RZIM：Life's Four Big Questions, Q and A – by Ravi Zacharias @ University of Kentucky

Jesus had a conversation with all of the ideas converging into the question what is truth said he and turned and walked away what irony that is standing in front of one who was the incarnation of truth the embodiment of truth and if his intention were honorable the least here to done is waited to hear how exactly Jesus would answer Mercer Pilate raised the most important question in life but did not wait for the answer if we really want the truth the Bible says when you abide in his word you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free if somebody is truly pursuing the truth the least they ought to do is give Jesus a hearing on what it is he says about life its essence and its destiny good evening how are you Wow my name is Mitch Barnhart I'm the director of athletics here at the University of Kentucky and we've had a lot of things in this building but this is awfully special tonight God is honored by your presence and we thank you for being here I just had an opportunity to speak with some folks back in the media room we had a opportunity just to see a few folks before we started and I wanted to sort of replicate just a couple of those thoughts out here and thank a few folks for what they've done is putting this event on first Christian Student fellowship for their efforts it's been all about a year and a half two years to get this night put together and they have worked diligently hard to do that and so we thank them for their efforts and bringing everyone together tonight thank thank you guys for all the local churches that have supported this event tremendously appreciative of that and the people that have contributed time and money the staff and the volunteers and and the folks that have contributed to help put this evening on we so appreciate what you have have done to help this to be a very very special night with dr. Zacharias my wife and I became involved with CSF about two years ago we had an opportunity to go to a Thursday night event and listen to a minister from Baghdad by the name of Andrew white it was an amazing night and there was about 750 young people in the Christian Student fellowship facility over on campus and it opened our eyes to - with a great work they were doing on our campus so we began to investigate a little bit about all the things they've done cupcakes - freshmen and when they come on campus Friday night flapjacks energy on Thursday night shift as a freshman program on Tuesday nights and then they have this thing called a water balloon fight which has caused a little bit of a ruckus on campus just a few had ly but great stuff and then oh by the way if you're watching the March Madness last year a little thing called a watch party that made nighttime television famous there was really really good stuff but out of all those events what so impressed us was the fellowship that they created for so many young people on our campus and out of that fellowship came an opportunity to share the gospel of Christ and bring people to a relationship with our heavenly Savior and that's special that is most special and about it two years ago three years ago I was up in Columbus Ohio and a woman asked me a question at the end of one of my talk she said what keeps you up at night thinking I was worried about winning and losing and I said ma'am frankly I said we're chasing the culture we can't catch and I said it's moving so fast we can't get our arms around it and Christian Student fellowship doesn't answer all the questions neither do the other ministry opportunities and groups on campus but what they do is they provide access for young people to have an opportunity to understand some of the challenges that are going on in the world today and how you deal with that at the end of the day we hope that they provide an opportunity for a relationship with Christ at the end of the day we hope that there's peace and joy in the journey for us our family we are so appreciative of the leadership for Brian Marshall and what he does with Christian Student fellowship and we hope that tonight sort of this is an entree to that for for you all and but most of all we hope that tonight you're honored by dr. Zacharias his presence and all the things that he will have to say we hope that as we leave here that will continue honor Christ in our actions in our time and our resources so we thank you for being here tonight I'm going to turn it over to Brian Marshall and let him introduce dr. Zacharias Brian [Applause] kids you should have gotten a little thank you you should have a card right - joy I'll get a program here there is a card that you have that on one side it says student on the other side it playfully says old people I hope the old people laugh at 43 years old I went to college in 1990 and I basically never left it's just kind of kept hanging around campus hanging around campus and you know for me when I went to college I just become a believer did not grow up as a Jesus follower but had some pivotal moments in my life that happened and when I went to college I mean my life changed and so in college I was a philosophy major - State University you know most of my professors that I was interacting with were not Jesus followers and so you know you wrestled with a lot of challenging questions and big ideas and it was just a huge kind of face shaping time for me and so I've given my life to try to help students as they wrestle with the questions as they ask what's what's my life about what am I here for what what am I going to do with with the rest of the years I've got and I am so so pleased tonight to have dr. Zacharias as Mitch was saying CSF we host a lot of different events on campus we host things like the world's largest water balloon fight we host parties we host free fatty flapjacks we host three o'clock prayer where every day throughout the week three o'clock the buildings open for people just to come in and pray we host packed out worship services we do anything and everything we can to build relationships with students and lots of fun really fun ways yeah like viewing parties where people are dancing around and just really really fun stuff that we want to interact with but let me just make sure that you guys understand this is that tonight you can cut the video they're gonna just keep watching Thanks because we do a lot of fun stuff and you know at CSF everything we do at CSF we want to honor people because we have a deep belief that that people are infinitely special that our belief is that God made everyone and that goes for people who agree with us and who say yes yes God whatever and it goes to people who deeply disagree with us it doesn't matter agree or disagree what viewpoint they come at they are infinitely special and we want to honor them whether it's just through high-five them at a party and just being friends or maybe through a Bible study and showing them the ways in which God loves them and so tonight is part of that honoring process that we honor people and you've got a card in front of you and I hope if you're a student I hope you fill that out and you go you know there's some questions we're gonna do dr. Zacharias is getting ready to come on stage in just a minute when he's done with this talk he and one of his colleagues Abdul Murray they're gonna do question and answer here in front of everyone tonight and deal with some hard questions but one of the things CSF is going to do is if you put a question down on that card tonight we're gonna send you a personal response that's going to take us hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of work but we're committed to honoring people's questions because as I've heard dr. Zacharias and other people say it's not questions that need answering it's people and we want to honor the people that are here and so if you have a question if you're a student we're gonna try to honor you by answering those questions however we can in fact there's even going to be a Q&A session we have four local professors some from UK if some from some other places in the area who are going to be right back here to the right of you all back here answering questions afterwards we've got a whole room set up back there so if you don't get a question answer tonight don't leave stick around and go back there and interact with some of them as well so if you're a student I hope you fill that out if you're a person here who's not a student I hope you fill out that card because you go wow this is incredible I had no idea that things like this and what CSF does on campus happens and what so many of these other groups that are working on campus that are listed on the card as well Kru r UF campus outreach all the different groups listed on there I mean I want to know how I can be a part of helping college students because you can you can wherever you're at in life so to the point of the night it was almost exactly 20 years ago someplace in the room is a guy by the name of pat pat and i met in college we actually met arguing about baseball in a college cafeteria and you know a few years later after that argument about the Cincinnati Reds he asked me to be best man in this wedding he was getting married in Texas it was 1996 almost literally within a week of the 20-year mark of his 20 year anniversary so happy Anniversary Pat but on that drive that I took to Texas my mom went with me I just grown up my mom my dad wasn't a part of my life growing up and my mom had been diagnosed with cancer and as we drove to Texas long you know lots of radio lots of talking back and forth I've been given recently a set of talks that someone had recently given at Harvard at the original Veritas forum at Harvard University and I said mom would you care you know a few months later she was going to pass away from that cancer she lived so much longer than doctors ever gave her a chance to it was just a really deep chance for us to wrestle and talk and I have one last road trip together and I put that tape in it was the days of cassette tapes 20 years ago and I put that tape in and that tape was by dr. Ravi Zacharias and that was within it hit me about a month ago that we are exactly 20 years ago from when I first heard Ravi and how over the years I've listened to countless Ravi talks I've heard him speak so many different times and I'm absolutely thrilled and honored that he is here with us tonight I could go into all dr. Zacharias degrees both earned and honored I could tell you you know about all the different campuses that he's been to in fact this is his 30th address already in 2016 I was talking with his personal assistant Thomas said we'll be on the road probably 220 to 240 days this year talking doing different meetings around the world Ravi turns 70 next month I don't have that much energy at 43 but he is a man from all over the world campuses all over the world the United Nations National Prayer Breakfast Ravi is is an amazing amazing just communicator of the faith to communicate in thoughtful ways this is a university you have come here to think as a Christian I believe you should use every ounce of your mind that God has given you and so dr. Zacharias is going to come help us think through some of the big questions of life here tonight so why don't you all put your hands together and welcome to the stage dr. Ravi Zacharias [Applause] [Applause] thank you very much thank you appreciate it Thank You Bryan and it's a real honor for me to be here in the state that made chicken famous especially in my country I had I had friends who would get off the plane in Atlanta and want to go straight to a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet where big chicken eaters in India those who are non vegetarians of course and would enjoy that but also to be at a university that the basketball team can be so proud of so when you combine a university a basketball team and chicken and all of that it's truly a privilege to be here in Kentucky because both goes into the stomach goes into the head and gives the heart some palpitations as well so I did visit some of the restrooms that the team practices around so that I could tell people that I have a lot in common with the Wildcats we shared a common room all jokes aside but maybe one little lighthearted comment I was telling my buddies while we were flying in here from Atlanta this morning and the weather was quite rough but we managed to make it about the this was sent to me from India about this guy who's going to visit a doctor and the doctor says to him I have a few questions for you what kind of toothpaste do you use and he said I new use KP namboodiri stood faced he said what about the soap he said I use KP namboodiri soap he said and the shampoo he said KP namboodiri Shampoo he's a toothbrush she said KP namboodiri stood brush so the doctor said is this some kind of a famous international brand or what he said no kept in the muder is my roommate and so I hope you and your roommate are here tonight being on a university campus chances are not all of you are comfortable with the theme that is being addressed or certainly you may not be very sympathetic to the message of the Christian faith but you have given us the honor and courtesy of your attendance and I'm very very grateful that you have joined us tonight especially if you are one who is on your journey or trying to figure out what this is really all about anyway the themes that we cover on campuses are oftentimes given to us by people who invite us as to what would be relevant and if we can't handle the subject on hand we let them know we we have a team of about 47 speakers on our as my colleagues placed in 15 different countries and tonight I'm having the honor of Abdo Marie from Detroit Michigan joining me after I finish you'll take a few minutes to talk to you and then we will both field your questions Abdul is a trained lawyer from the university of michigan got his law degree there his roots go back to Barry in Lebanon and now living of course in the United States he's the author of the book the grand central question and also one on understanding critical or the critical analysis of various worldviews so he'll join me later and after I finished my talk he'll take a few minutes and we will field your questions I don't think it is questionable at all but that we are living in very very critical times and I don't mean this to be a political statement although it's a slanted comment on it when I go overseas as we cover a lot of countries within about ten days I'll be doing a few campuses in India and I have absolutely no doubt several of them are going to come up to me and say what is going on and they're in the American political arena as they watch the debates as they watch the vitriol as they watch all kinds of strong language being used and personal attacks being made rather than ideas being questioned and challenged we recognize full well that this is a time of crises on the global scene many years ago I was in Syria by about five six years ago and I was a bear a guest of the chief of intelligence in Damascus they always called me in whenever I arrived to remind me not to get into the political turmoil of that part of the world and I always gave them my word but I looked at the chief of intelligence saloon surrounded by the military brass and I said to him I don't get into the politics of the region sir but it would be very helpful to me if you can briefly tell me what do you think is going on in this part of the world I want you to know this was before anything like Isis any of the crises that had erupted before the Arab Spring and so on and his answer to me shocked me because it was made in a statement or two he said mr. Zacharias if things do not change here within the next five years this whole place is going to blow up if things don't change here within the next five years or so this whole place is going to blow up and how do you come back with another question on that the fact of the matter is that there is an incredible uncertainty as weapons of destruction pile up and those controlling some of those weapons come from backdrops and political structures where they are more demagogue eclis controlled than the will of the people or some ethical underpinning that that that drives their passions and so I want to begin with two comments and then lead into a basic backdrop against which I want to address these issues of the four major questions of life it was in the 1970s I believe that Malcolm Muggeridge that prolific writer made this comment he said it is difficult to resist the conclusion that 20th century man has decided to abolish himself tired of the struggle to be himself he has created boredom out of his own affluence impotence out of his own erotomania and 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 weary battered old brontosaurus and becomes extinct now the fascinating thing about Muggeridge is that as a journalist and as one who described himself as being fatally fluent lived an indulgent life was a late comer to Christ also a chaplain of the University of Edinburgh resigned his position from the chaplaincy when he saw the trend of where education was going and on the basis of all of that talked about how we'd created boredom out of our own affluence impotence out of our own erotomania vulnerability out of our own strength and how this very battered old brontosaurus keels over and becomes extinct about a few years before as he before he said that dr. Martin Luther King jr. received the Nobel Prize for Peace and here was a man who was so articulate and so precise in what he said and impassion and what he believed listen to these words in his speech I accept this award today with an audacious faith in the future of mankind I refuse to accept the idea that the isness of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal openness that forever confronts him I refuse to accept that man is mere flotsam and jetsam in a river of life I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war or that the bright daybreak of peace and Brotherhood can never become a reality I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction now here's the line I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality so to you as young bright minds in one of the finest universities of the world I had this question to you if our entire educational ethos is built on naturalism and a scientific single vision of ultimate reality which discipline