To my brothers in Christ, fighting and defeating Satan with the power of the Holy Spirit
We have been given a weapon. Its name is apologetics, which means to 'give a defense'. What this is, for us, is the mountain of evidence God has provided, proving His existence and the Bible's veracity. Over the last hundred years there have been an extraordinary amount of discoveries (manuscripts, archaeological, scientific), such that a Christian should no longer say 'we can't prove God is real'. The fact of the matter is, with knowledge of the facts and a reasonable argument, we can prove that God is real and the Bible true. To shy away would be absurd. We have the advantage! We are the only people on earth that actually do have the truth on our side, and we can prove it. Maybe its just my aggressive nature, but I want to plead you to use this advantage to assail Satan. Be on the offensive. Maybe we'll even change the definition of apologetics to 'making an assault on lies/Satan'.
We must first know what we are talking about. Take advantage of the resources out there. There are so many great authors whose books you can read. There's Norm Geisler, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, William Lane Craig, Craig Blomberg, Ravi Zacharias, Gary Habermas, Frank Turek, and classics like CS Lewis and GK Chesterton. Plus I'm sure there's plenty of guys I haven't mentioned. Just go to the bookstore and ask about any one of those guys. Then we have many internet resources at our disposal. On Facebook there are a number of apologetics pages like: Apologetics Press, The Poached Egg, Apologetics 315 and Christian Apologetics Program at Biola. Look them up! And I'm sure you'll find many others if you go searching. And there are websites like: http://www.str.org/, http://www.christiananswers.net/, http://carm.org/, http://www.answering-islam.org/, http://www.faithfacts.org/, http://www.probe.org/, and http://www.reasons.org/. Check them out! The simple fact is that you don't have to go far to find answers, and a growing Christian apologist doesn't have to go far to strengthen his argument.
Finally, if that wasn't enough to convince you to actively use apologetics, I wish to simply say that it is fun. When people are faced with the facts and they reject them outright, without sense or reason, they're placed in a corner where its hard to not look like a fool. Any capable Christian can debate a non-believer and utterly humiliate them with the facts. Now, as a Christian, I'm not suggesting we should do this to tear others down and build ourselves up. However, there is a certain sense of enjoyment in knowing that you've won the argument even before you begin. So its a whole bunch of fun. Afterall, as Jesus says, 'The worker is worth his keep.' Or, as was said elsewhere, 'To the victor go the spoils.'
If we're looking for a verse to make our battle cry, I would suggest...
The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2Corinthians 10:4-5
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Followers
About Me
- Brent Heatwole
- Unimpressive in person. But always praying that these letters I write will be weighty and forceful. I serve the Almighty as a servant of Christ. I strive to conquer hearts and minds with the word of God. I am nothing, but the Holy Spirit living inside me is omnipotent. By Him I can run and not grow weary, or walk and not be faint. All glory and honor be to God and to Jesus the Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment