Ravi Zacharias at ALCF

[Music] well good evening welcome to abundant life and I hope you're enjoying the air conditioning amen my name is Brian Lorentz and I have the absolute joy of serving here as the lead pastor at abundant life I got here a little over a year ago and when I bought my home a little over a year ago it was it was crazy to me because I bought several homes and this was the first one that didn't have air conditioning and the real estate agent said oh you won't need it we're here in the bay won't need it and somebody lied to me I could have sworn I saw the devil walking down the street the other day and shorts and Fannin himself so it's a delight to be here I have looked forward to this event it's an honor for our church to host you all this evening I have been wildly influenced as some of you I'm sure have by just the writings and the teachings of dr. Ravi Zacharias and glad that he's brought his colleague here yes yes one of the things that I appreciate about the ministry of ravi zacharias International Ministries is they speak to just the universal need that we all have no matter where you may be some of you all are here today and you attend church regularly others of you this is your first time maybe ever in a church and but all of us wrestle with issues of meaning and value and significance and so I just remember tapping into the books and the teachings of Ravi and his colleagues and it has had a profound influence on my life so fasten your seat belts this is going to be an incredible time as we're going to hear from both Ravi and Vince this evening and then we're going to do a little bit of QA as well but before we do that we thought we'd take just a few moments to show you a video of a wonderful opportunity that our church is going to be hosting here in a couple of weeks called the Global Leadership Summit it is a wonderful wonderful opportunity that you and some individuals from your from your team at work can come and to learn what it means to be effective leaders so let's take a look at this video [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] how many of you have had a chance in the past to be at the global leadership summit great if you'd like more information you can go on the website of this church there'll be eight locations in the Bay Area during the first week of August my name is Nancy orberg and I am part of an organization called transforming the bay with Christ we and a few other people have had the privilege of hosting tonight and I want to add my welcome to Brian's we're so glad that you're here I want to introduce to you Ravi and Vince tonight most of you already know who they are I'm going to tell you just a little bit about them but then I want to dig just a little bit deeper for a minute or two to really set the stage for tonight Ravi has been a top apologetics around the world for the last 45 years he has spoken at some of the top universities in the world in the halls of government and other forms all over the globe he focuses on what the truth is and how it reflects on Christian faith Vince along with him they have written a book together called Jesus among secular dogs Vince has his PhD in the problem of evil and suffering from Oxford University and I don't know about you but there's been a lot of times in my life when I would love to sit down with somebody who studied the problem of evil and suffering so you're going to be hearing from both of them tonight both of them have great credentials both of them have huge impact in the globe at the highest level and everywhere in between in this last week I met a man who's 60 years old and just lost his job and in between transitions till he got a new job he drove for let's just call it a ride-sharing company since the headlines of today and for six months everybody that got into the car he struck up a conversation with and most of them he would refer to Robbie's website just met a guy tonight he said recently on a trip across Oklahoma in between three different FM radio stations listened to Robbie's message all the way across the great state of Oklahoma people everywhere are hungry to consider if there's a truce that might have some answers and what I love about both Vince and Robbie is they have an ability to take the truth and add grace to it John chapter one says the jesus came in grace and truth and for too long people of faith have used truth like a weapon and really what it's meant to do is to open a conversation and there is probably nothing more healing in our world and when in the context of our own vulnerability we invite somebody to know us by the questions that we ask these questions are really an invitation and whether you're a Christ follower or not we all have questions and I'm just so pleased tonight have both Ravi and Vince up here to address issues of truth but also to remind us that it's the entryway to our heart as well so would you join with me in welcoming Ravi and Vince [Music] what a wonderful introduction Thank You Nancy thank you Pastor Brian for having us incredible privilege to be here and to be able to share with you tonight we're going to be talking about our book Jesus among secular gods I'm going to start by talking about the relationship between science and faith before I hand over to Ravi but it's just wonderful to be here it's wonderful to see so many friendly faces it's good to see the rest of you as well that's rule number one you have to laugh at my jokes I've always been a lover of sports and so let me start with a sporting analogy this is a sporting experience I would never want to have you show up at the game that you're supposed to be playing in and it's already in progress and you don't know when it started you don't know when it's going to finish you don't know what the objective of the game is and you don't know any of the rules so you start asking the players around you these four questions they all give you different answers so now you're even more confused you look for a referee or an umpire but the players tell you that actually they decided they don't need him anymore and they sent him home if you had that experience you'd be completely unable to engage in the game meaningfully and it would be incredibly frustrating and I think sadly this is actually happening and not just in a game it's happening in real life we're losing the answers to the deepest questions of life Ravi has delineated the categories wonderfully origin meaning morality destiny where did we come from where are we headed what's the purpose of life and how should we live in light of that if we want to engage meaningfully in life every one of us needs to answer those questions otherwise we're just pretending we're just standing on the field roaming around pretending hoping that nobody realizes we have no idea what we're doing now a lot of people we'll grant me that those four questions are important but what they'll say is that we used to think that we needed God to help answer those questions but that's because we didn't know enough about science now we can answer those questions scientifically and so we don't have any need for God now I want to resist that way of thinking and I want to do that by introducing you to a new and highly scientific argument that I think is going to be very influential in the years ahead and here it is if there's no God how come the world fits so perfectly into a chicken I'm glad you like that for a long time I thought that was about as rational as faith could get I was studying philosophy at Princeton University I thought I was pretty smart I thought that Christian faith was for people who didn't think hard enough the first time I read the Bible I opened it and I started to add things and I would cross things out and I'd write a big BS in the margins wherever I disagreed and Christians would look over my shoulder and say Vince why do you have a BS in the margin of your Bible and I'd say oh that verse makes her a great Bible study I assumed that science had discredited God we used to need God to explain rain and rainbows and shooting stars but now we have naturalistic scientific explanations of these things and so we don't have any more need for God that's what I used to think a bit later in my journey to faith thanks to some great friends thanks to some great books I found myself incredibly surprised at how intellectually robust the case for Christianity is the arguments and I began to exchange emails with a Princeton professor of the history of science and we were debating about Christianity back and forth and I'll always remember one email he was detailing a number of his objections to faith and then at the end of the email in the last line as if to trump all other arguments he wrote nor can I believe in a virgin birth no further argument or explanation and this to say it would be crazy to believe in such a thing and it hit me in that moment that that was the Assumption underlying the entire debate that we had been having Christianity is the crazy option scientism or naturalism is the rational sober sensible option and therefore the burden of proof for belief in God is higher because it's such an extraordinary hypothesis Richard Dawkins the famous atheist puts it this way if you want to believe in unicorns or tooth fairies Thor or Yahweh the onus is on you to say why you believe in it the onus is not on the rest of us to say why we do not and I began to wonder is that true is he right or is that just an assumption that I have taken on board without really thinking it through god may be an extraordinary explanation of the fact that right now I am standing on a rock rotating at a thousand miles an hour flying around the Sun at 67,000 miles an hour as part of a galaxy being hurled through the universe at over a million miles an hour a universe with laws so orderly the human life has come to exist utterly remarkable God may be an extraordinary explanation of that fact but criticism without alternative is empty if God is not your explanation of that fact then what is what are the alternatives consider the big picture explanations for the universe how did all of this get here there are only three primary options number one God created the universe now admittedly that's a pretty extraordinary claim I'd like to put my hand up and say that's a remarkable claim but let's look at the other alternatives alternative number two the entire universe just popped into existence from nothing for no reason whatsoever now that too is a very extraordinary option okay in general things don't just pop in and out of existence in our everyday life if they don't now why should we think that they did at the beginning a third alternative the universe has always existed extending infinitely back into time but this just pushes the oddness the