The Suffering Church: Where Is God?

By Charles Konadu-Adjei Ph.D.

The Suffering Church is for anyone bewildered by the existence of God.

Charles Konadu-Adjei, Ph.D., explores different religious world views in an effort to answer the question: “Where is God?” In the process, he presents evidence that confirms the existence—as well as the authority—of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

The New Testament contains exactly what Jesus said, which makes it a true story. As a result, we can look to the New Testament as a historically credible account of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus.

The text serves as a wake-up call to the church to lead more people to God through the Holy Spirit. It also serves as a guide to help readers get more out of their journey with God on earth.

The book argues that the biggest enemy of the church is not the devil but ignorance. This is what keeps so many people from believing in the Lord.

Find out why the Bible is relevant and how to build a relationship with God and enjoy victory every day of your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664228849

Charles Konadu-Adjei Ph.D.

Charles Konadu-Adjei, Ph.D., is the President of CKA Ministries, a minister, host of “Time with the Holy Spirit,” “Good Bye my Yesterday and Hello my Tomorrow,” and the administrator of Apostolic Church International. He is also a motivational speaker, a life coach, and a success mentor. He has ministered and taught at national conferences, seminars, and workshops. He earned a Ph.D. in apologetics and theology, a Ph.D. in finance, a Ph.D. in policy and decision making, a Master of Arts in biology, and a Bachelor of Science in biochemistry.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-2883-2 (sc)

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WestBow Press rev. date: 04/08/2021

CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter 1 Where Is God?

Chapter 2 The Church and Legalism

Chapter 3 Carnal Relationships

Chapter 4 The Church and SWMDs

Chapter 5 The Church and Knowledge of the Word

Chapter 6 The Church and Discipleship

Chapter 7 The Prophetic Ministry and the Church

Chapter 8 Denying the Gift of Grace

Chapter 9 The Church and the Holy Spirit

Conclusion

Reference

PREFACE

This book has been carefully designed for those who are confused about the existence of God and truly want to know Yahweh. The book is also meant to give the church a wake-up call and to create awareness within the body of Christ so the soldiers of Christ will start to be sober and vigilant again. I urge you to read each chapter prayerfully and to allow the Holy Spirit to direct you. I also encourage leaders and members alike to implement the principles they will glean from this book in the church and their private lives.

The church’s biggest enemy isn’t the devil, as many saints have been told. Our greatest enemy is ignorance. Hosea 4:6 (KJV) says, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge: because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee. Anytime we reject knowledge, especially divine knowledge, we die spiritually. The citizens or ambassadors of Christ need to be informed people to affect their world. This well-researched book is designed to be used not only as an aid for personal growth and Bible study but also as a manual for leadership training.

I thank God for the special grace to empower me spiritually and physically to write this book. It is truly by His grace because I have tried many times to release what God had wired in me, but the prince of the kingdom of Persia has always withstood me. I have had many men of God asking me when the book is coming out, as if they had been sent with a divine announcement. The grace Christ gave me to pen this book should encourage someone who has been asking God when to know when his or her time has come.

If I were to individually thank people who helped me through prayers and proofreading, I would end up offending many important people, by whom God has surrounded me. Therefore, I thank all my family, my loved ones, and my friends. I would also like to thank all spiritual fathers and mentors who have supported me in ministry. God bless all of you in Jesus’s mighty name.

CHAPTER 1

WHERE IS GOD?

T here has always been a question about the existence of God on the minds of humanity since time immemorial. However, the desire to find an answer intensified at the beginning of civilization. The lack of an answer has birthed more questions. This has led others to ask, Is God alive but just dormant? Did God once exist and is now dead, or did God never exist? Theologians of various religious worldviews and philosophers have worked tirelessly to give answers to these questions, but it may interest you to know that their answers haven’t satisfied the masses. All major religions have believed in one god or another. Thus, believing in the Supreme Being who is benevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient is essential to the existence of humankind, especially with the evident problem of pain and suffering in the world. Let us look at the answers some of the various religious worldviews have offered.

Different Worldviews

Deism

According to Dr. Norman Geisler, a renowned apologist, proponents of deism (Celsus and Porphyry) are pagans who believe God created the world, but they credit the operation and the sustenance to the laws of nature. They believe there is a Unitarian God; however, they deny the Unitarian God’s supernatural interventions in His creation. They also don’t believe miracles are needed as a basis for religion. Deists—the likes of Toland, Blount, Chubb, Annet, and others—worked to assault theism (the belief in one God) by disclaiming the deity of Christ, taking the supreme God out of the equation, reducing supernatural miracles to the act of laws of nature, and criticizing the Bible and the apostles of Christ.

