Is Postmodernitry Subjective Suicide?

               Is Postmodernity Subjective Suicide?

A foreboding crisis of faith darkens the Western world. Traditional institutions seem unable to reach their goals. Capitalism hasn’t reduced disparity between the wealthy and the poor. Wasteful throwaway societies trash earth’s resources and environment. Science and technology haven’t solved our problems. Governments tax citizens into poverty taking their money, or wasting it on ineffective projects. Special interests usurp democratic systems making them unresponsive to citizens. Nations hoard weapons of mass destruction threatening to devastate each other. Greed and corruption appear everywhere. Traditional religions don’t improve the situation and fight among themselves. We fear global warming, an asteroid from space, or that aliens among us may destroy us. We no longer believe in absolute authority, truth, and morality. Let’s look at five stages of change. Change can be either progressive or regressive and in different ways.

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Pre-Christian Barbarism.

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 Before Christ, it was a brutal world where human life had little value. Half the world were slaves of no concern, dignity, or rights. They could be beaten, raped, sold or killed at their master’s will. They usually were put to death when their master died. Women were considered their husband’s property and animals might be thought more valuable.
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Unwanted babies were thrown away to be starved or eaten. Children could be put to death without pity or not live beyond the age of eight. Women could die in childbirth and men in war. City-states, tribes and empires fought all the time and authority rested in whoever had superior weaponry and army to dominate the others.
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People thought killing was the way to gain your enemies strength. Cannibalism, human sacrifice, sexual orgies, sometimes sex with animals were part of many people’s lives and used in worship of their gods. Their gods were as brutal, indifferent, jealous and cruel as were their worshippers. They knew of the one high God but felt estranged from him as isolated peoples do today. Plato (350 B.C.) made an amazing statement, “We wait for one be he a God or an inspired man to instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our eyes.”

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The West’s Hope in Jesus and the Bible until 1960.

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The death and resurrection of Jesus as taught in the Bible radically changed the Western world’s thinking. Ancient peoples feared their gods, sacrificed to them, but never loved them. Soldiers sacrifice themselves for love of country. Mothers died for children they loved. But Jesus showed supreme love giving His human life for us guilty rebels in his death on the cross (2 Cor. 5:21).
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Though innocent, Jesus was rejected, condemned, severally beaten, ridiculed, slapped, spit on, and hung naked before staring eyes. Ancient prophets foretold it (Gen. 3:15; Ps. 2; 22; Isa. 53). Jesus predicted it (Matt. 17:9; 27:63; Mark 8:31). Miracles testified to it—darkness, earthquake, temple vale torn, resurrections (Matt. 27:51-53; Luke. 23:44). It announced, “God so loved the world that He gave His unique Son (sinless God-man) that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). But it would be a dead hope apart from Jesus’ resurrection.

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Jesus resurrection established the most crucial things. There’s life after death. Jesus is the God-man with power of life and death. As God, all Jesus taught in and of Scripture is absolute truth. Humans created in God’s mental, moral immortal image have dignity and freedom. Ethics make sense—our thoughts, words, deeds are accountable to God so life has purpose. Our conscience, justice and love make sense.
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As created and controlled by a rational God, the world is meaningfully moving toward a climax. Experimental science is possible. Jesus divided our thinking about history into Before Christ and After His Death. This personal ethically perfect God offers us wayward rebels’ eternal life with Him forever through faith in Jesus, the Lord and Savior of sinners. Spreading this hope and love is imperative education--without it, all is lost.

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We could not know all this except for the Bible. Christians collected the Gospels written about Jesus and the letters of His apostles before A.D. 100. People were living at the time Scripture was published who knew Jesus, his fulfilled prophecies, miracles, claims to be God, and resurrection. Secular writers wrote details about his life. His disciples were tortured and murdered for their faith. No world religion has any Scripture or any founder like Jesus.
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The Bible is history, not some made up stories centuries later (Luke 1:1-3; Acts 1:1-3; 2:22-24; 4:33; 1 Cor. 15:3-8). Moreover, it’s translated from comparative copies of early original languages with the highest degree of accuracy of any ancient documents. We have every reason to trust the Bible as God’s authority and truth and in Jesus as the sinless God-man sent to give us abundant life and save us from Hell (Luke. 19:10; John 10:10; 3:36; 7:16; 8:24). All the unparalleled benefits Christianity bring without commitment to Christ and the Bible will pass away to pre-Christian barbarism.

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Modernity’s Self-sufficient Rejection of the Christian Worldview by 1990.

