To Bare Witness to the Truth: A Practical Guide to Witnessing for the Gospel of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ

By Scott Dalton Myers

If God does exist, why is there so much evil in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do we suffer so many trials and tribulations in our lives? These difficult questions that nonbelievers often use to deny God's existence are addressed in this book with the biblical and religious references and answers. Proof and evidence of God's existence surround us everywhere we go if we simply open our eyes and our minds to the truth. The miracles and incredible balance in nature, the wonder of the human body, the intricate structure of our eyes and ears, cellular complexity, molecular genetics, DNA, the wonders of the Earth and our universe all point to intelligent design. It is beyond belief and comprehension that all of these things could have simply evolved from some freak accident of "nature." The watchmaker's analogy for intelligent design is a good one and is certainly applicable to the creationism versus the evolution and randomness arguments discussed in this book.Jesus performed many miracles that were seen by a multitude of people and recorded by eyewitnesses. But there are also records of modern-day medical miracles that non-Christian doctors cannot explain. Additionally, thousands of people have chosen to share their near-death experiences with a research foundation, and virtually all of them reported that they came back with a profound understanding of God's love. In an interesting 1982 blind prayer study conducted by the San Francisco Medical Center, data suggests that the intercessory prayer to the Judeo-Christian God had a beneficial therapeutic effect in patients who were admitted to a critical care unit.Although there are many biblical and religious documents that recorded events in Jesus's life, there are well over ten independent accounts from outside the biblical record that identify over sixty life events and beliefs about Jesus's life. Finally, we must look to human nature itself for evidence of the existence of God and his son, Jesus Christ. Many Christians, including Jesus, and all but one of his disciples were persecuted, horribly tortured, and died excruciating deaths because of their belief in God. Many people throughout history have been willing to die for what they truly believed in, but no one willingly dies for what they know to be a lie.Finally, how do you approach a nonbeliever and talk with them about faith? This is difficult for most people, as they feel that they must have some specialized training in order to do so. One does not need a special gift to evangelize. The mandate to be a witness applies to every follower of Christ. This book can help you be a true witness!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 16, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098063276

Book preview

1

Does God Exist?

If the Christian God is real, why does evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why do we experience so many trials and tribulations in our lives? People reason that if God does exist and if he is perfect, then why would he allow these things to occur. We will examine these questions in later chapters, but for now, let us examine the evidence for the existence of God.

Philosophers have long wrestled with the question of why we exist and what is our place in the universe. In recent centuries, their fundamental premise is that there cannot be a God, a divine Creator. They believe that since we cannot see, hear, feel, or measure God through scientific methods, then He simply cannot exist. Hence, they have concluded that the universe came from nothing, life evolved from lifeless matter, and that human reason itself is our best guide to finding our way.

In our daily lives, we are surrounded by evidence that God the Creator truly does exist. One only has to open his eyes, his heart, and use his intellect. Whether in people’s abilities, the marvels of nature, the earth, or the universe, the wonders of creation point to the majesty of our Creator. The grandeur of the mountains, the power of the oceans, the flowing rivers, the life-giving rainforests, the deserts—nature makes God’s existence and power abundantly clear.

Consider our universe. The great cosmological question is this, Where did the cosmos (universe) come from? Only two possibilities exist. The cosmos has always existed, or the cosmos had a beginning. Either one poses a serious problem for those who deny a Creator. If the universe has always existed, there would seem to be no need for a being or outside intelligence to design and create it. On the other hand, if the universe came into being at a precise, specific time, something must have caused it to come into being. Most scientists believe now accept that the universe began suddenly and at a specific point in time. If the cosmos had a beginning, what existed before it? How was it created? Where did the matter and energy, which make up the cosmos, come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? Why is anything in motion rather than everything still? Why is anything hot/cold? Why is there order in the universe rather than chaos? Why is there life rather than deadness? What is nothing? What does it look like? What force, power, or laws existed before the beginning of the universe to bring it into being?

Source: The Truth Project: An In-Depth Christian Worldview Experience; A Focus on the Family Project developed and facilitated by Dr. Del Tackett

The idea that the universe exploded into being is often called the big bang theory. It was literally the moment of creation. This is a curiously biblical view of the origin of the universe in which there was a beginning and all things in the universe can be traced back to it. Science has proven that the universe exploded into being at a certain moment, but what cause produced this effect? Who or what put the matter and energy into being? Was the universe created out of nothing, or was it gathered together out of preexisting materials? Where did the materials come from?

Our universe works like a giant watch, vast in scale and complexity yet precise in its mechanics. Several decades of space exploration have shown the precision of our universe. Scientists have discovered a lot about the fundamental laws that existed at the origin of our universe. Far from a chaotic, random structure (as one would expect if no intelligence were involved), the general scientific conclusion is that the universe has been expanding in an orderly way since its inception. This expansion is not the product of simplicity or randomness! Keith Ward, a professor of history and philosophy of religion at King’s College, London University, wrote, The universe began to expand in a very precisely ordered manner, in accordance with a set of basic mathematical constants and laws, which govern its subsequent development into a universe of the sort we see today. There already existed a very complex array of quantum laws describing the possible interactions of elementary particles, and the universe, according to one main theory, originated by the operation of fluctuations in a quantum field in accordance with those laws (God, Chance and Necessity 1996, 17). The fundamental question, Who created the original laws that govern matter and energy? Did they emerge by chance or accident? Alternatively, did a divine Creator set them in motion?

