Raw Questions Relevant Answers

Finding The Truth

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: RQRA

Program Code: RQRA000005A


00:01 I don't understand.
00:04 Why did this have to happen to me?
00:08 I feel like I just can't make sense of things.
00:12 I need answers.
00:15 Where is God?
00:20 Welcome to Raw Questions Relevant Answers,
00:22 a program where we deal with relevant,
00:24 real issues that are crippling our young people
00:26 and just giving Christ-centered
00:28 practical answers from the Bible.
00:30 Today, we're talking about the topic of finding truth,
00:33 how can I know what's true,
00:35 how can I know it's actually right and correct,
00:37 and how do I balance my life in harmony with that.
00:41 I've got two really close friends of mine
00:43 with us today as our co-host,
00:44 Michelle Doucoumes, and Mark Paden.
00:46 And so we're just going to go ahead
00:48 and start right away
00:49 on addressing these particular questions.
00:51 Here's the first one from a male in Illinois.
00:55 He says, "What is the best way to empirically ask questions
00:58 about what we believe without going too deep
01:01 into the weeds of doubt?"
01:03 What a great question.
01:04 I love this question.
01:06 This is something that
01:07 I've been thinking about a lot recently for various reasons,
01:09 but I think one of the biggest things
01:12 going back to the Protestant Reformation.
01:15 In that time, you had these pillars of the faith.
01:19 You have people like Martin Luther
01:21 or Wycliffe, right?
01:24 These people that had profound influence in shaping
01:29 the culture of the world at that point,
01:32 and what was their means of ascertaining truth?
01:37 It was this. This is the best way.
01:40 If we are going to ask questions
01:42 about this thing,
01:43 it has to be answered with here.
01:45 We have to come to this Word knowing that
01:48 it's the inspired Word of God.
01:50 And then this is the complete system of truth
01:54 that when we come to this Word, this is God speaking to us,
01:56 and this is how we arrive at truth.
01:59 The other key ingredient is that
02:01 we have to have our hearts in a place
02:02 that are willing to hear and learn and understand.
02:06 And if in my heart,
02:09 I don't want to follow God,
02:12 if I don't want to know truth, I'm never going to find it.
02:16 But if in my heart,
02:18 I genuinely want to know the truth,
02:20 if I've gone to God and said,
02:21 "Lord, create in me a clean heart
02:23 and give me a heart that truly,
02:25 honestly desires Your will," you will find it.
02:28 It's like John 7:17 says,
02:30 "If any man wills to do My will,
02:32 he's going to know regarding the doctrine."
02:34 Are we willing to know?
02:36 And also may be willing to actually ask the questions.
02:40 I mean, I think about the Protestant reformers
02:43 that you mentioned, they went to Scripture,
02:45 but they also asked hard questions.
02:47 They grappled with their faith,
02:49 they wanted to know it for themselves.
02:51 And so I don't believe it's bad to ask questions.
02:54 That's not doubt, that's really seeking.
02:57 That's what we're told to do when Jesus says, you know,
03:00 "Seek Me, and you'll find Me
03:01 when you search with all your heart."
03:03 I do though realize that there is danger
03:07 and getting mired in the weeds of doubt
03:09 as the person said.
03:11 And I think of a quote from a book called Mind,
03:14 Character, and Personality Vol. 2.
03:16 It says, "Many pass long years in darkness and doubt
03:21 because they do not feel as they desire.
03:24 But feeling has nothing to do with faith.
03:26 That faith which works by love
03:28 and purifies the soul is not a matter of impulse.
03:32 It ventures out upon the promises of God
03:34 firmly believing that what He has said,
03:37 He is able to perform.
03:39 Our souls maybe trained to believe,
03:41 taught to rely upon the Word of God,
03:44 the Word that declares "the just shall live by faith,"
03:47 which is what Martin Luther really quoted a lot,
03:50 "The just shall live by faith."
