Ravi Zacharias: The Summit Aspen 2018

just to play some of that energy as well I'm 72 now and I still travel about 200 days a year so even though the gussto may have gone and they get up and goes got up and went the fact of the matter is still I'm getting up and going to about 200 days a year on the road as I said when my colleagues just came back from about three and a half weeks starting off in the UAE and then from there to went on from the UAE to Nepal from Nepal to India from India to Sri Lanka from Sri Lanka to the UK and got back and within a few short days doing another half a dozen countries beginning the first week of August so whether you're in the body or out of the body you cannot tell but you do show up and you try to do what God's asked you to do why then am I here I'm here for a very simple reason my love and admiration for Nabil and Mishelle Qureshi I don't think a day goes by Michelle but that I think of him honestly you gave me the shirt in which he preached his last sermon at was we were together in Malaysia it hangs in my closet I never dared to wear it because it belonged to a man who I admired so much and went all too soon but then again I think God just chooses the timing in which he brings people and the timing in which he takes people away from us so as I think of Nabil I think of him as I said it is funeral like a lot streak of lightning became just like oh who SH out of nowhere I still remember the first time we met and spirits remember how quietly you were sitting while Nabil and I talked about what role we could have him play he was quite an amazing guy many of you may not know some of the quite a side of Nabil we we know of him as sort of a racehorse and I always referred to misery remove the first time we were together I don't know whether we were in Johns Hopkins or where we were my colleague desange was with me and we sat down Annabel had a voracious appetite he could tuck it in between him and my other colleague Abdul Murray never got behind them in a buffet line or you'd never get out of a and actually that's how I noticed that he was not well we were having lunch together in Atlanta and I looked at his plate I said are you okay you're not even eating and that's when he said he'd been having some problems this summer for the first time we sat there for dinner it was about 10:30 at night with a long open forum and his first question to me was uncle how did I did was an amazing question for a young man who just knocked it out of the park uncle how did I do and so I think the best person he could have ever asked that question to is he's now in his presence I don't doubt at all when he arrived at heaven here to probably said father how did I do and our Lord was said well done good and faithful servant so the reason I'm here is when Michele wrote and called and asked if I would come here I was literally sandwiched very tightly between two meetings I've gotta leave at dawn and then speak at Hilton Head gotta be there tomorrow night and hopefully we will get there in time but with all the heaviness and all the labors that we bear under it's also nice to know that the mists of tragedy in the midst of grief in the midst of heartaches we can still smile we can still laugh because we know that's not the last chapter and as I've been sitting here I've been thinking of a story because I'm wondering what I'm doing here I've never been to Vail or Aspen or any one of these places I don't go anywhere where they ski my back is broken so I wrote to somebody and said I'm very close to Telluride today he said you're not here 250 miles away I said I'm not I saw him Aspen and then I looked at the map and I wasn't so I looked the map and said where's Vail I looked at all these skiing slopes that you people enjoy and flew over them and when I look at you I think of my brother he's a surgeon thank you for supporting him because every Saturday he was doing his bit putting limbs back together so yeah I've been to Denver I've been to Colorado Springs and a few others but all your ski slopes today we walked and I tell you what about 10 days ago you're sitting waiting for the clouds to lift off Mount Everest we want to see have respite everest we want to see us so he sat for three days waiting for the weather to clear I don't think we need to go there just whine over these mountains was absolutely amazing you live in a beautiful part of God's creation my congratulations to you and thank you for bringing me here now I can say I saw the ski lifts going up and coming down but it was not a scheme season there's a light-hearted story for you as a bagpiper this this comes out of out of the hills of the south there and you'll track it pretty soon as a bagpiper i play many gigs recently i was asked by funeral director to play a graveside service for homeless man he had no family or friends so the service was to be at a papa's cemetery in the kentucky back country as i was not familiar with the backwoods i got lost i finally arrived an hour later and saw the funeral guy had evidently gone and the hearse was nowhere in sight there were only the diggers and crew left and they were eating lunch i felt bad and apologized to the men for being late i went to the side of the grave and looked down and the vault with lid was already in place I didn't know what else to do so I started to play the workers put down their lunches and began to gather round I played my heart out for the soul of this man but no family or friends I played like I'd never played before for this homeless man and as I played Amazing Grace the workers began to weep they wept I wept we all worked together when I finished I packed up my bagpipes and started for my car though my head hung low my heart was full as I opened the door to my car I heard one of the workers say never seen anything like that before and I've been putting in septic tanks for 20 years that's what was hilarious stories I've ever read as nothing like being in the wrong place at the wrong time preaching the wrong sermon and being deeply moved and finding out you were really not doing what you thought you were doing and so here I am speaking to you this marvelous group in Aspen in a beautiful setting trying to speak to you on a subject that I hope will be important and I hope the spread of God takes it and strikes it deep into your heart here's what I want to say to you if you're a skeptic just give me a hearing you can hear what whatever you wish to hear through this and all I ask of you is reflect on it because I was one for many years I was raised in a country with more religions than you could shake a stick at then the Hindu faith boasts of 330 million deities in its Pantheon India is the most religious country in the world Hinduism Buddhism Sikhism and of India and Pakistan had never separated they'd be also be the largest Islamic country in the world all of the big pantheistic worldview ultimately have emerged from there and Dave Islam as I said a Vindhya Park had not separated there we had the same thing in huge numbers with the monotheistic worldview of Islam as well and I grew up with all of that and to be honest with you I didn't ever open a Bible because the least of those that really demanded my attention was the Christian faith although my ancestors were Hindu priests somewhere along the line there was a conversion and then there was a change I don't know what happened it all became very nominal and at the age of 17 I tried to take my life and I was on a bed of suicide when a Bible was brought to me and as I lay on that hospital bed and that Bible was read to me by my mother whose English was not that good but the man who brought it was not allowed to stay because I was in critical shape she began to read it to me and