As Albert Einstein put it, Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man (quoted in The Quotable Einstein, 152).

Does the preexistence of the elaborate, intricate system of natural law in the universe mean there had to be a lawgiver? A good example is gravity. We experience the law of gravity all the time. Though gravity is something we cannot see, we know it exists. We know it functions consistently. It is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. Similar laws govern every aspect of the universe—laws of energy, motion, mass, matter, and life itself. Can science demonstrate that the origin of the universe is solely the result of natural causes? Does it make sense to believe that a universe governed by a precise system of well-ordered laws came into existence by itself?

The amount of matter and energy in the universe is unfathomable to the human mind. Astronomers estimate that there are more than one hundred billion galaxies in the universe. They have not yet found an end or edge to the universe; this is simply all that we can detect using our most advanced instruments to peer ten billion light-years into space (adapted from Robert Jastrow, Red Giants and White Dwarfs 1990, 15). We describe distances and space in terms of light-years—the distance life travels in one year (almost six trillion miles). But we cannot begin to understand and comprehend these kinds of figures. Still, we must face the question, How did this all come to be? The precision of our universe is not the result of an accident. It is the product of a meticulous Creator and lawgiver, the universe’s master watchmaker.

Our solar system clearly exhibits characteristics of design. Our moon shields our planet from taking many meteor strikes (simply look at the moon’s surface through a telescope), as well as stabilizing earth’s vital tilt. The moon acts as a counterbalance to the earth, keeping the planet’s tilt carefully adjusted to allow the four seasons of the year. This tilt permits the sun’s rays to uniformly heat the globe, much like a rotisserie slowly roasts a chicken. The moon, along with the sun, also regulates our tides. The earth’s tides help circulate the water in the oceans and sweep away waste products from the coasts. If the moon were half as far away as, or twice its present diameter, great tides would wreck most of our harbor. If the moon were smaller and further away, it would not have sufficient pull on our tides to cleanse our harbors or adequately rejuvenate [with oxygen] the waters of our oceans (Fred Meldau, Why We Believe in Creation Not in Evolution 1972, 27–28).

Also remarkable is the relative size and placement of the moon with respect to the sun. The sun’s diameter is four hundred times that of the moon, but it is also four hundred times farther away from the moon than the moon is from the earth. The arrangement produces perfect solar eclipses when viewed from earth!

The two giant planets of our solar system, Jupiter and Saturn, with their strong gravitational pulls, also help shield our planet by functioning as giant vacuum cleaners, sweeping the solar system of dangerous comets and asteroids. Astronomers witnessed a stark example of this in 1994 when Jupiter was struck by the remnants of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet, which broke apart in its atmosphere. Dr. Hugh Ross describes how these planets play a varying role in preserving life on our planet: "Late in 1993, a planetary scientist George Wetherell, of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, DC, made an exciting discovery about our solar system. In observing computer simulations of our solar system, he found that without a Jupiter-sized planet positioned just where it is, Earth would be struck about a thousand times more frequently than it is already by comets and comet debris. In other words, without Jupiter, impacts such as the one that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs would be more common.

Jupiter is two and a half more times massive than all of the other planets combined. Because of its huge mass, and thus huge gravity, and its location between Earth and the cloud of comets surrounding our solar system, Jupiter either draws comets [by gravity] or, more commonly, it deflects comets [again, by gravity] right out of our solar system. The existence of a well-placed moon, of circular planetary orbits…of the outlying gas giants [Jupiter and Saturn] to sweep the solar system of sterilizing comets…all these and more are profoundly important to the existence of complex life on our planet (Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay W. Richards, The Privileged Planet 2004, 256).

The earth is truly an amazing and astonishing creation. We are literally hurtling through space (around the sun) on this giant spacecraft called Earth—at an incredible speed of 30 kilometers per second or 67,000 miles per hour! At the same time, we are spinning around earth’s axis at 460 meters per second or 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. Every year, we complete an entire circuit around the sun—a journey of more than half a billion miles. Yet the most amazing aspect of our voyage is that we don’t feel the trip at all! We are literally traveling through space, but we are unaware of this fact. This is simply amazing: How does this happen?

The earth’s atmosphere serves as a porthole to view the cosmos. It is like having a porous crystal 430 miles thick, which allows us to have a full view of everything outside our planet and yet still blocks the airless outer space. Some planets are covered by thick clouds that make it impossible to see outside. Our atmosphere allows us to view and discover the universe around us. This transparent canopy also houses a renewable supply of oxygen for human beings and animal life and carbon dioxide and nitrogen for plants. It also provides the proper air pressure for living things, and the outer edge of this translucent shell is composed of an ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays. The clouds in our atmosphere serve as a giant-adjusting curtain to shade us from too much sunlight hitting the surface of the earth. The earth has a magnetic field generated by the spinning iron core at its center that deflects damaging cosmic rays and deadly solar winds. Without these features, life here would not be possible.

