If I Am Seeking to Know Whether or Not Christianity is True, Where do I Start?

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If I Am Seeking to Know Whether or Not Christianity is True,
Where Do I Start?
Tuesday, June 30, 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” 

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (NIV)

If you or anyone you know is asking the question, “aren’t all religions basically the same?” the following quote from Pastor and Scholar Timothy Keller will be helpful.   Jeff  

“The resurrection of Jesus Christ probably is the thing that sets Christianity apart—because the other religions bring you a prophet or they bring you a sage, and they say: “This is the way to find God.” So in that sense they're all the same.
Christianity comes along and says: “This person IS God, and he was raised from the dead to prove it.”
And that is just a different category altogether and you have to come to grips with that to be a Christian, and also it does force you in a way to grapple with it. Instead of saying: “I like this religion because it meets my needs” or: “I like these thoughts,” you have to say: “Did it happen or not?”
So I would say the resurrection would be the place to go. First you have to have the caveat that you can't prove anything—you can't prove that you're not a butterfly dreaming that you're a boy! You can’t prove that your cognitive faculties actually work—so at a certain point there's no such thing as absolute proof for anything.
But once you grant that, you move into where we normally go with: “How do you know things are true?” NT Wright wrote a book, The Resurrection of the Son of God—890 pages of top flight historical research. What he basically shows in that book is not that you can prove anything from history (including the resurrection)—he admits that—but what he tries to show you is all alternate explanations for the data are even more difficult to believe.
He says if you don't have a presupposition that miracles are impossible, then it's very clear that the most likely explanation for what happened to Jesus is that Jesus was resurrected

• hundreds of eyewitnesses going around being willing to die for what they said they saw;
• at one point 500 people saying Jesus appeared to them at once, so that's not a hallucination (you don't have group hallucinations);
• we know the accounts are extremely old because Paul talks about them in his letters and that's only 15 years after the events;

So he goes through all of this in a very methodical way, and when you're all done you realize: if you don't rule out miracles before you start, then there's a very, very powerful case for the resurrection.
So I'd suggest—not maybe at that level, you don't have to read 890 pages!—but there are other versions of that evidence that would be good to look at”

 
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Three Big Lessons from My Trip to Romania - Lesson Three

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Three Big Lessons from My Trip to Romania
Lesson Three
Monday, June 29, 2015
Jeff Lampl

During my recent trip to Romania one of my translators was a terrific young pastor,  Gabi Rusu-Hack (pictured below)

He is the kind of young man who could be making lots of money elsewhere but has decided to work full time for the Lord as pastor of a small church.

I asked him what he felt the biggest challenge to the church in Romania is right now.   His answer was as important as it was unsurprising. He said the biggest challenge to the Romanian church is comfort.   Now that Romanian Christians are free to practice their faith, it has become all too easy to take God for granted.   It seems to be a time tested truth that as prosperity increases faith decreases.  

When Gabi told me that, I thought of what Moses told the fledgling Israelite nation upon their deliverance from 40 years in the desert and 400 years of slavery.   I believe this passage has great relevance for the people of Romania and also for us.  I would be surprised if you don’t find this passage challenging to your own struggle to maintain a vibrant faith in God and in his Son Jesus Christ.  Take a moment to read it slowly and thoughtfully.   

”Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years,  (for Romania was 45 years under communist control) to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. Your clothes did not wear out and your feet did not swell during these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the LORD your God disciplines you.

“Observe the commands of the LORD your God, walking in obedience to him and revering him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.   (Like other former satellite states of former Soviet Union Romania’s prosperity is slowly increasing)

“When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you.   Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, that thirsty and waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of hard rock. He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you.  You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.  

The Big Lesson?   Prosperity has a deadening effect on faith.  When we have all we need without God, awareness of God fades.  Faith entropies.  

The Antidote?      Moses tells us to remember.   

How do I remember?  

I have found that when I get around those who have suffered and sacrificed and as a result are spiritually alive, that helps me remember God.  It was humbling and powerful for me beyond measure to sing in unity with men who suffered in ways that are light years beyond what I have faced.  I would suggest that you, too, find a way to go on short term mission, find people who have faith, learn from them and serve with them.  