as she was stumbling through the words in the King James language I just grappled one idea that came through when Jesus said and he was talking to Thomas who by the way the one who took the gospel to India and Jesus was talking to Thomas and said because I live you also shall live out of all the passages that were read you know some key verses were read there I'm the way the truth and the life no one comes unto the father but by me all of that was too lofty for me to really fathom but this one simple verse because I live you also shall live I knew what I needed more than anything else was to know how to live why to live what living really meant and I hadn't had the answer to it and in a complete step of a faith that was very little informed by reason at that point except the desperate cry of a young man and I said if you are truly who you claim to be I will leave no stone unturned in my pursuit of truth take me out of this hospital bed and I will follow you in that pursuit of truth the more I followed the path with Jesus the more I have gotten to walk with him now after 55 years closer to the finishing line than the starting line I'm more convinced than ever that outside of the answers of Jesus Christ there are no answers out there there aren't a lot of questions a lot of philosophizing huge stones written on meaning and purpose and destiny and all of that and by the time you go through all those words and those sentences and those ideas you've still got the question unanswered what does living really mean what is my purpose of life some years ago I was doing an open forum along with a couple of very fine noted philosophers at the in Ohio State University and as I was driving into that a businessman must take me there and in Columbus Ohio and he stopped outside a building he said I think you want to take a look at this building it's the Wexner Center for the Arts it is the first America's first post modern building so I said to him what is a postmodern building I know what postmodern aasif is what is a postmodern building he said well the Artic architect was a postmodernist and he believed since life itself had no purpose why should our buildings have any purpose and so he designed it with no purpose and meaning at all it's got stairways going nowhere it's got odd shaped walls on which you can't hair hang anything and he went on and on and described it and said to me what do you think I said I have just one question for him did he do the same with the foundation did City Hall allow him to get away with a purposeless meaningless senseless pointless foundation in a where near where I live in Atlanta Georgia we were driving past a very exclusive community gated and all of that and I pulled up in front of a house because the real estate agent pointed the house and said this belongs to and she named one of the best-known basketball players in the country and the house was like that he'd spend millions of dollars on building it it had a flawed foundation now he can hardly get rid of it you're not even allowed to go to that part of the house but the foundation has collapsed and so what I want to say to you is what is the foundation on which you're building your life have you thought of that very carefully the Bible gives us very strong wording in fact in the psalmist in the Psalms the psalmist cried out in chapter 11 if the foundations are destroyed what can the righteous really do and our culture is on the verge of destroying its foundations it's almost like we're on a death wish we are flirting with a suicidal bid and as my colleague oz Guinness wrote as a social theorist he described his last book was titled a free people's suicide our foundations are being shattered we are concentrating so much on an infrastructure and a superstructure and one day reality will call our bluff reality will point out you don't start building from the top you start building from the bottom and so I wish to challenge you tonight on what it takes to build a strong foundation what does the Word of God say to us the first thing that the Bible gives us there is the dimension of eternity not to live merely for today but to live for eternity is values none of us knew three years ago that this robust powerful voice speaking all over the world with a dynamic personality but very soon be buried and we'd be speaking at his funeral if he had not built his life on eternal values we were called it's sort of a a marshmallow type existence very nice on the outside but Hollow and just a puff of nothing on the inside the foundation of the eternal state was Solomon who said God has put eternity into our hearts and yet we do not know the beginning from the end but it is on that eternal continuum that we have to measure what life really boils down to what does living really mean and I think of the fact that we only a few short years ago would so confidently espouse the reality of God and the values that he gave our culture know we were not a Christian nation but the imperatives that derived from what this nation was going to be could only have been justified but you by judeo-christian worldview you just take one statement that we're all created equal do you realize pantheistic worldview will not submit to that it will not submit to that and then when you go on to find out more and more what righteousness is all about the judeo-christian faith stands in a unique contrast to everything else I will point that out you so unique that we are almost ignorant of how uniquely different the gospel messages and Matt was right once you find out what it is that Christ has called you to and what it is that he has done for you rather than running away from him as a figment of imagination you will see him as the most brilliant diagnostician of reading your own heart and understanding who you and I are the eternal perspective I remember coming to Canada when I was 20 years old in 1966 two years later by that point my father and mother had also joined us my older brother and I he was 22 I was 20 we came my dad sent us to try and build a future for the family or that was purely economically driven to go and find a possibility for home elsewhere Christmas Eve December 1968 it come back from our midnight service and my dad who was a late comer to Christ by the way very late coming to Christ who only that year had come to know the Lord he had been a cat a clenched fist towards God for many years I had a sit down in front of the television because something was going to be shown that had never been vouchsafed to the human eye before as the American astronauts went on the dark side of the moon and saw Earth's rise over the horizon of the Moon author s peacock that scholar from Oxford describes it better best he said as they saw its rise over the horizon of the Moon draped in a beauteous mixture of blue and white garland it by the glistening light of the Sun against the black void of space here are these astronauts looking at that speck from thousands of miles away by an engineering skill that enabled them to go past beautiful planet and no poet no philosopher no memorized speech served the purpose of the moment overcome by the law just as I was yesterday flying in and looking at these mountains in that beautiful peaks and their splendor what language can you borrow to do justice to this but you see Oscar Wilde reminded us you can sit in all the Sun for hours but the Sun will never return the moment the Sun will never return the compliment neither will those mountain peaks you and I have something those mountain peaks tilt and so the man uttered the only words that he felt fit the moment in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth here we were sitting in a tiny little town house on Godstone Road in Toronto in