extraordinary nature one step back now maybe you can have an explanation for each part of the universe by some part of the universe that came before it but you still have absolutely no explanation for why there is this massive universe in the first place I think that too is very extraordinary now these three options they exhaust the relevant alternatives and every one of them is absolutely extraordinary every one of them is well outside the realm of the ordinary and even if you said you know what I can see that all of those look a bit remarkable so what I'm going to do is I'm going to remain agnostic I'm not going to commit myself to any of them well you still have to be committed to the fact that one of three things is true and that's just as remarkable the conclusion I think is that we live in a miraculous world whether you're a theist an atheist or an agnostic here tonight I don't think there's any getting around that fact no one none of us have the choice to believe only in the ordinary we have not been left that option in my own life I had to take a step back and reassess the situation I had assumed that science had disproved God but was that perhaps just a rumor was it just a rumor that maybe was unfounded I want to suggest to you three ways that I think science actually provides clues that point to God rather than away from him the first clue that I want to talk about is the fact that the universe had a beginning the Cambridge physicist Stephen Hawking he confirms he says all the evidence seems to indicate that the universe has not existed forever but that it had a beginning this is probably the most remarkable discovery of modern cosmology yet it is now taken for granted the universe has not existed forever rather the universe and time itself had a beginning in the Big Bang now it he's right if he's right that the universe had a beginning how do we explain that beginning how do we explain that at one point there was not something and then at another point there was something how do we explain that change here's the answer that the prominent atheist philosopher Quentin Smith gives this is a guy who has more than twelve books published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles a very established scholar and here's his answer he says the fact of the matter is that the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing by nothing and for nothing we should acknowledge our foundation in nothing yes and feel all at the marvelous fact that we have a chance to participate briefly in this incredible sunburst that interrupts without reason the reign of non-being and when I first read that it immediately took me back to that email exchange that I was having with my Princeton professor and I thought to myself is that not a virgin birth I found myself wondering maybe everyone believes in a virgin birth maybe it's not whether you believe in a virgin birth but it's just which virgin birth you believe in I believe in the virgin birth of Jesus but Quentin Smith believes in the virgin birth of an entire universe now to my mind Smith's answer is not a satisfying answer being doesn't come from non-being things don't just pop into existence out of nothing for no reason none of us have ever seen a table or a chair or a tiger or the person sitting next to you just pop into existence if the universe began to exist there should be a cause of its existence and then that raises a question what would that cause be like well for it to be the cause of the universe and not just some part of the universe it would have to be outside of space and time because it would have created space and time inferred to be the cause of all this that cause would have to be highly powerful highly intelligent highly creative so what we're pointed towards is a cause of the universe that is highly intelligent highly powerful highly creative and outside of space and time and I think it's very hard to think of a better hypothesis a better answer to who that could be than God now think with me about a second feature of the universe that I think points to God our universe is remarkably finely tuned for life now imagine that by this point in the talk you're unbearably bored hard to imagine I know you're praying that the universe will swallow you up into a black hole and so you you take out a deck of cards and you begin to play poker with Pastor Lawrence not for any money of course and in the first 12 rounds of the game pastor Lewis gets 12 straight royal flushes what do you think happened did you just accuse the pastor of cheating should be ashamed of yourself they're pretty quick to throw you under the bus though they're yes of course he must be cheating why because even if he's a very honest person it's so incredibly unlikely to get 12 straight royal flushes that someone must be messing with the cards someone must be arranging the system now over the last 35 years the fine-tuning argument has suggested that we should come to a similar conclusion with respect to God the universe that we live in it could have taken many different forms and scientists have approached a consensus not just Christian scientists but scientists in general that there are dozens of fundamental features of the universe that had to be precisely the way they are in order for life to come to exist not just life on the planet Earth not just life as we know it but any form of life anywhere in the universe take just one example the explosive force of the initial expansion of the universe scientists tell us had to be within one part in 10 to the 60th of what it actually was in order for life to be possible anywhere in other words the percentage difference that you could have while still accommodating the possibility of life is a zero followed by a period followed by 57 zeroes followed by a 1 if the initial expansion has been even the slightest bit maker gravity makes the universe collapse back in on itself almost immediately far too quickly for any form of life to develop if the initial expansion had been even the slightest bit stronger than the entire universe literally just disperses into thin air the molecules wind up so far from each other so quickly that all you could get would be cold simple molecules nothing like the sort of complex chemistry required for any form of life that's just one example in the literature and there are dozens more the precision necessary for meeting the requirements of life can be compared to being blindfolded and spun around and having one shot with a super high-powered gun to hit a one-inch target on the other side of the observable universe 50 billion light years away and hitting that target on your first try Sir Roger Penrose the Oxford physicist he suggests that the precision necessary is less than one part in 10 raise to the power of 10 raised in turn to the power of 123 I would write that number out for you but even if I could turn all the matter in the universe into paper I would still have far too little paper to print the required number of zeros so Fred Hoyle the cambridge astronomer he compared the likelihood of life just by chance to a tornado blowing through a junkyard and just by chance happening to produce a perfect Boeing 747 airplane those are the sorts of odds that we're talking about how are we to explain these amazing coincidences how are we to explain these royal flushes that are turning up throughout the universe time and time again I think we should come to the same rational conclusion someone got their hands on the cards and arranged the systems someone designed the universe it's not rational to watch someone get Royal Flush after Royal Flush after Royal Flush after Royal Flush and just say wow he's so lucky and likewise it's not rational to look at the intricate design that we see throughout our universe and to say it was just the luck of blind chance many people assume that the advancement of science has disproved god I was one of those people I've come to think very differently two of the most significant scientific discoveries of the last century that the universe has a beginning and that it's finely tuned for life they both point strongly to the existence of God and before I turn over to Robby reflect with me on just one more feature of our universe that I think does so as well and that's the regularity of the universe this is another thing that we just take for granted without realizing how utterly remarkable it is we just assume that when we wake up tomorrow things are going to carry on in the stable regular way that nature always has think about all of the predictions that we need to make in just the next five minutes in order to live coherent lives we assume that the objects in our vicinity are going to stay more or less where they are we assume that gravity is going to continue to do its thing that atoms and molecules are going to continue to interact the way they always have we assume the color of things is going to stay the same that the earth will continue spinning that sound waves will continue to carry as they always have why why do we assume that the universe is going to operate with regularity now you might say to me well that's the way it's always operated in the past but that's not an answer that's precisely the question why has it always operated with regularity and why should we think that it will continue to do so if right now I think of one number out of all the possible numbers and I asked you to guess that number there's no way you're going to guess it the probability is basically zero why because there are so many numbers that I'm not thinking of and there's only one that I am thinking of well the same is true when we consider the regularity of the universe there are all sorts of crazy things that physics could do tomorrow an infinite number there are an infinite number of different strengths that gravity could take but there is only one way that it could stay the same day after day second after second year after year we just take for granted the fact that the universe is going to continue to operate with regularity the truth is that's a great mystery Einstein said the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible however if God exists then we do have an explanation for the regularity of the universe because the universe is being regulated by someone who cares for us deeply and therefore wants us to live orderly and coherent lives that we can make sense of and that we can find meaning in I believe that God is the best explanation for the regularity of the universe that underlies the entire scientific enterprise and so not only do I resist the claim that science has disproved God but I've actually come to believe that only God proves science because only God makes sense of the regularity of the universe that underlies all science this