Ravi Zacharias - God's Protection: You Are Safe In His Arms - August 13, 2018

you can go through the pages of any worldview and any religion I'll guarantee you something you will never find what you will find in the pages of the Gospels in every religious worldview you pay in Buddhism you pay in Hinduism you pay the whole cyclical world of karma in Islam you pay you ask any devout Muslim how do you hope to gain entrance into paradise his answer will be very straightforward to you I'm not making a caricature of this this is a legitimate authentic Islamic doctrine that your good deeds will have to outweigh your bad deeds and when those good deeds outweigh your bad deeds you make your entrance into paradise and the metaphor of that paradise is in sensual terms I know a man from Iraq who told me that when he walked to the mosque on Fridays he would determine which mosque he went to based upon how miserable a week he'd had in his behavior the worse he'd been through the week he'd go to a father away mosque and count the number of steps he was taking so that his good deeds without way his bad deeds I remember some years ago being asked to speak at the United Nations at their prayer breakfast and they wanted me to speak on the search for absolutes in a relativistic age it's tough at any hour of the day leave alone early in the morning and because of the nature of the setting you're only given a handful of minutes 18 to 20 minutes and it's understandable but what's even more daunting is that there's a plurality of worldviews are out there so you have to be very careful how you even approach the gospel so my approach has always been take about 18 minutes to talk about something with which you'll find the common ground and take the last five to seven to bring the gospel into it so I said what absolutes are you looking for what areas you're looking for an absolute to define evil you talk about evil empires here which means you must have a definition for evil you talk about justice you have to be able to define what justice is and find a non tech point of reference for true justice and you have left your families in your home and you love them but in your heart you're tempted and you want to honor the dictates of love and the demands of love you need an absolute evil justice love I said sometimes you're gonna blow it big time and you're gonna come to your mates to ask for pardon forgiveness what is the basis on which you even can be forgiven evil justice love and forgiveness I said ladies and gentlemen can I ask you this question do you know where in the world these four converged on a given day it was on a hill called Calvary who an evil justice love and forgiveness came together in that historic moment of the Pacific let me let me let me take you to an incredible conversation us counselors know this better there are times when the headwinds are so strong in the in the situation can you find yourself in and desperately at that moment you are crying out to God for what for wisdom to take you beyond learning to take you beyond understanding you want the right word you want to touch the right nerve you want to bring healing and so it is with us as evangelists or apologists who stand in front of hostiles situate in hostile situations I had one such that I'll never forget it was just a few years ago as a guest of the Archbishop of Canterbury five of us were invited because of him to go and talk to the antagonists in Israel we were dealing with the Israeli leaders and we were dealing with the Palestinian leaders mainly the religious leaders and on the last day we were in the home of one of the four founders of Hamas his name was Sheikh Talal he had been in prison for 18 years lost some of his children in suicide bombings and the archbishop led the talk and the dialogue was going on it was getting very intense the room was full and smoke just filling that that room after a big lunch we had barely begun the discussion friendly the archbishop looked at the others of us and said can each one of you just ask one question keep it brief and let's see what his answer is to you when might because it is a private setting I won't tell you the question I asked I asked a question and sheikh talal answered it I said Sheikh I really don't like your answer I said you and I may never see each other again I don't like your answer I said can I just say one thing to you sir and I hope you'll bear with me I said 5,000 years ago on a mountain not far from here a man called Abraham took his son up the mountain to offer him as an expression of his faith you remember that story he said yes I said let's not argue about which son right now I said but he took his son up that mountain and as the axe is about to come down God stops that arm and he says stop he said that's right I said what did God say he just stared at me I said God said stop I myself will provide he said that's right I said shake we are here in Ramallah very close to us as a hill 2,000 years ago God kept that promise this time he took his own son up that hill and this time the axe did not stop I said sheikh talal until you and I received the Sun God has provided we'll be offering our own sons and daughters on the battlefields of this world for position and land and power and prestige he looked at me there was such a stunned silence in the room and you know what folks I'd never thought of that before what I'd said just came on the spur of the moment and I thought brother I've really blown it the archbishop said I think it's time for us to go back now so we started to walk towards the stairways and I was just in the body or out of the body I couldn't tell and the archbishop put his arm around me and he said Ravi that was of God I said I sure hope so we went down and the sheikh sheikh talal followed the archbishop because he was the guest of honor and so I was hurriedly making my way towards our Jeep and the Sheikh hardly put the archbishop in his and came running towards mine I said that's it I'm gonna be there's a big solid guy could have had me for lunch that day just twirled me around and I