03:52 And so there is this coming together
03:53 of being willing to ask questions,
03:55 but also saying, "Do I stand on what I do know,
03:59 with what is clear from the Word of God,
04:01 am I willing to take that?"
04:03 Sometimes they kind of throw out the baby
04:05 with the bathwater with doubt
04:07 because of the things we don't know,
04:08 we throw out the things that are clear in God's Word,
04:11 and that's not going to be productive.
04:12 It's true.
04:14 And there's kind of two schools of thought about thought.
04:16 There's the Greek view that just questions everything
04:19 at every essence of it
04:20 and then there was the Hebrew means of thought,
04:22 when it comes to,
04:23 you know, Christianity in the sense of...
04:25 There was a sense of faith and an understanding
04:27 and trust and who God was
04:28 and your system as truth was built around this.
04:31 And that Greek means of thought has really kind of permeated
04:33 a lot of what we see now today of.
04:36 So when a young person wrestles,
04:37 they want to tear the whole thing down,
04:39 even things that they knew to be true
04:40 and just try to start from the beginning.
04:42 But we should know
04:44 if we're seeking to know the truth as it is in Jesus,
04:46 let's start with the truth as it is in Jesus.
04:49 Jesus Himself said that
04:50 He was the way, the truth, and the life,
04:52 the way that life should look.
04:54 And so we do have an anchor that holds the soul steadfast,
04:57 and that's in Christ.
04:59 So our system of truth
05:00 should be telling us something about Jesus as well.
05:04 And so any of the beliefs that we may be garnering
05:07 as a movement, as a church, as an individual,
05:10 those things we're believing should give us an insight
05:12 into who Jesus was and be true to who Jesus was.
05:16 So one other thing too that I think
05:18 we need to deal with here in this question
05:20 is their use of the word,
05:22 "What is the best way to empirically ask questions?"
05:25 With the understanding of that word being
05:27 that it's empirical evidence,
05:29 evidence that is evidence and experience-based
05:32 rather than just theoretical and that type of thing, right?
05:36 So you should be true to life.
05:38 Right. Right.
05:39 And I think the key here is that...
05:42 You know what, we do have to experience these things
05:44 and as we...
05:46 Let's say, we're wrestling
05:47 with a question of faith versus presumption.
05:50 The best way to empirically look at that
05:51 is test it in your life, test it in the lives of others,
05:54 see how it has worked in others experiences,
05:57 see examples of it in the Bible, see in that way,
06:00 I think you'll come to a much better understanding of it.
06:03 However, the one thing that
06:04 we need to be cautious about is saying,
06:07 trying to look at scientific evidence
06:13 to prove miracles and different things like that
06:15 where we want to base Christianity on the same metric
06:20 that the world uses for its science.
06:24 True science is Bible-based.
06:25 Right.
06:27 God created the earth, right?
06:28 But when we start getting into the weeds of doubt
06:30 is where we start making our metric
06:34 something that isn't grounded in the Word of God.
06:36 And we're told that the things of God
06:38 are foolishness with men, right?
06:40 So there's this sense of, you know, context,
06:43 I think that's provided towards as well to the Apostle Paul.
06:46 Second question here is, "How can you know the truth
06:48 and how can you be sure that the Bible is true?"
06:50 This is from a female in Malaysia.
06:53 Now we've talked about
06:54 some of the ideas of how to find truth,
06:56 but I think we can kind of spend
06:58 a little bit of time here on how can we be sure
06:59 that the Bible itself is true.
07:02 I think there's a few ways.
07:03 One, the Bible is internally-consistent, right?
07:07 It's amazing that you have 66 books
07:09 that are written by 30-something authors
07:11 on the span of 3 different continents I believe,
07:13 over the span of like 1,200 years or more.
07:16 And yet, all of these people
07:17 with different experiences in different places
07:19 end up telling the same picture of God
07:22 and the same picture of man.