conversation about the relationship between science and faith it's one that the Bible encourages for since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen being understood from what has been made the Greek word there for what has been made is Polhemus in its where we get our English word poem from and there are two things in the Bible that are spoken of as a poem the first is God's creation God's creation is his poem and then there's another passage in Ephesians and it reads for we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do for we are God's handiwork another translation says for we are his masterpiece that's the same word poemas poem we've been asking the question of whether the universe is just the product of chance undesigned unintended without purpose or whether it's a poem chosen carefully crafted deeply valued that's also a question that bears on every part of the universe including every one of us are you in Quentin Smith's words from nothing by nothing and for nothing or are you a poem uniquely designed by someone who loves you uniquely designed for a purpose I believe that's the most important question in all of life are you from nothing by nothing and for nothing or are you from someone and are you headed back to someone two months ago our team spent a week on the campus of UC Berkeley we saw many people become Christians at that university people that for the first time came to understand the love that God has for them the purpose that God has for them the deep desire that God has to be in relationship with them incredibly powerful time one of those students that put their faith in Jesus for the first time was a young woman named Bailey Bailey was literally walking across campus thinking that God probably doesn't exist when someone handed her a flyer to a talk titled does God exist and she ignored it as she walked home and about 45 minutes later she just couldn't ignore it anymore and she turned around and she headed back to campus now Bailey would have characterized herself as an atheist but there's one thing that always nagged at her and it was flowers in particular daisies she would have look she would just find herself looking at daisies and looking at the intricate design of them and she would find herself asking could this really just be the product of blind chance Bailey got to the talk back on campus and she walked in my wife Joe was giving the talk and the main illustration that ran through the talk was a story about daisies and through that and conversation with our team and honestly a dozen other truly miraculous details that I don't have time to share right now Bailey knew in her heart that God was reaching out to her personally and she put her faith in Jesus Christ she knew for the first time that she wasn't from nothing by nothing and for nothing she was from someone and that someone was at the center of reality and that someone desired to live in friendship and relationship with her the day after we left Berkeley my wife Jo and I we headed down to Ocean Beach to have a day of rest and my wife was writing a text message to Bailey to encourage her in her new faith and right when she was about to hit sins someone walked up to my wife Joe handed her something and then jumped in a car and drove off and Joe looked down and there's a flower her hand and there's a little card on the flower from the flower shop and she turned it over and what did it say it said the delicate Daisy God has not only designed the poem of the universe he is writing a poem in Baileys life and he's writing a poem in each one of your lives as well I wonder if as I say that I wonder if that resonates it's true deep within I'm excited to hear your questions later but I just want to invite you tonight if you're in a place where you have been back and forth between those two alternatives and life from nothing by nothing and for nothing or mi a poem that's been chosen that's been carefully crafted that's been designed for a purpose by someone who loves me I want to invite you to consider whether that's true I look forward to your questions later and thank you so much for listening [Applause] [Music] it's a real honor and delight for me to be here and to follow [Applause] [Music] you don't often get to this part of the country even though I go through San Francisco to Los Angeles over into the asia-pacific region where I do a lot of my speaking but what a tremendous privilege to be in your beautiful city and enjoy your beautiful weather and also you're terrific cuisine out here it's absolutely fantastic I'd be amiss if I don't mention cuisine because I'm a culinary guy and just enjoy great food I am often asked why Indians die so young and my answer is very simple gods getting them up there to prepare the marriage supper of the Lamb and dearly and they're the only ones who have the recipes so that's my word for starters are you hearing me all right - yeah you are hear me oh thank you so much I want to personally thank pastor Bryan laureates I've known his father for many many years and it's wonderful to see you Bryan we bumped into an airport some time ago thank you for making it possible for us to be here Nancy for all your hard work behind the scenes you've done a beautiful job in preparing for us to come and also to Ryan Patton who worked a lot so that we got to speak at one other venue and my good friend human khalili thank you so much all four of you for all your hard work in preparing for us I speak a lot on what does it mean to be human one day I'm going to speak on what does it mean to be human in his he's a he's a biography all by itself an impressive guy and persuaded us to come here so here we are years ago I was spending about six months in Cambridge England and I recall on one of our off days my wife Margie and our kids went into London and we walked into the Old Bailey the great historic place of trials and I didn't realize at that time you could walk into the upper galleries and find a seat there there are five or six trials going on you could take in one of those trials and just listen in on the arguments but the one we stepped into we were told we could not bring the younger of our two girls because it was a very restricted allowance for that particular trial and my second daughter said it's okay dad why don't you all go ahead seems a fascinating trial here and some friends took care of our other two kids so my wife our older daughter Sarah myself and a couple of friends sat in he was shocked to find out what was going on it was a trial of a man who was in a senior years who'd been accused of rape by two minor girls and because of the nature of the trial children were not allowed below a certain age I was not sure I really wanted to sit through it but I as the argument was being undertaken I thought this could be a very fascinating trial to sit in on and so we did and as the accusation was made my eyes kept shifting towards the older gentleman there and you couldn't see the young gals because they were minors but the barristers could see them the lawyers could see them are on their own television screen and you could hear their voices but I kept looking at that man and thinking to myself how could somebody bring such pain and such horror to two young lives and Mar them for the rest of their existence so I kept looking in that direction watching as all the accusations were being listed then the defense attorney took to the microphone and he looked at the two television screens and could see both of the gals there are different rooms so that they could not collude and he looked at them and he said I want you girls to know something I am NOT here to hurt you I am NOT here to find any fault with you I just am interested in one thing and I want you to hear me clearly I'm only interested in one thing I want you to tell me the truth when I ask you a question if you don't know the answer tell me that if you can't remember tell me that but if you answer my question please tell me the truth a man's future lies in your hands I just want the truth you understand and these such shall like voices yes sir yes sir and then he began to unfold his pattern of defense and at one point he said to them why did it take you two months to tell your mommy and daddy what happened on that day and of course you know they said well we were afraid and this and that and all that so quite understandable then he planted this question he said tell me the truth is it true that on the day you told your mother and father this man had seen you at such and such a place and walked over to you and told you when he got home that night he was going to come and see your parents and tell them where he saw you and what you were doing is that true and there was silence one of them never answered and the other one said I can't remember and actually the mood began to change to my own displeasure because you wanted the truth if this man indeed did what he is alleged to have done it was a dust early act but if he's being falsely accused to protect some other storyline it is equally dastardly to destroy the life of an individual ladies and gentlemen we've all walked away from there so confused and so dissatisfied if in one case for one life on one allegation the truth is so important isn't it even more important for you and me to find out the truth of why we are here what does life really amount to this morning I was having breakfast with my nephews one of my our colleagues are a Seattle and even I was asking him how the conference went and his uncle there was a turning point in that conference when a young 14 year old boy with rather thick glasses walked up to the microphone and in very slow deliberate speech said I want you all speaking to us to just answer one question for me what is the meaning of life why are we here because three times he said I have tried to commit suicide and I just want the answer to why I am here there is writing by somebody that I've never been able to track down as to who the author is but I think it was given to us by a Canadian author at one stage and we never really were able to track down who the original author was but it says this in the 1950s kids lost their innocence they were liberated from their parents by well-paying jobs cars and lyrics and music that gave rise to a new term the generation gap in the 1960s kids lost their authority it was the decade of protest church-state and and parents were all called into question and found wanting their authority was rejected yet nothing ever replaced it in the 1970s kids lost their love it was the decade of me ISM dominated by hyphenated words beginning with self self image self esteem self assertion it made for a very lonely world kids learned everything there was to know about sex forgot everything there was