have two metal rods in my back I thought brother this is it he twirled me around put his hand on my shoulder stared at me and I looked back and he patted me on both sides of the face kissed me on both sides of the face he said mrs. Aquarius you're a good man he said I hope someday I see you again and you could just see the eyes welling up with tears ladies and gentlemen I've been a proclaimer of the gospel for 42 years now I came to know Jesus Christ on a bed of suicide at the age of 17 in Delhi and the longer I've walked with my lord I have got a deeper and deeper conviction that this combination of grace love forgiveness and redemption is the marvelous truth of gospel that the world so desperately needs his description of my condition his provision for my malady thirdly his strength in my suffering remember Annie Johnston Flint who was orphaned arthritic cancerous blind incontinent lay in bed with eight pillows cushioning the boils on her body for being in bed so long for so many years she writes he giveth more grace when the burdens grow greater he sendeth more strength when the Labor's increase due added affliction he added his mercy to multiply trials has multiplied peace when we have exhausted our store of endurance when our strength has failed ere the days hath done when we reached the end of our hoarded resources our father's full giving has only begun his love has no limit his Grace has no measure his power has no boundaries known unto men for out of His infinite riches in Jesus he giveth and giveth and giveth again the Lord who gives succor sustenance internal strength and takes you through the dark nights of the soul his strength is made perfect in our weakness no time to expand but let me maybe let me just read this for you for Italy what James Stewart said is this it is a glorious phrase that he led captivity captive the very triumphs of his foes it means he used for their defeat he compelled their dark achievements to subserve his ends not theirs they nailed him to the tree not knowing that by that very act they were bringing the world to his feet they gave him a cross not guessing that he would make it a throne they flung him outside the gates to die not knowing that in that very moment they were lifting up all the gates of the universe to let the King of glory come in they thought to root out his doctrines not understanding that they were implanting imperishable in the hearts of men the very name they intended to destroy they thought they had God with his back to the wall pinned and helpless and defeated they did not know that it was God himself who had tracked them down to that point he did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil he conquered through it the description of your heart the provision for your malady the sustenance in your suffering and lastly the hope that he gives beyond the grave when my mother passed away I couldn't tell but think of just one word she was gone I was in my 20s when we lost her gone gone my dad asked me to complete the thought gone where and on my knees it came so comforting Lee my mother had not just gone she'd gone home gone home to be with her Heavenly Father she was a late comer to Christ three conversions after the resurrection Saul of Tarsus to Paul doubting Thomas to the Evangelist to India James the brother of Jesus so powerful in their testimonies to the resurrection of Jesus that changed history hope hope beyond the grave and hope for now my times gone so let me just close because I began but there's nothing like him in history Malcolm Muggeridge said this and the dis I closed give me your undivided attention will take me two minutes so so to say he said we look back upon history and what do we see empires rising and falling revolutions and counter-revolutions wealth accumulated and wealth disbursed Shakespeare has spoken of the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon I look back upon my own fellow countrymen in England once upon a time dominating a quarter of the world most of them convinced in the words of what is still a popular song that the God who made the mighty shall make them mightier yet I've heard a crazed cracked Austrian announce to the world dinner the establishment of a Reich that would last a thousand years I've seen in the Italian clown saying he was going to stop and restart the calendar with his own ascension to power I met a murderous George and bryggen in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the as a wiser than Solomon more humane than marcus aurelius more enlightened than ashoka I have seen America wealthier and in terms of military weaponry had the American people so desired take a route down a Caesar or an Alexander in the range and scale of their conquests all in one lifetime all in one lifetime all gone Gone with the Wind England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy Hitler and Mussolini dead remembered only in infamy Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades America haunted by the fears of running out of those precious fluids that keeps a motorway roaring in the smog settling with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam and the victory of the Don Quixote s of the media as they charge the windmills of Watergate all in one lifetime all in one lifetime all gone behind the debris of these solemn Superman and self-styled imperial diplomatists stands the gigantic figure of one person because of whom by whom in whom and through whom alone mankind might still have peace the person of Jesus Christ the questions that you thought the ad you had the answers to it didn't all I'm saying this philosophy has a place it has it has an argument legitimacy there's no doubt about it but philosophy alone will not lead you to God as you see in the Greek philosophers themselves they left the answer moot but then you move to theology you here see holiness omnipotence immutability omniscience all these great terms and they are wonderfully instructive terms we need our theologians we need our doctrine we need the correctness but at the end of all of that study - you feel