you’ll see they talk about Jesus clearly before He was born. Some prophesies have even been fulfilled in our time: Israel was reborn in a day (Isaiah 66:8) and is a burden to the nations (Zach 12), the explosion of knowledge (Daniel 12:4), instant worldwide communication (Rev. 11:9). Some are in work to soon be fulfilled: one-world religion and government, mark on the hand needed to buy and sell (Rev 13).
Sincere Leaders. Jesus, and His disciples were killed for their message, showing sincere motives. No other major religious leader voluntarily died for his message. Usually only his followers die for him while he lives well.
Teaching. It has unique teaching on sin, forgiveness, peace, love and wisdom that heals the soul and makes sense of a fallen world. It tells of a loving God that wants good for us but also of a deceitful Satan/Devil that hates us. Satan comes to kill, steal and destroy and he’s a great deceiver. His ways look fun but lead to problems, as you find out later on. When we follow what the Bible says, things work out better. (E.g. Marriage vs immorality). The exception is persecution from people following Satan.
Summary of deceptions preventing belief in God:
(Given very briefly for you to consider a side you may not have seen, since the Christian side is not often presented in mainstream sources.)
ð Enjoying sin & don’t want to think about it. It’s important! Please do. Satan offers many temptations, but they are all harmful counterfeits.
ð Church Hypocrisy, problems, wars, etc. See 2 Timothy 4:3, Rev 3:14. Sadly, many churches are lukewarm as the Bible predicted in end times. People pervert the truth all the time. Follow only the Bible.
ð Various “historical” documentaries and Movies. Archeology overwhelmingly supports the Bible as many secular archeologists admit. But it deals with fragmented or sometimes inaccurate archeological information. It requires guesses and assumptions sometimes. Remember written language itself was developing during these times and there was no universal dating system. So some critics can quickly develop skewed opinions with the unclear areas. Many times they have thought the Bible was wrong, only to find later it wasn’t. e.g. For centuries they thought the Bible was wrong because it mentions Belshazzar as king of Babylon and everyone knew it was Nabonidus. Other details were off too. Then in 1882 they found a small detail on the “Nabonidus Cylinders” which clarified it all. Nabonidus left his reign to his son Belshazzar as co-regent while he was away most of his reign. That’s why Daniel became the “third ruler of the kingdom” (Daniel 5:29) and not the second. The cylinders were buried and forgotten and this detail was lost to ancient historians as Babylon was destroyed. Historians just 100 years later (Herodotus, Megasthenes, Berossus) mention only Nabonidus. This gives credibility to the Book of Daniel and it’s amazingly accurate prophesies because it must have been written close to the events before the detail was lost. The Bible was also criticized and then vindicated on the peoples of the Hittites, the Horites, and the Edomites.
Here’s a good documentary discussing these types of difficulties in archeology. It details what appears to be a major flaw in archeological dating that throws all kinds of things off. It’s 2.99 to rent on YouTube.
ð Evolution casts doubt that there is a god.
Evolution has so many flaws that are not revealed in popular media and education outlets. They fight hard to suppress this from being taught. When you look deeper you see it’s just well-guarded propaganda.
1. Life has never come from non-life! Even the famous Miller-Euric “primordial soup” theory has been proven impossible.
2. The well-known example of a horse turning into a giraffe by generations of stretching their neck, called Lamarckism, is also abandoned.
3. Darwin’s theory, change by natural selection alone, has been proven inept so they’ve added mutation, called neo-Darwinism. But mutations are harmful and have never been shown to do anything except alter existing information, ie an extra foot, not create new features. There is no known process to add new information to the DNA code and no new beneficial information has ever been found (just guesses). This is crucial to evolution so belief in it is by faith.
4. If evolution were true “Missing link” fossils should be as abundant as other fossils, but they are non-existent except for a few propped-up ones.
5. DNA research has shown that creatures have built-into their DNA (by the creator) a wealth of information that allows them to speciate within a kind. (E.g. produce many types of dogs and wolves but not cats). Evolutionists name this “micro-evolution”, and use it for their examples, touting that “evolution” is proven true. But it’s not evolution as we know it. It is actually a complex creation. True evolution (changing kinds) is never found.
6. Cells, organisms, and even the whole world eco system are made of many integrated parts that can’t survive alone. It’s called “irreducible complexity”. All the parts had to be created and assembled at the same time or they would have died because they need each other. But the odds of even one cell, the smallest living system, all coming together is 1:1×10137,000 (that’s a number that is a hundred and thirty thousand zeros long, a million to one shot is 1:1×106). The cell is much more complicated than Darwin could have ever imagined. It’s basically a mini-city. Google an image of “metabolic pathways” if you want to blow your mind. The Expelled documentary also has a good animation of what happens in a cell.
It’s interesting that the evolutionists have to cheat to hide this absurdity.
1) First they start with a much simpler scenario – a sentence with about a dozen letters, and even it is pretty unlikely but nothing like a cell coming together.
2) They assume that a new try for the code happens each and every second.
3) But the biggest trick is they assume that once the right letter occurs in the right position it can lock-in while the others keep searching. But to do this they have to ignore the very idea of irreducible complexity. In real life the parts of a cell are not going to sit around in the right position and wait for the other parts to form.
ð Killing in the Bible. God “resets” peoples when they become depraved – a miserable, hopeless condition where even innocents suffer (child abuse & sacrifice, disease). It won’t change so God ends the misery (by fire, flood too). It was always limited to one time and place, it was not to be ongoing.
ð If there was a god, why is pain and suffering common? Satan, the “prince of this world” with some control, has brought suffering, death, etc, and man is free to obey God, who wants good, or Satan and evil.
ð Why doesn’t God prove Himself? Discussed earlier, He wants faith.
ð Isn’t the Bible full of errors? In spite of being written over 1500 years it actually isn’t. Critics usually just misunderstand this ancient book which was written in a totally different culture and writing style. E.g. Prophesies can have multiple fulfilments or come from different sources. Terms can mean different things (“father” can mean predecessor or great great grandfather).
The modern church lie: “Believing” in God is all that is required.
You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder. … You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone. Read all James chapter 2
We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. (1 John 2:3-6)
There are many verses that say if you believe you will be saved, but later verses clarify that true belief will be followed by obedience. There are 60 other verses that support this and the church taught it for 1500 years. See our Facebook page “God Focused Homeschooling” on 1/13/2018 for more.
Sin is forgiven & not a big deal. Jesus said cut your hand off if it causes you to sin! (Matthew 18:8-9). “No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning” (1 John 3:7)
So don’t be afraid to seek and obey God. When you sincerely follow His ways your conscience will be clear and you’ll have peace and joy. There can be times of persecution and we are not exempt from those who follow Satan’s evil ways. But overall it’s be much better way to live!!