the middle part of that city a family of seven from India sitting in front of the screen watching these American astronauts come by and utter the first verse of the book of the Bible in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth it's so vast that our pride ought to be drowned in its immensity it so got such specific complexity that as Frederick Hoyle said the possibility of the fine-tuning of this universe is even more remote than the possibility of a jumbo 747 coming out because of a tornado in a junkyard you don't get a 747 airliner because of a tornado going through a junkyard and you and I didn't come out of a junkyard either that whole issue of eternity stands before you and me years ago when my mother was still young in her 50s she contracted a very serious case of diabetes and we were bearing her by the time she was 57 just a few months before that I was speaking at a car at a conference and a man came up to me from Northern Ontario we were living in Toronto that time and he said you know your messages really touched me and he gave me his card and he said I hope you never need my services he designed gravestones few months later I didn't need his services and my mother passed away and you put those final words and what did I put in there the words that I heard from her for the first time because I live you also shall John 14:19 you see we don't live with eternity in mind two things happen number one you fail to be able to find justifiable meaning by pure existential terms but number two whatever happens to justice whatever happens to justice if there is no eternity think of all the horrific crimes a man or a woman can commit and just go and put a gun to their head and finish themselves off and that's it they're gone the others have gone too there is no balance that can set it all straight ladies and gentlemen Jesus said I have prepared a place for you that where I am you may be also the whole Gospel message is fine-tuned to the reality of relationships but not just relationships horizontally it's relationships vertically let me tell you I have covered scores of countries over scores of years for the last 46 years I've been an itinerant but the place I love to go back to most is when I find out I'm getting into a plane to head back home you can see all the splendors of this world but you come back home and you get on your knees and you kiss the kitchen floor because that's where you really want to be with your wife your children and your grandchildren if it weren't this calling that I have I would never do the kind of lifestyle that I'm doing right now I have a grandson Jude who's just turned seven he's an amazing little boy amazing little boy he he uses language that I'm amazed by one day when he was about five or six found a half he is sitting across a table from me and says Papa what is the meaning of sophomoric I said what and he's just staring at me legs dangling down you know the other day he had read about slavery in America and other parts of all he was shocked and he started crying at the table he just learned it at school that day and so my daughter Naomi had started to read to him the story of dr. King and several others and William Wilberforce and all that telling him about him how odd this scourge ultimately ended and then he looked at her and he said what about my friend who comes from another part of the world do you think he may face some things like this in life and Naomi said why do you ask that in this hour and a half year old guy six year old guy says mom because my philosophy is this and he starts going to explain philosophically what it is he thought the depravity of man was all about but he has the clincher when he was running through this house and he's noticed his mother just slapping her forehead because she couldn't find her car keys and says I I must be losing my mind and he comes in front of her stands in front of him he's a wee little guy my daughters will be little gal he looked at her and she said mommy whatever you do please don't ever lose your heart because I'm in there what have you do please don't ever lose your heart because I mentor who teaches this little guy that just like Michelle we'll have to tell her the stories of Nabeel and read his books one day and understand what a great man he was our life is ultimately defined in relationships as was so well taught to us today we were adopted brought into the family eternity confirms that yearning of the human heart that death cannot break all the breakages of relationships secondly eternity and morality when we talk about the dimension of morality this is where I think God gives us two very unique unique positions that are there are no I found in any other world view the first is this and both of them came in a form of question trying to trip trip Jesus up the first one came in to him and said is it alright to pay taxes to Caesar and it's one question I wish so much Jesus had answered differently if he had just said no you don't it'd be a wonderful thing to April 15 be both as religious and rebellious at the same time Jesus was brilliant he always questioned his questioner to open them up within their own assumptions and to change the entry point of the discussion so jesus said you have a coin and a follow did he give it to me he said whose image is on this coin and have the answer he said Caesar said give to Caesar that which belongs to Caesar and give to God that which belongs to God the man should have had a follow-up question what belongs to God and Jesus would have said whose image is on you whose image is on you that remarkable description no you're not God nor I you Beast but you're created imago dei you're created in the image of God so he comes back with a follow-up question first he tried to fit her politics or King against Jesus now he's trying to pit God against God and he says to him which is the greatest commandment see Moses had given 613 Isaiah reduce them to much less David - even less Micah 2:3 do justice love mercy walk humbly before your God you know Jesus could have reduced it to 1 I think her back would tried to Habakkuk said the just shall live by faith and that's repeated in Romans and Galatians and Hebrews that simple line that you still have our faith just introduce it to one it was a remarkable answer would Jesus gave he said this you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength he could have stopped right there and he said and you shall love your neighbor as yourself on these two Commandments hang all of the laws and the prophets there are two pegs on which all of civilization should hang the vertical of loving God had seen the implications of that the sacredness of your fellow human beings see I have no right to break in to your marriage I have no right to break in to your home I have no right to break in to your treasures your holdings all of your values because your possessions and your accomplishments are treated as sacred in the eyes of God no one else gives you that sacredness it's fascinating those who put their signature to the Declaration of Independence or what they said we do this we put our names with our sacred honor with our sacred honor they saw the vertical right of the bat if I see your body as a body I will be drawn to the body purely for the sake of the body but if I see your body is the temple of the Living God I will not transgress it this is the beautiful reality and the more we find out that God's laws are given for our protection the less we will fight him for it those laws are not given just to protect your neighbor they are given to protect you too but here's what I want to say to you that is so precious and so unique your problem is not morality our problem is not that we are immoral