The Sinners Prayer is fairly common practice, especially among Baptist and Southern Baptist organizations wherein some evangelist will take people through a checklist; something like, “Do you know that you’re a sinner? Do you want to go to heaven? Do you believe that Jesus died for you? Do you want to accept him into your heart? Did you accept him into your heart?” So long as they answer yes at every station, the evangelist will declare them to be saved and that person will walk away thinking they have just…
Month: June 2013
Is It Possible To Lose Salvation?
In contemporary theology, evangelists find that those to whom they have recently begun to disciple have a walk with God that was short-lived, it just sort of fizzled out when they grew tired of church. Evangelists see those who they spoke to on the street and convinced to recite the Sinner’s Prayer, or peer pressured them to speak with angelic tongues, and then they wonder why they find out that this person has not been attending church and just showing no growth at all. So they might say that this…
10 Questions For Atheists
In discussion with my atheist friends, a number of topics arise and as purely intellectual questions, they are quite interesting, I think, for both parties. However atheists frequently tend to just dismiss these as ridiculous, as though they were familiar with this argument as toddlers and rejected it a long time ago. I often suspect that this is just a shell game, or a confidence trick, for even if these arguments for the existence of God fail, they are certainly not easy topics, they are not things which can be…
Atheist scientist tries to disprove God and becomes a Christian
If God Is Good, Why Is There Evil?
Everybody acknowledges that the world is not how it is supposed to be, that mankind behaves in a way that is wicked and depraved, and that there is suffering for which we cannot see any purpose. As Christians, we are often willing to say that we just trust in the will of God, when we look at the suffering of others. However the problem of evil and suffering is often brought home when it becomes personal, when we suffer, we feel as though some injustice has been wrought against us…
Do Christians Need Apologetics?
Sometimes when a person is expressing their lack of religious belief, they will explain that they are more compelled science than they are religion, the insinuation being that we must choose between science, intellectualism, and religion, that we cannot hold on to both. This may be partially due to the vehement criticism of science in the church, the absolute opposition to any advance in knowledge aside from that which is biblical. Thus when young people are in school, they are left to think that they must either choose between what…
Are We All Born Atheists?
There is something to be said about teaching children Christian truths at a very young age, for even Jesus promoted it by saying that if we teach them things when they are very young, they will not forget it, and in Timothy 3:15, we are commanded to remember what we learned even as children. Atheists will often call this indoctrination, that Christians are leading their children astray, and in fact that even babies are atheists until they learn these these. But is that the case, are we all born atheists?…
Can Being A Good Person Get You Into Heaven? (Second Rebuttal)
I can certainly understand and even relate to the emotional element behind the belief that being a good person can get you into heaven, as Jared pointed out in his introduction, how unthinkable is it that somebody who lost family members and whose heart is so hard, will be judged for that? But that is precisely why the Bible teaches that we must be reborn and be given a new heart with new desires. In my introduction I raised a number of arguments, all of which Jared replied to, while…
Can God Create A Rock So Heavy That He Cannot Lift It?
Often in dialogue with non-believers, they will appeal to some sort of one-liner or meme to render their unbelief a more plausible stance than the existence of an omnipotent God. However, just as often as they submit these memes, they turn out to be specious, which is to say that they appear to be true, but are actually false. So the same with what we call the omnipotent paradox, which essentially attempts to pit God against himself in asking, Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift…
Can Being A Good Person Get You Into Heaven? (First Rebuttal)
Most religions acknowledge the problem of sin in contrast with the Holiness of God (or the gods) and attempt to offer some sort of atonement for sin, such as in Islam, where if our good deeds weigh more than our evil deeds, our wage awaits us with the Lord, or in the Hindu karma system, wherein our good deeds are propositional to our position in the Caste system. However I have always maintained that Christian theology is the only system which offers a system of atonement that made sense, for…
Is The Universe A Design? (3 Answers)
Martin: Would you not agree that a Universe that was NATURALLY UNSUITABLE for life and yet contained life would (being necessarily a miracle) be very powerful evidence of an intelligent and very powerful entity? If not, why not? I would agree with that, but that is not to say that this is the only possible evidence of an intelligent designer. One could say that the purpose of the fine-tuning of the universe is not to provide evidence for the existence of the designer, but is to provide a stable and…
Voddie Baucham
How To Evangelize
When we think of evangelism, we often become very uncomfortable with the precedent set down by certain religious groups, knocking on doors, accosting strangers in the street and so forth. Now I do not condemn anybody who has the strength to talk to strangers in the street, but that sort of witnessing is not compatible with everybody. For some people, dialogue with strangers may make them very uncomfortable, and therefore some people perhaps should not approach in that manner because they will not be effective evangelists. However that is not…
Why Does The Oneness Pentecostal Church Have Weird Rules?
After the Lord freed the people of Israel from the clutches of the Egyptians, he imparted a series of rules meant to govern them as his people, relaying his message through Moses and Aaron. The Lord commanded the people of Israel to be Holy, as he is Holy, and by this meant that he wanted them to be separate from the world, to be morally superior to the other civilizations, even though they might be hated. This is reflected again in the epistles Peter, as he quotes God in saying,…
Can People Who Commit Suicide Go To Heaven?
With the recent tragedy known to many of us, namely, the suicide of Pastor Rick Warren’s, many Christians have posed the question to themselves of whether those who commit suicide can receive redemption, or are they automatically condemned to Hell? As one might expect, Pastor Warren has answered this question by saying that he knows that his son is with the Lord, and many who hear this whisper to themselves is he? but they dare not speak this question aloud, for there are extremely personal implications and it is probably…
Why Do People Believe In God?
When people are questioned about their belief in God, often they cannot justify it from a logical angle, offering answers such as Just look around you, appealing to the existence of the natural world, without having any understanding of any form of the Cosmological Argument for God’s existence. People seem to suggest that they know who God is on the basis of what they can see plainly, and this is true of all religions and people groups; even those who were not raised to believe in a Creator God believe…
What Is Mass?
It could be understood that many Protestants probably do not think much differently of Catholic Mass than they would another denomination, and perhaps even a viable option according to ones’ own personal faith, since they do not really understand the practices that they are observing. In fact I might wager that many adherents to Catholicism do not really understand the doctrines that they are practicing. I therefore write this (while appealing to the Catholic authority known as the Council Of Trent) to the end of explaining what Mass is to…
The 10 Plagues Of Egypt
When the Lord created man, he did so for himself; he wanted to show his glory and express his love, so that they will know that he is God, and that in him, they will live, and move, and have their being. But the people rejected the sovereign Lord and began to create idols; gods constructed in their own image. This is to be expected, because if one is to create their own deity, they are no longer subjected to the strictures of following the Lord. The Egyptians were guilty…