something falls short and that falling short is what sometimes is the gap when you are looking at the sovereignty of God and what he has been sovereign over in your life for the moment you seem not to like it at all see I don't like what is happening to me and the sovereignty of God is not a good enough answer at that moment as Jobe himself found out and so vociferously argued not that it's not important it just falls short in in the in that in the realm of human experience and in the longing of the human heart where you want the sense in the presence of divine again it's valuable argument is valuable experiences valuable and you all these doctrinal terms are important to unpack and to - marvelously understand they are very very legitimate in their disciplines the Apostle Paul understood all of these things he understood them all very well he's a brilliant exponent of these ideas he sat at the feet of Gamaliel he was a Hebrew by birth the Hebrews gave to us our moral categories he studied in a Greek City the Greeks gave to us our philosophical categories he was a citizen of Rome Rome gave to us our legal categories he understood these things understood them well and then on that divine encounter on that road to Damascus where he finally met the risen Christ he writes in 2nd Corinthians 4:6 to the Hebrews for whom the quintessential metaphor was light to the Greeks for whom the quintessential essential expression was a knowledge to the Romans it was glory you've got the light the knowledge and the glory in three great cultures he writes to the church at Corinth God who caused the light to shine out of darkness has caused his light to shine in our hearts to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus our Lord what a beautiful verse what a beautiful verse to summarize in just a few words the converging beams of knowledge on a face it's a marvelous thing to ponder her see unto us a child is born and unto us a son is given the son wasn't born the son eternally existed the child was born the son was given how meticulously and carefully they chose their words now I want you to look at that face with me for a few moments because this very face is set with grim determination to a hill called Calvary and in John 17 you hear him praying for his disciples before he leaves and the struggle has begun the struggle of the flesh in itself because the very idea of the Cross excruciating literally comes out of the cross how painful it was and for him the very son of God all that was lying ahead of him you and I could probably never understand but three times in his prayer he says this Holy Father Holy Father Holy Father you know I didn't have a close relationship with my dad although I had a great admiration for him but he was a man plagued with a violent temper when he lost his temper and when he lost sober reasoning what used to break out in the house was undescribable I've told it in my book walking from east to west and before I sent it to print only sent it after they passed away and I sent for my brother and sisters so what do you think is it okay and one of them wrote back and said rather than ething you've gone very kindly on this Ray you've held back but you know one of the reasons I could hold back to was because it's all the way the story ended my dad my mom died when she was 57 my dad died five years after that so we lost them both very early in life but my dad came to know Christ just a few years before he passed away the most dramatic conversions of Sene he lived in toronto my brothers and sisters are all still in toronto and my parents are buried there and I lived in Niagara Falls Ontario at that time and I get this telephone calls son would you drive me to the hospital I'm doing elective bypass I said dad really he said yeah he said I think I need to it was in the early days of bypass had not yet brought it to a kind of excellence they have nervous quite overweight and not not to have really gone in dead but that's all past now so I Drive the 75 miles I pick him up and I take him in he says I wanted to talk to you alone I want to have this time with you no he was very close to my older brother and he lived in Toronto and he phones me so I knew things were gonna may dry be made right that day and in our culture for a father to have said the things he said to me was almost unthinkable really fathers never want to look weak in front of their kids in East they're always the big person on campus and when I finished and cinema on little knowing that I was not going to see him alive again I realized what I'd missed all those years what a description to give to us of God he is our Holy Father you need him I need him he exemplifies that which the human heart craves for that strong arm that is strong not only in strength but in the ultimate beauty of love I have a letter that I want to read for you this letter was written in 1989 it was written by a 12 year old a young boy by the name of McKittrick his name is McKittrick Simmons he's a grown man now and as a businessman in Atlanta but in 1989 his father was a successful businessman at the age of 41 had bought a property in Highlands North Carolina anyone then there no it's beautiful beautiful terrain out there just lovely and spectacular to see so he had rare Gregg Simmons had five chat five children the youngest was just a babe in arms and the one above her I think was about one if I'm not mistaken but McKittrick was 12 so Gregg phones a friend of his and also friend to bring his son and Greg takes his four kids so there's Greg and his friend with his son and four of his children and so the seven of them go and they are visiting the highlands and at one point the son McKittrick 12 looks at his dad and says dad can we go up to the waterfall too and he says I never walked up that close son why don't you come along so they walk up at a certain point he puts his arm out and tells all of the rest of them to stay he would check out the terrain and he takes one hesitant foot at a time took one too many and came cartwheeling down a quarter of a mile to his death his wife