to know about real love and few had the nerve to tell them there was indeed a difference in the 1990s kids lost their hope stripped of innocence authority and love and plagued by the horror of a nuclear nightmare large and growing numbers of this generation have stopped believing in the future I added this one para in the 1990s kids have lost themselves trapped in a virtual world of their own away from voices and from touch they now talk and feel in cyberspace losing their own individuality and actually now just stalking machines they've lost their worth I understand this predicament very well very well even though I have entered my seventh decade of life it was in the 17th was last seventeen years old I remember asking the same question what does living really mean why am I here why am I born in a culture where if you don't come at the top of your class shame and pain can be your destiny why do I end up the dad one day looking in the eye and saying you're going to bring shame and embarrassment to this family and he was right the way I was headed he was trying to jolt me into reality and there at the age of 17 having tried to take my own life I ended up unconscious and then with a doctor who made me well and his last words were to me beta which is the Hindi word for son beta I have given you back your life but there's one thing I cannot do I cannot make you want to live I've given you back your life but I cannot make you want to live but it was in that little bear that a Bible was brought to me that I had never owned one that I never opened one and a man came and brought the Bible is not allowed to read it to me because I was in critical care and he gave it to my mother to read from John chapter 14 jesus said I'm the way the truth and the life no one comes unto the Father except through me nobody there to explain it so I want to talk to you tonight about this very simple pursuit of truth and why I believe it is in the person of Jesus Christ we find not only the truth but also the way and the life and why he is the answer to the deepest hungers of your heart and mine and I just ask you to give us the patient listening only have a few minutes in which to do it I cannot go on an extended journey of thought here but I want to at least try and set the trail in place it was natan Sharansky the former justice minister of israel after he'd left from left the former Soviet Union and moved back to his homeland in Israel years later asked if he could go back to the LeFort oval prison where he'd been incarcerated for solitary confinement and he took his wife and he went back and they took him into the prison and as he was about to enter he put his arm out and told his wife please let me go back there for a moment by myself before you come in I'll let you in after a few minutes but I want to be there alone because this is where I really found myself and he walked into that dungeon like setting put his face in his hands and sobbed with memory after memory after memory and after he came out he there was a battery of microphones waiting for him but he didn't respond he said could you please first take me to the grave of Andrei Sakharov the Russian physicist who gave to the Soviets the nuclear bomb so they took him to the grave he laid a wreath on the grave and then he spoke to the press and here's what he said mister Sakharov who gave us the most powerful weapon we have before he died made this comment I always thought the most powerful weapon in the was the bomb he said I've changed my mind the most powerful weapon in the world is not the bomb the most powerful weapon in the world is the truth telling that to the Soviets was a powerful statement where he was challenging the regime to come in correspondence with reality and not to manufacture a reality of their own because Pravda means truth with all kinds of false stories that are often printed there Winston Churchill during the war gave a speech in which he said this I always thought that the most valuable thing in the world was something else he said now I've come to the realization that the most valuable thing in the world is the truth Sakharov the most powerful weapon in the world is the truth Churchill the most valuable thing in the world is the truth what does truth really mean is it purely abstract is it just an idea for a courtroom or it does it provide the boundaries for your life and mine I want to read for you to two statements by Malcolm Muggeridge which will put me on the track to what I want to say to you as I bring you at least a brief answer Muggeridge was the man whom I longed to meet for many many years I'd read just about everything he'd written I think possibly the most eloquent English journalist of the 20th century they say it's a toss-up between him and GK Chesterton both of whom became moral philosophers and their writing here's what Margaret said truth is very beautiful more so I consider than justice which is today's easy pursuit which can also easily put on a false face in the nearly seven decades I have lived through the world is overflowed with bloodshed and explosions whose dust has never had time to settle before others have erupted all in purportedly just causes the lies on behalf of which our wars have been fought and our peace treaty is concluded the lives of revolution and of counter-revolution the lives of advertising of news of salesmanship of politics the lives of the priests spoke with the professor of the podium the journalist of the typewriter the line now stuck like a fishbone in the throat of the handheld microphone and and in the hands of the prowling cameraman ignatius alone told me once how when he was a member of the old common turn some stratagem was under discussion and a delegate a newcomer who had never attended before made the extraordinary observation that as such and such a statement were ever to be made it ought not to be made because it wouldn't be true there was a moment of dazed stunned silence and everyone began to laugh they laughed and laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks and the Kremlin walls began to shake the same laughter echoes in every council chamber and Cabinet Room where at wherever two or more are gathered to exercise authority it is truth that has died not God says Malcolm Muggeridge Stroup that has died not God but then he went on to make this profound comment and you must hear it as only muggeragem is inevitable wake and say it in this Sargasso Sea of fantasy and fraud how can anyone else hope to so I or anyone else hope to swim unencumbered how can I learn to see through and not just with the eye how can I take off my own motley wash away the makeup raised the iron shut Anandpur shutter and put out the studio lights silence the sound effects and put the cameras to sleep can I ever watch the sunrise on Sunset Boulevard and the sunset over Forest Lawn will I ever find real furniture among the studio props silence in a disc effect love in a striptease read truth of an autocue chase it on the wings of music view it in living color with the news or hear it in living sound along the motorways no not in the wind that rent the mountains and broken pieces of the rocks not in the earthquake that followed nor in the fire that followed the earthquake I think I could probably hear it in that still small voice if I could only catch it not in the screeching of tires either the grinding of brakes or the roar of jets or the whistle of sirens or the howl of trombones of rattle of drums or the chanting of demo voices again and again and again I long for that still small voice if I could only catch it the voice of God in this clutter of noise how can I ever hope to hear what life is all about Muggeridge has touched the nerve of the question truth may be described philosophically as that which corresponds to the propositional reality that is asserted that's a theoretical description but truth ultimately is the pursuit of existential meaning and significance in your life and mind so not just truth about life it's truth about what life is truly about and as I look at war where America is headed and where we've lost our definitions where we can ultimately find meaning in front of a screen rather than spending time in relationships where we can spend so much time in boardrooms and chambers and not listen to the cry of our kids or their voices we have to find answers we have defined balance we have to find the truth about what life is all about but what has happened as a result now we have come to this postmodern philosophy starting off with rationalism moving on to metaphysical skepticism and then heading on to empiricism and then existentialism and now in post-modernism if you were to give three Frazee illogical descriptions of post-modernism this is what it would be no truth no meaning no certainty no truth no meaning no certainty you take truth meaning and certainty out of life what have you got empty bodies moving from day to day without any concept of destiny or real meaning let me just give you a very simple example of this and then try to draw it to close my grandson Jude is about to celebrate one of his birthdays a few weeks from now and we are reminded of it constantly when he was three and a half years old his mother my daughter Naomi had lost her car keys and she is running around the house looking for it and she finally snapped her forehead and said I must be losing my mind and this little guy and he's a very little guy comes in front of her and he looks at his mother and he says mummy whatever you do please don't ever lose your heart because I'm in there the Bible says out of the mouths of babes you have ordained praise Chesterton said I have learned more from observing children and I have ever learned from attending lectures and philosophy how did we end up in a world where so little is really going on in our heart that matters and so much is going on in the mind that ultimately one day disappear as a vapor three moods secularization globalization and privatization those are modern are not my terms they were graphically described by the brilliant brand social thinker Peter Berger in the 70s and 80s I had an interview with Peter Berger once as he visited our office in Atlanta and I talked him about this and it is fascinating how he even retracted some of his own thinking from those days a very very honorable man but he talked about three moods coming in the 70s secularization pluralization privatization secularization where religious ideas institutions and interpretations have lost their social significance hear me again where religious ideas institutions and interpretations have lost their social significance that's what America is sick ulam this worldly fascinating at a time where India is moving more towards its roots in Hinduism the Middle