I have also found that it is important to sacrifice when I don’t have to.  When I take time for someone when I don’t have time or use my gifts and talents for others when I’m too busy, these things sharpen my faith and bring a spiritual reward.     

The writer to the Hebrews tells us make a sacrifice of praise.  When I praise and thank God when I’m feeling ungrateful, that’s a sacrifice which builds my faith and trust in the Lord.   Expressions of praise and gratitude beget praise and gratitude.  

Finally when you put your money in the basket on Sunday morning, make sure it’s an amount that is a sacrifice, an amount that causes you to have to give something up.   That’s the kind of giving that sharpens your faith and grows your heart.  God has wired us in such a way that wherever we put our money sacrificially that is where our heart goes.  When my heart follows money sacrificially given to God then my heart gets healthy and sharp and resilient.   

And God uses that money.  Pictured below is the van purchased by CLC giving that gets orphans to and from school every day in Timisoara Romania.  It is also used to deliver daily meals to the needy and is the means of transportation between the widely dispersed Jesus Hope of Romania ministry centers in Western Romania.  

In what way is the Lord leading you to strengthen your faith while living in the land of plenty?

 
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Some Initial thoughts on Friday's Supreme Court Ruling

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Some Initial Thoughts on Friday's Supreme Court Ruling
Friday, June 26, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court declared Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States.   Gay and lesbian couples already could marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The court's 5-4 ruling means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage”

I have the following random thoughts in no particular order, and I am certain that I won’t remember some of my best ones until after I’ve sent this to you.

1.  Marriage in the Bible is one thing.   Gay marriage is another thing.  The former is a really, really big deal.   All of human society depends on it working as God set it up.   When a man and woman make a commitment to be committed to each forever and actually pull that off that dramatically increases the possibility of a stable society especially as it relates to what happens to children.   The biblical picture is of a man and woman becoming one in every sense of the world and that oneness produces children.   Imagine what our society would look like if ever kid had both a mom and a dad at home.  

2.   In the Bible marriage is the primary metaphor of God’s relationship to us.  See especially Ephesians 5:32.   I don’t think we should be messing with this.

3.   In terms of redefining marriage I think the cat left the barn in the 1960’s when sex got separated from love and commitment.    The ship left the harbor fifty years ago.

4.   Speaking of marital love, the biblical describes it as an other-oriented life-long commitment before a community and its authorities.   Behind today’s Supreme Court ruling is the idea that love is simply something else.  I guess the new definition of love comes down to however you want to define it.

5.   Having said those things, when a gay couple marries I would suggest that it is a commendable thing when they intend for that commitment to last a lifetime and then they actually fulfill that commitment.

6.   Attending a gay wedding or becoming friends with a gay couple are not the same thing as condoning gay coupling.   I think Christians should attend their friend’s gay wedding and befriend their gay neighbors.   It is loving others regardless of beliefs and practices that sets Christians apart and shocks the world.

7.   Do not shun your gay son or daughter.   Sacrificially love your child until the day you die.  Also love his or her partner.   In fact I’m not even sure that you need to voice your disapproval.   I suspect they are already aware of your disapproval.   What they need is unconditional, not conditional, love.

8.   I don’t think gay marriage is good for our society.   It is another step away from a stable society.

9.   On the other hand, even though the image of God shining through a godly marriage is becoming more rare, that image will shine
 all the more brightly when it is seen.

10. Christians must NOT come off as proud, arrogant, judgmental, hateful, bemoaning of society’s decadence, and critical.   This is not the end of the world.   Jesus is Lord and is working his plan.   We are in the throws of God creating a new world.   And you and are above all called to witness to that, not to doom and gloom.

11. Don’t fall into an “us” vs. “them” mentality.  Our job is to reach out to the “them’s” and shock them with our love.  

12. I don’t think Christians should say things like, “I think he’s gay”.   Why would we?   It’s not that we should fear being called bigots, rather that we should never verbalize things that would risk alienating others from God’s love.

