Wuji
Visitor
 Platinum Boarder
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Re:Where I am today... - 2005/05/30 11:28
Heb 10: 38 “But my righteous one will live by reason of faith,” and, “if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.”
It is not necessary to have everything proven for us to have faith in God’s word. At the end of the day it is a matter of faith. Yet there is ample secular and independent evidence for us not to doubt that “all scripture is inspired of God…”. God expects us to live by faith, but at the same time he has given us ‘intellectual capacity’ to gain knowledge of truth. So our faith is based on evidence (Hebs 11:1 “…the evident demonstration of realities though not beheld”). One could say that it is on the 'balance of probabilities'. However, it is primarily through Jesus Christ that our faith can be complete:
1 John 5: 20 "But we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us intellectual capacity that we may gain the knowledge of the true one. And we are in union with the true one, by means of his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and life everlasting."
What was Jesus’ view of all scripture up until his time? Many times Jesus quoted from OT scripture as fact, thus confirming it all to be true and inspired of God. He often used it as the final authority. This can give us utmost confidence in putting our faith in the entire bible as being inspired of God.
On the question of evidence for believing that the New Testament canon as we have it is also inspired of God and that the Gnostic/apocryphal scriptures are not inspired, there is ample evidence that can be found from a number of excellent Christian apologist sources that give us reasons not to shrink back to doubting.
Lately there has been an explosion of interest in gnosticism and popular new theories that can challenge a Christians faith in the reliability of God’s word. Because of new popular books such as 'The Da Vinci Code', for example, many have wondered if in fact there was some kind of conspiracy in the formation and writing of the NT and perhaps that there is another side to the story. Any whose faith is currently been tested by these notions would benefit from re-examining the evidence for why we can solidly rest our faith on the accuracy and inspiration of the gospels and other NT writings.
There are many fine non-JW sources that can help with this. As an example, here is a website that has some very good resources that show there is an abundance of evidence for solidly resting their faith on the fact that Jesus died and was indeed resurrected: www.risenjesus.com
Warm regards Wuji
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