in that framework gives to you the imperatives of unarmed truth and unconditional love these are philosophical principles this is not given to us by the exact sciences I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality what of the exact Sciences gives you this eternal hotness that forever and fronts us and so I say to you whatever world you will live in and it you know when you're sitting down and somebody introduces you and says you know what next month is going to turn 70 is in my word I didn't know that myself but it's true the calendar does not lie and we are reminded again and again of as each passing year comes and goes that the world is changing at a staggering pace I have no idea what kind of world will be yours 10 to 15 years from now but I'm hoping it is the kind of world that dr. King talked about the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood what a glorious thing it would be to have unarmed truth and unconditional love because truth is the most powerful weapon in the world and love is the most supreme ethic in the world where do we find these philosopher who lived between 1844 and 1900 was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche his father was a pastor both of his grandfather's were a pastors but somewhere he clenched his fist at God and philosophically believed it could no longer be sustained and he wrote this parable you will recognize it I will read it for you in extent so a few paragraphs because on this I want to build my deductions have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours ran to the marketplace and cried incessantly I'm looking for God I'm looking for God as many of those who did not believe in God was standing together they he excited considerable laughter having lost him said one did he lose his way like a child said another maybe God is hiding is he afraid is he afraid of us has he gone on a voyage or emigrated so they shouted and shouted and laughed him to scorn but the madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances where is God he cried I'll tell you we have killed him you and I we are all his murderers but how have we done this how were we able to drink up the sea who gave us a sponge to wipe away the entire horizon what did we do when we Unchained this earth from its Sun whither is it moving now whither are we moving now away from all suns maybe are we not perpetually falling forwards backwards side words in all directions do you notice the metaphors he's using here they are poignant are we not perpetually falling backwards forwards sidewards is there any up or down left are we not strained through an infinite nothing do we not feel the breath of empty space has it not suddenly become colder is not more and more night coming on us all the time must not lanterns now have to be lit in the morning hours do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition God's decomposed too you know and he's dead he remains dead and we killed him now how shall we the murderer of all murderers compose ourselves because that which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives who will wipe this blood from us with what water should we purify ourselves what festivals of atonement what sacred games will we need to invent is this not the greatest of Deeds too great for us to handle must not we now ourselves become God simply to seem worthy of it there's never been a greater deed you know and whoever shall be born after us for the sake of this need shall be part of a different history than all history hitherto this tremendous event is still on its way still traveling and has not yet reached the years of men the mad man fell silent and regarded his listeners they too were silent they stared at him in astonishment he threw his lantern to the ground and it broke and he went out I come too early maybe my time has not yet come he has been related further on the same day that the madman in two diverse churches and there sang a Requiem eternam Dale let out and quieted he said to have retorted each time what are these churches now if they are not the tombs on the Sepulcher of God God is dead we have killed him I remember taking some courses with the famed on Cupid who was professor at Emmanuel College Cambridge University he was an Anglican priest turned atheist and I remember on more than one occasion he would walk up to the window and point to the school opposite and the spires of a church and he said this was all our heritage at one time it's gone we no longer can believe any of this ironically a few miles down the road was John Polkinghorne one of the leading quantum physicists who was fair was who was a late comer to Christ in whose lectures he would be arguing for the rationality and the defense of God's existence and so the worldviews collide if you take Nietzsche's then I have four unanswered questions that will bring coherence to your life and mine the first is this where do we find our moral framework where do we find a moral law if naturalism is completely in control if materialism is all that there is and there is no absolute remember what Nietzsche said there is no up and down there is no up and down and so if you listen to politics it's right or left there is no up and down they don't believe in the vertical a transcendent notion anymore where lanterns have to be lit in the morning hours what sacred games will we need to invent are we not perpetually falling as Chesterton said there's only one angle at which you can stand straight and many many angles at which you can fall Chesterton went on to say the tragedy of disbelieving in God is not that you end up believing in nothing alas it is much worse you may end up believing in anything and we're testing the angles now where is there a moral law the irony of this is as follows Adolf Hitler took the Nietzschean phrase of a higher history took the writings of of Nietzsche personally presented Nietzsche's writings to Stalin and Mussolini and between these three created a kind of a hell in this world and I've given the illustration so many times but I never tire of it because we are always not far away from being forced to repeat the same mistakes it was in the 1980s during the Cold War when I happened to be visiting Poland and Russia I had never been to those parts of the world before and my host in Warsaw took me one day to visit the concentration camp of Auschwitz I had been to Buchenwald and Dachau and some of the other camps but they were not death camps so emotionally I was not prepared for it and when you walk into our wits the only thing you hear in those confines I kid you not his silence you don't hear anything probably if I'm being brutally specific with it the one thing I did here was a young gal storming out of there and then bursting into sobs and going outside to sit in the front veranda of that building and when we walked out I still saw her sitting there holding her face in her hands she was a young woman she saw what had happened you see at Auschwitz alone they were obliterating them at 12,000 every day and Eichmann's comment was that the first time he saw what happened and got the report of a whole lot of them being herded into the gas ovens denuded shaven head share shaven off and leaning flesh against flesh already emaciated they were told they were going into the showers and when they would be taken into that room and the gas spigots would be turned on they would only be able to hear one or two people screaming out gas and that's all they would hear and the bodies were literally shoveled out Eichmann said as painful as it was the first time I learned we were now able to disperse of many many bodies at the same time and do it in the quickest possible way he said one death is a tragedy a million deaths is a statistic but just outside the gas ovens were the words of Hitler I want to raise a generation of young people devoid of a conscience Imperial relentless and cruel what they did with kids there what they did with womenkind there as many people were dragged into this onslaught who didn't want to be dragged in who never realized what they were going into when I wrote a book called Jesus talks to Hitler in a great conversation series I went to Nuremberg with one of my colleagues Susan's authority on that to help meet my research the first thing that struck me in the judgement Hall at Nuremberg just above the tribunal with the ten commandments and as you leave the hall above the door our forget above or beside it was the Garden of Eden and the temptation you shall be as God's knowing good and evil meaning defining good and evil so here was the challenge where they're going to let God be God over they're going to become definers of good and evil now the important thing to state here is to understand what I am NOT saying I am NOT saying for a moment that an atheist by definition is an evil person am a mass murderer this and that that's not what I'm saying at all I'm just going to wanting to point out that once you do away with the absolute once you do away with the existence of God where do you turn for your absolutes where do you turn how do we get an answer probably the most recent work of Sam Harris made a noble effort at trying to talk about the moral landscape and of course he transposed positions from talking about morality to well-being and then he himself concedes towards the end that yes we have a lot of psychopaths in the country about three million of them and a person can be a mass murderer and still be extremely happy and in the puzzling conclusion then ends up not really with an absolute but some kind of a continuum and so the man today who stands in front of the lens of a camera and uses a sword without even having the courage for his or a face to be seen to behead somebody can also say to you and to me he is doing this for geopolitical well-being it's exactly what they believe I have sat across tables and discussed dialog and asked such questions and I say the discussion even amongst philosophers is a divided house guy Neil s'en the renowned atheist from Calgary we have not been able to show that reason requires the more point of view or that really rational person's unhooked by myth or ideology need not be individual egos or classical a Martha more or less reason doesn't decide here the picture I have painted for you is really not a pleasant one reflection on this actually depresses me pure practical reason even with a good knowledge of the facts will not take you to morality this is a very outspoken atheist he says this even with a good knowledge of the facts will not take you to morality Richard Rorty if moral imperatives are not commanded by God's will and if they are not in some sense absolute then what we wish to be is a matter simply of what men and women decide should be there is no other source of judgment too renowned atheist Bertrand Russell says you know what I do live I cannot live as though it's ethical values were simply a matter of personal taste but I find my own views incredible I do not know what the real solution is there has to be a rational justification above all of our differences and this is especially important for America at this time in her history where pluralism is a design and it is a good design I happen to be a privileged one who was born in one part of the world at the age of 20 moved to the other part of the world and because the doors of these nations were open with a legitimate pluralism people like me could come here earn a living raise our families but the absolutes that built this nation are now in serious jeopardy and we had better realize it the absolutes that built this nation because the nation talked about the fact that there were there were there were naturally endowed rights given to us that these truth roots were self-evident all of these moral statements are very critical to understand in the light of our pluralistic culture in our time I know by going to places in the world right now people look at me and we lost the question what is going on in the West what is going on was it not a doff Eichmann who finally when he was tried in Israel and was sentenced to the death penalty I was there when they were dealing with all of the evidence and was given several pages and pages of the trial which I was able to get back before I wrote my book but here's Hannah arrant describing Eichmann's last moment this is critical and I moved to my next thought here had all five men went to the gallows with great dignity he'd asked for a bottle of red wine and drank half of it he refused the help of a Protestant minister the Reverend William hull who offered to read the Bible at him he had only two more hours to live and therefore he said good quote I have no time to waste he walked the fifty yards from his cell to the execution chamber calm and erect with his hands bound behind him when the guards tied his ankles and knees he asked them to loosen the bonds so that he could stand straight I don't need that he said when the black hood was offered to him he was in complete command of himself nay he was more than that he was completely himself nothing could have demonstrated this more convincingly than the grotesque silliness of his last words he began by stating emphatically that he was God God Bob eager to express in Nazi fashion that he was no Christian and did not believe in life after death he then proceeded quote after a short while gentlemen we shall all meet again such as the fate of all men long live Germany long live Argentina long live Austria I shall not forget them in the face of death he had found the cliche used in funeral oratory under the gallows his memory played in the last trick he was elated and he forgot that this was really his own funeral it was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson one did hear this now it was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness has taught us the lesson of the fearsome word and thought defying banality of evil evil had become trivial the man who arrested Eichmann in a cloak-and-dagger operation in Argentina tells the story is now long gone but he tells the story that he was bringing him back if you've read the book the house on Garibaldi Street you know exactly how they got him they waylaid him they stalked him ultimately put an injection into him and knocked him out and brought him up under a different name and a plane the Mossad had done its work to bring him back and the man who brought him back looked at him sat down next to him in the train and he broke his own code he wasn't supposed to talk to him but he couldn't resist this he said mr. Aikman I have a question for you every day I watched you from a distance I saw you getting off the bus looking over your shoulder carrying your briefcase there in that little town in Argentina just before you entered your own home you would turn around to make sure nobody was watching I was watching you sir from a distance behind the bushes I was watching you but I noticed something mr. Aikman every day as you opened the door there was a young boy who was waiting for you and leaped into your arms who was that boy so he was my son he said mr. Aikman how old is your son he said eight said you killed my nephew who was eight can you tell me what was the difference and Peter Malkin with the Israeli Mossad was sitting by his bed waiting for the answer and Eichmann turned to him and said Peter my son was not Jewish Malcolm said he got up from there and walked away and sobbed with uncontrollable tears he never wanted to see this man again the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood had not yet become a reality where are we going to turn from moral law where am I gonna find your value and my value if you don't have essential value we are dependent upon the state to give us value you know Moses gave the people 613 laws david reduced it to 15 isaiah reduced it to 11 when Jesus was on the earth they asked him which is the greatest commandment Jesus could have very easily said one he didn't he said that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself he said on these two Commandments hang all of the laws and the prophets that you and I are made in Margo day the image of God is a uniquely so is a unique truth to the judeo-christian worldview in the same chapter in the Bible there's a conversation between a man who comes to Jesus and said is it alright to pay taxes to Caesar how wonderful it would have been if Jesus had said no Jesus said do you have a coin the man said yes he said give it to me he held the coin out to him and he said whose image is on this the man said Caesar he 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 the follow-up question should have been what belongs to God and Jesus would have said whose image is on you whose image is on you this is what gives you your unique essential worth in a moral framework that moves horizontally without moving vertically there is no essential worth there is no eternal hotness that forever confronts us I have no right to violate you as an individual I have no right to violate your property I have no right to invade your life because you are made in the image of God you have a right to make your choices I have no right to stand in the way of your choices either but the choices will always have consequences and so what I say to you is God gives you the greatest compliment in telling you your made him our gordei and Jesus Christ takes that so specifically he says to you that your body and mind are the Temple of the Living God we don't go to the temple we take the temple with us this is inviolable the moral law that Martin Luther King talks about the eternal ordinance and you know people often say yes he was very much inspired by Mahatma Gandhi which is true Matt McGann Dee's life and ahimsa non-violence had a lot of an inspiration but let me tell you two things about that Matt McGann D would never have used the term unconditional love because that is very much from the judeo-christian worldview and Gandhiji carried a New Testament wherever he went and often would quote from the Sermon on the Mount and it is fascinating that in one of Gandhi's homes in India is a quote by Bertrand Russell and outside that home the banner says this it is doubtful that the Mahatma would have succeeded in his effort except that he was appealing to people with the Christianized conscience so here was a atheist applauding the success of a pantheist because of appealing to the conscience of a theist you see how