13. I don’t think this ruling brings about a cataclysmic shift in the American culture.   But it does reflect a shift that happened long ago.   This ruling was only a matter of time.

14. There will be pressure on Christian pastors to perform gay weddings.   Part of me loves to affirm people when they are trying to a good thing (such as make a commitment to one another for life out of a desire to serve the other above self).   But I won’t be doing so, not because I’m a bigot, not even because doing so would be unbiblical, rather because of why doing so would be unbiblical.

15. Yes there is a political dimension to this whole thing and there are also the issues of freedom and rights.   Those issues do need to be addressed from a Christian perspective.   More on that at another time.

16. Christian faith shines brightest when the freedom to practice it diminishes.  If you feel threatened by this ruling, well, it’s nothing new.   The church was birthed under far worse opposition to its positions.

More Later.

In Christ, Jeff

 
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Aren't All Religions Basically the Same?

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Friday, June 26, 2015
Jeff Lampl

“For the truth about God is known to (all people) instinctively; God has put this knowledge in their hearts.  Since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made, and have known of his existence and great eternal power. So they will have no excuse [when they stand before God at Judgment Day]”.
Romans 1:19-20 (TLB)  

Do you ever wonder if it might not be true that all religions are basically the same?  

This Sunday I will begin a six week series taking a close look at five of the world’s major religions:  Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity addressing how they are similar and how they differ.   

Are there similarities?  What are the differences?  Is it consequential to my life which religion, if any, I choose to follow?  Is the God of Islam the same God as the Christian God?  Is Islam a religion of peace?  What after-death destination is offered in each of the major religions, if any?   Has God revealed Himself in and through every religion?   Does God play a role in each religion?   Does the location of one’s birth and national identity and religious identity determine one’s eternal destiny?  

Thinking people all over the world respond to these and other questions differently.  Some simply say, “there are so many truth claims out there that it’s impossible to know what’s true.  I’ll just choose what works for me”.   Others conclude, “there are so many options I don’t think any of them are true”   In this series we’ll look at the various truth claims of the major religions with the hope that you will be able to understand them more clearly, be able to discern more wisely, discover that your Christian faith can withstand an honest look at other truth claims, and most importantly find that you are able to articulate your faith more effectively because you know a little bit more about the people you desire to reach with the Gospel.  

 
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Three Big Lessons From My Trip to Romania - Lesson Two

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                                   Three Big Lessons From My Trip to Romania
                                                       Lesson Two

 

 

 

 

 

“that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one:  I in them and you in me. May
they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
John 17:21-23 (NIV)

Lesson Two

In December of 1989 Romania was freed from Communist oppression.   Since that time 25 years have passed.

My impression of the Christian Church under Communism is that it was strong and fairly unified, at least that appears to have been the case among the uncompromised believers.   As always oppression, persecution and stress strengthens the faith. 

However in the 25 years since liberation my impression of the Romanian Church is that it, like other parts of the world-wide church in similar circumstances has found it easy to revert to intra-faith denominational differences.

When Steve, Jeanne, Kathy and I attended the  city prayer gather on Pentecost, a national holiday in Romania, I looked out at the thousands of faces gathered and I thought wow, what a picture!    Pentecostals, Orthodox and Baptists. ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, gypsies, all unified, yes all speaking different languages but praising the same God just like at the first Pentecost, all waking up the next morning going into their worlds with a message of unity under the one God of the universe, going out to their places of work wherever they may be with the goal in mind of making God’s existence known.

But what I experienced instead was unreconciled divisions, a tendency for Christians of different stripes go back each to their own enclave of ethnicity and faith practices.

ethnic Hungarians here
ethnic Romanians there
ethnic Germans somewhere else
men here, women there.
one church praying one way, another another way, the latter refusing to acknowledge the way of the former
Orthodox not trusting the Baptists and Pentecostals not trusting the Orthodox
the Orthodox remaining the unforgiven collaborators while the those who consider themselves the faithful still holding it
against them.
with reconciliation on hold.

                and we Americans Christians are exactly the same

Biblically there’s no escaping what Jesus wants, which is

                in the essentials unity,
                in the non-essentials liberty
                and in all things charity.  