East moving mainly Moe back to the Islamic world view we in this secularized worldview have not only marginalized religious ideas we have a bitted them from any discussion and if anyone brings a transcendent worldview into the discussion he or she is ipso facto dismissed as being highly prejudiced and subjective while everyone else is considered thoroughly objective and rational but what happens if you take secularization to its logical outworking I'll tell you what happens ultimately you will build a generation and a society which has lost its sense of shame because definitions are gone definitions are lost there is no ultimate antic referent for value definitions this was the first temptation faced in the created order what was the temptation do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because the day you do this you'll surely die now we have spent more time discussing the Apple you know as one of our professors used to see the percent the problem is not the apple on the tree it was the pear on the ground so what is it that's going on you know what's going on who is going to be the definer of good and evil that's what's going on don't play God there's only one prohibition don't play God and once we violated that law think of the thousands of laws that we now have to have the health law the health care law's go into thousands of pages you can't even get onto a plane without them telling you don't touch tamper disable or destroy the smoke detector that just say don't mess with it why is the touch stop or disable destroy because every word dies the death of a thousand qualifications in a courtroom because we violated the first law not to be the definer of good and evil that's precisely what has happened we have become the definers of good and evil and we are now autonomous a law unto ourselves secularization going to its logical outworking will lead to a generation without shame pluralization will ultimately lead to in logic you hear these statements all religions are fundamentally the same and superficially different anybody who says that doesn't understand these religions they're not fundamentally the same and superficially different they are superficially the same and fundamentally different the primary assertions are very varied in all of these and if you take pluralization to its logical out working in a culture by the way all these things are good things I mean if you go to Los Angeles you can see a fast food outlet where a Korean is selling kosher tacos that's brilliant pluralization in cuisine having its marvelous fertilization is a good thing in the name when I came to Canada I was twenty years old that I was desperately looking for an Indian restaurant there was one it was called India house which was an absolute disgrace and a kind of an offense to the Indian palate and I will hoped and prayed that they will ultimately shut down and some genuine Indian cook will come today view good at all when I go came to Toronto 1966 there were 500 Indians in Toronto today there are 500,000 Indians in Toronto if you go into the airport and just shout mister saying how does that I'm about to turn around you this is I love it I love it our team is full of international speakers love the accents love the perspectives love the insights love the languages there are some things I can still say in Hindi that I don't think I can ever fully translate into English there's a phrase if you insult somebody they'll say is not a falooda BA Nadia you know what that means you have taken my self-respect and made a spaghetti out of it how graphic realisation is a good thing it's a good thing but if pluralization leads you to believe that logic no longer applies to reality you are violating the very systemic necessity with which we were framed secularization can lead to no shame pluralization to no reason and finally privatization can lead to no meaning what is privatization of America we're told again and again believe whatever you want to believe in the sacred but keep it to your private life don't bring it into a public world there's an amputation that goes on and you're not allowed to carry the sacredness of your private belief into the public theater or the public arena what happens then is the death of meaning death of meaning songwriters say this long before philosophers will say it they will touch the nerve of reality King Crimson writing in the 60s gets what iron claw neurosurgeons screen football from paranoia's poisoned or 21st century schizoid man blood rag barbed wire politicians funeral pyre innocence rape in napalm fire 21st century schizoid man dead seed blind man's green poet starving children bleed nothing is god he really needs 21st century schizoid man the walls on which the prophets wrote is cracking and the seams upon the instruments of death the Sun light brightly gleams with no one lay the laurel wreath the silence drowns the screams between the iron gates fade the seeds of time are sown watered by the deeds of those who know and who are known knowledge is a deadly friend when no one such the rules the fate of all mankind are seized in the hands of fools confusion will be might be tough as a crawler cracked and broken but if we make it we can all sit back and laugh but I'm afraid tomorrow I'll be crying the Moody Blues why do we never get an answer on a knock in the middle with a thousand million questions about hate and death and war because when we stop and look around us there's nothing that we need in a world of persecution that is whirling in its greed why do we never get an answer when we knocked on the door and it ends with this I'm looking for a miracle in my life I'm looking for someone to change my life there's the answer I'm looking for a miracle in my life if you turn to the Scriptures in John 3:16 there's a very simple verse for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life depending on which translation you take is 30 some words I read it one day and I just wrote this down I said it's amazing I read it again and again and again what do I see in here the starting point is filial God is our Heavenly Father the giving is unconditional he gave the reception is relational so that whoever believes the arrangers eternal shall have everlasting life and the core is judicial because there is a moral law at work in this filial unconditional relational eternal judicial years ago I was driving through the main highway in Toronto where we lived at that time my wife's from Canada we're living in Toronto and there's snowy night and I saw figure tottering on the side and I said from earth am i seeing something or is this real and I slowed down I was already going slow because the highway slippery and it's surely a young man I gradually pulled to a slow halt I didn't want to want to make sure I didn't get too close and hit him in anyway I got out of my client he was just swaggering like this I said can I help you said sir I've lost can you take me to my home and Downsview I said about heading there but I will I'll take you so he got in and he said to me thank you for stopping on a night like this you don't know who I am I said no I really don't but you were going to get hit out there he said what do you do I was young in ministry I said I'm a speaker so what do you speak about said I speak about God and what Christ son sir it was not completely clear earnest thinking I said you know I'm leaving tomorrow morning to go to Calgary Edmonton something I'll fly back and I see you next week you said yes please he said can I have your address I said yes I gave it and I said can I have yours the new exchange I said I come back to call you when I came back it was a message waiting for me it burned himself to death and in that envelope I've written these words lost in a world of darkness without a guiding light seeking a friend to help my struggling failing flight so all of you good people just go on passing by leaving me with nothing but this lonely will to die for somewhere in this lonely world of soul and of woe there's a place for me to hide but where I do not know wherever I go I never can escape the devil's reaching touching hands or the drink unfermented grape so perhaps out of my grief and anguish some wandering boy will see and learn to build his own life true and good and free they're connected truth goodness and freedom I present you Jesus Christ is the way the truth and the life who loves you and me and God is good and he seeks the best in your heart and mine I learned that at the age of 17 I have only grown deeper and deeper in my love for him and when you learn to follow him you will find the truth of exactly what I am saying to you without shame without reason and rod meaning the world is skidding out of control Christ offers eternal life within the moral law that he has put in this world we would love to interact with you now thank you so much for giving both of us a patient so much to think about and both Vince and Ravi are giving us another gift for the next 30 minutes to interact around questions there are two microphones one on each side in the inside aisle if you would feel free to go up there and if I could remind you just to take a moment when you think about your question to make it clear and concise and relevant to what you heard tonight and then there will be somebody at the microphone just going over your question with you to make sure especially for those of you that have skeptical questions or secret questions you're able to get those in before the evening is over so we're going to invite anybody that would like you to come to the microphone again just to keep your questions very clear and we'll have a campus interested Isis I know you just clap for them but thank you so much it was just delightful to hear you both yesterday and then again tonight really remarkable [Music] [Applause] over here hello thank you for being here I was born into a Christian family and as a child I used to pray for death to be the end so there could be no heaven or hell I came to know the Lord when I was 19 and held on to him throughout my undergraduate and graduate career but I struggle with what I see as a disconnect between what scripture says that by His stripes we are healed and all the people in my life stood up died of cancer despite prophetic words the latest revivals in anointing ministries and fads and I often ask pastors and get unsatisfactory answers like well the person didn't have enough faith or it might have just not been God's will or what really does it for me is where they point to that verse in scripture where Jesus says that he came to a town and such was their own belief that he was not able to perform any miracles and I confess that I am struggling with this in my face today and I wonder what you can say about that thank you