Kristi at home with the baby and the rest of them watch this happening I happen to be speaking in Chattanooga some time later and Greg had passed away his parents of staying in their home and they brought me this letter and I remember reading it then and I said I can't believe this has been written by a 12 year old and the parents of course crying their heart out there I sort of have the permission to use this said yes contacted Christiano Kristi had their permission here's what he writes to mrs. Wieland the wheel and family prominent builders in Atlanta to this very day dear miss whelan you don't know how much your family helped produce my father he admired your husband and you a lot he would talk about how good your faith was with God he tried to be as generous as you all have been to the church and many other good things since his death true friends were revealed your families of the top of our list you're a great source of energy for my mother and I my daddy loved you very much and was always trying to be like you daddy was like the one of the three men in the Bible who were given the talents by Jesus one went out and invested them and multiplied them one took some stock that failed and came out with nothing the last one buried them and did nothing with them all three returned in a few days and the Lord was pleased with the two had tried to multiply them but the third who came back with the same amount the Lord was disappointed because he didn't try my father multiplied and lost many things but he's always trying to please the Lord he got a lot of that a lot of that from your family miss whelan my daddy was a ristic and that's just the way he was Genesis 1:1 says in the beginning is God and that was the most important thing to my father in the beginning of my dad's life he was something special and eristic that was so that's what I saw brilliant and successful no one will understand how or why my daddy fell into the waterfall please do yourself a favor and don't try to figure it out my dad died for his children he was making sure it was safe for us to come up you may had different things but only six people saw it only three understand or understood what really happened that day I'm one of those my mom has lost her treasure chest her husband most of the others have lost Greg you've lost a best friend my grandparents have lost their son for us John and Barbara have lost their brother but ms Weiland it is different for me totally different for me he was my best friend in my idol but when I got my last glimpse of him falling down the falls I lost my most prized man on earth he was my father he was my one and only dad I had a dream of him three nights ago but it wasn't a dream my daddy is all right he told me himself thank you for being a true friend I love you a lot McKittrick simmons 12 imagine a world without a creator imagine that the darkness the destitute reality no you and I are the creation of a merciful loving Heavenly Father who are you gone you are my holy father that's who he is secondly the question goes did you not did you not deliver us before you know how important now experience becomes and knowing the presence of God the revelation of truth comes from his word in the beginning god but in that promise of all of the theory he gives us the promise of a relationship I don't think you will ever hear any other religion ever talk about a relationship with God you won't the Muslim will never talk about a relationship with God and consider that concept blasphemous blasphemous in relation to God was so distinctly the other pantheism you ultimately are divine yourself through your multiple reboots and life and yet here we we understand that he calls us to this relationship invites us to trust in him and know him that's why paul who knew christ chronologically in reverse order all of the others knew him from his book life death and resurrection he encountered Christ on the resurrection first that's why I said that I may know him the power of his resurrection and the Fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death he was moving from the destination point to the origin point he wanted to cover the gamut understanding who this Jesus really was even in his suffering not just the triumphal resurrection I came here from Connecticut where I was speaking at Connecticut Christian University for two days and the only reason I was there I told him that I said you know it's busy for me to travel I said I'm here for one reason the president's assistant is a woman called Wendy I've known Wendy from when she was a babe in arms the reason I knew her her father who led me to Christ she wasn't even born when he led me to Christ her father Fred David we used to live not far from here passed away last April and he came into my hospital room when I was 17 in Delhi and brought a Bible to me and I couldn't hold the Bible my body was dehydrated with the poison I'd taken my mother's English was rather struggling in itself and yet here in the King James she's gonna have to read to me he was not allowed to stay because I was in very critical condition but he opens it to John chapter 14 and tells over hot where to read it for me and he had to leave he passed away last year a few days before he passed away he spoke to me on the phone and he said Ravi I often think that the only reason I came into this world was to walk into your hospital room and give you a Bible I said no friend you did a lot more than that he said no man that's why I think so Fred you did a lot more than that so this one-year anniversary of his death Cincinnati Christian University wanted all that come and speak in memory oh and honor of that life you see I never opened the Bible I didn't even have one my ancestors came from the highest caste of the Hindu priesthood and there was a conversion that took place somewhere then it ultimately became nominal but a man prompted by God who comes into my hospital room and gives me that Bible and five days later I walk out of there a totally different man that's what my dad said to me what happened to you had to take the