For those of you who doubt that the secular humanist agenda has been trying to force it’s values on an unsuspecting populace for years via Judicial Tyranny, consider this article at SFGATE.com:
A day after California voters approved a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, the incendiary issue returned to the state Supreme Court, where gay and lesbian couples and the city of San Francisco filed lawsuits Wednesday seeking to overturn Proposition 8. [Read More]
There is only one way to avoid this. Don’t elect any liberal secular humanists to any office anywhere at any time ever. Over time, there will be real judges who respect law, and the rights of the people will begin to be restored.
Oops. America just elected Barack Obama. Of course, Barack Obama claims to be a Christian. Perhaps he is; I am not qualified to be his judge (it is below my pay grade). It is possible, however, to be a Christian and still advance a liberal secular humanist agenda.
Back in the late 1980’s I had a hard time being sure that God was there. I was filled with doubt.
In 1991 I had an encounter with God. I met Him. I’ve been unable to doubt His existence since then.
I am 100% convinced of a number of things:
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is the One True God who created Everything.
God Created Mankind (Adam and Eve) on this planet a long time ago, and He had a purpose for them.
Man blew it big time - and I mean really screwed up - by disobeying God in the Garden of Eden.
God holds man responsible for his choices and their are temporal and eternal consequences for those choices.
God did not want man to be lost.
God incarnated. Jesus Christ - 100% man and 100% God - was literally born to a young virgin girl named Mary about 2,000 years ago. He literally walked the earth and performed miracles and taught a new way of life. This all happened in real time/space/history - these events are not just inspiring fictional stories, they are true and factual.
Jesus literally was crucified by the Romans and paid off the wrath of God as well as the human conscience and satisfied eternal justice once and for all.
He literally came back to life and left the tomb 3 days later.
He appeared to his followers and proved He was alive.
He went to Heaven where He is right now, interceding for all of His followers.
He will literally return and complete the establishment of His Kingdom. All the Kingdoms of this world will become the Kingdom of God! This is not poetry. This is real.
Come Lord Jesus!
So… What in the world am I going on about all of that for?
Well, I have been reintroduced to the world of the Atheist and the Agnostic over the past several years. For many years previously I spent a lot of my time in 3rd world countries with people who are already convinced about the Supernatural World. But recently, via blogs and in person, I have been facing the kind of folks I knew back in the 1980’s.
I am clearly different now. I am not intimidated at all. I feel no obligation to prove anything to anyone. In fact, sometimes I just feel weary when I deal with those who claim their is no reason or evidence for Christian Faith.
Here is what it comes down to. Faith is not “blind.” Faith is based upon reasons and choices and everyone puts their faith in something! Everyone.
When you get up in the morning, every second of the day you are putting your faith in certain assumptions just to live! I need to wear clothing to keep warm. I need to eat food to have energy. I am unlikely to go floating off into the Universe because of gravity. Their are physical laws all around me that I am trusting - Friction, Inertia, etc.
For some bizarre reason Atheists have decided that only the Natural/Material world is real. They have chosen to have faith in the natural world. Of course, the ones that I have met are very convinced that their senses and “scientific” measurements and the like are “evidence” of what they have chosen to believe.
And indeed those things are reason and evidence.
So every human being puts his faith in certain thing based on various reasons and evidences. It could be as simple as “my dad told me and I believed him.” (Testimony is evidence!) It could be as ordinary as “the same thing happens over and over again so I believe it.”
If we wanted to, we could refuse to believe anything and fry our brains on chemicals because nothing is real anyway.
God has supplied us with plenty of evidence to follow Jesus Christ.
Creation - all of creation around us points to a Creator. We can choose to believe that, or choose to not believe it.
The Testimony of the Holy Spirit. The Bible says that the Holy Spirit is convicting the whole world. He is there testifying to everyone on the inside that God is and that God can be known.
The Testimony of the Historical Writings of the Holy Scriptures. They can be studied. They can be analyzed with questions like “do these documents really contain the thoughts of the alleged authors?” It can all be stacked up and thought through. Each one of us will make a choice as we investigate.
The Testimony of Changed Lives around us. People Changed by God.
If a miracle is seen or experienced, a miracle is a testimony.
So… Here we are reading this really long post together. Their is a ton of “evidence” out there to be investigated and considered. Each of us is able to make a choice: What will I believe?
I have thrown my lot in with God. The evidence is just too overwhelming for me. I feel compassion for those who choose to believe otherwise. The loud and powerful testimony of the Presence of the Holy Spirit speaks most eloquently of all.
In the end, God is obvious. His existence is obvious. His ways are displayed throughout the Universe. (Natural Law and the like!)
Every individual who has ever lived, lives now, or will live is bombarded with the Story of God all around.
