By Dennis Petersen
Do you think you are a Bible believing Christian? Do you believe that there are a host of people in your community and nation who believe a long list of myths, fallacies and deceptions?
Do you believe that your own perceptions are generally accurate and truthful?
Few will admit to deliberately believing and acting on what they know is a lie, right?
Let’s remember the Biblical warnings about falling for lies:
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.” Hosea 4:6
“For false christs (messiahs) and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” Mark 13:22
“Therefore my people have gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge; Their honorable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst.” Isaiah 5:13
“The lips of the righteous feed many, but fools die for lack of wisdom.”Proverbs 10:21
When I was a young student in public school in the 50s and 60s, I began to learn about the advancements of the ancient Roman civilization. I wondered how they could become so decadent and morally depraved after reaching so many technological and cultural heights. How could they lose their entire social-political structure to the barbarians?
Years later I discovered some facts about the existence of a variety of advanced ancient civilizations on planet earth. Some were before the Romans; others were after. I began to realize there was a common denominator. It’s easily understood by the historically traceable, miraculous origin of all the world’s language groups. Where did that happen? At the Valley of Shinar (Sumer) in the Middle East. Studying world history from a Biblical worldview, it comes into focus that mankind is essentially flawed. He is self-destructive, and incapable of independently overcoming his fallen condition in sin.
With all the evidence surrounding humans that testifies to the reality of our Creator being so clearly seen (Romans 1:20), Paul’s revelation of man’s ultimate inexcusability could not be clearer. “They are without excuse.” Let’s recount just a few of those evidences.
Some evidence qualifying to be included in Romans 1:20
- The systematic design observed in the stars did not start by accident.
- The extraordinary complexity of living cells could not have originated by chance.
- The astonishing capacity of the human mind means no people groups are organically primitive.
- The mere existence of fossilized living creatures trapped in the vast sedimentary systems covering the continents all over the earth could not have been formed by anything but a global cataclysmic flood in relatively recent historical time.
- The harmonious synergism of the living natural world on earth, as particularly obvious by what is famously known as the “Anthropic Principle,” is so vast that the ancient writer of Job stated “who doesn’t know that that hand of the Lord has made this?” (Job 12:9).
When I present creation evidences to most Christian audiences, like most teachers, I appeal to their inner sense of God-consciousness. I also appeal to their willingness to consider the Bible in helping them overcome the propaganda that has programmed their thinking, having lived in a secular society all their lives.
Now, because so many law abiding, upstanding citizens have been so badly compromised by secular indoctrination in their steady diet of information overload, many of them have a very unbiblical concept of God. They don’t really trust His Word. They are a lot like the men of Athens whom Paul addressed in Acts 17 when he said, “I perceive that in all things you are too superstitious” (vs. 22).
Acts 17 beautifully shows us a pattern for communicating good news to pagans we call secularists.
Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore, he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods,” because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. (Acts 17:16-18).
And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? “For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore, we want to know what these things mean.” For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing. (Acts 17:19-21).
Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; “for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown God.’ “Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you: (Acts 17:22-23).
“God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. “Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. (Acts 17:24-25).
“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, “so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; “for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’ (Acts 17:26-28).
“Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead (Divine Nature) is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man’s devising. (Acts 17:29).
“Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, “because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead.” And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, “We will hear you again on this matter.” (Acts 17:30-32).
The sad condition of too many modern Western religious Christians
All too many of today’s church people in America – more than half statistically – are really not much different from those men of Athens over 1,950 years ago. We can’t assume that they are even open to hear and know the truth. So, we need to honestly ask those we are wanting to positively influence if they are willing to let the Holy Spirit convict them of the sin of hardening their hearts to God’s Word.
Line upon line, precept upon precept, step by step, we can guide an open mind to at least see truth.
Hebrews 3 urges us: Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: “Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, and saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, and they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ ” Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:7-13).
Then we can ask if they want to access God’s spiritual strength to pull down the strongholds that keep them from God’s best.
“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor 10:5
Now we are in a place where we can ask if they want to see what God’s Word says about the Jesus that Paul proclaimed to the superstitious Athenians.
It’s really all about Jesus – without Him we can do nothing.
Colossians tells us: “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and … on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist (hold together). (Colossians 1:13-17).
Of course, this confirms what Paul told the men of Athens, reiterating John’s introduction:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:1-4).
When you can help someone see Jesus as the source and center of all things in their life, then you can draw attention to some key things He said to confirm the truth of God’s Word even before the New Testament was written and canonized.
What Jesus said is key if we trust in Him for our eternal lives.
Luke 16:31 “But he said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’ ”
Ask what they think Jesus was talking about. Did it include the creation account of Adam or the Flood account of Noah?
Then show them a few passages and ask if it sounds like Jesus thought those references to His own ancestors were fictitious.
“And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ “and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? “So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let not man separate.” (Matthew 19:4-6).
“And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: “They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. (Luke 17:26-27).
When a believer comes to grips with the Scriptures that Jesus believed in the genuine history of the book of Genesis, you then can help him discover the truth of a host of realities they have been systematically conditioned by the enemy’s deceptions to disbelieve.
The Creative and sustaining power of Almighty God
Isaiah tells us: “Thus says God the LORD, Who created the heavens and stretched them out, Who spread forth the earth and that which comes from it, Who gives breath to the people on it, And spirit to those who walk on it: “I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, And will hold Your hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, As a light to the Gentiles, To open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. (Isaiah 42:5-7).
So now we know part of why civilized people believe in so many lies, but there is more.
Remember what Paul said in Romans 1 about the divine result of rejecting God’s reality?
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness…” (Romans 1:18)
“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting…” (Romans 1:28).
But it gets worse. The prophecy Paul made about the coming anti-Christ carries a principle that we should be aware of.
Look in 2nd Thessalonians 2: “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness. (2 Thessalonians 2:9-12).
So, what should we do about it?
Matthew 28 records: “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, “teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20).
Now Jesus’ mission compels us. It’s His imperative for all of us who believe and follow Him in the 21st Century…
Jesus began his public mission, declaring: “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED…” Luke 4:18
So, what does that leave us to do?
Paul wrote to believers in that first generation following the resurrection: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.” (2 Corinthians 5:17-20).
