What Are Common Ways To Misinterpret Scripture? ...

1.  Most common are taking out of context: theological, literary, historical, cultural;
2. not interpreting the implicit in light of the explicit;
3. not recognizing imagery or figures of speech;
4. not according to genre (narrative, prophecy; poetry, proverb, didactic);
5. not taking the OT in light of the NT or vice versa;
6. not interpreting as the author meant it to be—a face value;
7. spiritualizing or not believing it literally when meant to be;
8. not letting common sense makes sense, but seeking other sense;
9. hyper-personalizing or thinking there’s some secret or special message for you only;
10. interpreting texts in isolation to find some far-fetched truth, without regard to the whole of Scripture not interpreting Scripture in light of Scripture and letting it be its own Supreme Court;
11. reading into the Word your preconceived ideas and prejudices
12. confusing Law and gospel. 

Who Created or Caused God? Doesn't Everything Have A Beginning And An End? ...

 

NB: THIS IS A THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT NOT MEANT AS SCIENTIFIC. THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME AGREEMENT HERE IN THE TWO. THESE VIEWS ARE NOT FRINGE BELIEFS BUT FAIRLY WIDELY ACCEPTED.

The maxim that out of nothing, nothing comes is valid. God is not a thing but the Creator of all things. But we must not jump to the conclusion that everything was created or had a beginning. Then there would be a time when nothing existed and that means nothing would exist now. The fact that something exists really proves something must be eternal. Only that which is within the time-space continuum has a beginning. God isn’t as its Creator and is therefore eternal or without beginning.

All events and effects have causes. Even the Big Bang had a cause outside itself. Everything that begins to exist has a cause; how can God be the First Cause if He began or was created? God is eternal and that means without a beginning point or cause: He’s the First Cause. Aristotle settled this issue and called God the First Cause that caused all things to begin.

It’s impossible to cross infinity, to say everything had a beginning is just that; it's faulty logic. A caused B caused C caused D ….. (AT SOME POINT WE RUN OUT OF LETTERS). Infinite regress is impossible philosophically, mathematically, and logically. Every chain of events has a beginning point and a cause. God is not an event or an effect, but the uncaused cause, which is possible philosophically and logically. So you cannot say that there was no beginning or creation point when God began it all.

If someone or something made God, God would not be the Creator but a creature and be caused Himself and not the First Cause. If someone made God you could ask who made him? and so forth ad Infinitum. God says He is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end Himself! Even time had a beginning and is part of creation for God created it because it's a corollary of space and matter. Many things just are: love, truth, logic, justice; where did they come from? God is love, true, just, and logical. “In the beginning was the Word” [Logos or logic, understanding, intelligence, law, order, design, purpose, design].

Science, not philosophy or religion has come up with the theory that time would not exist had it not been for the existence of both space and matter. That time began therefore at the big bang when the time-space continuum began. This was postulated (some may say speculated) by physicist Stephen Hawking who wrote The Brief History of Time supposedly outlining the beginning and end of time. Before the Big Bang, there was no time! Even the Bible (cf 2 Tim. 2:9; Titus 1:2) says that time began or had a beginning.

According to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity space and time are interwoven and connected. It is said that at absolute zero no time exists and that after the so-called “heat death” of the cosmos that it will too. Also, that time began at the Big Bang and someday will cease to be. I do not claim to be a scientist but am well-read on the subject. This is a lay opinion and meant to be a philosophical/theological answer, not a scientistic one. I regard the Bible as the final arbiter of truth and rule of faith for the Christian.

I refer all questions to The Nature of Time and Space by Stephen Hawking. I did not intend to make a direct quote but what science has come to believe.: “Almost everyone now believes that the universe and time itself had a beginning at the Big Bang.” (Page 60).

In conclusion, God’s name is I AM with no predicate (I AM WHO I AM WHO I AM ….) God is whatever He needs or desires to be and is complete in Himself, self-contained, and self-existent. (cf. Acts 17:25).