(Scroll down to the bottom to watch the Gary Habermas - Anthony Flew Debate)
I was introduced to God personally at age 4. I know, that may seem strange to those who don’t know that God actively pursues relationship and connection with His Creatures!My mother was not a Christian, but she encountered God when I was 1 and 1/2 years old. She led me in a prayer “inviting Jesus into my heart” when I was 4. There has been interaction between the Creator and myself ever since.When I got to high school my friends were the “intellectual type.” They questioned my faith intensely. “Why not Buddha or any of the countless other god’s?” they said. “How do you know the Bible is True, how do you really know about Jesus? Whey would God send everyone other than Christians to hell?”
This questioning sent me on a journey of personal crisis. I found within myself a longing for truth. My mother believing something wasn’t good enough. What the rest of my culture said wasn’t good enough. What the whole world said wasn’t good enough. I didn’t want anybodies opinion, I wanted to know what was true.
I used to sit in an old Blue Ford Pickup Truck out in a parking lot and demand that God show Himself to me in person. I cried out. I cried. I sought. I longed. I yearned. I felt lost. Wasn’t there an answer?
One day I was sharing my doubts with a friend and mentor as we camped in the woods of Northern Michigan. He introduced a radical idea to me. I asked him “why should I believe in the Bible and Christianity?” He told me “because of the evidence!” Evidence? I was shocked. Is there evidence?
This led me on another path where I discovered that many people were going around saying “How do you know your religion is true and not somebody else’s” and “the Bible is full of errors and no different from other religion’s holy books”, but few had actually investigated anything at all. They were usually repeating their college professors.
The case was launched to win my mind. I started to see that Christianity was reasonable. It was reasonable to believe in the literal life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is possible to reasonably believe in God. It is not a matter of “blind faith.” God is reasonable. There is historical evidence.
This pursuit was good for me, and I would recommend it, but it was not enough. Something deep inside me needed MORE! I used to tell my friends that I was 99.999999% convinced about Christianity, Jesus, the Resurrection, and the Bible and I was placing all of my chips on that spot. What did I have to lose?
My soul was still starving. My quest continued.
“God, I want to see you!”
Then it started to happen. I began to encounter God! Internally, I started to know Him!
I remember standing in front of a crowded room, staring up at the ceiling, looking into the eyes of God and beginning to fall in love with Him! (not a literal vision, but an internal “revelation.”)
This went way beyond a mere “religious experience.” It was not always emotional.
For three years I immersed in God, the Bible, and worship, falling more and more in Love with my Creator.
In the midst of that 3 years I had a moment of revelation. I was at a university and I met two students who began to launch at me the same questions my friends had asked me in High School. They kept mentioning their professor.
I found myself arguing rather fluently the Case for God and for Jesus Christ. They grew a bit timid. I was shocked. Then they pulled out their Big Bomb. “You need to talk to our professor.” Out of my mouth came something like this: “Your professor is probably smarter than me, he probably is a better debater than me, he may know more information than me; but he would have more luck proving to me that you don’t exist than that God doesn’t. You could be a hallucination, but I know God!” They stood there and looked at me with some pretty silly grins. I don’t think they knew what to do with that. I was never once mean or angry with them.
I am not talking about an emotional experience, I am talking about an internal Revelation and Knowing. I have been unable to doubt the existence of God in the 15ish years that have followed! That is right, I said unable.
I personally believe that everyone has a drop of this “knowing” inside them. Everyone knows God is there. I know some will take issue with that, and I respect that they disagree. But I also submit that it is within us all.
I personally believe that when we all face the judgment on Judgment Day we will realize that God is and always has been Plain and Obvious to all, both in our Hearts and in Creation.
I believe in God because it is reasonable to do so. I believe in God because of the historical testimonial evidence of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe in God because of Internal Revelation and Knowing (also known as the Testimony of the Holy Spirit).
God is there. He is not silent. Jesus literally walked the earth. He was 100% human and 100% Creator God. He literally died to pay for every drop of sin and evil in each individual’s past, present and future. He literally, historically came back to life, shattering the power of death for all time. He is literally going to return to earth to judge the living and the dead. There is literally grace and forgiveness being offered to all. There is literally an accounting to God after death and an Eternal Judgment for all who refuse the Grace that is offered.
I believe it. I have bought it all hook, line and sinker. Jesus is not a crutch for me, He is the stretcher that carried me out of the Grave and into New Life.
I am not threatened by those who say they don’t believe, although I think they are missing out.
Jesus (Yeshua!) is real and knowable! He is the living representation of God and He is God - and I believe in Him and love Him and am delighted to be considered a “Fool for Christ.”
ThirstyJon
Here are the videos of the 1980’s Gary Habermas and Anthony Flew Debate:
by Josh McDowell; I read 
by Josh McDowell; I read 
by Gary R. Habermas and Antony G. N. Flew (which is a debate between an atheist and a Resurrection Advocate). These are dangerously persuasive books.
by Francis Schaeffer and learned about Epistemology and Reason in discovering God.