important it is to understand that a moral law has to have this transcendent value but secondly and quickly not only is the question of a moral law unanswerable from a horizontal perspective guy Nielsen sustains that even JL Mackie argues for the struggle you've got several atheists who deal my Michael ruse deals with the same issue richard rorty they all bring up the question of where do we go for an absolute objective moral law but the second question is that of meaning how do I really find meaning in my life recently I had the privilege of speaking at a conference called passion some of you are out here who are at that conference forty thousand in a live audience in three venues and tens of thousands scattered across listening in from about a hundred and fifteen different universities and 47 countries eighteen to twenty four or so at age bracket many of those who went forward to find help do you know what were the two most important issues in their lives for which they sought help 18 to 24 number one was among the young guys especially struggling with pornography and number two was the stalking haunting fear of suicide I don't have the ever saw the logical connection but nah graffiti nudes the other person doesn't just disrobe the nudes the other person in exchange for a feeling the person who's soaked by it is not looking for a person the person who's hooked by it is looking for a feeling a feeling ultimately that no one person in the world can satisfy and once you have robbed the other person of any value you ultimately denude your own self and there is no purpose and meaning file now that logic connection wasn't there in my life but the end result still was I came to know Christ on a bed of suicide when I was 17 years old in Delhi because I had no meaning in my life I didn't care what anybody was saying to me it all didn't add up it simply didn't make sense people say what this meaning really mean it's a long talk one could give on their on its own but let me just tell you a meaning meaning is found with four components a sense of wonder we watched children reading fairy tales and being read to in fairy tales and the enchantment is awesome they want this sense of wonder but as they grow up they begin to struggle and they say the fairy tales are not true they're merely fantastic they were mere fantasy now they are looking for that which is fantastically true wonder truth thirdly the experience of love and finally the knowledge of security if you are really looking for meaning to build a coherent worldview you're going to have these full components wonder truth love and security I will deal with just one of them as I bring my message to a close but here it is this sense of a moral law that we cannot find the quest for meaning that we hunger after let me give you an illustration of this when existentialist writer wrote a play a long time ago called the adulterous woman a woman who had just wanted to flirt with all this kind of stuff but she had held back and never indulged in it so her husband takes her into a town where he's dealing as his works and jewelry and all of that at the end of it he comes back exhausted and he is in bed and the woman thinks to herself everything I saw in town tonight's my night to have a last fling I will never have it again and he he sound asleep she wakes up gets dressed goes out into the night and expends herself in ways had never ever dreamed she spent herself into pleasure and exhausted with pleasure she comes back in the early hours of the morning opens the door while the he is still sound asleep she slips under the covers but there's a big problem she cannot fall asleep now on her pillow the chairs are rolling down the side of the face and our husband hears the sobs and wakes up and looks at her and said what's the matter she brushes him aside and says nothing just nothing see the loneliest moment is when you have just experienced that which promised you the ultimate and it has let you down the loneliest moment is when you have just experienced that which has promised you the ultimate and it has let you down I look at you tonight as young students and I say and you're really the primary reason I'm here by the way because I care for the student world I care for the young life that is living today almost skidding out of control with no answers the meaning that Christ offers to you is a meaning in a personal relationship Justice Antonin Scalia just passed away last week and some of the channels were playing his some of his major speeches he was considered one of the brightest intellectuals on the Supreme Court bench whether you agreed with him or not is not the issue here even those who disagreed with him were good friends and said the man was made of sterling character and in his speech I was just puttering around the house and I heard him make three statements back-to-back and I thought what on earth is this about he's like behind the lectern he said I want you all to hear me he said sophisticated thinkers can believe in God that's what he said next statement sophisticated thinkers can believe in a personal God third statement he made sophisticated thinkers can believe in the person of Jesus Christ the very son of God and meaning comes ultimately in finding the sacred that binds the diversity of your proclivities and gives it that homogeneity of a supreme expression that is bound by the skin of the sacred the sacred is what gives life meaning so you know where the boundaries are you know where the purpose is moral law an uncertain where do we find the sacred and if we don't find the sacred we have no meaning where are the answers thirdly and quickly I say to you what about hope where is hope really found if life ends in the grave one of my great privileges is to speak to our military bases I'll be doing to two or three of them this year I've always gone there to minister to our men and women in the Armed Forces whenever it is finished they always line up and will talk to me to have a word of Prayer and talk about the dangers with which they live I was led into this when I was 25 years old speaking in Vietnam I was a young undergraduate student invited to speak in Vietnam going from military base to military base and I saw death on the side of the highways I saw death as we flew in the choppers all around going from one venue to another I saw death and dying in military hospitals where in some places unless you had a burn on your body there were two bodies to each bed and when I saw the horrors of that kind of warfare I said what are we doing to our fellow human beings and yet these are the very ones who look for hunger and look for hope I was just meeting a gentleman from Egypt before we came in here my colleagues and I were in Egypt in November and one night we spoke to a large number of young people on that given night alone in Cairo over 500 young men and women responded to the invitation to follow Jesus Christ the life had been empty they realized the moment had come to see what it is that Christ offered to them and before before I moved to my final thought I had a dialogue with Sheikh Hussein the leading Shia cleric in Syria he sat from the table day with an interpreter always kept addressing me as professor even though I told him I wasn't a professor but he kept respectfully calling me professor zacharias professor zacharias he would ask me a question about my faith I would answer him I would ask him a question about his faith he would answer me what a marvelous moment of a few moments they were to dialogue cordially with somebody of a different worldview and people listening to this for nearly three hours when it was over he leaned forward and said something through the interpreter I said what did he say she said he said mr. Zacharias maybe it's time for me and my people who follow a different faith to stop asking if Jesus died on the cross and to start asking why I said Shaykh Hussein may I quote you on that sir he said yes you may you have to ask yourself the question in the gospel narrative the cross is central why because your greatest need is not for a political leader your greatest need is not for the best of Education all of those are important but your need and my need the greatest need we have is deep within our own heart where evil stalks and seeks to take over our greatest need is for a savior our greatest need is for a savior no moral law no meaning no hope and lastly I say the supremacy of the ethic of love the supremacy of the ethic of love think of this where do we go to understand love would you allow me just a personal illustration of this you know Winston Churchill was once asked by a corporal mr. Churchill have I ever talked to you about my grandchildren Churchill said no and I want you to know how much I appreciate it so I won't bore you with my grandchildren's stories but since I'm not Churchill can I tell you at least one I have a four year old grandson his name is Jude I don't know where he gets his vocabulary from I really don't one day he leans over at the dinner table a few months ago and he says Papa what is the meaning of sophomoric I told my daughter you better watch this guy if he's using the word sophomoric which I didn't even understand till I was in my twenties and was probably very sophomoric and my behavior at that time but one day his mother when he was about just little over three his mother had lost her car keys and she's looking around the house and can't find it and she slapped her forehead and said I must be losing my mind Jude comes over in front of her looks her in the eye and says money whatever you do please don't ever lose your heart because I'm in there and I ask you where did that intuitive statement come to him from where did that statement come to him from see the longing for love is very real in your life and mine but we only think of romantic love or we only think of other loves in the Greek language there are full of agape storge falero and eros storge protective love filler or friendship love eros romantic love it all hangs on agape which is God's love if you lose God's love you cannot define the other three and so the love that you and I long for that binds it all together for you and me which is something that by the way Bertrand Russell himself said he never found in life and when I go from place to place in this world to preach the love of Christ I think of this and I close with this in John 3:16 the Bible says for God so loved the world that He gave His only his one and only that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life about twenty-five words depending on which exact translation you used about 25 words what do you have in all of that you have that which is causal God so loved the world that He gave His only Son you have that which is filial you have that which is sacrificial you have that which is relational you have that which is eternal and it is all bound up in the judicial it is all bound up in the judicial causal filial relational eternal sacrificial all bound up in the judicial we say we are a country of laws I say to you God is the one in whom there is no contradiction and the moral law is an intrinsic part of his character everything in love everything in sacrifice everything in relationship everything that he offers to you and me is built within the legal framework of God's being in whom there is no contradiction where there is contradiction there is breakdown so on these four issues alone of law meaning hope and love they are the unanswered questions of naturalism there is no objective source of defining them in the judeo-christian worldview they correspond to reality in measuring it they cohere in a worldview and so I present you that option as worthy of your investigation that's why Jesus said I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly we'll have a chance to take your questions may God richly bless you thank you for giving me a hearing and I stand next to him I failed a physical I remember hugging my wife once giving you the best possible hug and she looked at me pushed her face back and said she has a loving name for me I won't tell you what it is but she said to me I just want you to know you have the arms of a thinking man so I'm working on becoming an on thinking man but I'm really glad to have the arms of a thinking man here - this is Abdul Maury he's going to share a few thoughts with you please welcome him from Detroit Michigan thank you what a blessing in an honor and a daunting task by the way to follow the the comments of a truly thinking man my name is Abdul marine I'll be joining Ravi for some Q&A following some very brief comments if you've noticed there's a bit of an oddity in my name and one of the first questions I get speaking of Q&A is what's with the abdu and what's with the Murray Lebanese and Scottish how does that work the Long's the short story is that basically got anglicize when we came over the you can't really write my last name or so you can say it in English letters to Sarah Lee so they said okay your last name is Marie so I'm Lebanese in Scottish which means that I fight with everybody I hope not today actually that that won't be the case we want to come to you in the spirit of answering your questions with the real sense of we can disagree or we can agree but we don't necessarily have to be disagreeable about these things now as we come to you talking about these questions and you're gonna have some very profound questions over the course of the evening generated I hope by dr. Zacharias is talk and some of the things you've heard I want to ask you a question and it's a question that neither I nor Ravi nor anybody else could ask could answer I should say the question is this why are you here why are you here there's a lot of you here and everyone has an individual reason why you're here now perhaps you're somebody from a strong Christian faith and you've come to hear how a defence of the Christian faith can go someone who can provide answers to these things maybe you've been posed a difficult question that you can't find the answer to or you've struggled to articulate it you're of course welcome maybe you're someone who's come from a Christian home who has a strong Christian faith or who had it at least at one point but because of the way in which the world use have come at you and you've had these questions posed to you and you don't know how to answer those questions maybe your faith is teetering on the edge of ruin it's a great place for you to be maybe you're somebody from a contrary worldview somebody who was not raised in a Christian home or was and is now finds themselves to be an atheist or maybe you're from a pantheistic background or you're a Muslim this is for you as well by the way you're someone with whom I most identify in this room because I came from the worldview that was not a Christian worldview I was raised most of my life from the counter worldview to Christianity as racism Muslim to committed Muslim and I took it seriously in fact friends I would actually challenge my Christian friends about their worldview you see I had this fundamental belief in God's greatness as a Muslim we believe in that Muslims believe in this phrase this that the content of this phrase Allahu Akbar you've all heard this phrase if you've watched the news for five seconds you've heard someone say allahu akbar and unfortunately when you hear it something bad happens but the reality is this friends that oftentimes muslims say this all the time in in nonviolent ways it's not really a battle cry all will always it's it's a blessing it literally means god is greater the fundamental doctrines of Islam and for me especially was God's greatness how do we understand God to be truly great it really means God is greater so for the Muslim there is no being who is greater than God and I firmly believed that I also believed in those days that Christians wished they believed in a God who was great but they were really confused try theists they thought they were to the Yamano fee there's confused try theist whatever it would be and I would challenge them on their faith and I would say you hear this you know this hymn you sing How Great Thou art you ought to change it how great thou are not and I would go into it challenging the Trinity the Incarnation the atonement and the Bible itself in terms of its validity but a funny thing happened in the way the mosque is they say I was confronted with the credibility of the Christian faith by the way I was an equal-opportunity faith knocker outer of ER it wasn't just Christians I was looking at there were people from contrary world views with the atheist or Hindu or Buddhist whatever it was but Christians were low-hanging fruit in the area I grew up in but they began to respond to me and to say you know if this is actually something you might want to think about the validity of the Bible for example and how we have it transmitted down through the centuries as something that is reliable and gives me a source for the historic Christian faith for the theologies behind it that the Trinity actually makes some kind of sense in fact it makes supreme sense if you're looking for a God who is truly at the atonement the incarnation of God in Christ and what happened at Calvary's Hill actually can satisfy not only the heart but also the mind and of course the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus himself these things started to become harder to build up and they were becoming what Al Gore would call it Inconvenient Truth in my life you see I didn't want them to be true because that would mean that I'd have to change my my perspective my worldview and if we know something and I think everybody in this room knows this you know that if you have you hold a world you dearly there's a certain level of clinging to that worldview because a worldview actually comes into play into your identity and so if you change that worldview you change something about who you are it's a tough thing to do and friends it took nine years as that inconvenient truth became more and more true but also more and more inconvenient because of the identity shift that would have to happen in my own life nine years of searching asking questions of debating or getting questions answered and then rehashing them and over all know over and over again there began to see that this worldview is worth at least considering all of us no matter what your stripe is from a secular background from a theistic background from whatever