supernatural so I could never change you I could never change you and then I began to study and then I began to pursue understand why all this is true and Fred was always there on the sidelines cheering me on you know he never even went to car I don't even think he finished high school and yet he was prompted by God do you know him do you know you've met him and encountered him did you not so that you have that moment that you came to know him I know the moment I looked at my wife and said to her I love you will you marry me why that ultimate commitment of consummate love I remember the moment my little ones came into this world and I held them for the first time I remember the moment I preached my first sermon I remember the moment I got off a plane in Toronto Canada for the first time in the West and saying wow we're all the billion people over all these things how much more important to know the moment where you met the Living Christ when that happens to you you will know that divine encounter has taken place your innocence are you not did you not which brings me to the last will you not you know I said it in the last service alarm % sure that any one of you has a way to research this I think there's the middle verse in the Old Testament not sure do not be afraid or discouraged because this vast army for the battle is not yours but God's what a reassurance to Jehoshaphat this is not your war it's mine you know I look at the way our country is spiraling down into the vortex of moral suicide I am never recalled such disastrous decisions being made in such a rapid sequence redefining everything all with the pomposity that we've arrived in a lose heart and then you say no maybe we need somebody else up in this place somebody else are there I think we can make the right decisions and wiser decisions but ultimately it's not politics that's going to help us no country in the world is how people articulate today no countries in the war in the world everybody wants a change there's only one hope that hope isn't the Living God Billy Graham once was telling us around the table he said I'll never forget the day Konrad Adenauer the Chancellor of Germany looked me in the eye after he'd walked up to the window and looked at the ruins of the city and he came back and he said mr. Graham do you believe Jesus Christ really rose again from the dead Billy shocked and said Mr Adenauer if I didn't believe in that I would have no gospel to preach and he said Konrad Adenauer said to him this outside of the resurrection of Jesus Christ I know of no other hope for mankind outside of the resurrection of Jesus Christ I know of no other open man can the ramification of that statement is immense and I don't want to get sidetracked here justice morality all these other things get defined but I just want to say this to you I don't know what you may be going through right now in an audience like this some of you have to be hurting very deeply some of you may be struggling financially and you know how you're going to cope some of you hurting physically some of you struggling emotionally some of your families are falling apart some of you hurting for your children your grandchildren I see it I hear it all the time we've been to the valley to so many times you know and you walk there and you realize how do you make it with that God can do it trust him walk with Him as the Holy Father prayer he knew that without his father's will he would never have endured it and never gone toward it so I just want to say to you if you're hurting today and you're struggling get some moments alone with God and ask him to walk with you through that without him you will never be able to make it you will never be able to make it will make you cynical if not apathetic see in 1939 everything about the world was going to be redefined the war was looming with tens of thousands were going to be decimated King George the sixth with the stuttering malady went to the microphone because he knew somebody had to bring hope to this world he didn't know at that time during his speech that he himself had cancer within his body it became one of the most historic speeches that you can go into almost any bookstore in England and ask for King George the sixth speech in 39 because in them were these famous words I said to the man at the gate of the year give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown and he said to me go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you better than the light and safer than the know said to the man of the gate of the year give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown he said to me go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you better than the light and say no how do you put your hand into the hand of God yes sir take it read it imbibe it and you'll be surprised how he brings those words back to you just when you need them the worm the most I word is truth but there is an extension of that I believe the extension isn't fellowship believers such as you are here how you reach out across the aisle and hold a hand of a fellow believer who will represent the touch of God and the hope of God as you stand together in community if there's one prayer for my life in these days my team hears me say this you know the front end of the problem is evangelist on the back end of the problem is where do you send them when they come to know Christ churches like yours are rare we need the fellowship we need the community we need the building together of God's people go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you better the light and safer than the known it's a long story and I don't have time to go into it I will just tell you this from 1985 to 2012 I lived in pain every day because of my back cried out to him every day may 29 2012 a friend of mine comes from Singapore I don't have time to go into them he just said to me God had spoken to him the previous day and he

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Id: WvFuC1P4d6s

Length: 37min 35sec (2255 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2018