Does God Exist, And If So, Have You Ever Seen Him?

 What evidence do you have that He doesn’t exist? Objections to Christian conduct or church history are not enough to debunk Christianity. Christians make mistakes and the church has learned from its mistakes. There are multitudinous arguments for the existence of God that are philosophical, scientific, historical, and literary. Books and volumes have been written and philosophers have dabbled in the subject including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle who all believed in Him. I will not even attempt to go there because no one can prove His existence beyond a shadow of a doubt.

But no one can disprove God either. Philosophically you cannot prove a universal negative. It takes faith both ways and both believers and naysayers are people of faith. To place your faith in science is also faith. To say that you only believe what science can prove is foolish and cannot be proved as a valid option even scientifically because that itself is a truth claim and made in faith. No amount of evidence will convince a person to believe who doesn’t want to believe. There is no “smoking gun” evidence either way! So we must have faith.

The existence of God according to God (per the Bible) is self-evident and there’s enough evidence in nature to convince anyone but a fool. God says that no one has an excuse and will be judged according to the God they did know. The problem is not intellectual but in the heart of man that is stubborn and rebellious against God. The heart of the matter is that it’s a matter of the heart then!

Now whether I’ve seen Him. That’s why God sent Jesus to show us Himself. The Bible says no one has seen Him but to see Jesus is the same as seeing God. Jesus came to show us, God, in the flesh as His Son. He is the express image and likeness of God—His icon. All of the fulness of deity dwells in Christ. The disciples asked to see God and Jesus told they have seen Him because He is God. We believe in many things we don’t see but we see their effects: air, electricity, thoughts, love, etc.. People who are blind often “see” better than those who are not.

We have spiritual eyes and God can open them to see Jesus in the Bible on every page in every book in every theme through many of its characters. God opens our hearts to believe and helps us to see spiritually. I do not believe in the wind because I can see it but because I see its effects and what it’s doing. If I don’t look at the sun, I can still believe in it because I can see everything else. God is light and dwells in unapproachable light that no man is capable of beholding. We do not see light but its effect: colors. God is spirit and spirit is unseen. God is also love and love isn’t seen either but is felt and experienced. We can taste God with our emotions, for God challenges us: “Taste and see that the LORD is good.” You see, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Is It Logical To Believe In God? ...

Yes, the maxim goes: “Out of nothing, nothing comes”. Matter can't arise from pure nothingness, (as some who study quantum physics believe) and by the way, a vacuum is not “nothing” because it contains space) God created space too. The fact that something exists proves something must have always existed or be eternal; namely, God. Nothing, and that includes all matter, can create or cause itself. Everything that exists in the time-space continuum has a beginning and therefore a cause. And that’s because everything that begins to exist has a cause.

It all goes back to the First Cause that is responsible for everything. Even the creation (Big Bang) had a beginning and therefore a Beginner. The beginning of creation had design and purpose and was not chaos. Logos (logic) cannot arise from chaos and without Logos is no cosmos. This shows signs of ID or intelligent design from an Ultimate or Supreme MInd at work.

Pure energy would be nothing but chaos and isn't organized; it takes logic and design to make it useful energy (random to kinetic). That comes from a master Designer or Creator. When Carl Sagan said, “The cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be,” he forgot about ID or the intelligence in the cosmos as the missing ingredient necessary for creation. It seems like creation was pre-programmed with universal constants or the laws of nature.

NOTE: Logos means many things including law, order, design, purpose, expressed thought, and logic.

Nothing To Offer Christ

Christ offers salvation to the lowest bidder, not the one who thinks he's qualified but the one who humbly acknowledges he isn't.  Paul saw himself as the chief of sinners! We must realize that we cannot do enough to impress God or make ourselves worthy.  We cannot earn, deserve, nor pay back God but must realize salvation is a grace-transaction, not a works-transaction.  They say it is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, and this is the best way to see it because religionists add merit to grace, works to faith, and the church or tradition to Christ.  We must also realize that Scripture alone is our rule of faith and final authority or arbiter of truth, not tradition or any church leader.   We must realize though that we can never be good enough, in fact, we can only realize how bad we are when we try to be good and trying to be good. 