And you and I have been given . . . . . well here’s how Paul puts it:  

“God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation”      2 Corinthians 5:19 (NIV)  

We must be bridge builders with other Christians and never criticize Christians of other “stripes” if we want others to ever believe that Christianity is true.  Shock your world with your optimism, faith, joy and your unwavering love of other believers.

 
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Three Big Lessons From My Trip to Romania

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Three Big Lessons From My Trip to Romania
Lesson One
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Jeff Lampl

     

Background  

Steve and Jeanne Cowan and Kathy and I spent 10 days this month with Jesus Hope of Romania in Timisoara, Romania’s second largest city.   Steve Jeanne and Kathy each had their own tasks interacting with the children in the orphanage, delivering food to the hungry, visiting the mentally handicapped and the elderly in Bethany House, and supporting the constructing of a new retreat house for youth.   My task was to teach and preach the Bible.  In eight days I taught spoke or preached 16 times:  to a pastors gathering, to a pastors retreat, to six churches, to a youth gathering and to a couples gathering.  Steve may have had the toughest job of all.  He had to listen to me 16 times.

Jesus Hope of Romania was founded in 1990  by Peter Dugulescu, pictured above.  

Peter had been a Baptist pastor in the 1970’s and 80’s under communism.  The Orthodox Church had been compromised by the Communists and the Baptists and Pentecostals were being watched and threatened. Peter had been arrested, interrogated, questioned, offered coffee with poison in it, threatened, and had a bus t- bone his car in an assassination attempt, and later heard from an imprisoned communist assassin who was charged with killing Peter but couldn’t pull the trigger. Peter also had church members who were blackmailed into becoming informants, had his telephone lines tapped and rooms bugged.  

Many of us at CLC had the honor of meeting this humble and courageous man when he visited us 6 years ago before he passed of a heart attack.  Ligia, his daughter has since become president and she’s visited with us many times. 

As for me this trip was very humbling and very spiritually alivening.  Like most of us from New London I am a comfortable, “1%er”,  meaning that I am among the top one percent of the wealth of the world who has never faced a bullet or poison or loss of anything.  And I was asked to teach these faithful, resource starved pastors.   That was humbling to say the least.  

Here’s Romania between 1945 and Christmas Day of 1989

The red part of the map was under communist control and the border between east and west was called the iron curtain, a border with an actual metal fence, land mines, and armed guards. It was November 9, 1989 that the wall fell, first in Berlin.

But a month later Romania was still standing with Nicolae Ceaucescu still holding on to his brutal Dictatorship.

One of the many pastors who stood firm in his faith under communism was Lazlo Tokes. On Dec 15 his wife was pregnant and sick and security police were trying to come into his church to take him away, but church members formed a human chain to prevent them from doing so.

The crowd grew, candles were passed out and hundreds were lit. The crowd was ordered to disperse but didn’t.  The army fired into the crowd, and a total of 93 people were killed.  The crowd grew and moved to the city square.   At one end of the city square was the Orthodox Church and at the other end was the Opera house.   I took the picture below from the church so that you can see the size of the city square.

By Friday December 22 the entire square was filled.  The picture below is an actual photo taken on December 22, 1989 from the Opera house balcony.

Peter Dugalescu, Ligia’s father, was called upon to speak to the crowd.    Ligia who was 17 was crying not wanting her father to go for fear that he too would be shot.  But he went.  When he stood on the balcony of the opera house, someone from the crowd shouted “God exists” and crowed began chanting, “God exists, God exists”.   After 45 years of the Soviet Union’s greatest efforts to stamp out God, 2,000 men and women were shouting “God exists!  

Then Peter said something that I find very moving.   I said to the crowed from the Opera House balcony, “I hope you still know this prayer”.  He then led them in praying it together.   Instinctively, the crowd, without being told to do so, fell to their knees, turned their backs to Peter and faced the church at the other end of the square and prayed the Lord’s Prayer.  