people our problem is so deep that even morality cannot solve it it's so deep that even morality cannot solve it and so every worldview tries to get to God by its moral efforts pulling ourselves up by our volitional bootstraps only in the Christian faith is salvation a gift you are forgiven by the grace of God and the gift of God not because it's free but it was the costliest gift ever procured to give to you and me Malcolm Muggeridge you know he he wrote such profound words he was one of my great heroes before he passed away in 1990 I had the privilege of having lunch with him and his wife kitty he said when I get to heaven I'm going to have to ask God to forgive me for being so fatally fluent he could turn a phrase probably the most brilliant English journalist him or chesterton of the 20th century he used to give give incredible descriptions one of them he said is is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself tired of the struggle to be himself he's great at boredom out of his own affluence input inside of his own erotomania vulnerability out of his own strength he himself blows the trumpet that brings the walls of his own cities crashing down until at last having educated himself into imbecility having drugged and polluted himself into stupefaction he keels over a very battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct brilliant use of language but here's it you know what he said towards the end of his days I feel so remorseful that for so many years as a journalist I mocked the cross and I mocked the Christian faith he said it was after I came to know who Jesus is and what he really did for me every time I look at a cross offered that matter he said even two pieces of timber crossing like that I think of the price that my Saviour had paid for me and that's why when I say to you that morality is not the issue we need a Savior we need a Savior one who can take our imperfections upon himself and paid the price so that you and I can walk away free in my office I have a painting of a little girl holding the hands of Jesus and looking at the nail box and then she's looking at him and saying what happened to your hands what happened to your hands what happened to his hands was what had happened to you and to me eternity morality may be a very attractive ideal it's not good enough we are sinners in need of a savior nobody likes to admit it take a look at what's happening in Washington these days just take a look at it all for that matter in other parts of the world in politics one woman who'd served 30 years in the State Department came up to me after I'd spoken to a group in Washington and said to me I have never seen such a toxic mindset in Washington as it is now we can't even sit down with civility and talk to each other how are we ever going to get to the questions if we don't even we are not even willing to sit down and talk with at least some semblance of respect any father knows you don't curse your child from a distance and expect them to come and talk to you you win them over you draw them closer tilled with love and respect they are willing to listen to what it is you have to say think of all that staring our nation apart probably the wealthiest experiment in civilized history and we're in the verge of burning ourselves up completely we've lost it ladies and gentlemen morality is a great ideal but it's not good enough we do not need a guru we need a Savior we need a Savior and our gurus need saviors the Saviour to eternity morality thirdly accountability accountability is where you realize that the vertical dimension is the most critical I'll make this brief and then move to my final thought you know when you travel alone you'll find out who you really are when you travel alone talk about identity Matt you know when you travel alone you find out who you really are because 90% of the time you're behind the closed door and you're by yourself with your thoughts and opportunities I came to I came to the ministry from the hospitality industry I was going into a career in hotel management when I moved to Canada and I worked in the banqueting Department and all behind all of those where people hang out till midnight and 1:00 in the morning and I saw some of them behaving the way they did and I finally said is this what I'm really gonna do with my life hang around here till 2:00 a.m. every morning watching people destroy themselves this is what my life is all about no I wanted to go and find a proper answer to that but the more I've dealt into this and the more I have thought of this I've seen it and then I had the opportunity to live in hotels and ask myself the question Who am I what do my vows really mean I used to do a lot of devotionals for frou-frou teams and did it often for the Atlanta Braves because I live in Atlanta and once they were playing one of the other teams I shall leave it unnamed and you spoke to the other name first and they spoke I just bought 1215 minutes and I started off by saying you know guys it's terrible to walk into a room and be the only one who fails the physical I said you guys have got muscles bulging like watermelons I have the arms that my wife described as the arms of a thinking man I said like I'm here to speak to you I said I can't talk to you about how to hit a fastball because I don't think I'd even know he's thrown it at that point by the time you guys have knocked it out of the park I said I've done one thing more than most of you I've lived on the road I want to talk to you today about how to live on the road did they ever lean forward one guy was a well-known Slugger making millions here came off to that meeting and he grabbed me by the back of the neck like that he said hey man I want to talk to you and my travel assistant recognizing the tears streaming down his face knowing it was a private moment step back together man his privacy he said you know I have more money now than I ever thought I would but I have less things of value now than I've ever had I've blown it big-time I've blown it big-time the money I had I used to destroy myself I don't know where to go Ravi I really don't know if I'll ever recover any other than that ladies and gentlemen you see the problem is ultimately not out there I have a lot of people who don't like what I say and a handful of them would like to get rid of me from this earth step privilege their prerogative they never put me up here God did God wants to take me down yeah well they're not gonna take me down but I'll tell you what my problem is not them a problem is in here and the same is with you what have you done with your depraved heart what have you done with your depraved heart we're all depraved we all have a price we all can be bought my colleague Sanj before he came to know the Lord eight years ago lived such a depraved life he was on a tennis scholarship for the University of Akron he was getting ranked in the country Berlin tennis flare he has the skill but he wrecked his life by not moderating it in a sensual passion penny realized what was happening to him to his family to his two beautiful daughters and he drove to a church his option was either gonna to take that car of his and Ram it into a tree and end his life or go and get his life made right by the Savior he pulls up in a church and I was up on his knees holding the pastor's feet saying I need some answers I have messed my life up completely today wherever we go when he shares us just money you get oh-hoh it all started by the way for him with pornography to destroy his life when he talks about it you should see the men lined up after the meeting even in a plane ride coming to sit next to him and ask him the person next to her to move because they want to talk to him find out how he ever