they take the first shot at it and I'm sure Vince might add because why don't you be here for your pieces I'm supplying a painting like this all the master in action thank you for such an honest question and I won't have an easy answer for you first time I ever really spoke with someone who was hurting on this topic it was my aunt Regina and I started to give all my philosophical responses to a question like yours and she turned to me and she said that doesn't speak to me as a mother I've always been slower to respond to these sorts of questions since then and I think Jesus was as well when Jesus is good friend Lazarus died he waited before going and when he got there Mary and Martha reading between the lines were saying why didn't you come sooner if you had been here my brother would not have died and I believe as a Christian that Jesus could have given a good answer but he didn't he he just wept with them and and that is utterly unique to the Christian faith that we have a God who weeps with us we're not going to understand in full I don't think that's a cop-out I think that if God is as big as we think that he is and we are as small as we are just like a child doesn't fully understand apparent ways and why he does and doesn't at different times allow what's allowed if a child can't fully understand a parent's ways and I don't think I should be able to fully understand God's ways but I know that Ravi and I right now have a good friend who is in latter stages of cancer and it's incredibly incredibly difficult and I'm so thankful as a Christian that when I pray with him and for him I do believe I can pray with confidence I pray with confidence that he will be healed what I don't know is whether that will be in this life or whether that will be in the next life but I don't pray with uncertainty wondering whether or not he will be healed I pray with the confidence knowing that he will be healed what we see right now seems like everything but we are actually seeing just the very beginnings of life from an eternal perspective if you saw only the first five minutes of my life you would think it was a horror story I was premature there was an emergency caesarean section my mom is yelling the doctors come in they cut right into her stomach blood everywhere I get taken out she's yelling for me and the doctors rushed me out of the room if that was all that we saw we would think that the doctors were utterly evil the reality is that they cared for my mom extremely well and they saved my life as well but we can only see that when we see it in the context of a much larger story and I believe these Christians that we have a much larger story the book of Job at the beginning of that book job loses everything he loses family he loses home he loses wealth at the end of the book it says that God gave back a double portion to job of everything that had been lost job gets back twice the number of animals exactly he gets twice the amount of wealth but he only gets back the same number of children he lost ten children at the beginning of the book he's only given back ten at the end of the book why is that and I think maybe it's because he hadn't lost those ten children he's not with them for a time but actually he can be with them perhaps for all time could it be the case that God is big enough and powerful enough and loving enough to be writing a story like that in your life as well and in the lives of those that you love that is hearted as it is right now actually there will be a redemptive eternity where you can be with many of those people for all eternity in the context of friendship why should we trust that why should we have any confidence in that again I think only because of the uniqueness of Christianity a God who would come down and live a human life he didn't have to live suffer a human death that he didn't have to suffer as he's there on the cross Father forgive them then a caring word to his mothers and make sure if she would be cared for it and then the offer of salvation to the criminal next to him because of his repentant heart this is a God who didn't have to die and came down and suffered everything we've suffered died the way that we will die and showed perfect integrity as he did so so is that a perfect answer no it's not but it is a hope for the future it is a confidence in a healing that will take place now or later and it's a trust in a God who has done what was necessary for us to believe that we can trust him I hope that's at least an initial encouragement [Applause] Tuscon over here hello hi dr. Zacharias you quite often mentioned that there are autonomous and heteronomous and theocratic worldview in this world and a lot of people live within those three worldviews and in a secular society like current America so how does Christian ideology lay in this category so Christian ideology doesn't seem like neither autonomous North Dakota and I was wondering how to balance our actions in this society and properly voice our worldview in a secular society thank you yeah you're talking about the Theon immerse heteronomous an autonomous thread of culture and value yes yep then there is theocratic becomes actually a full fourth category where some some religions are theocracies not even Theon immerse their theocracies they dictate more like the heteronomous mold but I follow exactly what you're saying and so your question is a very legitimate one and it's it was the glory of this country for many many years where we had a civility in discussion and disagreement and I long for those days where we can in a civil fashion and in a courteous fashion learn to withstand criticism and counter perspectives if you go to some parts of the world today especially theocracies like it all or whatever for you to stand on a street corner and share your faith in any other world view either atheistic or Christian or Buddhist or whatever you're running the risk of your life being taken from you that is an oppressive controlling of people's minds and beliefs and actually reveals a weakness within the belief system that feels it needs to do this kind of enforcement in order to perpetuate its belief that then moves away actually from just religious belief to political theory and it is an enforcement of a political ideology upon religion and weds the - and whenever you politicize religion you lose both aspects you lose the political aspect and you lose the religious aspect because I think what God did right from the beginning is a very important thing he gave us the freedom to believe or to disbelieve that's what a truly secular society must do give us the freedom to believe or to disbelieve and what has happened unfortunately and I point my fingers principally to the intellectual and the academic world where in a cowardly way they started to mock the Christian faith some of those universities were founded by Christians for the whole idea of study and education and finding unity and diversity with the judeo-christian underpinnings in the world views but once the secularists and the naturalness and the atheists or the humanists so-called took over those academies they evicted the Christian faith I I remember taking lectures in university where the professor would Mock the Christian faith he never had the courage to mock Hinduism or Buddhism or Islam in the latter he probably would not be returning for his second lecture but they didn't have the courage to do that and I think that's the wrong use of the intellect is the wrong use of the Academy I'm very grateful to God for the way the academic world has opened its doors to our team and to our speakers whether it's Oxford or Cambridge or whether it's John Hopkins or Harvard or Princeton or Cornell Dartmouth we've been to all of these and I've been in universities in Jakarta and in India last year was in Delhi University in two of its primary colleges and all we do is present the truth claims of the judeo-christian worldview or deal with a philosophical issue and throw it open for questions intelligent people ought to be able to make up their minds on these matters anybody who's forced into a religious belief is not really following God they are coerced into conforming to a belief system ultimately belief has to come from the heart and faith has to come through heart so what I say to you how do you live in this kind of a society Jesus said let your light so shine before men that they will see your good works and glorify a father who is in heaven be an example by how you live how you behave how you respond for no matter what our disagreements are there is never a risk excuse to be unloving towards the opponent of your worldview against love there is no more and when you love the opposing worldview in the counter perspective dialog interact ask questions when you ask questions of a person it does two things it opens them up within their own assumptions and determines the entry point of the discussion where we in America have failed as Christians I believe we've never bothered to understand what the other worldviews are what does the Buddhist world truly believe what does Taoism believe what does Islam believe what is Hinduism bleah so sometimes those who come from those perspectives actually look down and say have you ever understood what I actually believe in you're not talking to me about what you believe if you take time to understand the first step in the effective evangelism is asking questions and learning and when you learn you will find out how unique the judeo-christian world views it is only in the judeo-christian worldview that you have grace and forgiveness in every other worldview you pay in every other worldview you pay you pay either through your good deeds being out weighing your bad deeds or through the karmic cycle of repetition and so on but Christ welcomes you and me with grace and forgiveness and love the gospel will shine in splendor when you put it besides anything contradictory or of another perspective in the world you live out learn to understand learn to listen and when the gospel comes through clearly it will be seen in all of its beauty and all of its splendor why Jesus is truly the way the truth and the my big toe [Music] [Applause] hi I'm Lucero beams and I don't know how relevant this question is they sent me up to a second of the line so so I do believe that there is a God but I'm still going back and forth to the worshipping on him and my question is why would anyone ever or what would I ever want to worship a God that I feel has been so horrible and just to my sex when I look at Genesis and when I look at the Old Testament there are a lot of really cruel punishments that have been put upon women and the way that God has set the system of in a marriage is that the husband is the head of the household and that