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Like waves pounding shoreline rocks turning them to sand, unbelief relentlessly pounds Godly faith intent on beating it to pieces. We decided we don’t need God—evolution explains everything. Scientific method and logical reasoning will lead us to truth and progress. Our objective thinking can make things right, save us, and make us free. Jesus, the Bible, and divine authority haven’t worked. Though imperfect, we quickly excuse ourselves pointing the finger at persons struggling to live God honoring lives.
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We blame the world’s evils and sufferings upon superstitious belief in God though we bring them about ourselves. We decided the Bible’s miracles were only imaginative tales of later prescientific writers--it contains numerous absurdities and contradictions—never mind checking out any facts. We were confident our new gods of science, technology, democratic government, law, diplomacy, a good economy, and a strong military could correct any adverse conditions. But then adverse conditions seem to pile up to overwhelm us without relief and without faith.

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Postmodernity’s Lost Faith in Human Achievements from 1991 to today.

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Loss of faith in the personal ethical God demonstrated in Jesus and the Bible has brought about loss of faith altogether. If we’re only evolving animals that return to dirt, we have no great dignity or destiny. If no personal ethically perfect Creator exists who knows and guides our lives, each person’s purpose is freedom to please them self. But it’s a freedom to destroy us. God warns us, “All who hate me love death (Prov. 8:36).
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To follow Darwin, Marx, Muhammad, or some other dictator will lead us to poverty, virtual slavery, and possibly a blood bath. Check it out in history. When we have no objective authoritative guide, we call good evil and evil good. C. S. Lewis in Christian Reflections warned us of the poison of subjectivism that can remove all restraints to evil. Politically correct lays the groundwork for government takeover and imposition of tyranny. It destroys honest objective thinking.
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Science and technology cannot save us and may even destroy us. It is what has enabled us to build weapons of mass destruction but gives no guidelines about using them. Terrorism increasingly stalks our lands. Could the real problem be that we ignore the selfishness, greed, overindulgence, injustice and indifference of our rebellious hearts? With little thought for others, all we care about is our being happy and having life’s good things on our terms. Is our self-occupation and self-sufficiency all we need to make things right? Where are our limited, conflicting, self-centered lives leading us? Those who make the subjective claim there’s no absolute truth and morals, believe they’re making a true statement, and that makes them liars and opens the door to every evil.

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What Does the Future Hold?

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As I see it, we have three options. One, the West can avoid barbarism and return to its former glory of the Christian worldview with serious commitment to Jesus as Savior, Lord, and the Bible to Guide us as we are so prone to sin. Sin is the basis of all our problems. Then, the Lord will hear and bring healing, renewal, and restore us as light to the nations (2 Chron. 7:14; Isa. 55:6-7). God may rise up strong godly national leaders such as Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Daniel.
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Two, it may be that since the West turned its back on the Lord, God will give the East opportunity it’s not had before (Rom. 1:28; Acts 16:6-10). Many in the East are coming to Christ. Three, many believe we’re near the rapture, the revealing of the Anti-Christ, and world domination and persecution of everything Godly. Then, the Bible predicts a Golden Age like the Garden of Eden ending in a final conflict of good over evil. More will be said about these things in God’s later articles.

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Dear friends, thank you for reading my articles and for your concern. Let me plead with you again. We never know how much time we have left. Turn to the Lord Jesus who can save us sinners and be our Guide for life. He alone has given us evidence He’s real, not just conflicting human guesses, opinions and preferences. He’s humanity’s only hope, authority, and absolute truth. Everything else is subjective suicide. Pray, Lord Jesus, save me and control my life.

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Did Jesus Really Perform Miracles?

                                                Did Jesus Really Perform Miracles?
#miracles   #Jesus   #supernatural-faith 
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The universe’s expansion, it’s running down, the impossibility of eternal backtracking, and its complexity, all point to its being the effect of a self-existing, eternal, infinite, unchanging intelligence and will which best explains the world and is rightly called God. And since this Creator God exists, it’s a small thing for him to perform miracles or even take on a human nature and body and walk among us as said of Jesus. Several factors require honest consideration.

Jesus’ Miracles Require Open-minded Consideration

Some object saying that’s religious, bias and unfair. But isn’t government refusal of research grants to religious universities biased? Isn’t Bible study and prayer illegal in public schools biased? Isn’t forbidding discussion of Christian ethics on TV and radio biased? Isn’t politically correct secular legislation against the Bible, prayer and Jesus biased? Isn’t a judge’s opinion contrary to a nation’s will biased? Secular politically correct philosophy is what's biased and unfair--God made us with the right to free speech and to know the truth.