Our planet is also miraculously on an autopilot system governed by carefully adjusted physical laws. Although there is no visible physical being managing this system, our planet faithfully obeys the programmed, finely tuned commands of the physical laws and completes its yearlong journey around the sun. The earth travels through space at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, the speed that perfectly offsets the sun’s gravitational pull and keeps the earth’s orbit the proper distance from the sun.

The earth’s atmosphere contains a mixture of gases in perfect proportions to sustain life. Oxygen makes up 21 percent of our air. Without oxygen, all animate life would die in minutes. But too much oxygen is toxic and makes combustible materials more flammable. If the proportion of oxygen were to increase to 24 percent, destructive fires would frequently break out and be much harder to bring under control. Nitrogen makes up 78 percent of earth’s atmosphere, dilutes the oxygen, and serves a vital function as fertilizer for plants. Carbon dioxide makes up much of the rest of our atmosphere. Without it, plant life would be impossible. Plants require carbon dioxide, which they take in while giving off oxygen. Plant life sustains animal life and vice versa in a magnificent, precise, self-sustaining cycle.

The size of the earth is another critical factor since it determines its gravity and, in turn, affects the atmosphere. If the earth were only a little larger, making its gravity slightly stronger, hydrogen, a light gas, would be unable to escape the earth’s gravity and would collect in our atmosphere, making it inhospitable to life. Yet if the earth were only slightly smaller, oxygen would escape, and water would evaporate. Thus, if our planet were slightly larger or slightly smaller, human life could not have existed here.

Our planet remains in orbit at just the right distance from the sun and is designed with an optimal tilt of 23.5 degrees that keep temperatures comfortable for humans, plants, and animals. If the earth had been tilted at 45 degrees instead of 23.5 degrees, temperate zones would have horrid zone heat and a frigid zone cold in the winter. On the other hand, if the axis of the earth were vertical to the plane of its orbit, January and July would have the same climate and ice would accumulate until much of the continents would be ice-covered six months and flooded the other six months (Fred Meldau, Why We Believe in Creation Not in Evolution 1972, 27–28).

The rotation period of our planet cannot be changed by more than a few percent. If the planet takes too long to rotate, temperature differences between day and night would be too great. Plant life would be impossible because of the extended darkness and extremes of heat and cold from such long days and nights. On the other hand, if the planet rotates too rapidly, wind velocities would rise to catastrophic levels (Hugh Ross, The Creator and the Cosmos 2001, 135–136).

So many of our planet’s forms of life are dependent on an environment in which liquid water is stable. Astronomers estimate that if the earth’s distance from the sun changed by as little as 2 percent, all life would be extinguished as water would either freeze or evaporate.

Our planet, our solar system, and our universe are surely not the result of some lucky accident. All display evidence of intelligent design and the touch of our all-powerful Creator. The number, precision, and perfection of natural laws cannot be explained away as random chance. Such reasoning is simply irrational.

The writers of the Bible recognized much evidence of a great, all-wise Creator. They understood that the wonders we see around us shout the same message—such astounding design demands a master designer! Whether we are moved by the power of the sea, the grandeur of the mountain range, the delicate beauty of the first spring flowers, or the birth of a child as we look at the world around us, we naturally conclude, this is the handiwork of the great Creator!

And finally, another interesting perspective from Albert Einstein. Certainly, we would agree in our own country, in the history of our own country, there has never been a greater brain, a greater mental capacity than that enjoyed by Albert Einstein—not just the greatest scientist of this century but maybe the greatest intellect we’ve known in modern times. And for Albert Einstein, just for an illustration, the great scientist that he was, the great mind that he was, the toughest intellectual barrier to the Christian faith was not the question of God creating the world. Simple reason, the reason of cause and effect, was not hard for Einstein to grasp. He saw that the universe was an effect, and it had to have a source. He saw that the universe was designed, and it had to have a designer. He saw that it was ordered, and it had to come out of an orderly mind. And so Einstein concluded that there must be a mind behind the universe. He rejected the idea of matter simply bumping around endlessly in space until, by random, it formed itself into the universe that now exists. As he put it, quote, The universe reveals an intelligence of such superiority that it overshadows all human intelligence.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)

God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)

The heavens declare the glory of God; The skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; Night after night they display knowledge. There is no speech or language Where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, Their words to the ends of the world. (Psalm 19:1–4)

Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19–20)

Ah Lord GOD! Behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee. (Jeremiah 32:17)

Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? There is no searching of his understanding. (Isaiah 40:28)

For this is what the Lord says—he who created the heavens, he is God; he who fashioned and made the earth, he founded it; he did not create it to be empty, but formed it to be