has I feel like has set a really really bad like domino effect on how women have been treated throughout history and I who come from a hem family of a lot of abuse and marriages from my husband and wife we very strongly okay so is God the reason why like in so many cultures women are deemed so much lesser than the man and so much so they're supposed to be submissive and all of that happy to take a start at your question and it's a really good question my wife Jo is actually writing a book is the Bible sexist we have a cousin who her main stumbling block to becoming a Christian is the thought that God is sexist and I wish my wife was here now but she loves speaking to this question because we actually think that when you take a detailed look at the Bible it's actually incredibly Pro women now hear me say that Christianity like anything else has been abused at times I would ask you not to judge a philosophy by its abuse right none of us would want to be judged by the abuse of our words or the way that our words have sometimes been used when actually that's not how they were intended or that's not even what we said there is a challenge here because as we read the Bible it's not always going to be the case that we just read it on first glance and it just makes obvious sense to us but that is okay it's a book written thousands of years ago portions of it from a very different cultural context I remember when Joe first came to visit my family in New Jersey she was looking at me and my mom having a conversation in the kitchen through a glass window and she saw us getting more and more animated and the hands were flying and and were yelling and my mom's chopping garlic at this point and so every few moments she starts waving the knife in my direction now my wife's British okay so I'm an italian-american from New Jersey my wife is British and she comes up to me after this conversation my mom and I go our separate ways her first time meeting my family and she comes up to me and she goes is everything going to be okay and I had no idea what she was talking about she thought World War three had just broken out and actually me and my mom were just having a really agreeable conversation we were just affirming each other I had to tell her that that's just how Italian Americans express love towards one another and sometimes with certain things in the Bible we read things on first glance and they don't make as much sense that they do if we actually understand the cultural context that's Joe trying to figure out my cultural context in a globalized world in the 21st century and she still had that much difficulty so it's understandable that sometimes we go to the Bible and we can have difficulty with some of these passages okay the idea of of a woman not uncovering her hair in the context of a worship service that to me seems very odd from my cultural perspective but when I understand how sexualized the hair was at that time when I understand that having the head covering would be a sign of being married then it starts to make some more sense to me right I don't Joe wouldn't want me to my wedding ring off when I come up here to speak because I'd rather people not know that I'm married the symbolism for having the head covered was something similar to that in that context so it doesn't make sense to me in this context but actually it does make sense in that context and then we look especially at the way that Jesus treated women how close women were to him as his disciples the fact that women supported him at times the fact that he allowed women to sit at his feet now again sit at his feet in my context I'm not sure what that means but in that context that means specifically to be one of the honored disciples this is at a time where it was considered blasphemous to teach a woman and Jesus has women sitting at his feet as his beloved disciples and as his specific students of great affections so there are all sorts of things like this one of the biggest ones is that it's women who first encounter the resurrection our beliefs every one of us in this room in Christianity in Jesus as risen from the dead goes back to the honor that Jesus bestowed on women to be the first to uncover the empty tomb and then to share that and then for that to be passed down through the generations you mentioned specifically the idea of headship that in the context of marriage there's some form of headship between a man and a woman the Bible also talks about there being headship between God and Jesus so it can't be that that's meant to be in a dominating domineering hierarchical sort of way otherwise we're not Trinitarians so this is just a starting point for thinking about it but please feel free to talk with me afterwards and please keep looking into this because when you understand the Bible in the context of its cultural context I think Jesus is radically radically Pro women who's very good news not just for men but for women as well [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi so you said that with secularism accompanies basically a loss of shame and my question is why if somebody were to derive their values from secular moral reasoning what violating those values not being about shame the last line again please why would somebody why if somebody were to derive their values from secular reasoning secular moral reasoning would they not feel shame for violating those values okay it's a good question and I'll turn that around slightly and then get back to the way you phrased it first of all I haven't I have an illustration that I'd have time to go into on this when in the 1980s in Atlanta there was a major major trial going on on the whole issue of pornography and founder of one of the major pornographic magazines was under trial and the Jada witnesses had said his pornography pornography was so vile that it actually made playboy look like a very comfortable house whole reading piece of literature and went on to show how graphic and how perverse this production was and there were witnesses against it the lawyer defending the pornographer came up to him him up and called up witnesses who had witnessed against is his client and he said this have you ever gone into an art gallery where there are paintings by the grandmasters the answer be yes have you ever paid to go in yes have you ever paid to go into those art galleries where they're sometimes paintings of unclothed or loot people see how they were there will you please tell this jury why you call that art and when you look why you call my clients productions pornography he moved in a clever clever direction there was no point of secular definition for what qualified as art and what fighters pornography because the end result was basically the same an unplowed human body so that's the first thing there are no points of reference for definition of absolutes in fact if secularism yields anything it ultimately yields that life itself becomes desacralized because life is the random collocation of atoms we are here by chance we are an accident how do we arrive at moral reasoning how do we arrive at right or wrong what is an absolute an absolute is something like this if you're stopping at a traffic light and you're just daydreaming for a moment and all of a sudden you look at the car next to you and you're not sure if he's moving or you're moving but you know one of you two is moving and just to be sure it's not you because the life is light is still red you put your foot on the brake because you want to make sure you're not moving but what if after you put your foot on the brake you're still not sure if you're moving or he is moving you would look to something in movable like a lamppost or a tree or a building and measure yourself by that fixed structure in secularism there is no fixed structure culture is in flux and the very idea of shame becomes reprehensible in some secularized cultures you could walk through the streets of some parts of Europe and see all the prostitution and it's heinous expressions and my daughter works with rescuing women and children from the sex trafficking industry and it is interesting to me when she's talked to me she said dad almost every one of these customers that comes and plunders these women with it's Cambodia or Amsterdam or Bangkok or South Africa or even the streets of Mumbai wherever you go so almost every one of them has the pathway to that with an uncontrolled appetite into pornography till finally they want something actually in this role and something very concrete if the body is desacralized what is wrong with any of this it really isn't so why can't a secularized consciousness have shamed it may and it can but with the shifting landmarks of absolutes the very idea of shame is going to change because what was right five years ago will not become wrong today or the other way around it's only with an ultimate purpose of which God has created you that shame comes in now here's a very important point I want to make to you very important point I was giving this careful thought some weeks ago and I thought to myself what is the difference between sin and evil think about that we're all sinners we all falter we all make mistakes and when God speaks to Cain he tells him if you do what is right will you not be accepted but if you do not do what is right sin is crouching at the door it desires to have you sinned uncontrolled and unbounded when it is given totality of expression will ultimately become evil we all falter as sinners but when I seek the destruction of somebody else that becomes evil at that point so I say to you in secular eyes consciousness when we do not even have the vertical notion of sin and it is all either preferred or not preferred or violent good or bad then one day you end up with people taking swords and beheading others in the name of some supreme idea and evil and stake and hold at that moment where they are not merely faltering but they are seeking the destruction of others that's why Jesus said the two greatest Commandments that vertical love and then the horizontal love to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and all your soul and all your strength and your neighbor as yourself' of these to hang all of the laws on the profits without the first the second is with your feet nearly planted in midair because we are created in a day we protect one another's dignity I have no right to violate you so the transcendent informs the horizontal without the transcendent the horizontal is up for grabs and any culture can make its own choices that's why when God gave the Ten Commandments he gave the preamble I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt therefore you shall have no other gods before me Redemption will always precede righteousness not the other way around you are