07:24 I mean, if you were to assemble,
07:26 you know, five scientists or doctors to say
07:28 whether coffee is good for you or bad for you
07:31 and have them assemble those into one book,
07:33 you're not going to get
07:34 an internally-consistent article.
07:37 And yet, over the span of this long
07:39 and these different many places...
07:40 These many different places, how was that possible?
07:43 There was a divine mind guiding these individuals
07:45 as they wrote.
07:47 2 Peter, is it 1:20?
07:49 2 Peter, I believe it's chapter 1
07:51 where he talks about the fact
07:52 that the Spirit of God prompted them
07:54 and moved them and carried them along the way
07:56 as far as the people who wrote the Bible.
07:58 And I think it's an important premise for us to know
08:01 that there's a divine mind behind the Bible.
08:03 And its internal consistency and its cultural consistency
08:07 attest to this as well.
08:08 How is it the Jamaicans know who Abraham is, right?
08:11 This is a book written by nomadic Jews to a large degree,
08:14 and yet, Jamaicans know who Abraham is,
08:16 and they're putting their faith in the God of Abraham.
08:18 Why?
08:20 Because the Bible speaks to the very issues
08:21 of all of our lives throughout all the salvation history.
08:25 It was just as relevant to Moses as it is to me today.
08:29 How's that possible?
08:30 And you can't say that about other books of history
08:33 as you can of this powerful book,
08:35 and I believe this
08:36 because there's a divine mind behind it,
08:38 let alone prophecy and other things.
08:40 You know, another big thing for me has been Daniel 2.
08:44 Honestly, the whole Book of Daniel,
08:46 you hear God prophesize
08:49 how a kingdom is going to come about,
08:52 which kingdoms would rise and fall at what times
08:55 and all of that happened.
08:56 Yeah.
08:58 And to me, that gives me a lot of faith in it
09:00 that if God is able to predict the future,
09:04 I think He's able to tell me how I should live, you know.
09:06 Yeah. Yeah, that's huge.
09:08 Prophecy, like you said, Daniel, Revelation,
09:11 we can see things actually happening
09:13 through history like the Bible said.
09:15 Archaeology shows the same thing
09:18 that they find things in archaeology
09:19 the Bible spoke about,
09:21 people didn't realize that it existed,
09:23 things about the Babylonian Empire
09:25 and other kingdoms of the world
09:27 that the Bible had spoken this a long time before.
09:31 And also, even though
09:33 there are some little differences,
09:35 like the gospels have small differences,
09:38 people say, "Wait a minute, that's not consistent,
09:40 " like you were saying, Dee.
09:42 But at the same time, it actually, in a way,
09:45 shows more the consistency.
09:47 People wrote in their own way, they saw it in their own way.
09:50 It shows this wasn't just a collusion
09:53 or something that was put together.
09:55 Also something that speaks to me
09:57 is how vitally it shows the reality,
10:00 people's good sides and their bad sides.
10:02 Add to that, yes. Can I just point out?
10:04 Those discrepancies were not theological discrepancies.
10:07 Those were little tiny details of an event.
10:10 Yes.
10:11 Like all three of us go to the same event
10:14 and tell how many people were there, right?
10:17 Like, there can be differences in something like that, but...
10:19 The overarching picture of who God is and who man is
10:21 and the condition it's in, none of these change.
10:23 The internal consistency still applies.
10:25 And it does discredit this idea of collusion.
10:28 They wrote with different experiences
10:29 and different point of views,
10:31 all telling the same overarching picture
10:33 of the purpose of why Jesus came,
10:35 the impact that it had,
10:37 and the truth that it lay or the...
10:40 What that means to you, what that means to me.
10:42 And I think it's amazing.
10:44 You know, the prophecies in Daniel that say that,
10:46 you know, when Jesus will be baptized,
10:48 when the gospel is going to go to the Gentile world,
10:50 there's just these amazing things
10:52 that God has throughout the Word
10:53 to show that it's verifiably accurate.