On Christmas Day 1989, Ceacescu was deposed and Romania freed.  Communism not only could not stamp out God, it fell at the hands of God.

A Big Lesson for Each of Us  

Those who remained faithful to Jesus Christ, through prayer, candlelight vigils, faithfulness when suffering, with no human power on their side, just living  in their weakness, were actually living in the greatest power on earth.  It was the church, believers all over Eastern Europe, whom God used to bring down the largest most fearful force in the world.   Jesus is Lord of the earth, not communism, not the United States, not radical Islam.  

The lesson for us is that God uses us most powerfully when we stick together in unity and in weakness.  Suffering will happen it always does, but if we persevere we will always find that Jesus as Lord overcomes all evil.  

Therefore when you find yourself at that place in your life when you are crying out to God, “when Lord when, when will you DO something!” It is then that you must throw yourself on the faithfulness of God through Jesus Christ.  Don’t quit.   Never give up.   Jesus is Lord.  45 years of entrenched communism fell in days.   

In your weakness, in your willingness to endure the suffering of Christ, in your trust in God’s faithfulness to set things right, is your strength.  Resurrection, restoration and new life will come to you, not just in its final and eternal form but also in some kind of temporal form, in some kind of a blessing from God for which you will be able to look to the heavens and say, “thank you God, thank you, thank you, thank you!!”  But you must not give up.   Your pain and suffering when you experience them will feel interminable, but they are not.   The final word is always God’s.

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A Reflection on the Shooting in Charleston

		Blog »   A Reflection on the Shooting in Charleston Monday, June 22, 2015 Jeff Lampl           On Thursday at a prayer meeting in an historically black church significant in the civil rights movement in Charleston South Carolina, Dylann Roof, a 21 year old white man, went to a prayer meeting, took out a gun,  and shot and killed 9 members of that church.     We can blame racism, bad parenting, chemical imbalance in the brain, a culture of violence exacerbated by video games, 24 hour news coverage which turns perpetrators into celebrities or drugs, both prescribed and off the street.     But the most relevant thing for us to know is that sin and evil permeate every single one of us.  The Bible tells me that it is my anger, my hate, my denigrating and blaming whatever group of “them’s” I don’t agree with, my participation in a culture of violence in movies and TV and video games.   It is when I think that if we could only get rid of the bad elements out there then life would be good.   If only we could get rid of drugs, video games, Vladimir Putin, racists, radical Islam, Obama, republicans, liberals, fox news, the main stream media, if we could just eliminate the “them’s” that ruin everything the life would be good.       But Jesus tells us to look no further than ourselves and see that the seeds of the same evil in Dylan Roof exist also in us.  God wants us to see this not about others but first about ourselves, to really understand the depth and horror of my own sin, and then, once we acknowledge it to God, to be astounded and overwhelmed at God’s Grace, God’s forgiveness of me, and his offer to transform me and then to live in broken gratitude for his undeserved love and then do the courageous things that he calls me to,  to love my enemies,  to not participate in our culture of violence, to realize there is no governmental or police force fix, to recognize that how I think and behave today in my world makes me either part of the problem or part of the solution, to cross societal boundaries and love the “them’s” and love even the Dylann Roofs and to do it all without complaining and blaming, and in that way shine like a star in the universe (Philippians 2:14-16)     Wherever and whenever I have a chance to share Christ’s forgiveness and love with someone, I must, because as far as I can see there is no hope for this world outside of Jesus Christ,   And the church is the hope dispenser.     And Jesus Christ shone brightly and brilliantly in this tragedy, because 8 of the 9 families who addressed Dylann Roof in court as he appeared before them on camera, forgave him.   Each said to his face in their own words, God forgives you and I forgive you.  Against all desire for justice and revenge that must have been felt by them they reenacted the central event in all of human history, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   They bore their cross, forgave their enemy, and thereby not only quelled flames of anger and revenge but they also opened the door for an entire nation to see the different kind of power that exists in cross of Jesus Christ, the power that leads to a new kind of life, that hints at the new Creation that will be established when Jesus returns, “on earth as in heaven”.   Comment     For more:   follow on Twitter @jefflampl