redeemed first then you're righteous and then you worship the is this on great the good news is the bad news the good news is this has been fabulous the bad news is this is going to need to be the last question and then we'll literally not only afterwards thank you very much good evening want to know we are thankful that you're here and my name is Yama me and my question is for dr. the carriers please do bear with me because I've had these questions of the past seven years but I've had it in my mother tongue so I'm just translating it into English the question is that I am a Brahmin convert and my question is that how do you approach a culture that is far from logic but it is so much rooted in superstitions and so basically ancestral pride you know it has been handed over from our fathers and great-grandfather's and how do you answer them who says that they believe in the trust and they believe in everything but they believe that they have chosen one path to truth and that is Brahman Hinduism you know so and honestly saw the commercial Christianity that is rampant so much in my country right now doesn't make it easy at all so for everything that I say I'm struggling together into the hope that is within me so this is my question to you please thank you very much and sadly this commercial versions in every religion I mean you can see the commercialization of the whole bhakti movement and all of that and the yoga movement and all my goodness I could tell you story after story after story of how people have been exploited into believing things and as Vince said early you never have a judge a system by its abuse you have to just just heard Union by its intrinsic worth Zach Gulen is here who has got 70 churches planted in India he'd be the best one to come up here and answer to you how exactly to do it in our homeland to speak in be Gigi in Hindi it says humble Earth Academy have I am also a person on the soil in Hindi there are two songs I want to quote for you and I'll translate it for the rest of you from the film Mother India probably one of the greatest films India has ever produced the neo mayhem I hear the Jeana he Prager Giavanna hair there is a head of the penis a bodega that famous song if I have come into this world I have to live if living means drinking poison I'm going to drink it one of the most famous songs in the 60s from Mother India if I've come into this world I have to live it living means drinking poison I have triggered where did that come from kashi Dicky MacLeod acheter Beeman come into the military to our colony kyoki I've been to all the holy cities of India the singer says but my heart is still empty where am I going to find happiness nama Bhagwan hunama shaitaan who the NeoGeo jaha soldier mother and son who I'm not God I'm not a human being and not I'm not the devil you can choose what you will I'm a human being these are the songs of India this is what they sing even after they go through their sacred scriptures there are no answers there is the continual pursuit that's why the cyclical nature of reality you come back and you come back and you come back all of the pantheistic worldview has two realities to them reincarnation and karma reincarnation and karma why did the bhakti movement develop after Brahmanism and all of the Vedas why did it come to be in the story of the Gita you remember Arjuna and Krishna Krishna as the chariot driver nor Arjuna is going to war to fight against his own brothers and Krishna is giving him all the counsel and the advice only he doesn't know who this person is and then through that conversation krishna talks about the need for a Prajapati a sacrifice but there is no sacrifice provided in there it's just an idea so how you reach many of the our fellow human beings you know one thing about Indians if you talk about religion you don't have enough hours in the day to end the discussion what they'll talk you out of your breath and go on and on and on but I have gone back three or four times a year I go back to India give those invitations priority standing very near you is a good friend of mine promoter Huck right there in the second row coming from a background promoters a Hindu name Huck is a Muslim name comes from an extraordinary story and he told us a story just the other day had breakfast I come to Ravi Zacharias Sakurai's was not the original name for my ancestry it was an embroidery they came from the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood in Kerala the namboodiri swung that the Apostle Thomas went to reach and after he reached seven Hindu priests ultimately he paid with his life but I'll tell you what it is not so much what you share but how you share it with the Indian mind because of the very thing you named the commitment and the respect and the love your family and your parents you have to be very wise in how you share it and show them that you can be a better son than a better daughter and that Christ has paid for all of the sins that we talked about and the fatalism that we sing about and so let me give you the simple illustration and outcomes with that and here we could go on and on but we'll stay a few of us or say to answer your questions one on one let me put it this way as a guy in Atlanta it's a friend of mine his name is on rock he would come and see me every Sunday for five hours of questions I was exhausted I toyed with the idea of charging him for that time but it would stop because an Indian watch his wallet very carefully and one day my wife came to me and afterwards she said you know I'm sitting in the next room Sunday after Sunday listening to this you guys are saying the same thing every Sunday he's asking the same things you're giving him the same answer as I said McGee in India when you greet somebody you saying I must stay when you're saying goodbye you say namaste because you don't know whether you're coming or going we do the same thing again and again we go around in circles and I said he's Indian what do you expect from him so one day he comes with his wife and she's listening to all of this and she's he says to her I'm ready to make my commitment but if he will do it with me she says on a rug I will do it with you on one condition we go back home and tell both of our parents what we've done easier no no nope not right and he started talking in Hindi that it was too much to ask so the next Sunday he came he said I have two questions for you now I said thank God it's come down to two one of them was this I said uh nuraghe I'd asked him the previous Sunday how many births and reboots have you had he said I don't know I said but if you start from now you go backwards you have a finite number of births otherwise you would never have reached this book he said that's right so you agree you've had a finite number of births from now going backwards he said yes I said but you told me every birth is a rebirth in every rebirth as a payment for the previous birth he said that's right I said what were you paying for in your first birth so I just left that with him so he comes back he said ruddy sob pretty sir I've been thinking yes I had to have a first birth but I've been thinking something else he said when I borrow money from a bank the bank manager tells me how much I owe and how much time I have to pay it back I said yeah he said the bank manager is kinder than the Kermit law he said karma I don't know how much I owe and I don't know how much time I have to pay it back I said now you're really thinking he said and then it dawned on me that the cross of Jesus Christ is the only answer to my predicament of karma today if you were to phone on rock he will tell you he lives across he loves the cross there's never a message from him but that he mentions the cross and then one day he phoned he said I want to tell you something I phoned a friend of mine from IIT Bombay where we were classmates Indian Institute of Technology he said that guy was number one in class I was never number one so I hated it he said I phoned him and told him please forgive me for hitting you I have become a follower of Jesus Christ is the man was silent on the other on the phone he said Anurag so am i I've given my life to Jesus too this is happening in significant numbers across the nation here's my colleague Sankara if you heard his testimony you'd have tears running down your face and I'm sure as a component would tell you story after story there are amazing stories taking place don't lose heart you sow the seed it is God who gives the increase and you will be surprised [Music] maybe in the humility of America we can say in the Bay Area if it can happen in India perhaps it can happen here as well I just read a book this last week who talked about every step we make towards Jesus even those of us that are already following him if anything brings us even one millimetre closer and surely tonight has done that and for those of us in this room something significant may have happened and then when we leave today we live in an area that has 11 counties 256 cities and could easily be considered the darkest metropolitan area in our country and so those of us in this room who follow Jesus buoyed up by what we've learned today for both our minds and our hearts can go out and be the gospel so that maybe in the years to come the San Francisco Bay Area might be the most Kingdom connected metropolitan area in the entire United States because if it can happen here it can happen anywhere there's a card of resources before you go for everyone that came tonight and register you'll receive a series of just three emails that will tie you back to different talks that Robin has given just to keep this alive in your heart and I'm going to ask Brian to come up and we feel would close us in prayer tonight thank you thank you so much one tonight rich wonderful wonderful let me pray for us as we prepare to leave father we are thankful for gifts like Ravi and Vince thank you Lord God for safe spaces to ask questions and to wrestle with the deep issues of life god I do pray that you would continue to speak to each of our hearts that you would continue Lord God to be with us as we go on this journey and that we would find our ultimate sense of rest meaning value and significance in you and the gift of your son Jesus Christ who died on the cross for our sins thank you for that Lord Jesus now bless us as we leave this place keep us safe and free from harm it is in Jesus name we ask amen amen thank you for coming good night [Music] wonderful [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] lift up your voice we toy

Channel: Abundant Life Christian Fellowship

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Id: 83viNnPdmTI

Length: 111min 23sec (6683 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 06 2017