Why do deists believe in a creator but not a personal god? Deists base their beliefs on empirical evidence—much like is done in science. They believe enough evidence exists to justify that our universe is the product of a creator or higher being, but they aren’t persuaded by arguments for an intervening, political God, who keeps His ear pressed to the other side of our clouds or selectively interferes with individual humans. In short, deists believe there is strong evidence that our universe was created by a prime mover but that the prime mover abandoned the universe or died after creating it. The deists started out nicely but killed and buried God in their thought process.

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is one of the many approaches opponents of Christianity use to disprove the existence of God in their quest to destroy the two pillars the Christian faith is built on. Agnosticism is divided into two types. The first type is called limited agnosticism, which states that God isn’t known due to the human’s limited state and sinful nature. However, the second type, which is unlimited agnosticism, asserts that the existence of God cannot be known. The agnostics Ayer and Wittgenstein offer a more devastating blow to the existence of God. They believe all statements about reality are noncognitive, and they declared it nonsense or empty to talk about God, because God is beyond what can be experienced. The issue with proponents of both unlimited agnosticism and limited agnosticism is the fact that we are finite beings, a fact that prohibits us from knowing God. The reason for their argument is that we cannot experience God through His creation. Apologists argue that both unlimited agnostics and limited agnostics are self-destructive and self-deifying, because they imply knowledge about reality to deny the possibility of any knowledge of reality.

Panentheism

Panentheism is the belief that God is in the universe but not in the world. This system is built on the work of Diogenes, who held the belief that God is to the world as the soul is to the body. However, the panentheistic system views God as a dipolar being, whose actual pole is singled out with the mutable, temporal universe; and the whole pole comprises all eternal possibilities that transcend the world.

The different scholars of panentheism have an internal debate. Pantheists believe that God is associated with the world as the soul is to the body, God has two poles, the world was formed out of something eternal, God and the universe are interrelated and interdependent, God is growing in perfection as a result of human assistance, and evil won’t be defeated. Panentheism is just like other systems, whose contribution to the worldview drove others to their destruction. The views of God being dipolar and a finite, changing being don’t hold ground, because both ideas suggest a being who is outside the system to make these views realistic.

Polytheism

Those who embrace polytheism believe in the existence of multiple gods in the world. This belief system was born out of religious systems like Hinduism, paganism, and Wicca (witchcraft). Modern polytheism is believed to be born out of the death of God. There are different types of polytheism, which includes belief systems of gods who are almost equal in power; henotheism (gods forming a hierarchy with one chief god); traditional polytheism (the existence of limited gods); serial polytheism (the belief in an uncountable number of gods); and manifestational polytheism (the belief that one impersonal being is manifesting in many people). Apologists including Geisler (2013) are of the view that polytheism, which died out due to Plato and Aristotle’s philosophical theism and Christianity in the West respectively, was revitalized with witchcraft because it embraces polytheism. Witchcraft has risen as a result of the decline of Judeo-Christian views and the rise of traditional Mormonism. Just as the previous beliefs are self-destructive, so is polytheism. Their idea to do away with reason or to view it as normative in life is irrational because it violates the basic laws of thought. Most polytheists are relativists, for there cannot be both a monotheistic God and a polytheistic God existing at the same time. The ultimate reality in the realm of religion isn’t one but many—a concept of metaphysical and religious pluralism, which creates squabble and discord.

Atheism

Atheism is the belief in the complete absence of God in and beyond the universe. There are some groups, like semantical atheists, within this system who don’t argue that it is necessary to disprove God’s existence. However, whether it is traditional, semantic, mythological, or dialectical atheism, they all refute the theistic claim of the existence of God. Some of the arguments atheists have raised against theists cover reasons that are cosmological, ontological, moral, and more. They question the possibility of an infinite being, because they believe everything, including God, needs a cause. They also argue that existing out of necessity isn’t possible because necessity isn’t applicable to existence, in that necessity is characteristic of propositions and not reality. They further question the prevalence of evil and the existence of an all-powerful, wise, good, and loving God.

To rebut allegations from the atheist community, theists argue that the atheists argument against the existence of God is an indication of atheists believe in God. The theists called the ontological disproof of the existence of God self-destructive, since it makes their very statement about the necessary existence true. The attack on morality doesn’t hold because the fact that evil hasn’t yet been destroyed doesn’t mean it won’t be destroyed. It is argued that the total worldview of atheism doesn’t live up to its standards. They failed, according to apologists, to answer any fundamental metaphysical questions pertaining to the existence of the world, the genesis of personalities, or the actualization of the universe.