broke that spell see we all have propensity xand the propensity starts someone inclination we want to run our own lives ladies and gentlemen what a moment today in this beautiful city of Aspen for you to come to the cross and turn your life over to him and songwriter says to us what language shall I borrow to thank you dearest friend for this thy dying sorrow thy pity without end will make me thine forever and should I fainting be Lord let me never never outlive my love for thee the cross stands as the centerpiece of history to let you and me know that's where the answers really are let me move to the final eternity existence morality essence accountability conscience charity beneficence existence essence conscience beneficence eternity morality accountability charity no matter what our disagreement soon our we have to learn to live peaceably and charitably with each other I go into all kinds of places when I was speaking in Colombo a man stood up and from the back put his hand up and he said you're a Christian obviously you're biased about Jesus we are primarily Buddhist what is your message got to say to us I said I find it fascinating that questioners always think that the answerer is biased and the questioner is totally objective I said sir we all have a bias that what I need to tell you is not the bias the basis on which we believe what we do whether it is the truth and what the answer of Jesus really is to these and so with charity we answer at the end of it he raised his hand and waved his hand at me to say thank you I've seen people at the opposite end of the spectrum years go by and they write me a letter saying they've turned their life over to Jesus Christ but appreciated the time we've given to them years ago in a one-on-one conversation being disagreeing is not a problem being disagreeable is do you know which is the fastest second fastest growing nation in the world in terms of Christian faith if you haven't heard it you will never guess it China's number one the fastest growing Church Iran is number two the very places where people have been bullied into submission are now turning to Christ in masses I am getting invitations from faces place I cannot even publicly disclosed to you well they want to talk about what it is that the gospel really has to give to them and so let me close with this very simple illustration eternity morality accountability charity that's the foundation what is the object that we find the answer in in order to understand what the substructure needs to be some of you may have heard me tell this and I close with it many years ago I was in Israel with the arch former Archbishop of Canterbury took five of us with him for a five I don't forget the exact number and we with his guests and we were meeting with the Israeli leaders political and religious Palestinian leaders politican Ruiz I want to tell you it was nerve-racking absolutely know some of the passion in the room you could have lit a fire with that passion and one day we were sitting at one of the fair the home of one of the founders of Hamas muscle built guy and for about an hour or so he was ranting and raving had been in prison and this and that there was no give of any kind and we just sitting there saying what are we even doing here the room was full of tobacco smoke and they given us a beautiful meal but now we were being treated to her ideology and at the end of it that Archbishop looked at the skies and Cydia why don't you all ask him one question and let him answer it so in my quest turn came I asked him a question I can't tell you what the question was because there was a private meeting but I can't tell you I didn't like his answer so I looked at him and I said Sheikh I really don't like your answer I said but it's okay however I feel I oh you something in this explanation why I don't like your answer I said 5,000 years ago not far from where you and I are sitting a man you respect by the name of Abraham took his son up a hill to offer him as a sacrifice because of his faith in God do you remember the story he said yes I said please let's not debate which son let's just agree that he took his son up that mountain he said okay I said and as the son is about to be offered God and the axis coming down god stops that ax do you remember that story he said yes I said what did God say he just looked at me I said God said stop I myself will provide he said that's right I said shade within a few minutes drive from here very close is a hill it's called Calvary I said God kept that promise this time he took his son up that hill and this time the axe did not stop he just looked at me and I could just see the blood going into the face I said shake until you and I received the son God is offered we'll be offering our own sons and daughters and the battlefields of this world for position and power and land and prestige the archbishop said ah I think it's time to go now as they're about to go down the steps he's put his arm around me and said Robbie that was of God I said I sure hope so so he walked out the archbishop was the guest of all of the shake was ushering him into his SUV house other guys were walking a little distance towards Aras and I heard somebody running behind me and as I began to turn my neck around it was the shake he caught me by the shoulder and twirled me around some of you may or may not know I have two titanium rods from l3 2s1 holding me up I broke my back and had two major surgeries that's why I'm not on your slopes and I didn't know what he was gonna do to me I thought if he gave me even a hug he's gonna break it turn me around slapped me on both sides of the face and kissed me mr. furious you're a good man you're a good man I hope I will see you again someday and he gave me a big bear hug the cross has an answer that no one else does that's why even Islam denies that Jesus actually died on the cross I want to say to you build your life on the Foundation's pillars of eternity morality accountability and charity take a look at that cross that is what really defines why we need that kind of foundation so that the storms and the winds and the rains will not pull your life down may God richly bless you thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to [Laughter] Thank You Robbie we're um you should say the number on the screen and we're just gonna take a few minutes I wish we could be here all night but just to respect obviously Ravi and you're speaking to us thank you for that let me just throw something out why's bring the chair around just while the questions are coming in right this came in it says from the Enlightenment on it seems like there has been a push to separate reason and faith and logic and love how's that adversely impacted us and our conversation and maybe just what does this look like for you to this foundation of faith that you're talking about to get from as we're talking about here from our mind to our heart what is that how's that look whoever raised that question it's a great question and may I recommend to you a book by Gertrude Himmelfarb former professor at Columbia in her book roads to modernity she traces a lot of this and of course if you have done any of your epistemological work on how truth was arrived at meaning by that big word how did they determine the test for truth and to determine a philosophy was true and it is this you go back to the 13 and 1400s you've got Descartes reason reason reason alone reason alone and ultimately what came about was mathematics was the only thing you could actually talk about with any certainty but the fact of the matter is the only reason he could even believe his philosophy was because he doubted therefore he knew he existed I think therefore I am because I'm doubting therefore I'm thinking when he really should have said I think therefore thinking exists how do you arrive at and I am from the thinking process but after you went through the years of rationalism you came to the to the whole idea of the Enlightenment with Immanuel Kant and rest of them and what they were trying to find a bridge between came about by the impersonated you David Hume went into an empirical way of knowing truth and the philosophy of that was logical positivism that science is the only sure I am sub structure on which truth can be determined and the philosophy that emerges from the scientific worldview is logical positivism empiricism started to take over so from rationalism man being a rational being we moved to man becoming an empirical being but what happened after all of that people like Nietzsche and then Sartre and Camus who wanted to feel who wanted to talk about emotions who wanted a place for passion who wanted a place for will rejected both of those and went to the existential side of things so from rationalism we moved to empiricism from empiricism we moved to existentialism the whole idea of a volition and a will facing in the light of despair finding meaning for yourself that's what Sartre and Camus were all about and the the Neolithic philosophers that's why they wrote dramas that's why they wrote plays it was through the story that they were communicating the ONC's of human existence so man being a rational being to being an imperial empirical being to being an existential being the post modernists came around and through all of those out and post-modernism believed in no truth no meaning no certainty you construct your own world in your own terms and some of the postmodern philosophers would take poetry would take authors and deconstruct philosophy deconstruct poetry it was no longer important what the author intended it was only important what the reader made out of whatever he he read or he or she read and if you read Gertrude Himmelfarb she has an amazing chapter this brilliant philosopher made the comment that America was uniquely different to Europe America and England stood in Contra distinction to Europe for the European philosophies and the European philosophy and the thing kurz it was reasoned with supreme reason reason rationalism for the American framers of this nation and for the British she said the impact of somebody like Wesley and Whitfield she said for the American psyche reason was not supreme moral reasoning was supreme huge difference you don't reason your way into think you have to have a moral reasoning behind it a person in Burlington Ontario stood up and said to me I I live my life by the sciences I'm a scientist science is the queen of all disciplines I said so if you go into a lab and you do some research and you see what happens when you add this to that and what happens with the litmus test what in science tells you to come out of that lab and be honest about your findings I said you may all realize it you're a metaphysician - you're not just a scientist you are dealing with philosophical issues and dare I suggest spiritual spiritual issues and so you see the whole idea of science being the ultimate answer thus the Songwriters tell us knowledge is a deadly friend when no one sets the rules the fate of all mankind I see is in the hands of fools confusion will be my epitaph as I crawl a cracked and broken path if we make it we can all sit back and laugh but I'm afraid tomorrow I'll be crying one of my meetings coming up in next few weeks is with the Getty with it yetis and Christ alone the ones who wrote that song and I'll be with a Christian musicians out there I meet up with a lot of musicians as I go they are really the Philosopher's of our time they really are the philosophers over time because in music you can tell it like it is in abstract terms you want to guard and protect yourself what do they say happens if you play country music backwards you get your car back you get your wife back you get a everything back you know it's all the case of everything has to do with a broken heart and a broken life so I say to you moral reasoning with supreme for this nation and the every one of them by the way had a point to make but in grabbing the finger of one they thought they had grabbed the fist of reality we have to bring all of the disciplines together we have to bring reason we have to bring the impresses we have to bring the existentialist we even have to talk about post paternity because one thing post modernist desperately cling to is the sense of community and that's really what the Scriptures talk about the fellowship of those who follow him so one alone can never give you the comprehensive answer pull them all together so that reason and essence and meaning all come together the reason our young people are committing suicide today is not because they don't believe in rationalism but many of them believe reason alone has led them to despair and they don't find me so I realize okay um I think that's a pretty good answer oh I'm easier on my bodies okay yes they just want you to step back in the light so we can we can be all right back there I'm really struck I'm really struggling here wanting to listen to you and get to these questions um job 210 shall we accept good from God and not trouble this verse my friends 11 my friends 11 year old son accidentally hung himself and is now unable to walk or talk his mom quoted this verse and therefore was implying that God can hand out bad things is this true what a loving father hand out horrible situations in order to teach me something isn't there a better way yeah I think we all will be always back of here okay we always we always think of that we could do it one better than God which of us hasn't thought that the prophets thought that I mean Jeremiah says I want to ask you a few questions about how on earth can you justify this the New Testament and Peter taught the cross was a wretched idea so what on earth you're talking about going to the cross we always think we can do it our own way as far as we know philosophically there were four possibilities for God to have in relation to this world since creation number one no creation at all number two to create a world where there will be no such thing as good or evil an amoral world number three to make a world where we would only choose good and not choose evil a kind of a deterministic world or number for this world where there was the possibility of good and evil the fourth option the one we have is the only option in which love is possible and if love is a supreme ethic the fourth possibility in creation this world where good and evil are possible as the only one where the supreme ethic was actually possible wherever you have love you will always have the possibility of pain always which of us doesn't know that when you're raising children or your your face betrayal or whatever it is do we therefore say let's have a world without love let's have a world without those options number one number two we see through a glass darkly we don't see it completely imagined if by two-year-old grandson or granddaughter goes to the doctor only to find out that the mother has brought her there so that this big thing can be poked into their arm and they scream and they walk our events head my mother is something else she took me there to watch this man poke my arm and I saw her paying him for doing that and then 1517 years go by and she says you know what my mother hadn't done that today I would have been stricken with the worst disease my mother protected me from what it was that I had gone to endure that pain there is a syndrome in this world called SEPA congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis there's only about a hundred people in this world who have that malady where they don't feel pain so they step on a nail they don't feel it if they cut their finger and they didn't see the blood they won't even feel that there's one like that in Georgia her mother went on television said every morning every night I pray every morning I pray God please let my daughter feel pain because she is bruising herself there infections coming when she plays sports and pain is not there to warn her why do we think that an infinite God will not find it possible to use the vehicle of pain to bring us to the greatest treasures that he really has God does not triumph in spite of the dark mystery of evil God triumphs through it he doesn't triumph in spite of the darkness fear of evil he triumphs through it at least in the Christian faith there is an answer all the way to the cross in a skeptics worldview forget the answer even the question cannot be justified when I was in that uh Johannesburg South Africa a couple of months ago a guy went up to the side to ask the question he said you know I want to know I've heard you answer the question that when there is evil there has to be good where there is good there has to be a moral law where there is a moral law there has to be a moral lawgiver and but if there's no moral lawgiver there's no moral law if there's no moral law there's no good there's no good there's no evil and you said therefore the question self destructs he said I have just one question for you why do we need a moral lawgiver I agree with you that if you got good and evil these two polarities somehow you have to explain it but why do we need a moral lawgiver and of course we were strapped for time so I gave a very simple on season why can't evolution give us the answer to a moral law I said Tim because very simply every time you raise the question about evil it is either raised by a person or about a person it is either raised by a person or about a person I said am i right because right now you're a person asking me this question about other persons am i right he said yes I said the reason your question is valid is because you attribute intrinsic worth to hood essential worth to personhood that's a luxury a theistic evolution cannot afford it cannot give you intrinsic worth only an almighty and an eternal God of intrinsic worth gives intrinsic value to you and to me he said thank you very much and just walked away he didn't argue the point you are a creature of intrinsic worth where does that come from it comes from the hand of an eternal Almighty God who is worthy of our worship that's why you have worth otherwise we are just the random collocation of atoms time plus matter plus chance a blip on this radar screen of time trousered Apes that's not the way we treat our fellow human beings we realize they have intrinsic worth and dignity so to that young boy I say to him very simply as a son when mummy took you to gave you that injection you felt pain didn't you did you fully understand that then no are you understanding and now one day in the presence of God we will find us why he gave us that injection of pain and fulfilled the purpose for what true healing and nurture is all about okay well that was good too that was uh I think you answered like 20 questions there that was when someone chases God but has never heard the name of Jesus and ends up worshiping the only name of God a Brahm Buddha etc etc they have ever heard can they be saved as alluded to in CS Lewis's last battle well first of all if he's chasing buta Buddha didn't believe in God at least he didn't talk anything about God so there are many pantheistic religions where there is no real divine entity we need to know that people don't realize that Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths it full path Buddhism is actually a very sophisticated attempt at finding salvation apart from God it is playing God in the end and when I talked to I draw by the way called Jesus talks to Buddha the Lotus on the cross and I interviewed a lot of priests and monks before writing that book I wrote one called Jesus talks to Krishna new birth or rebirth one on Oscar Wilde sense and sensuality Jesus talks to Oscar Wilde one with Hitler you know I took all of these imaginary conversations and I took their own words in fact the publisher on Oscar Wilde said where'd he get all these thoughts and Oscar Wallace and right from his mouth so he read his writings and he put it into a conversation so what I say to you is what Louis is pointing out too is that the sincerity of heart in the pursuit of the fact that you are insufficient to save yourself that you come to the person who is the only one who is able to save you not because of your righteousness but you're really looking at the resolution to what you cannot give to yourself you know bad Louis himself flooded with pantheism as you know for some time till he said I found out in Jesus and not come to a place I'd come to a person huge difference so what I say is you know uh what is it Francis a Thompson wrote I fled him down the nights and down the days I fed him down the arches of the ears I fled him down the labyrinthine ways of my mind and in the midst of tears I hid from him and down Titanic glooms of chasm fears amid running laughter and all that stuff this guy was a drug addict he was selling shoelaces and pencils and going to Charing Cross to get his drugs and ultimately he found out the Hound of heaven was following him he was running in the other direction but God had started to follow and started to follow him and pursued him till he made his own commitment I don't know if you've ever read the book the march of faith that's a life of Sammy by Sammy Morris it's written by a man with a last name of Baldwin Sammy Morris was a student at tiller University Indiana one of the I think the chapel is named after Sammy Morris auditorium this guy was a young African guy living in Africa and desperately wanting to find God he was a stowaway on a ship and arrived in New York hiding in the bowels of that ship a young lad and met a man by the name of Samuel Samuel Merritt who took him under his wing gave him a home but talk to him about Jesus Christ Sammy Morris went and studied at studied at Daley University and he's well respected and known there he came all the way from one continent to the other said he was looking for God and God brought him up to meet the person who was going to introduce him to Jesus Christ so I say to you you may think as the beautiful scripture is narrated by the way absolutely anointed and brilliant I would love to hear that every morning after I wake up just great the fact that where are you going to hide from him where you going to flee from him for him even the darkness is as light and so if you think you're running from him ultimately you might find out you actually run towards because he's been waiting for you all along have you ever at the book the story rendezvous at Samara it's about this guy who is goes into the marketplace and he is buying some stuff for his master and he sees death crossing by for a moment and he is terrified he runs back home and tells his master I'm not going back to the marketplace today because I saw I saw death in the eye death is in the marketplace looking for his next victim so the master said get onto the horse and write as far as you can into the sunset towards Samara I'll let you know you can come back three or four days so he rides all the way to Samara when he arrives in Samara the Angel of Death is looking for him saying I've been waiting for you I wondered what you were doing in the marketplace this morning when I had an appointment with you right here at Samara tonight God has his appointments with us no it's not fatalism that moment will come don't run from him how did Tom sell and that poem the poorest blindest meekest I am he whom thou seekest thou darest love from thee that traversed me nabil pursued his attacks on Christ too fool Jesus to be a fake and they found Christ to be the truth and what he had believed was to be wrong I tell you you can think that you're running from God but as you pursue him with sin spirit and in truth you shall search for me and find me when you search for me with all your heart by the way one of the bills closest friends was a man by the name of Jim tor Jim tor made the comment at his funeral I dare anybody to read the Gospel of John three times with an open heart and not feel some sense of conviction that Jesus is who he claimed to be so if you're running he'll catch you you'll catch up with you and when you read the scriptures you'll find out that's where you really wanted to make your home that's where your eternity really lies we cannot outrun God Saul of Tarsus went to destroy christened 'im little did he know he was going to write one third of the New Testament God tracked him down so we have to be careful it doesn't mean that sincerity alone will get you to that point you have to ultimately get to the word and it's faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God that you need some flesh on the bones of faith God has put enough in reason into this world to make faith in Him a most reasonable thing but he's lived enough out to make it impossible to live by sheer reason alone we both know last one that is great yeah just one more how about that okay um by the way Jim and turned his wife texted and said say hi to you and Michelle the chemistry between him and his wife is still going prospects is a PhD in chemistry it's great um you kind of touched on this but I think it's a great way to maybe wrap things up okay what got us into this place in society where we're increasingly incapable of having honest respectful conversation even in the midst of the age of Tolerance and maybe what's the solution so we can leave here and continue this respectful good discussion you know I was I was at a lunch in London and we had a couple of Lebanese couple of Palestinians there was a Jewish gentleman and some Iranians it was quite a lunch you know and they were really diamond dead you know the one thing about the Middle Eastern culture that I love is they put more energy into saying good morning than you and I would in a whole talk the passionate people all right passionate people my dearest friends come from there and it was an Iranian guy who told me this and my wife was there next to me said have you seen today why we can never get to the heart of any issue I said why he said there's a joke the joke is that there was a Press reporter going around during the famine in Biafra years ago asking a question so he went to be Afra and said to ABI Afrin what is your opinion on the shortage of food and the B Afrin man said to him what is food so he came to America and he said what is your opinion on the shortage of food in this world and the Americans said what is shortage and then he goes to Russia and he says to them what is your opinion on the shortage of food in this world and the Russian says what is opinion and finally goes to the Middle East and says what is your opinion on shortage of food in the world and the Middle Easterners as what is what is he says we never get to the question because if you never got past the first two words I'm afraid we're becoming like that we have to get to the questions we have to get to the questions only then can we find the answers if we slide generously cut the opponent down and mercilessly impugned the opponent we will never ever gain civility the goal is not just to be right the goal is to build a civil society otherwise we'll be a bunch of idiots living in a country with so much and the Greeks would talk about the idiots who only lived for themselves we cannot be that kind of person we need to build a coherent culture coherence comes from the very notion of God because there is no contradiction in him so how do we do it and I just say to you why do why are we itinerant we stand face to face with people who cannot stand the sight of us and at the end of it we've had those who have really opposed us to stand up give a sock it happened that you pen or a Carnegie Mellon I forget which of the two we done them back-to-back the vice-president the humanist association they'd really railed against my coming there were placards out there never seen my name written so many artistic forums and so I just went and spoke and at the end of it the Vice burned the atheistic Association showed up and said mrs. I cries you know there was a lot of buzz before you came here but you still came and the place was packed by the one good thing about controversy it brings more people and impact and then he looked at me and he said you've handled this so well we hope you will come back again and talk to us again on these issues these are very critical issues and if we do it lovingly and understandingly ultimately the goal is not to destroy the questioner the goal is to win the questioner and that's why I think Jesus won even the most hostile in his time when even on the cross he said Father forgive them because they don't know what they're doing you have to be convinced that he is the way the truth and the life if you are not please read the Gospel of John ask him to speak to you you know can I close with this when I was a youngster I used to listen to a lot of music yeah I was an Elvis fan and Cliff Richard and all this kind of stuff you know and I paid the greatest compliment in Florida some years ago that Pat Boone was to give his testimony and I was standing next to Pat Boone and a man from the audience came up came right over to me and said mr. Boone I'm really happy to meet with you and that how is water to sound like Pat Boone never did but one of the songs used to be sung by the Kingston Trio and it was called desert Pete about a man going through the desert getting very thirsty but although what bottles of water had run dry so he came to a pump and on the pump he saw lifted the handle but metal upon metal no more water but he saw tin can inside the tin can a message dear traveler there's plenty of water here just follow the directions directly under the nozzle about a foot beneath the sand there'll be a bottle of water it should be full don't drink it don't drink if you drink it you will soon be thirsty again empty it out into the cylinder and primed the pump the suction system will begin to work you'll have all the water you want gushing out of the water pump fill up all the bottles you've got don't forget to fill up that one bottle and put it back below there for the next pass warning if you disbelieve this note and drink that one bottle of water you will soon be thirsty again and so will everybody else who is following you empty it out as instructed and you will have all the water you need when you come to Jesus that's the struggle you have are you going to take your life into your own hands and consume it upon yourself you will soon be empty down the road pour it out into his hands and He will give you a living water so that you will never really thirst for meaning and hope and answers again nice to be here in Aspen God richly bless you I hope we'll see you all again it's it's wouldn't would be unfair to see something so beautiful and not return Michelle thank you and Shanna Thank You Angela

Channel: Summit Aspen

Views: 60,213

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Keywords: Summit Aspen

Id: Jsq8KFSfMpo

Length: 74min 2sec (4442 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018