SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/20/2023 8:34 AM
I continue to look at the rather long introduction on the
book of Daniel from two sermons that John MacArthur preached to his church many
years ago.
That’s
what rationalism says. It must be reasonable to the human mind. And if it
isn’t, deny it, label it fiction, get rid of it. Now, one thing that we want
you to understand is that rationalism will never tolerate two things: miracles
and prophecies. Because if there are miracles and predictions of the future,
then there’s something beyond the human mind. There’s a God somewhere who can
violate the norms of human existence and predict the future. So in their attack
on Daniel, the real issue – and I want you to remember this – is that they’re
trying to deny the miracles and prophecies of the book because miracles and
prophecies, mark it, are signs of supernatural power.
And
rationalism, humanism, liberalism wants to get rid of the supernatural. Why?
Because it wants to live its own sinful way without the fear of a God who will
punish. You see? And so in the need to live your own life and not fear the
consequences, you eliminate God in your thinking so that any time somebody
comes along and talks miracles and prophecies you deny it because if there are
miracles and there are prophecies, then there is the supernatural and you don’t
want to allow for that.
So
Satan is inevitably trying to undermine the integrity of Scripture by deleting
the miracles and the prophecies. Now I really believe, people, that miracles
and prophecies are the two greatest proofs of the validity of the Bible as
God’s Word. In studying apologetics, or the defense of Scripture, it’s always
been interesting to me that the two key things that Jesus banked His entire
credibility on were miracles and prophecies.
For
example, in John’s gospel Jesus repeatedly says this, “Believe Me for the
works’ sake.” In other words, you ought to know I am God by what I do. And what
did He do? He raised the dead, He gave sight to the blind, and hearing to the
deaf and all of these things. He fed the five thousand creating loaves and fish
out of His hand. He walked on water. You see, He was saying, “Look at the
miracles that I do. Do not they speak of My supernatural life?”
Secondly,
He said, “Believe Me for the words that I speak.” And just to show you how very
specific that became, in John 14 in verse 29, listen to this. “And now I
have told you before it comes to pass that when it is come to pass you might
believe.” In other words, Jesus says I have two credentials to prove that I’m
God. One, My miracle works; two, My prophetic words. They then become the
epitome of defense for the deity of Christ.
And,
beloved, as you pick up the Bible, the greatest proofs in the Bible of its
truthfulness are its miracles and its prophecy. If that’s true, then believe
me, Satan will attack at that point. And Daniel is a book of miracles and
Daniel is a book of prophecies so Daniel is an attacked book. Now, basically
speaking, we usually say there are five categories in which we defend the truth
of Scripture. And I’ll just show you these real quick.
Number
one is experience. If somebody says to me, “How do you know the Bible is true?”
I might say, “Well I’ve experienced it.” Right? I’ve experienced it, I believe
what it says and it works. And that’s wonderful. And you have people stand up
and give testimony and they say, “Christ came into my life and He changed my
life and where there was sorrow there’s joy, and where there was confusion
there is confidence, and where there was unrest there is peace and Christ has
changed my life.” You might say, “I have studied the passage and I put them to
a – the principles into application in my life and my life was changed, and my
experience says that the Bible is true.”
And
you want to know something? It does, doesn’t it? But that’s not always very
convincing because lots of people have experiences. There are people who think
they see pink elephants, but they don’t. And there are people who go around in
funny robes saying “Hare Krishna,” who must have some kind of an experience but
it isn’t the right one. And there are people who talk to little green men who
crawl out of flying saucers and they have very vivid experiences, but I’m not
sure they really have those experiences. Experience is fine but it doesn’t
really go far enough and we don’t want to base the validity on the – of the
Bible on our experience.
So
let’s move up the ladder to a second way we defend the Bible and that is
through science. People say, “Well, is the Bible scientific?” You better
believe it. The Bible says way back in the Old Testament, “The life of the
flesh is in the blood.” And it wasn’t till the eighteenth century that William
Harvey discovered the necessity of life coming – or – or the actuality of life
coming from the circulatory system. The Bible says in the oldest book written
that, “He hangeth the world on nothing,” and I – I’ve – I’ve read a lot of
places in history where people thought it was on the backs of elephants who
made earthquakes when they shook.
Pliny,
the Roman elder, says that, “The earth is on seven stages of honey, butter,
syrup and stuff all mixed up.” He’s wrong. The Bible doesn’t make dumb
statements like that. It says, “He hangeth the earth on nothing.” It says, “He
turneth the earth like the clay to the seal.” And they would roll it on a stick
just like turning the earth on the axis. The Bible makes statements that are
amazing.
Herbert
Spencer died in 1903. He was given many awards in his life. The major thrust of
his life was that he discovered five categories of knowable truth. He said,
“All truth can be classified into five things: time, force, action, space and
matter.” And those five categories truly can – can encompass everything that
exists. Time, force, action, space and matter. And they hailed him as a
brilliant scientist. The first verse in the Bible said that. “In the beginning
(time), God (force) created (action) the heavens (space) and the earth
(matter).” So we can say we can defend the Bible on the basis of its scientific
accuracy.
But
there’s even something better than that. We move to a third defensive
scripture, and I like to think that the third one is the person of Christ. I
think one of the great proofs of the truth of Christianity is Jesus Christ. You
want to know something? Because of Jesus Christ, I know men didn’t write this
Bible.
I
know this Bible isn’t phony because men could never conceive of a person like
Christ. And men would never write a book about a man who came into the world to
condemn the whole world and tell all men how evil and sinful and hell-bound they
were. Men don’t write books like that. And Christ rose from the dead, and if
you’re having a problem believing it, His tomb has been empty for 2,000 years.
Buddha’s is occupied. So is the tomb of every other religious leader that ever
lived, at least whatever what may be remaining.
11/20/2023 8:38 AM
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