it might be we all face this think of the words of Thomas Nagel the famous philosopher atheistic philosophy out of New York University when he says I want atheism to be true and I made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers it's not that I this belief in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my beliefs it's that I don't want there to be a god I hope there is no God I don't want the universe to be like that that's a very honest statement not about the lack of evidence in favor of God but about the desire that there be none we all face these things every one of us you see that the issue is this and I found this over that course of that nine years the answers are not all that hard to find they're not all that hard to find they're not even all that hard to agree upon intellectually but they can be very hard to accept because it requires each one of us to change something about ourselves you know CS Lewis made the statement if you look for comfort he said this actually he said if you look for truth you will find comfort but if you look for comfort you will get neither truth nor comfort only soft soap to begin with and in the end despair it's very important you can what he's saying here he's saying if you look for truth you will find comfort in the end but if you look for comfort primarily you will get neither only your soft soap to begin with but in the end there will be a despair because truth has a way of catching up to us but we want to sort of serve that that comfort I certainly wanted to I can tell you this I identify with that I wanted desperately for the Christian worldview to not be true especially the gospel of Jesus and him dying on a cross you see I thought that if I believe in a God who was great how could it be that the God of the universe the God of all creation could become incarnate in a limited body and died on a cross at the very hands of the sinners he created how is this God great exactly but then I realized something and dr. Zacharias mentioned that about the whole ID Supreme ethic of love think about this in Islam you do have a God who is loving it's a conditional love but it is there but he would be supremely that way if God is the greatest possible being then he would express the greatest possible ethic which is love in the greatest possible way and what is the greatest possible way that is possible to express love in sending books for us to follow rules regulations these might be acts of love but they're not the supreme act of love the greatest possible way to express the greatest possible ethic is self-sacrifice and if you and I are capable of doing that not the God of the universe the greatest possible being being able to do that himself and the cross of Christ the historic cross of Christ and that empty tomb proved he did it so as we begin to ask ourselves these questions we welcome your questions we come from the particular worldview and a particular idea and perspective about how we want to answer your questions I have to ask you the question you have to ask yourself this question why are you here why do you have the question you ask because each one of you asks a question not in an academic sense purely out of curiosity that is there but also you are unique individual with a unique history and a future you worry about and so your questions are always tied to the person you've heard something of Robbie's story about how he came to face and the tremendous price that was really when he was looking for comfort he didn't find it but then found it when he found truth you've heard a little snippet of my own story but has that close I want to say this from the from CS Lewis who called himself the most reluctant convert in all of England and from the Christian perspective we embrace this idea of of experiencing the cost of truth because the one who we claim is the very embodiment of truth experiences the price himself Lewis said the great thing to remember is that though our feelings come and go his love for us does not is not worried by our sins or our indifference and therefore it is quite relentless in the determination that we shall be cured of those sins at whatever cost to us I whatever cost to him is the self sacrificial God that I found as the search that my heart was longing for and my mind was longing for as well I'll close with this as Bryan comes up and leads us in the question and answer period in Colossians chapter 4 verses five and six the Apostle Paul says that we are to be careful how we walk toward outsiders meaning non-christians walking in wisdom at the end of it he says this we ought to know how we ought to answer each person not each question not its objection not each argument not each issue because people need answers people look for answers questions don't need answers people do people have questions in order to get those answers it's my prayer that as Brian comes up and take your questions and you come forward to ask those questions that it's not just your questions that are being asked and answered but do you feel respected by us and then it is you who are being answered thank you so much so here's what we want to do we have a microphone that we are setting up just down here one of the even the things that I know Abdul and dr. Zacharias appreciate is just the ability to even look a questioner in the eye to to try to honor them with just a face-to-face interaction and so if you have a question here tonight you go I just need this answer and in particular tonight as Robbie said is you know we are so glad for so many people from the community to be a part of tonight but tonight is primarily about students and to give students a chance as many ideas are shared on a university campus that would be in conflict with what's been shared here tonight so give students a chance and so if you're a student here and you go I have a question I want to ask and in particular if you're somebody who's going I'm someplace along the journey I don't even know where I'm at along the journey but I've got a question that needs to be asked we want to give you a chance and invite you to come up and to ask a question at the microphone so if you have a question you want to start making your way up here we want to take any question under any questionnaire that we have here in the center tonight so go ahead and feel free to make your way there if you are maybe a little bit shy and you go there's a lot of people here and I feel nervous we understand that as well we have a slide up here if you have your phone available as well you can do this I really want to encourage you to take the opportunity even now we won't have time to take all the questions here tonight we'll have space for Q&A afterwards but to find a space there to line up but if you go I have a phone and you want to text in or tweet in I think we've got a slide up here actually above my head here submit your questions you can tweet a question in to uky Ravi you can use that hashtag on Twitter you can also if you want to text that is the the CSF cell phone which I'm pretty sure will explode so if you hear something don't be alarmed it's just a cell phone going boom but but you can text in a question as well if you have one there or you want to tweet that in so if you have somebody here I know there's a lot of people here we want to honor any questions that you have so I have an open mic and I know a lot of people have some questions so if you have anything you want to ask feel free to make your way over yes please what's your question therefore dr. Zacharias or Abdul Mary well Mike I want to thank you all for coming out tonight and spending time here my question is uh when debating atheists like Stephen Hawking's and other people like that what is the how do you convince someone like him that a God exists without using the Bible necessarily well I was having lunch with Stephen Hawking yesterday no I'm just kidding I'm sure your question is not specific but we get the idea I spent six months at Ridley Hall in Cambridge and actually heard one or two lectures from him on a very famous lecture from him at Lady Mitchell Hall in 1990 and he was addressing the issue of are we determined or are we free and of course Hawking as considered them if not the brightest one of the brightest minds in the world of science today she's very amazing to me of course he can't speak because of Lou Gehrig's disease he has this computer designed by a Caltech scientist and either by the cutting into the infrared ray with his eyelid or with a movement of finger is able to select letter sticks and so on and it's amazing that he so it takes him very long to even answer a question that's why you can ask very difficult questions and we'll take him about him two or three minutes to compute his answer and his answer always is very brief but you know the interesting thing is if naturalism was the only worldview reigning I wonder if Stephen Hawking would have made it this far a scientist gave him the equipment by which he could communicate but it was love compassion altruism and generosity that cared for him and brought him through all of the years so there were philosophical ideas behind it that protected his life in his brief history of time the last page he makes something like this he said now I have told you what if I could tell you why we would have the mind of God very interesting that he gave that little caveat and at that time he was attending one or two churches in the area on the weekend and somebody told me who knew him that he was on his own spiritual search but of course in his later book the grand the grand design he talked about the fact that gravity explains everything and he made the very irrational and unfortunate statement that philosophy is dead so much so theologians did not respond to him the chairman of the philosophy department at Cambridge responded by saying maybe it's about time the oracular professor Hawking recognized that he's not kept up with our discipline as much as we have with his and this kind of hostility developed but as I told you down the road was John poking horn the quantum physicist who of course no Stephen Hawking I don't know what the answer is how one leads him but the answer to a specific question how do you do it without the exhibit out invoking the Bible is really not that difficult because his explanation that gravity is really at the heart of it and explains everything is like me explaining a dictionary because of the alphabet doesn't follow the alphabet exists with the compilation requires design and specified complexity it is a rather simplistic explanation to say gravity explains at all and our colleague from Oxford John Lennox responded to Stephen Hawking in one of his books and I think he called it Stephen Hawking's God as something to that nature John Lennox who has a triple doctorate and was professor of mathematics at Carey at at Green College Cambridge Green College Oxford and is one of our colleagues on our team so they've responded David Berlinski also even though he's a natural and even though he's a skeptic is responded I would basically say three very simple things number one however you sex physical concrete reality however you section physical concrete reality you always end up with the state of affairs that debt that that concrete reality doesn't explain its own existence that physical concrete reality doesn't explain its own existence number two wherever you see specified complexity and design you assume a designer number three looking at the history of culture humanity and history you see the very person of Jesus Christ coming with the prophetic scheme and the specifics of it and all the promises contained there and his transformation in the human heart so whether you take those three stages however you cut downs the physical concrete reality you end up with the state of affairs that it doesn't explain its own existence whenever you see specified complexity or design you assume designer and in the human events and course of history and culture and the human search you see especially in the person of Jesus Christ the evidence of God's existence but if you take just the first two and leave the third out it ought to lead you to wherever the evidence actually directs you and once you accept the existence of something non-physical that is eternal and the designer you can go into history and the human experience and see how it is that Jesus Christ indeed has changed lives change history changed hearts and in that three stages I think you can demonstrate the reality of a personal moral first cause who also offers to transform the human heart that would be my basic response but people like Steam and like John poking horn and all in his book one world have done a marvelous job of explaining it do you have any just something short it would be this the next step though is not just to speak to the language that someone else speaks and if it's science then we can talk about science and science points to things the science is the measure of the physical world but it also leads to implications about what the world is actually like in a non-physical realm in terms of the moralities that are around us in terms of the the meaning and the purpose for what which we were created in fact when you look at someone like Francis Collins who is himself a Christian of a quite devoted Christian who is a scientist in fact the leader of the human genome project and now I think the director of the National Institutes of Health he will tell you that when you look at DNA for example we have the universe itself then you have a specific design of DNA itself 3.1 billion bits of information specifically ordered and we're finding more and more of the information that's actually coding for well actually has functioned the more and more we look at it you're seeing something you're not seeing a specific statement that says this is God created but it is an implication that that which is ordered specifically has an informer the information has an informer there's an implication being made they're a leap that now that madden up is not too far believe in fact and you look at the Stephen Hawking's own words about the way in which the universe itself seems to be designed that there are certain properties that if they were even infinitesimally off by a hair's breadth you'd have no life possible in the universe in any way and to quote I think there was under Coyle who said I wouldn't Hubble it I'm Karen Berg which one what are the h's who said that it looks like somebody's been monkeying with the physics interesting statement but there's another aspect of this once we speak about these things then we can talk talking about what the Bible actually has to say about these things because if the Bible is true this might get you to see ISM but how does it get you to understand if Christian theism actually holds of water because if the Bible comports is what we find in a natural realm if the Bible comports we find in the moral realm then you see a correspondence between the two now I'll tell you this as someone who was not friendly in any way shape or form to the validity of the Bible I remember specifically grabbing a little green Bible from a Gideon I still have that little green Bible going back to my apartment so I could find a contradiction and that would finally sort of these two guys were coming to my door they were trying to convert me to Christianity I was going to knock them down finally with an objection a contradiction they couldn't explain and in that little green Bible specific words I won't go into the detail because time doesn't permit but specific word from Luke chapter 3 verse 7 suddenly got me thinking about objective truths and whether or not I was being fair with the data here's the point the Bible itself spoke to a skeptic of it so be careful about our desire to speak with lofty arguments and closed Bibles we can actually have that Bible it's not going to be the primary source always but it can be a source where we can look at and say now does what we've explored comport with this Bible teaches and if it does now it's worthy of our beliefs great question thank you thank you we have we're gonna take you know just gonna be about a 30-minute time we appreciate the time here but I want to tackle as many questions as we can again we're gonna do some more afterwards dr. Zacharias and mr. Murray will be down front but a few more questions here please go ahead I just wanted to know what why did God put the tree in the garden to begin with he ultimately knew what decision Adam and Eve would make so why even put the tree there to begin with because it makes it just seem like we're just a big social experiment let me give a shot of that first great question if you understand if you look at what the the nature of God first that's what I go to the nature of God first and from a Christian perspective God is a community there is one God who is one being but three and his personhood Father Son Holy Spirit eternally distinct personhood who share one nature that easy degree to grasp know is it is it comprehensible by finite human beings no but it doesn't go against our logic so God exists in the Christian mindset as a community he defines what love and relationship is he eternally exists in a state of relationship so you as an effect he's the cause but you as an effect actually crave desire want covet and mourn the loss of relationship it's one of the key things about human existence and you're the effect shouldn't the cause reflect something about that and in this case in the Christian worldview the cause who is a triune being who exists in a relationship actually explains why you the effect wanted so badly how does that relate to your question on the Garden of Eden God Himself is a relational being and in order to have true relationship instead of a winding automaton like the monkey to clasp like this and the eyes bug out and all these things but we just wind up and see where we go he creates the ability for us to have a choice an actual freedom to choose relationship because relationship not chosen is not really relationship at all the relationship chosen is real love actually has an existence then in a real sense because love itself is vulnerable so he creates this scenario where people can actually choose the choice is freely given God's foreknowledge does not necessarily mean he creates that he creates the choice that they make but the possibility for them to make that choice he