Notes From Ravi Zacharias' Message

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Ravi Zacharaias

West Acres Baptist Church, Evans Georgia 1-17-2020

• Ravi Zacharaias' ministry RZIM has a team of 98 global speakers in 15 countries
• There is so much toxicity and vitriol in the media today. The whole dvison in the land is because the politicans have left God out of the process.
• Iran show down plane, all the lives, the intellect lost. No one says anything about the lives lost due to abortion.
• Differences come down to one word GOD
• All of this is happening to us because we have forgotten God.
• Good and evil, there is an irreconcilable difference
• The Parable of the Madman, Friedrich Nietzsche (didn't understand this) http://www.historyguide.org/europe/madman.html
• Hitler, Muslini … we paid a price
• right/wrong, left/right, up/down there is no frame of reference
• God has been taken away from our eduction system
• Philosophy
• absolute point of reference
• everything is in flux
• society has broken down boundaries
• God didn't come to the wold to make bad people good, he came to make dead people LIVE
• Moral Reasoning and Meaning
• collapse of our culture
• worst is higher education
• If God doesn't exist, there is no moral imperitive, no point of reference
• In David Berlinski in his book, The Devil's Delusion:"Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on."
• God LOVES you! DNA Soul
• naturalists say do whatever makes you happy

1. Sense of awe and wonder (childlikeness)
2. Truth (no meaning without truth)
3. Love (belongingness)
4. Seccurity

• without God there is no definition of love
• Pete Buttigieg says love between two people is fine. Zacharaias answers then why ot 4 or 5 people who love each other in a relationship. Society has taken away the boundaries
• purpose for our living is LOVE
• Zacharaias' daughter was having a particularly harried day and said she was losing her mind. Her 6 year old son, replied, Mommy, whatever you do, don't lose your heart, because I'm in there.
• Loving, Kindness, HOPE
• Jesus rose from the dead
• first testamony was in the mouth of women
• justice eternity
• gospel is awhold way of seeing things

Additonal quotes from David Berlinski in his book, The Devil's Delusion:

"No scientific theory touches on the mysteries that the religious tradition addresses. A man asking why his days are short and full of suffering is not disposed to turn to algebraic quantum field theory for the answer. The answers that prominent scientific figures have offered are remarkable in their shallowness."

"What Mao did not believe and what the SS did not believe and what the Gestapo did not believe and what the NKVD did not believe and what the commissars, functionaries, swaggering executioners, Nazi doctors, Communist Party theoreticians, intellectuals, Brown Shirts, Black Shirts, gauleiters, and a thousand party hacks did not believe was that God was watching what they were doing. And as far as we can tell, very few of those carrying out the horrors of the twentieth century worried overmuch that God was watching what they were doing either. That is, after all, the meaning of a secular society."

"Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon b, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental missiles , military space platforms and nuclear weapons? If memory serves it was not the Vatican."

"The advent of militant atheism marks a reaction—a lurid but natural reaction—to the violence of the Islamic world."

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The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity is a non-fiction book by Lee Strobel, a former Atheist turned Christian who uses the book to examine a number of critical questions that he feels limit a person’s capacity to embrace Christianity specifically, and organized religion more generally. He calls these questions “heart barriers.” The book consists of a number of interviews and reflections from prominent philosophers and theologians, as well as everyday Christians, that seek to answer some of the questions Strobel poses.

Strobel begins his book with an anecdote about a pair of evangelists and close friends, Charles Templeton and Rev. Billy Graham. Graham, who is now quite old, has remained a Christian for his entire life, despite all his varied experiences. Templeton, on the other hand, became an agnostic after he saw a photograph of a mother in African holding the dead body of her baby during a horrific drought. After seeing this photo, Templeton began to question his faith and his doubts about God, finding few answers. He fell away from his religion because he found it impossible to believe in a loving God when women were losing their babies due to lack of access to drinking water.

Strobel uses this anecdote to set up his book as an examination of some of these challenging questions, which cause even the most devout believers to lose their faith and move away from the church. Once an atheist for many of the same reasons as Templeton, Strobel counters some of these questions through interviews with prominent thinkers in philosophy and religion. The questions that he focuses on include: How can a loving God exist in the midst of evil and suffering? How can miracles be true if science contradicts them? Why is God needed if evolution occurred? How could God be worthy of worship if he allows the killing of children and innocents? How could a loving God torture people in Hell? Other chapters include questions about how it is possible to support Christianity given its violent and offensive past, and how to cope with the often exclusionary principle that embracing Jesus is the only way to find God.

Through his interviews with priests, scholars, and theologians, Strobel lays out clear arguments for each of these questions. Evil and suffering exist, he argues, because having free will, man is able to counter the will of God by refusing to ask for help when it is needed, or actively working against the plans of God. Miracles are possible because, operating within the realm of nature, they are only facilitated by the hand of God. Hell is not God’s punishment, but rather a realm full of suffering into which people go only when they reject God – by embracing God, it is impossible to go to Hell; God does not send people to Hell through judgment. The violent history of Christianity, like suffering, comes from the free will of men; the fact that it existed does not speak to the actual principles of Christ. Strobel also makes it clear that it is natural to doubt one’s faith, and possible to ask God not only for help in one’s belief but also for help through phases of unbelief. As for the people who were killed in the Bible, Strobel argues that God only allowed them to die because if they were to live, they would have caused unspeakable violence against the Israelites.

Overall, Strobel’s message is both in favor of Christianity and one that embraces doubt and questioning. Strobel acquiesces that in order to become a strong Christian, one must consider arguments that promote Christian belief systems and shine a good light on the church, as well as those that cause tension. After weighing all the evidence, Strobel confirms that Christianity is an overwhelmingly positive force, despite the doubts that he has presented in his text. He ends the book with a heartwarming note about Graham visiting his friend Templeton on his deathbed, and praying for his dying friend.

Lee Strobel is a former investigative journalist and the author of several Christian books. He has received four ECPA Christian Book Awards for his work. Some of his titles include The Case for Christ and The Case for a Real Jesus. He has also written a spin-off The Case For… series which is geared toward young readers interested in critically analyzing Christian faith. Strobel worked as a teaching pastor for a number of years before moving into the production of his own television show, Faith Under Fire. He also worked as a journalist and has a degree from Yale Law School.