Some claim nature’s laws make miracles impossible and it would destroy science.  Ridiculous! A rocket going to the moon didn't destroy gravity or make science impossible. Jesus' turning water to wine, walking on water, feeding the hungry demonstrated he was nature's Lord. Unless God did extraordinary astonishing things beyond nature’s usual patterns, we would never recognize his presence and power.  Nature’s regularity is required in order to identify miracles as exceptions and Jesus as its Lord. Miracles show conclusively there is a God who can act in our world.

Others claim the scientific empirical method alone leads us to knowledge as only repeated experiments under controlled conditions can insure a predictable outcome. Scientific method can’t prove ethics, history, macro evolution, or even the scientific method itself. And there’s no rule the Almighty must submit to our controlled experiments for us to believe in him. God could be the primary sustaining Cause and nature’s patterns secondary causes. We can’t show nature is everything
without exhaustive knowledge. Do we even know what's taking place in the house next door?

Good objective science doesn’t exclude God and miracle before investigation. Science’s role is to describe what is, not prescribe what can and cannot be. supernatural--that's a closed-minded, biased, unscientific dogmatism. Beware of biased scientists who say there's no God and no miracles. 

The skeptic philosopher David Hume said miracles were impossible but he never weighed the evidence of Jesus’ miracles. He assumed overwhelming evidence of natural events outweighed their possibility. He said miracles would violate nature’s laws. No wise man, only ignorant superstitious persons in some unknown corner believes them. Hume claims also that miracles occur in all religions alike that discredits their opposed teachings. He never examined the exceptional nature of Bible miracles.

Hume’s objection would eliminate the possibility of any unknown or exceptional event even when we know it occurs, such as walking on the moon. Unlike other miracle accounts, Jesus’ disciples were eyewitnesses and martyred for their belief. Jesus’ miracles astonished his disciples and his  hostile  critics couldn’t deny them, which shows all knew nature’s laws. We know miracles impossible only if we  know no miracle working God exists and that requires exhaustive knowledge we don’t have.

Naturalistic philosophy makes us soulless material manipulative dirt without dignity, worth or rights. Pantheism makes us illusion cycles of energy awaiting absorption into nothingness. If Jesus arose bodily from the grave, it assures everybody’s vital human needs and rights. For only Jesus showed life beyond the grave. Since only God the Creator has power over death, we can know Jesus Christ is the incarnate God-man who walked among us. God grants us the right to life, dignity, and free speech as created in His image for His glory and for relationship with Him.

What basic momentous things did Jesus teach? The Bible is God’s message to man. We’re beings of great value in God’s rational, moral, immortal image. God gave us laws, justice, love and his human life to save us. Jesus alone can save us from sin. Heaven and Hell are eternal realities-- we decide our destiny. Jesus makes history climactic, life ultimately meaningful, truth and ethics realities, the world understandable, experimental science possible, and our daily choices crucial. Wow! Can speculative philosophy and religion match that? No way!

Now, let’s examine Christ’s miracles. Our present well being and eternal destiny could be at stake. Unless we have irrefutable proof it can’t be true, we’re most wise to give it utmost honest consideration. Jesus’ miracles were God’s exceptional acts within nature showing his claims true.

Jesus’ Miracles Are True History

Several lines of evidence establish Jesus’ miracles as real historical events showing he was the God-man who walked among us. But even then, it requires open-minded consideration.

Historians accept two primary sources as verifying events and three as excellent. Jesus has six independent sources each telling the same general events but with different details: the four gospels, the sermons of Acts and statements of Paul and Peter in their epistles. Except for an anti-supernatural bias, that alone would establish historical fact.

Matthew and John were Jesus’ disciples for over three years. Mark was a close associate of his chief apostle Peter while Luke was Paul’s disciple and an extensive eyewitness researcher. That’s immediate documentation. And while other historical events have few manuscripts to document them with the New Testament there are thousands.

The Gospels mention well-known persons, places, dates, events, and customs. Archaeological and historical research has repeatedly verified the Gospels as history. Luke mentions thirty prominent names of that time and place known to secular writers and archaeologists. For example, Tiberius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Herod Antipas, Herod the Great, Pilate, and high priests as Caiaphas and Ananias. An ossuary or bone box recently found may contain Caiaphas’s bones. He mentions social Jewish customs, laws, places, feasts verified as true to the time. Fiction writers dare not mention things fact hunters would expose.

Published by A.D. 100, the whole New Testament amazingly circulated among churches less than seventy years after Christ. The few copies of other ancient documents are dated hundreds of years after publication. Over five thousand Greek copies, thousands of copies in other languages and New Testament quotes of all but eleven verses of the church fathers give far greater evidence of accurate history than the few surviving ancient secular documents. Scholars point to creeds and hymns of the early church the apostles received and incorporated in their letters (Rom. 1:3-4; 1 Cor. 11:23-33; 15:3-8; Phil. 2:6-11; Col. 1:15-18; 1Tim. 3:16; 2 Tim. 2:8; 1 Pet. 3:18-22; 1 Jn. 4:2-3). They date them as early as A.D. 33 to 48, which rules out any legendary and imaginary embellishment. So the accounts of Jesus’ miracles then are true history.

Jesus’ Miracles Show He Is God

Biblical prophets and apostles performed miracles grouped around three crucial periods in Israel’s history. During slavery in Egypt, Israel needed miracles to establish Moses as their leader to the Promised Land. Again, miracles group around Elijah and Elisha to save Israel from Baal worship. Finally, miracles occur with Christ and the apostles to show God’s new revelation. Of course, the Creator can heal and provide miracles any time. But these grouping in crises times show they are not everyday occurrences. What’s different about Jesus’ miracles is that he alone claimed to be Israel’s predicted Messiah and humanity’s God. What is the character of Jesus’ miracles that elicit faith?

First, the Gospels mention only 35 miracles but Jesus performed hundreds if not thousands (John. 3:2; 21:25). Individuals and groups requested healing for over three years wherever he went between towns, in people’s homes, by the seaside and at the temple. Hostile critics accused Jesus of blasphemy claiming to be God, said his miracles were Satanic, but could never deny them even when challenged to do so (John. 10:33; 11:47-48).

Second, Jesus performed visible close-up miracles before watching crowds and critics in the daylight. Sleight of hand tricks in darkness or at a distance and freakish accidents or anomalies of nature were simply impossible.

Third, wherever Jesus went both individuals and crowds requested healing, and they were healed on the spot (Luke 4:40). He healed the nobleman’s son (Jn. 4:46-53) and the centurion’s son (Matt. 8:5-13) from a distance. Preplanned healings among strangers might be faked, but not spontaneous healings among well-known townspeople and relations.

Fourth, Jesus’ miracles were of varies kinds and in four categories. He did nature miracles such as stilling the storm, walking on the water, cursing the fig tree and ascending into Heaven—no magic or anomalies of nature here. He healed obvious visible ailments such as blindness, deafness, leprosy, dropsy, and paralysis—no deception or hypnotism possible here. Demons acknowledged Jesus as the holy one of God who cast them into pigs restoring the possessed to sanity. Jesus raised three stiff cold people from the dead. He visibly showed control of all nature, disease, demons and death. Natural causes can’t explain away Jesus’ miracles.

Fifth, Jesus works identify him as God. Only the God-man could live without sin, forgive sins, and die to save sinners. Only God could fulfill scores of detailed ancient prophecies of a divine Messiah. Only God could come down from Heaven, existed before creation, raise the dead, command angels and demons, knew people’s inner motives, change into Light. Only God could claim to be the only way, truth and life to the Father. Jesus showed himself the self-existing I Am of the unconsumed burning bush. No sorcerer or anyone was like Jesus.

Sixth, Jesus’ miracles stand alone in the world’s knowledge. Modern medicine can’t heal every disease and do it instantly as did Jesus. World religions don’t claim anything like Jesus’ supernatural actions. Jesus’ miracles were not freakish bizarre myths like moving statues, one-eyed giants, snake headed Medusas or flying carpets in some far away land. Jesus turning water into wine, multiplying food and catching fish in great abundance show the natural order. What better visible proof could we have that Jesus is in fact nature’s Lord and our God? He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).

But, the decisive question is this: Is Jesus your Lord and Savior from sin, self, Satan and Hell? As rebellious sinners before a morally perfect God, we face an eternity of darkness, despair, tears and torments. Or, we can have an eternity of love, fulfillment, joy and service with our Maker. Won’t you humbly say, Lord, I’m an unworthy sinner deserving Hell? But I trust Jesus taking my place bearing my sin upon the cross. I accept you right now as my Savior, Lord and Guide throughout life. Thank you Lord. Help me live a life pleasing to you and share my godly faith with others according to your Word. So be it. Feel free to link & share these blog articles, even translate them into other languages.

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