doesn't so that we can have relationship you see the God of the Bible does not lack relationship he never lacks it he eternally exists in that state so why create us he doesn't need us for relationship well I create you or create me to muck it up he creates you and creates me not so that he can have relationship he's already got it within himself in the Godhead he creates you and creates me so that you can it is an utterly selfless act in that sense he utterly and selflessly creates out of an abundance of his love out of abundance of who he is as a relational being and the relationship requires choice and a free will that's there and the tree allows for that and because of that you and I have there's a fallen nature to human humanity and that's there as well but then the redemption comes in and then we are offering as Ravi had already said from John 3:16 that God so loved relational equality the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever shall believe and actually given an actually chosen shall not perish but have everlasting life from the beginning we have relationship from eternity we have relationship and a Redemption we have relationship and the tree actually is the is the beginning of that it's a very very good question sir and I think it actually hinges a little bit also on the previous one you know the thing about skeptics sometimes when they ask us these questions and I'm not saying it's you because I don't know what the background from which you are coming is oftentimes I wonder whether they realize we ask these same questions you know we struggle with these issues it's not like we think these are invalid questions they are very valid question but what is the question assume the question assumes something very critical that the answer should be coherent because a coherent worldview is what you're really looking for you cannot be comfortable within coherence and the question that was asked earlier the whole issue of how does one talk to a Stephen Hawking the fascinating thing about the talk that Stephen Hawking gave in 1990 at the lady Mitchell auditorium which was packed on the question of his man determined or is he free he went through about 25 minutes of all kinds of scientific arguments and so on and his skull monnet ting statement got an audible response oh oh my is this the best answer we can get and what he said at the end is yes we are determined he was under the stranglehold of determinism right from the beginning in a in a naturalistic framework he said yes we are determined but since we do not know what is determined we may as well not be that was this concluding statement yes we are determined but since we don't know what is determined we may as well not be what he's really saying is since we don't know the answer to my complete the explanation for my confusion conclusion let us live as if it is not a legitimate conclusion that's really what he was saying so I say when you're looking for a coherent worldview look at it this way what options would there have been for the Great Creator in the beginning of this no world at all versus this world number two creating a world where there would be no such thing as good or evil an immoral world number three choosing a world where we would only choose good where we'd be predetermined to choose good there would be the total constraint so we've got three options nothing versus what we now have no such thing as good or evil or creating a constraint where we would only choose good and there were we would never make the evil choices or number for creating this kind of world where there would be the possibility of good and evil and we are given the option of the privilege of freedom and making the choice out of these four options this option is the only universe in the only world in which love is possible in the previous three love is not possible at all love would not have been possible within between the divine and human interaction so I say this sometimes these are mega questions and macro questions and other times they are filtered down into micro questions and the fine-tuning of an individual life I found the answer to this first of all from the negative you take a naturalistic framework you live in an incoherent world I couldn't live with that so how do I find coherence in putting together the diversity in my own heart which was put together by God and that knowledge of a personal relationship with God we change not only what I did but what I wanted to do in my personal life gave me hope meaning and a relationship let me give you just two quick illustrations because I think this is critical I've had the opportunity of speaking at the one of the most famous prisons in the world Angola prison in Louisiana up there was with me some of my colleagues with me 6,000 plus prisoners there 85% of whom are in life without parole it was the bloodiest prison in America blood on the ceilings blood on the carpets blood on the walls when a prisoner was checked in there he was given a dagger or a knife with which to protect himself and this warden comes in this director comes in and says I'm gonna change this place you allow me to do it my way he put a Bible in every cell he had Chapel every day he as a seminary that he's built in there within a matter of a year or two it became the safest prison in America today instead of a gang of fire of tugs they've got gangs of pastors going through that prison out there and they're the prisoners themselves we had lunch with them and I said to the guy sitting opposite us why don't you and get yours he said hey man I'm going nowhere you may as well go and get yours and then I'll join you the guy who led in worship a young man I said to him can I ask you a question his lead worship so beautifully he said I said can I ask you a question are you here for a life without parole he said yes sir I said how do you feel he said mrs. Araz if you'd known why I am here you would never ask me that question he said but let me tell you something out there I thought I was free and the horrific things that I did destroyed people's lives and destroyed my own now inside prison bars have been found Christ I have never been freer in my life this are the most free I have ever been pray for my family they're outside and think they are free when they are really not and he put his arm around me and prayed for me and there were tears running down my face we had lunch made by the prisoners the warden sits there eats the lunch of the prisoners are made what you call that faith you better believe it he doesn't why they have found meaning by an individual life being conquered when you know Christ when you have that relationship and your will is transformed to his will you find out why you were made in the first place and the crowd is just multiplied opportunity for individual conquest that God desires in every life out here tonight I'll leave that with you let's let's take a question from Twitter or text because we are going to respond to those at some point we do want at least take one from there because if you have sent something in our promises that we will respond to those if not tonight you will get something in the coming days but let's take one I know you all been working you have something on the screen from us Twitter a text question but for those of us who can't read I'm a bad if I a bad person for doubting or questioning my faith I think you know it's interesting boy it's a good question doubt it'll become a dirty word if if we say you know you have to believe 100% and if you have any questions or any doubts and you're not really a true Christian or whatever these things might be this is interesting because we need to this and shortly as I possibly can but it's terribly terribly important because I think people often fall into despair and their doubt creates further doubt there's a difference between two things there's a person who's a skeptic and there's a person who's a cynic a skeptic is somebody who doesn't believe something until there's enough evidence a cynic is somebody who won't believe it even when there is two different things now if you're a skeptic I'm skeptical of all out of things but if you're skeptic and you come to wrestle with these issues doubt can often drive us to a to a knowledge of the truth because it drives us to find out is this really real or am i believing in a fantasy and doubt could help us get there John the Baptist the story John the Baptist of course who Jesus said there was no man greater and born among women than John the Baptist comes when he's in prison and bad things had happened to him and he comes and brings his people to Jesus and says are you the one who's to come or should we look for another this is the same one who baptized Jesus and saw the doves and all these things yet he has his doubts and Jesus rewards his doubts not with saying go away be gone you're a doubter get out of here he says go tell John the evidence his doubt his sincere doubt was rewarded with evidence so doubt can be something that leads us to face a stronger faith but if it becomes cynicism that becomes a problem next question please hi there I was raised by a mother who was a feminist and is a questioning Christian at the moment and she finds that there are some contradictions somewhere in the Bible that states that male have to be domitor for women and women had to be submissive so just from a Christian perspective does God favor a gender specifically and you know why what I think your mother has a fair question there I don't think it's just in a vacuum or at any sense of just trying to be cavalier about it not just that you think of the very nation that he chose through whom to really matter heal himself he could've chosen Rome he could have chosen Greece you get a Johson Babylon in fact will Mt yours talking about it in a piece of poetry said how out of God to choose the Jews but then he went on to say how order still are those who reject whom God chose God I think often times in life for the human life chooses the weakest through whom to make his strength manifest if you were to ask me what really makes this world you know let me dispel one idea here you often hear a statement men are more cerebral women are more emotional nothing is farther from the truth but I'll tell you what I have found both are equal cerebrally but women are more consistent in willing to let the thought be connected to the emotion men like to hide from the emotional ramifications of the thought so if I talked to my mother she'd immediately connect the emotion with what she was thinking with my father he could draw circles around it because he'd run from the feeling I've talked to husband and wife we were on a on a vacation once and they both lost a son and the woman was talking to my wife and said it has put such a strain on our marriage because my husband doesn't even want to talk about it while I'm breaking up on the inside they both had the same thoughts one was running from it the other was willing to find the greatest bridge between in life between the head and the heart so Thea so even in theory the whole idea is wrong secondly some of the finest thinking in the world has been done by womankind you see it so this myth has to be dispensed with it's purely an archaic thing but to your question is the Bible dishonorable like this in gender we've just had Joe Vitale who is on our team from from Oxford Cheers just defended her doctoral dissertation at Oxford on this very issue and this very subject DIMM demonstrating how strongly the Bible speaks of the equality of the genders and what it is God has in mind and the complementary Ness of the two so here's my question to you if God were a discriminator against gender the greatest truth on which the gospel hangs is the resurrection if Christ be not raised from the dead our faith is in vain why in heaven's name did he reveal himself to the women to go and tell the message all of Easter all of Easter hangs on the testimony of womankind with whom he trusted the entire gospel when the woman with the alabaster ointment came to him and those were frowning about her he looked at them and said be quiet where were the gospel is preached there shall also dis be told what this woman has jumped to me in worship he paid her the greatest compliment that the gospel would be carried to the ends of the earth and this story of this woman's faith will also be told he goes to saya Samaria and he sees a woman of the well with five broken shattered marriages she was ethnically ethnically barred from the society as maritally broken and shattered five times he made her the first evangelist to the samaritan world imagine what an incredibly gracious God to remind us that none of us is superior to the other we only have the same privilege of taking our distinctives and complementary strengths and carrying the message to the world I can tell you this I would never be here today if it weren't for the strength of my mother and when when my younger brother was six or seven years old he was dying with double pneumonia and typhoid my dad had given up our family had given up we were living in Delhi and the doctor came and told us my younger brother Ramesh was today the chairman the Department of pain management at McMaster University in in Canada he was 6-7 dying I remember seeing him as a bag of bones for the last time I'm Jim for six years older than him and I walked away from there bidding him goodbye he was unconscious my mother refused to leave she refused to leave she sat by his bedside and we were all worn to the bone including my dad and so four of us kids backed up taken back home and all of us lying in bed saying we've just lost our youngest my mother sat by his bedside whatever she was doing I don't know sher exhaustion for days she hadn't slept and just by his bedside crying out to God to rescue her son somewhere in the early hours of the morning he began to move and began he was very much alive but just quite worn out and broken and that need of life was coming back to him and the next day when we all were told to come back to the hospital his eyes were open and his whole life given fresh strength there was only one out of the six of us there who had the strength to sit by that bedside and watch what loomed as a tragedy and watch the triumph to turn into victory anybody who thinks that's weak and lesser doesn't understand reality God is the god of humankind and the last thing jesus said on the cross but the redemption of mankind was look at a young man and tell him not to forget his mother to make sure she was also taken care of because a sword was piercing through her heart that is our Lord who treats all of us with intrinsic worth and reflective splendor and I thank God for the beauty he is created in this complementary nurse let's do this we're still gonna have some time to answer questions in the back we we're gonna we've got kind of a special thing I want to make sure we cover the end so let's do this let's do one final question dr. Zacharias I believe wants to have some final words here and then let's let's take a final question on this hi I was wondering I've grown up in steeped in church traditions I've grown up I went to a religious school I still go to a religious school and I feel that perhaps indirectly I've been taught that the most important thing about Jesus is his death and I was wondering how true that is oh boy without his death there is no gospel without his resurrection the death was a minami thing I want to give a talk great question by the way I was gave a talk at a at a business sort of talking about Easter diversity day they never had a thing about Easter done at this Hitler business and I made this statement and it's I think it's true that Christmas without Easter is meaningless Easter without Christmas is not possible so you see that the diverse and the death and the resurrection all wrapped up into the same into the same real that the story the story is a beginning middle and end but when Jesus was asked why have you come he says for this reason I have come he's come to give his life as a ransom for many that's the reason now that ransom is his death as a payment for sin because what the gospel tells you and tells me is this and by the way if I can't has a shorter side here Jesus what I loved he just for a lot of reasons one of those reasons is he's not a sales person who tells you what you want to hear he tells you what you need to hear it's a very terrible sales pitch to say you're evil come follow me what kind of a poster is that but people do it anyway he tells you what you need to hear not what you want to hear in distinction to every other worldview by the way which tells you that you can do it yourself you're the one who can make it on your own and I think if the 24-hour news is one of the worst inventions the past 20 30 years I got a cop over here on that one but one thing it does provide this though is ample evidence that men is in need of a savior who's not himself we need someone who's not as to save us from ourselves because of our innate meet our innate evil and our sin Jesus tells told us that 2,000 years ago so we need someone who can redeem us who can pay the penalty that we deserve Jesus says I'm that guy now what's interesting is if he died and stayed dead then how would you know he's right they could be dead and well maybe he was right maybe he was wrong who knows he's like everybody else so maybe he was wrong but he didn't stay dad his death is the payment when he says on that cross to tell us die when he says that in the Greek it actually means it is finished it is accomplished it's a financial term paid in full it's like a stamp on a document the debt is paid that is done for us though you can know that he was right that he took away the sins of the world through that death because of his resurrection if he died and stayed dead no way to know but he didn't die and stay dead he showed his his conch his conquering over that death is conquering over the last enemy through the physical and I believe truly historical resurrection from the dead so the death without the resurrection doesn't really show you anything but the resurrection shows that the death meant something in fact let me just put it this way plainly it meant everything thank you some years ago I had the privilege of speaking at the United Nations and they had asked me to speak on a search for absolutes in a relativistic world it's a tough subject especially in the early hours