Based on what has been discussed so far, it sounds like God is dead or has become part of the universe He created or that He never existed. It can also be said that if there is one supernatural being, there could be more. Has all this confusion about God affected the church He claimed to build in a way that the gates of hades shall prevail against it? Has the mockery of the atheist community taken a toll on the church? Is it the reason for the different temperatures we experience in the church? Before we hesitate to make premature conclusions, let us hear the case for theism.

Theism

Theism is the view that all limited or finite things are dependent in some way on one supreme or ultimate reality, of which one may also speak in personal terms. Theism is the belief in the infinite God, who created and controls the universe. The philosophical arguments that prove the existence of God describe an immutable, infinite, all-loving, and all-powerful Creator (Isaiah 66:1; Malachi 3:6; John 3:16; Hebrews 1:2). If there is only one God and the God described in the Bible is identical in traits to that God, then it follows logically that the God described in the scriptures exists. It is therefore inescapable that something exists, for no one can deny his or her existence without first asserting his or her existence. This admission, according to apologists, leads to an unavoidable existence of the Supreme Being, who transcends the universe and has always been in charge of it and of sustaining the world and everything in it with His omnipotent power. This conclusion wasn’t arrived at by ignoring the questions the atheists and other worldviews raised against theism. All charges and criticisms brought against the existence of an infinite, perfect God have been thrown away. The reason for this is that the charges are unfounded. Theism has been acquitted in the face of its opponents. This fact makes this universe a theistic world, and it makes the theistic worldview true and all other worldviews false.

Evidence for Theism

Objectivism and History

Christianity is a religion that uses historical corroboration regarding miracles to make bold claims. However, these miraculous claims must be put under the objective microscopic lens of history to be verified. The question that surfaces with objective historical fact is whether it is knowable. Apologists argue that the only way to answer the question is to dissect the postmodern and relativistic arguments against the objectivity of history. Looking at the arguments raised against the objectivity of history as a means to verify the authenticity of miracles as the supernatural work of God of the Bible, one can see the unfair treatment that has been leveled against miracles if one honestly measures these same arguments vis-à-vis science, especially in the field of geology. The opponents of miracles argue that miracles by definition are established on the least probable cause.

The main criticism is that there is no way for historians to keep themselves out of histories when this same issue isn’t raised against geologists in their use of fossils to study the past. It can be seriously argued that it is true that interpretive frameworks are paramount when it comes to objectivity; however, it is a false statement to say that all worldviews must be completely relative and subjective. It can be concluded, from the various responses given for the charges that history is objectively knowable, that miracles can happen in the historical process without them being of a natural process. Therefore, the moral and theological proportions of miracles aren’t completely subjective. Geisler (2013) asserts that the opponents of miracles call for a subjective retort, but there are objective levels of quality of truth and goodness, by which the miracle can be objectively judged.

Naturalism and the Supernatural

Christian apologetics comes in two forms, namely theism, which deals with philosophical first principles and claims miracles to be a possibility; and Christian theism, which is built on historical evidence and declares Christianity as the sole religion, with trustworthy miracles to support its principal truth claims. The arguments raised against miracles suggest they are impossible in principle or in practice because they violate the laws of nature, which are built on the highest degree of probability. Miracles aren’t the same as anomalies and satanic signs; neither are magic and other things those nontheistic claim because they don’t have any divine purpose to their occurrences. Since the existence of God of the Bible has been undeniably established, making this world a theistic universe, it also follows that miracles are possible in the sense that they are the handiwork of God, the ruler of the universe. Miracles are supported by not only Christian historical records but also Judaism’s historical records. Geisler (2013) states that anyone who denies miracles is simply denying the existence of God.

The Historical Reliability of the New Testament

Having reliably established that history is objectively knowable, one can use history to also assess the validity of the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Christ, as enshrined in the New Testament. To determine the historical reliability of the New Testament, Geisler (2013) offers two ways—the authenticity of the New Testament writings and the establishment of the trustworthiness of the New Testament authors. Geisler (2013) then employed three methods (examining the extant manuscript copies, comparing New Testament manuscripts with those of ancient secular history, and dating the original sources of the manuscripts) to accomplish this.

After examining, comparing, and dating the manuscripts by philologists, mythologists, historians, legal experts, and non-Christian scholars, we can conclude that there is more abundant and accurate manuscript evidence for the New Testament than for any other book from the ancient world. There is no other book from antiquity possessing anything like this abundance in manuscripts; it is superior to that of any other book from the world. No other book