10:56 And if it can be that true to life,
10:59 I'm reckoning it can be that true to my life.
11:01 Yeah, sure.
11:03 One more question here.
11:04 We say, finding truth, question three,
11:08 "Should I rely on what the preacher says
11:09 to be true or should I study for myself?"
11:12 This is a 25-year-old female from the United States,
11:15 and I think that question was somewhat asked in jest,
11:17 but there's a lot of truth to this.
11:19 Because when you're in a situation
11:21 where you hear someone say something,
11:23 the easy thing to do and the intellectually...
11:27 Lazy?
11:29 Lazy-ish, I don't want to be mean,
11:30 but like that's easy.
11:31 Anyone can just say, "Hey, so-and-so said this,"
11:34 and this person's stuff is solid, right?
11:36 We like this person, we love their sermons,
11:38 we love their books.
11:40 The problem is God wants you
11:41 to have an experience for yourself.
11:42 We talked about this in a previous program
11:44 that when Jesus in Matthew 25, I believe,
11:46 tells the parable of the wise and the foolish virgins.
11:49 The wise virgins spent their own time
11:51 in preparation to receive the oil,
11:53 the Holy Spirit for themselves.
11:55 Someone else's experience with God
11:57 cannot get you into heaven.
11:58 Yeah.
12:00 Someone else's understanding of the Bible
12:01 can't get you into heaven.
12:03 You need to have your own experience,
12:04 and it's not just like you better or else,
12:06 I mean this in the context of you have the privilege
12:09 of having your own experience with God.
12:12 God can speak to you in the same way
12:13 He spoke to them by you searching out
12:14 the Word for yourself.
12:16 They're not a better person than you,
12:18 and just because they may have an education,
12:19 original language or something else
12:21 does not mean that God can't give you understanding
12:23 in the Word of God for yourself,
12:25 and God wants that for you.
12:27 Yeah.
12:28 Yeah, it's a crazy thing
12:30 because God does use other people to speak for Him.
12:34 That's what we see in Scripture,
12:36 the Holy Spirit speaking through men.
12:39 And so it's not that it's wrong to listen to other people,
12:42 but I think of the Bereans in the Book of Acts.
12:45 In Acts 17, it talks about Paul visiting Berea
12:48 and how they were more fair-minded
12:50 because they searched the Scriptures daily
12:52 to find out whether these things were so.
12:55 And Paul was a smart guy. Paul knew his Bible.
12:57 Right.
12:58 And made a convincing argument,
13:00 but they still wanted to see for themselves
13:01 that it was true.
13:02 You know, here's a one other example from the Bible
13:04 that I think really does this.
13:06 Matthew shows this.
13:07 Matthew 23, Jesus says...
13:10 He's speaking to the multitudes and to His disciples,
13:12 and He says, "The scribes and the Pharisees
13:14 sit in Moses' seat.
13:15 Therefore, whatever they bid you to observe,
13:17 observe and do but do not do what they do."
13:20 Right?
13:21 And then it goes on to show how many abuses they had done
13:24 and how much they had corrupted the Bible.
13:27 And yet you had a whole generation
13:29 who was willing to reject the very God of heaven,
13:34 Jesus Christ is prophesied throughout Scripture
13:37 because they were listening to their preachers
13:41 rather than studying the Word of God.
13:42 And their preachers happen
13:44 to coincide with the worldview that they wanted.
13:46 Exactly.
13:48 They wanted a messiah to look one way,
13:49 but the messiah was prophesied to look a different way,
13:51 and they missed a blessing.
13:53 Thank you again for taking time to join us today
13:55 on Raw Questions Relevant Answers.
13:57 You can submit your questions by going to our Facebook page,
13:59 RQRA3ABN.
14:02 We'd love to hear from you
14:03 and can't wait to have you here the next time around
14:05 on Raw Questions Relevant Answers.


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Revised 2018-08-20