of the morning and about 18 minutes and what I did in my talk has talked about four absolutes that we really look for evil justice love and forgiveness I said we all have the desire to call some nation an evil nation you brand some nations evil nations but you also talk about justice you want just societies you all love your families and you miss your families and then you're all some of you are going to blow it ethically and you need to be forgiven evil justice love and forgiveness so I said to them where in the world it these converge at one point in history the spin drop silence acid they converged on a hill called Calvary and as that meeting was over and I presented to them the message of Calvary they were lined up the ambassadors and one of them came to me shook my hand and he said dr. sacra as he said I come from an atheistic nation and I don't want to be here my president asked me to come here I hate being here I miss being here but I want to say to you today I have found out why I came here I came here to find God I came here to find God recently I was in a Middle Eastern nation where the minister of finance came and asked if he could talk to me personally Manama so my colleagues you know which one I'm talking about he doesn't want to be there so much violence he sent his family out and he said I'm only here because of my faith and the sacrifice that Christ made for me that I want to do my part in life to take one aspect of the gospel and make it the most important aspect is actually that which God had joined together let no one put asunder it is the birth life death and resurrection they are all put together his death was spoken off prophesied and so was his resurrection even Paul struggled with that that I may know him the power of his resurrection and the Fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death one thing the death of cross the Christ does his answer for me the question of evil and pain and suffering that no other worldview offer as my colleague Vince Vitale and I wrote the book why suffering and in that I made the comment that God does not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil he conquers through it he conquers through it so the cross is central but it is not in isolation because you and I do not need a guru we need a Savior to offer and heal that which is central to your life and mine and the cross of Christ by John Stott it's one of the most powerful books I have ever read if you haven't read that book by John or W Scott it's an all time classic please take it and read it but fits into the grand design of God's total plan thank you for asking that and now I come to disclosing many times the years says the years have gone by and I've been in this now for four decades I asked myself the question why am I doing this what's in it for me your organizers will tell you money is not even mentioned in this one week um I frankly don't know who is paying for what in this we just show up we're here and we cover 15 to 20 countries a year deep in my heart I am persuaded that outside of Jesus Christ there is no other answer to the haunting questions of your life and mine I say that truthfully as book after book has been written I have no other answers if they were I would give them to you and so they are speaking at the son of a geopolitical strategy in Moscow or the UN or a university or sitting next to somebody in a plane the only answer I have seen is in the person of Jesus Christ on the four questions of life of origin meaning morality and destiny and especially to use students may I say this you have a rare privilege you have a very rare privilege I don't have them to have the mind that you all do frankly and I'm not putting this up but I would never made it into a university like this I lived for cricket I wanted to play cricket I was a sports person I wanted to play cricket for India that was my goal I neglected my studies never worked hard ended up with shame on a bed of suicide in about two weeks from now I'm speaking at Saint Stephen's College at the University of Delhi probably the premier institution in the whole country of that specific nature anybody here from India will tell you saying Stephen's College Delhi most of India students would never even get it and yet the principal has asked me if I would come there and present the defense of the Christian faith God has a sense of humor I would never made it as a student and now they're asked me to come and speak to them this is how God does it because the coherence of the judeo-christian world deals with where you are and you have two options to go with and I'll close with this and give you what I think would be a marvelous response on your part your tensions are great your illumines are great your physicality is a strength but also makes you vulnerable you are possibly oftentimes at the mercy of an academic who wants or not God out of you this happens again and again and again I hear it so often I will tell you this you reject God and your worldview will become systemically incoherent you follow the truth where it leads and in the person of Christ you will find personal meaning and the meaning that God can help you carry it to the rest of the world Konrad Adenauer after the Second World War was alone with Billy Graham but Lee Graham is not very formally educated and he will tell you that with a minimal education God's anointed him Konrad Adenauer looked at billy graham billy graham told this to us around a gathering of lunch and he looked at me and he said mr. Graham do you believe Jesus Christ really rose from the dead and Graham said Mr Adenauer if I didn't believe that I would have no message left to preach to the world he said Konrad Adenauer walked out towards the window looked out of that window and turned around he said looking at the ruins of his City he said Mr Graham 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 hope for mankind several years ago when I was a young man just starting my ministry living in Toronto I was driving on the 401 it was a cold night snowy night I was driving in my little Volkswagen red bug and I saw a guy on the side of the road coming for a ride on a highway I said somebody's gonna run over him I pulled up on the side quite late at night about 10:00 10:30 I opened the door I said are you ok he said can you take me home sir I said where do you live and he told me it was not near my home but I was fearful for him and fearful for myself he's a total stranger I said come on in so before he even said anything I said please give me your name he said my name is lorne lust aus I said as we are driving talk to me about who you are and then I will tell you what I do and as we were driving he said to me tonight's been another night same thing liquor fun everything he said Ravi I'm a messed up young guy I'm totally messed up he was stopping pausing thinking collecting his thoughts and I dropped him off at his home I took his hand I said Lorne I'm leaving out of town early tomorrow morning will you please see me when I come back next week here is my phone number and my address I want to see you I want to meet with you he said okay and he took my phone number and address when I came back there was a letter waiting for me from Lorne last house but when I contacted I found out that week he had burned himself to death as well and in my letter was this spawn I want you to think about it lost in a world of darkness without a guiding light seeking a friend to help my struggling failing blight so all of you good people just go on passing by leaving me with nothing but this lonely will to die for somewhere in this lonely world of sorrow and of woe there's a place for me to hide but where I do not know for no matter where I go I never will escape the devil's reaching clutching hand or the drink of fermented grape so out of my grief and anguish perhaps some wandering boy will see and build his own life in this world strong and good and free but he was gone what a genius to be able to put those thoughts together what the same young man had turned that genius to the glory of God as a poet you look at a fork in the road and I just say to you you don't have to take our word for it get the Gospel of John and say a prayer Jesus of you really who you claim to be speak to my heart and change my heart if you are truly the Son of God you mean that sincerely and I'm hopeful that he will answer your prayer and when you enter that relationship you will become an ambassador for him as well what an honour for me to be here at your great University and see it turn out like this we're not worthy / turn out of this nature but thank you for hosting us and if even one of you gives your life to Jesus Christ or begins your journey in that direction we would consider worth it for having come here turn your hearts towards the home for which God has made you and build your own life strong and good and free god bless you and thank you thank you thank you you could just be seated let me make it just a couple of closing comments you know what Ravi shared and just as he read that poem I felt my heart just surged with him in me knowing Ravi's story of his own just struggle through depression knowing myself some of my history even of the wrestling with the darkness and depression and and just not sure where life was to be found and so tonight you have cards with you and if you're a student here again I just want to encourage you or even if you're not a student here to fill out that card leave a question to say here's what I'm wrestling with there's a spot on there to say hey I want to grab coffee with someone from CSF or there's a spot if you want to grab with some of the other great ministries there fill out some of them will contact you we would love to followup with you if you're a community person here thank you for coming fill out the car we love you to be engaged at the University if you want someone to pray with you we will have people over on this side of the stage to pray with you if you are someone here as a question back here we have some food we have some drinks we have some things set up in the back a panel professors just who will stay here to all hours of the night answering questions for you there's an RM resource table in the back if you're looking for books Ravi and updo will be down here in the front last thing tomorrow night here on campus we are doing an open question and answer time with the panel professors at the CSF building over across from the library at the intersection there you know a lot of you of your students who you've been through our building before we'd love for you to come over the Christmas student fellowship building for just an open time of question and answer tomorrow night thank you for coming drop your cards off in the back at the doors as you leave thank you so much [Music] next question please hi there I was raised by a mother who was a feminist and is a questioning Christian at the moment and she finds that there are some contradictions somewhere in the Bible that states that male have to be domitor for women and women had to be submissive so just from a Christian perspective does God favor a gender specifically and you know why what I think your mother has a fair question there I don't think it's just in a vacuum or in any sense of just trying to be cavalier about it not just that you think of the very nation that he chose through whom to really emit reveal himself he could have chosen Rome he could have chosen Greece you get a Jose on Babylon in fact will mt ears talking about it and a piece of poetry said how out of God to choose the Jews but then he went on to say how order still are those who reject whom God chose God I think oftentimes in life for the human life chooses the weakest through whom to make his strength manifest if you were to ask me what really makes this world you know let me dispel one idea here you often hear a statement men are more cerebral women are more emotional nothing is farther from the truth but I'll tell you what I have found both are equal cerebrally but women are more consistent in willing to let the thought be connected to the emotion men like to hide from the emotional ramifications of the thought so if I talked to my mother she'd immediately connect the emotion with what she was thinking with my father he could draw circles around it because he'd run from the feeling I've talked to husband and wife we were on a on a vacation once and their book lost us and the woman was talking to my wife and said it has put such a strain on our marriage because my husband doesn't even want to talk about it while I'm breaking up on the inside they both had the same thoughts one was running from it the other was willing to find the greatest bridge between in life between the head and the heart so Thais so even in theory the whole idea is wrong secondly some of the finest thinking in the world has been done by womankind you see it so this myth has to be dispensed with it's purely an archaic thing but to your question is the Bible dishonorable like this in gender we've just had Joe Vitale who is on our team from from Oxford cheers just defended her doctoral dissertation at Oxford on this very issue and this very subject DIMM demonstrating how strongly the Bible speaks of the equality of the genders and what it is God has in mind and the complementary Ness of the two so here's my question to you if God were a discriminator against gender the greatest truth on which the gospel hangs is the resurrection if Christ be not raised from the dead our faith is in vain why in heaven's name did he reveal himself to the women to go and tell the message all of Easter all of Easter hangs on the testimony of womankind with whom he trusted the entire gospel when the woman with the alabaster ointment came to him and those were frowning about her she looked at them and said be quiet where were the gospel is preached there shall also dis be told what this woman has done to me in worship he paid her the greatest compliment that the gospel would be carried to the ends of the earth and this story of this woman's faith will also be told he goes to saya Samaria and he sees a woman of the well with five broken shattered marriages she was ethnically ethnically barred from the society as maritally broken and shattered five times he made her the first evangelist - the samaritan world imagine what an incredibly gracious God - remind us that none of us is superior to the other we only have the same privilege of taking our distinctives and complementary strengths and carrying the message to the world I can tell you this I would never be here today if it weren't for the strength of my mother and when when my younger brother was six or seven years old he was dying with double pneumonia and typhoid my dad had given up our family had given up we were living in Delhi and the doctor came and told us my younger brother Ramesh was today the chairman of the department of pain management at McMaster University in in Canada he was 6-7 dying I remember seeing him as a bag of bones for the last time i'm jennifer four of six years older than him and i walked away from there bidding him goodbye he was unconscious my mother refused to late she refused to leave she sat by his bedside and we were all worn to the bone including my dad and so four of us kids backed up taken back home and all of us lying in bed saying we've just lost our youngest my mother sat by his bedside whatever she was doing I don't know sher exhaustion for days she hadn't slept and just by his bedside crying out to God to rescue her son somewhere in the early hours of the morning he began to move and began he was very much alive but just quite worn out and broken and that need of life was coming back to him and the next day when we all were told to come back to the hospital his eyes were open and his whole life given fresh strength there was only one out of the six of us there who had the strength to sit by that bedside and watch what loomed as a tragedy and watch the triumph to turn into victory anybody who thinks that's weak and lesser doesn't understand reality God is the god of humankind and the last thing jesus said on the cross but the redemption of mankind was look at a young man and tell him not to forget his mother to make sure she was also taken care of because a sword was piercing through her heart that is our Lord who treats all of us with intrinsic words and reflective splendor and I thank God for the beauty he is created in this complementary nurse [Applause] yes please what's your question therefore dr. Sakurai sir I do marry well I want to thank you all for coming out tonight and spending time here my question is uh when debating atheists like Stephen Hawking's and other people like that what is the how do you convince someone like him that God exists without using the Bible necessarily well I was having lunch with Stephen Hawking yesterday no I'm just kidding I'm sure your question is not specific but we get the idea I spent six months at Ridley Hall in Cambridge and actually heard one or two lectures from him on a very famous lecture from him at Lady Mitchell Hall in 1990 and he was addressing the issue of are we determined or are we free and of course Hawking as considered if not the brightest or the brightest minds in the world of science today she's very amazing to me of course he can't speak because of Lou Gehrig's disease he has this computer designed by a Caltech scientist and either by the cutting into the infrared ray with his eyelid or with a movement of finger is able to select letter sticks and so on and it's amazing that he so it takes them very long to even answer a question that's why you can ask very difficult questions and we'll take him about two or three minutes to compute his answer and his answer always is very brief but you know the interesting thing is if naturalism was the only worldview reigning I wonder if Stephen Hawking would have made it this far a scientist gave him the equipment by which he could communicate but it was love compassion altruism and generosity that cared for him and brought him through all of those years so they were philosophical idea behind it that protected his life in his brief history of time the last page he makes something like this he said now I have told you what if I could tell you why we would have the mind of God very interesting that he gave that little caveat and at that time he was attending one or two churches in the area on the