When we realize we are saved by grace through faith we realize our works do not merit salvation.  We are not saved by any work, but we cannot be saved without them either for faith without works is dead and cannot save.  If we have no works, our faith is suspect and we certainly are not producing fruit as Jesus said we shall be known by our fruits. James said he could show his faith through his works (cf. James 2:18). Likewise, our works validate or authenticate our faith. As the Reformers taught: "We are saved by faith alone, but not be a faith that is alone!'  By definition, grace is getting what we don't deserve, but mercy is not getting what we do deserve; this means God would be perfectly just to condemn everyone to hell and save no one!  If God had to save us or was obliged by our deeds, it would be grace but justice. 

We are humbled when we see that even a great preacher like George Whitefield said, "There but for the grace of God go I, "after seeing a condemned man to the gallows. Paul had similar thoughts when he said, "I am what I am by the grace of God," (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10)  As Paul nearly wreaked havoc on the early church Christ chose him to be a light to the Gentiles. We come to the realization that all we have to offer Christ is brokenness and strife, a contrite heart of repentance as a sacrifice. 

We don't have to do anything to be saved; no pre-salvation work.  God opens our hearts and kindles or quickens faith within us, even making the unwilling willing and turning hearts of stone into hearts of flesh (cf. Ezek. 11:19). We when we realize Christ is the way it all is clear and we surrender ourselves to Him in faith.  That's the gist of it, exercising faith in some way: It differs for every individual; just because someone walked an aisle for instance to receive Christ doesn't mean that it's necessary or the only way.  There may be prefabricated prayers of salvation and the common one, the sinners' prayer  from Luke 18:13 ("God be merciful to me a sinner)") but none is perfect and certainly not the only valid one. For there can be no perfect, foolproof prayer to grant salvation for God sees the heart and reads the motives.  Then salvation would be by lipservice or going through the motions: religiosity. 

This is what I mean:  we need to know how bad we are to be saved, and we don't know how bad we are till we try to be good or repent of our badness!  In other words, we are never good enough to get saved but bad enough to need salvation! We all have a dark side, a side no one sees but God and we all have feet of clay or apparent flaws that are not visible or known by others. This means we are not basically or inherently good but bad or evil without Christ in our hearts. When we really see ourselves for who we are we realize the picture isn't pretty.   We are "dead in trespasses" and "by nature children of wrath," "sold under sin."  God needs to open our eyes to have faith (cf. Acts 26:18) and especially the eyes of our hearts to see Jesus (cf. Heb. 2:9) in the Bible, which testifies of Him (cf. John 5:39).  

When we realize what great sinners we are, we thank God that He is a great Savior! And we are humbled by grace to say, "Why me Lord," and "a wretch like me?" But thanks to the restraining power of the Spirit, we are not as bad as we can be; we are only as bad off as we can be in respect to our ability to save ourselves and therefore need a Savior. Recognizing that God doesn't grade on a curve and has concluded all slaves of sin and spiritually dead, we realize our need for grace for there could be no other way to qualify for salvation in our own right. 

In the final analysis, we must be willing to stand up for what we believe (cf. Jer. 9:3) in and that means confessing Christ as Lord or verbalizing our faith, not privatizing it.  "Let the redeemed of the LORD say so," (cf. Psalm 107:2).   "I  believed, therefore I spoke," (cf. 2 Cor. 4:13).  And if we don't stand firm in the faith we will not stand firm at all. (cf. Isaiah 7:3).  NB:   We have nothing to bring to Christ but the sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, and of a contrite heart (cf. Heb. 13:15; Lev. 7:12; Psalm 51:17).   Soli Deo Gloria!