weekend and somebody told me who knew him that he was on his own spiritual search but of course in his later book the grand the grand design he talked about the fact that gravity explains everything and he made the very irrational and unfortunate statement that philosophy is dead so much so theologians did not respond to him the chairman of the philosophy department at Cambridge responded by saying maybe it's about time the oracular professor Hawking recognized that he's not kept up with our discipline as much as we have with his and this kind of hostility developed but as I told you down the road was John poking horn the quantum physicist who of course know Stephen Hawking I don't know what the answer is how one leads him but the answer to a specific question how do you do it without the exhibit out invoking the Bible is really not that difficult because his explanation that gravity is really at the heart of it and explains everything is like me explaining a dictionary because of the alphabet it doesn't follow the alphabet exist but the compilation requires design and specified complexity it is a rather simplistic explanation to say gravity explains at all and our colleague from Oxford John Lennox responded to Stephen Hawking in one of his books and I think he called it Stephen Hawking's God as something to that nature John Lennox who has a triple doctorate and was professor of mathematics at Carey at at Greene College Cambridge Green College Oxford and is one of our colleagues on our team so they've responded David Berlinski also even though is just natural and even though he's a skeptic is responded I would basically say three very simple things number one however you section physical concrete reality however you section physical concrete reality you always end up with the state of affairs that debt that that concrete reality doesn't explain its own existence that physical concrete reality doesn't explain its own existence number two wherever you see specified complexity and design you assume a designer number three looking at the history of culture humanity and history you see the very person of Jesus Christ coming with the prophetic scheme and the specifics of it and all the promises contained there and his transformation and the human heart so whether you take those three stages however you cut downs the physical concrete reality you end up with the state of affairs that it doesn't explain its own existence whenever you see specified complexity or design you assume designer and in the human events and course of history and culture and the human search you see especially in the person of Jesus Christ the evidence of God's existence but if you take just the first two and leave the third out it ought to lead you to wherever the evidence actually directs you and once you accept the existence of something non-physical that is eternal and the designer you can go into history and the human experience and see how it is that Jesus Christ indeed has changed lives change history changed hearts and in that three stages I think you can demonstrate the reality of a personal moral first cause who also offers to transform the human heart that would be my basic response but people like Steam and they're like John poking horn and all in his book one world have done a marvelous job of explaining it do you have any do just something short it would be this the next step though is not just to speak to the language that someone else speaks and if it's science then we can talk about science and science points to things the science is a measure of the physical world but it also leads to implications about what the world is actually like in a non-physical realm in terms of the moralities that are around us in terms of the the meaning and the purpose for what which we were created in fact when you look at someone like Francis Collins who was himself a Kris a quite devoted Christian who is a scientist in fact the leader of the Human Genome Project and now I think the director of the National Institutes of Health he will tell you that when you look at DNA for example yet if the universe itself then you have the specific design of DNA itself 3.1 billion bits of information specifically ordered and we're finding more and more of the information that's actually coding for well actually has functioned the more and more you look at it you're seeing something you're not seeing a specific statement that says this is God created but it is an implication that that which is ordered specifically has an informer the information has an informer there's an implication being made there a leap that not enough but not too far belief in fact when you look at the Stephen Hawking his own words about the way in which the universe itself seems to be designed that there are certain properties that if they were even infinitesimally off by a hair's breadth you'd have no life possible in the universe in any way and to quote I think it was a recoil who said I wouldn't Hubble it I'm the Cameron bird which one what are the h's who said that it looks like somebody's been monkeying with the physics interesting statement but there's another aspect of this once we speak about these things then we can talk talking about what the Bible actually has to say about these things because if the Bible is true this might get you to see ISM but how does it get you to understand if Christian theism actually holds water because if the Bible comports is what we find in a natural realm if the Bible comports we find in the moral realm then you see a correspondence between the two and I'll tell you this as someone who was not friendly in any way shape or form to the validity of the Bible I remember specifically grabbing a little green Bible from a Gideon I still have that one Green Bible going back to my apartment so I could find a contradiction and that would finally sort of these two guys were coming to my door they were trying to convert me to Christianity I was going to knock them down finally was an objection a contradiction they couldn't explain and in that little green Bible specific words I won't go into the detail because time doesn't permit but specific word from Luke chapter 3 verse 7 suddenly got me thinking about objective truths and whether or not I was being fair with the data here's the point the Bible itself spoke to a skeptic of it so be careful about our desire to speak with lofty arguments and close bibles we can actually have that Bible it's not going to be the primary source always but it can be a source where we can look at it and say now does what we've explored comport with this Bible teaches and if it does now it's worthy of our beliefs great question thank you thank you we have we're gonna take you no just gonna be about a 30-minute time we've you appreciate the time here but I want to tackle as many questions as we can again we're gonna do some more afterwards dr. Zacharias and mr. Murray will be down front but a few more questions here please go ahead I just wanted to know what why did God put the tree in the garden to begin with he ultimately knew what decision Adam and Eve would make so why even put the tree there to begin with because it makes it just seem like we're just a big social experiment let me give a shot of that first great question if you understand you look at what the the nature of God first that's what I go to the nature of God first and from a Christian perspective God is the community there is one God who is one being but three and his person whose father son Holy Spirit eternally distinct person hood's who share one nature that easy degree to grasp no is it is it comprehensible by finite human beings no but it doesn't go against our logic so God exists in the Christian mindset as a community he defines what love and relationship is he eternally exists in a state of relationship so you as an effect he's the cause but you as an effect actually crave desire want covet and mourn the loss of relationship it's one of the key things about human existence and you're the effect shouldn't the cause reflect something about that and in this case in the Christian worldview the cause who is a triune being who exists in a relationship actually explains why you the effect wanted so badly how does that relate to your question on the Garden of Eden God himself is a relational being and in order to have true relationship instead of a wind you up automaton like the monkey to clasp like this and the eyes bug out and all these things but we just wind up and see where we go he creates the ability for us to have a choice an actual freedom to choose relationship because relationship not chosen is not really relationship at all the relationship chosen is real love actually has an existence then in a real sense because love itself is vulnerable so he creates this scenario where people can actually choose the choice is freely given God's foreknowledge does not necessarily mean he creates that he creates the choice that they make but the possibility for them to make that choice he does it so that we can have relationship you see the God of the Bible does not lack relationship he never lacks it he eternally exists in that state so why create us he doesn't need us for relationship well I create you or create me to muck it up he creates you and creates me not so that he can have relationship he's already got it within himself in the Godhead he creates you and creates me so that you can it is an utterly selfless act in that sense he utterly and selflessly creates out of an abundance of his love out of abundance of who he is as a relational being and that relationship requires choice and a free will that's there and the tree allows for that and because of that you and I have there's a there's a fallen nature to human humanity and that's there as well but then the redemption comes in and then we are offering it's Ravi had already said from John 3:16 that God so loved relational quality of the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever shall believe and actually given and actually chosen shall not perish but have everlasting life from the beginning we have relationship from eternity we have relationship and a Redemption we have relationship and the tree actually is the beginning of that it's a very very good question sir and I think it actually hinges a little bit also on the previous one you know the thing about skeptics sometimes when they ask us these questions and I'm not saying it's you because I don't know what the background from which you are coming is oftentimes I wonder whether they realize we ask these same questions you know we struggle with these issues it's not like we think these are invalid questions they are very valid question but what is the question assume the question assumes something very critical that the answer should be coherent because a coherent worldview is what you're really looking for you cannot be comfortable within coherence and the question that was asked earlier the whole issue of how does one talk to a Stephen Hawking the fascinating thing about the talk that Stephen Hawking gave in 1990 at the lady Mitchell auditorium which was packed on the question of his man determined or is he free he went through about 25 minutes of all kinds of scientific arguments and so on and his skull monnet ting statement got an audible response oh oh my is this the best answer we can get and what he said at the end is yes we are determined he was under the stranglehold of determinism right from the beginning in a in a naturalistic framework he said yes we are determined but since we do not know what is determined we may as well not be that was this concluding statement yes we are determined but since we don't know what is determined we may as well not be what he's really saying is since we don't know the answer to my complete the explanation for my confused conclusion let us live as if it is not a legitimate conclusion that's really what he was saying so I say when you're looking for a coherent worldview look at it this way what options would there have been for the Great Creator in the beginning of this no world at all versus this world okay number two creating a world where there would be no such thing as good or evil an immoral world number three choosing a world where we would only choose good where we'd be predetermined to choose good there would be the total constraint so you've got three options nothing versus what we now have no such thing as good or evil or creating a constraint where we would only choose good and there were we would never make the evil choices or number for creating this kind of world where there would be the possibility of good and evil and we are given the option of the privilege of freedom and making the choice out of these four options this option is the only universe in the only world in which love is possible in the previous three love is not possible at all love would not have been possible with in-between the de Maya divine and human interaction so I say this sometimes these are mega questions and macro questions and other times they have filtered down into micro questions and the fine-tuning of an individual life I found the answer to this first of all from the negative you take a naturalistic framework you live in an incoherent world I couldn't live with that so how do I find coherence in putting together the diversity in my own heart which was put together by God and that knowledge of a personal relationship with God would change not only what I did but what I wanted to do in my personal life gave me hope meaning and a relationship let me give you just two quick illustrations because I think this is critical I've had the opportunity of speaking at the one of the most famous prisons in the world Angola prison in Louisiana up there was with me some of my colleagues with me 6000 plus prisoners there 85% of whom are in life without parole it was the bloodiest prison in America blood on the ceilings blood on the carpets blood on the walls when a prisoner was checked in there he was given a dagger or a knife with which to protect himself and this warden comes in this director comes in and says I'm gonna change this place you allow me to do it my way he put a Bible in every cell at Chapel every day he has a seminary that he's built in there within a matter of a year or two it became the safest prison in America today instead of a gang of fire of tugs they've got gangs of pastors going through that prison out there and they're the prisoners themselves we had lunch with them and I said to the guy sitting opposite us why don't you and get yours he said hey man I'm going nowhere you may as well go and get yours and then I'll join you the guy who led in worship a young man I said to him can I ask you a question his lead worship so beautifully he said I said can I ask you a question are you here for a life without parole he said yes sir I said how do you feel he said mrs. Araz if you'd known why I am here you would never ask me that question he said but let me tell you something out there I thought I was free and the horrific things that I did destroyed people's lives and destroyed my own now inside prison bars have been found Christ I have never been freer in my life this are the most free I have ever been pray for my family they're outside and think they are free when they are really not and he put his arm around me and prayed for me and there were tears running down my face we had lunch made by the prisoners the warden sits there eats the lunch of the prisoners are made boy you call that faith you better believe it he doesn't why they have found meaning by an individual life being conquered when you know Christ when you have that relationship and your will is transformed to his will you find out why you were made in the first place and the crowd is just multiplied opportunity for individual conquest that God desires in every life out here tonight I'll leave that with you let's let's take a question from Twitter or text because we are going to respond to those at some point we do want to at least take one from there because if you have sent something in our promises that we will respond to those if not tonight you will get something in the coming days but let's take one I know you all been working you have something on the screen from us Twitter a text question well but those of us who can't read I'm a bad if I a bad person for doubting or questioning my faith I think you know it's interesting boy it's a good question doubt it'll become a dirty word if if we say you know you have to believe 100% and if you have any questions or any doubts and you're not really a true Christian or whatever these things might be this is interesting because we need to this and shortly as I possibly can but it's terribly terribly important because I think people often fall into despair and their doubt creates further doubt there's a difference between two things there's a person who's a skeptic and there's a person who's a cynic a skeptic is somebody who doesn't believe something until there's enough evidence a cynic is somebody who won't believe it even when there is two different things now if you're a skeptic I'm skeptical of all out of things but if you're skeptic and you come to wrestle with these issues doubt can often drive us to a to a knowledge of the truth because it drives us to find out is this really real or am i believing in a fantasy and doubt could help us get there John the Baptist the stories on the Baptist of course who Jesus said there was no man greater and born among women than John the Baptist comes when he's in prison and bad things had happened to him and he comes and brings his people to Jesus and says are you the one who's to come or should we look for another this is the same one who baptized Jesus and saw the Dove and all these things yet he has his doubts and Jesus rewards his doubts not with saying go away be gone you're a doubter get out of here he says go tell John the evidence his doubt his sincere doubt was rewarded with evidence so doubt can be something that leads us to face a stronger faith but if it becomes cynicism that becomes a problem excellent next question please hi there I was raised by a mother who was a feminist and is a questioning Christian at the moment and she finds that there are some contradictions somewhere in the Bible that states that male have to be domitor for women and women had to be submissive so just from a Christian perspective does God favor a gender specifically and you know why what I think your mother has a fair question there I don't think it's just in a vacuum or in any sense of just trying to be cavalier about it not just that you think of the very nation that he chose through whom to really miss reveal himself he could've chosen Rome he could have chosen Greece Iger chosen Babylon in fact will mt ears talking about it in a piece of poetry said how out of God to choose the Jews but then he went on to say how orders still are those who reject whom God chose God I think oftentimes in life for the human life chooses the weakest through whom to make his strength manifest if you were to ask me what really makes this world you know let me dispel one idea here you often hear a statement men are more cerebral women are more emotional nothing is farther from the truth but I'll tell you what I have found both are equal cerebrally but women are more consistent in willing to let the thought be connected to the emotion men like to hide from the emotional ramifications of the thought so if I talked to my mother she'd immediately connect the emotion with what she was thinking with my father he could draw circles around it because he'd run from the feeling I've talked to husband and wife we were on a on a vacation once and they had both lost a son and the woman was talking to my wife and said it has put such a strain on our marriage because my husband doesn't even want to talk about it while I'm breaking up on the inside they both had the same thoughts one was running from it the other was willing to find the greatest bridge between in life between the head and the heart so Thais so even in theory the whole idea is wrong secondly some of the finest thinking in the world has been done by womankind you see it so this myth has to be dispensed with it's purely an archaic thing but to your question is the Bible dishonorable like this in gender we've just had Joe Vitale who is on our team from from Oxford she's just defended her doctoral dissertation at Oxford on this very issue and this very subject DIMM demonstrating how strongly the Bible speaks of the equality of the genders and what it is God has in mind and the complementary Ness of the two so here's my question to you if God were a discriminator against gender the greatest truth on which the gospel hangs is the resurrection if Christ be not raised from the dead our faith is in vain why in heaven's name did he reveal himself to the women to go and tell the message all of Easter all of Easter hangs on the testimony of womankind with whom he trusted the entire gospel when the woman with the alabaster ointment came to him and those were frowning about her she looked at them and said be quiet where were the gospel is preached there shall also dis be told what this woman has jumped to me in worship he paid her the greatest compliment that the gospel would be carried to the ends of the earth and this story of this woman's faith will also be told he goes to saya Samaria and he sees a woman of the well with five broken shattered marriages she was ethnically ethnically barred from the society as maritally broken and shattered five times he made her the first evangelist to the samaritan world imagine what an incredibly gracious God to remind us that none of us is superior to the other we only have the same privilege of taking our distinctives and complementary strengths and carrying the message to the world I can tell you this I would never be here today if it weren't for the strength of my mother and when when my younger brother was six or seven years old he was dying with double pneumonia and typhoid my dad had given up our family had given up we were living in Delhi and the doctor came and told us my younger brother Ramesh was today the chairman of the department of pain management at McMaster University in in Canada he was 6-7 dying I remember seeing him as a bag of bones for the last time I'm Jim for six years older than him and I walked away from there bidding him goodbye he was unconscious my mother refused to Lee she refused Tilly she sat by his bedside and we were all worn to the bone including my dad and so four of us kids backed up taken back home and all of us lying in bed saying we've just lost our youngest my mother sat by his bedside whatever she was doing I don't know sher exhaustion for days she hadn't slept and just by his bedside crying out to God to rescue her son somewhere in the early hours of the morning he began to move and began he was very much alive but just quite worn out and broken and that need of life was coming back to him and the next day when we all were told to come back to the hospital his eyes were open and his whole life given fresh strength there was only one out of the six of us there who had the strength to sit by that bedside and watch what loomed as a tragedy and watch the triumph to turn into victory anybody who thinks that's weak and lesser doesn't understand reality God is the god of humankind and the last thing jesus said on the cross but the redemption of mankind was look at a young man and tell him not to forget his mother to make sure she was also taken care of because a sword was piercing through her heart that is our Lord who treats all of us with intrinsic worth and reflective splendor and I thank God for the beauty is created in this complementary nurse let's do this we're still going to have some time to answer questions in the back we we're gonna we've got kind of a special thing I want to make sure we cover the end so let's do this let's do one final question dr. Zacharias I believe wants to have some final words here and then let's let's take a final question on this hi I was wondering I've grown up in steeped in church traditions I've grown up I went to a religious school I still go to a religious school and I feel that perhaps indirectly I've been taught that the most important thing about Jesus is his death and I was wondering how true that is without his death there is no gospel without his resurrection the death was a minami thing I want to give a talk great question by the way I was gave a talk at a at a business sort of talking about Easter diversity day they never had a thing about Easter done at this tickler business and I made this statement and it's I think it's true that Christmas without Easter is meaningless Easter without Christmas is not possible so you see that the birth and the death and the resurrection all wrapped up into the same into the same real that there's a story the story is a beginning middle and end but when Jesus was asked why have you come he says for this reason I have come he's come to give his life as a ransom for money that's the reason now that ransom is his death as a payment for sin because what the gospel tells you and tells me is this and by the way if I can just has a shorter side here Jesus well I love teachers for a lot of reasons one of those reasons is he's not a sales person who tells you what you want to hear he tells you what you need to hear it's a very terrible sales pitch to say you're evil come follow me what kind of a poster is that but people do it anyway he tells you what you need to hear not what you want to hear in distinction to every other worldview by the way which tells you that you can do it yourself you're the one who can make it on your own and I think if the 24-hour news is one of the worst inventions the past 20 to 30 years I gotta clap over here on that one but one thing it does provide us though is ample evidence that man is in need of a savior who's not himself we need someone who's not as to save us from ourselves because I've RNA RNA evil and our sin Jesus tells told us that 2,000 years ago so we need someone who can redeem us who can pay the penalty that we deserve Jesus says I'm that guy now what's interesting is if he died and stayed dead then how would you know he's right they could be dead and well maybe he was right maybe he was wrong who knows he's like everybody else so maybe he was wrong but he didn't stay dad his death is the payment when he says on that cross to tell us die when he says that in the Greek it actually means it has finished it has accomplished it's a financial term paid in full it's like a stamp on a document the debt is paid that is done for us though you can know that he was right that he took away the sins of the world through that death because of his resurrection if he died and stayed dead no way to know but he didn't die and stay dead he showed his his countenance conquering over that death is conquering over the last enemy through the physical and I believe truly historical resurrection from the dead so the death without the resurrection doesn't really show you anything but the resurrection shows that the death meant something in fact let me just put it this way plainly it meant everything thank you some years ago I had the privilege of speaking at the United Nations and they had asked me to speak on a search for absolutes in a relativistic world it's a tough subject especially in the early hours of the morning and the agreement about 18 minutes and what I did in my talk has talked about four absolutes that we really look for evil justice love and forgiveness I said we all have the desire to call some nation an evil nation you brand some nations evil nations but you also talk about justice you want just societies you all love your families and you miss your families and then you're all some of you are going to blow it ethically and you need to be forgiven evil justice love and forgiveness so I said to them where in the world did all of these converge at one point in history the spin drop silence acid they converged on a hill called Calvary and as that meeting was over and I presented to them the message of Calvary they were lined up the ambassadors and one of them came to me shook my hand and he said dr. Zacharias he said I come from an atheistic nation and I don't want to be here my president asked me to come here I hate being here I miss being here but I want to say to you today I have found out why I came here I came here to find God I came here to find God recently I was in a Middle Eastern nation where the Minister of Finance came and asked if he could talk to me personally Manama so my colleagues you know which one I'm talking about he doesn't want to be there so much violence he sent his family out and he said I'm only here because of my faith and the sacrifice that Christ made for me that I want to do my part in life to take one aspect of the gospel and make it the most important aspect is actually that which God had joined together let no one put asunder it is the birth life death and resurrection they are all put together his death was spoken off prophesied and so was his resurrection even Paul struggled with that that I may know him the power of his resurrection and the Fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death one thing the death of cross the Christ does his answer for me the question of evil and pain and suffering that no other worldview offer as my colleague Vince Vitale and I wrote the book why suffering and in that I made the comment that God does not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil he conquers through it he conquers through it so the cross is central but it is not an isolation because you and I do not need a guru we need a Savior to offer and heal that which is central to your life and mine and the crew the cross of Christ by John Stott it's one of the most powerful books I have ever read if you haven't read that book by John RW Scott it's an all-time classic stick it and read it but it fits into the grand design of God's total plan thank you for asking that and now I come to disclosing many times the years as the years have gone by and I've been in this now for four decades I ask myself the question why am I doing this what's in it for me your organizers will tell you money is not even mentioned in this one week um I frankly don't know who's paying for what in this we just show up we're here and we cover 15 to 20 countries a year deep in my heart I am persuaded that outside of Jesus Christ there is no other answer to the haunting questions of your life and mine I say that truthfully as book after book has been written I have no other answers if there were I would give them to you and so were they are speaking at the son of a geopolitical strategy in Moscow or the UN or a university or sitting next to somebody in a plane the only answer I have seen is in the person of Jesus Christ on the four questions of life of origin meaning morality and destiny and especially to use students may I say this you have a rare privilege you have a very rare privilege I don't have them to have the mind that you all do frankly and I'm not putting this up but I would never made it into a university like this I lived for cricket I wanted to play cricket I was a sports person I wanted to play cricket for India that was my goal I neglected my studies never worked hard ended up with shame on a bed of suicide in about two weeks from now I'm speaking at Saint Stephen's College at the University of Delhi probably the premier institution in the whole country of that specific nature anybody here from India will tell you saying Stephen's College Delhi most of India students would never even get in and yet the principal has asked me if I would come there and present a defence of the Christian faith God has a sense of humor I would never made it as a student and now there asked me to come and speak to them this is how God does it because the coherence of the Judaic in worldview deals with where you are and you have two options to go with and I'll close with this and give you what I think would be a marvelous response on your part your tensions are great your illumines are great your physicality is a strength but also makes you vulnerable you are possibly oftentimes at the mercy of an academic who wants not God out of you this happens again and again and again I hear it so often I will tell you this you reject God and your worldview will become systemically incoherent you follow the truth where it leads and in the person of Christ you will find personal meaning and the meaning that God can help you carry it to the rest of the world Konrad Adenauer after the Second World War was alone with Billy Graham but Lee Graham is not very formally educated and he will tell you that with a minimal education God's anointed him Konrad Adenauer looked at Billy Graham Billy Graham told this to us round of gathering of lunch and he looked at me and he said mr. Graham do you believe Jesus Christ really rose from the dead and Graham said Mr Adenauer if I didn't believe that I would have no message left to preach to the world he said Konrad Adenauer walked out towards the window looked out of that window and turned around he said looking at the ruins of the city he said mr. Graham 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 hope for mankind several years ago when I was a young man just starting my ministry living in Toronto I was driving on the 401 it was a cold night snowy night I was driving in my little Volkswagen red bong and I saw a guy on the side of the road thumbing for a ride on a highway I said somebody's gonna run over him I pulled up on the side quite late at night about 10:00 10:30 I opened the door I said are you okay he said can you take me home sir I said where do you live and he told me it was not near my home but I was fearful for him and fearful for myself he was a total stranger I said come on in so before he even said anything I said please give me your name he said my name is Lauren Lauren last house I said as we are driving talk to me about who you are and then I will tell you what I do and as we were driving he said to me tonight's been another night same thing liquor fun everything he said Ravi I'm a messed up young guy I'm totally messed up he was stopping pausing thinking collecting his thoughts and I dropped him off at his home I took his hand I said Lauren I'm leaving out of town early tomorrow morning will you please see me when I come back next week here is my phone number and my address I want to see you I want to meet with you he said okay and he took my phone number and address when I came back there was a letter waiting for me from Lauren lust house but when I contacted I found out that week he had burned himself to death as well and in my letter was this spawn I want you to think about it lost in a world of darkness without a guiding light seeking a friend to help my struggling failing flight so all of you good people just go on passing by leaving me with nothing but this lonely will to die for somewhere in this lonely world of sorrow and of woe there's a place for me to hide but where I do not know for no matter where I go I never will escape the devil's reaching clutching hand or the drink of fermented grape so out of my grief and anguish perhaps some wandering boy will see and build his own life in this world strong and good and free but he was gone what a genius to be able to put those thoughts together what if the same young man had turned that genius to the glory of God as a poet you look at a fork in the road and I just say to you you don't have to take our word for it get the Gospel of John and say a prayer Jesus of you really who you claim to be speak to my heart and change my heart if you are truly the Son of God you mean that sincerely and I'm hopeful that he will answer your prayer and when you enter that relationship you will become an ambassador for him as well what an honour for me to be here at your great University and seer turn out like this we're not worthy / turn out of this nature but thank you for hosting us and if even one of you gives your life to Jesus Christ or begins your journey in that direction we would consider worth it for having come here turn your hearts towards the home for which God has made you and build your own life strong and good and free god bless you and thank you thank you you can just be seated let me make it just a couple of closing comments you know what Ravi shared and just as he read that poem I felt my heart just surged with him in me knowing Ravi's story of his own just struggle through depression knowing myself some of my history even of the wrestling with the darkness and depression and and just not sure where life was to be found and so tonight you have cards with you and if you're a student here again I just want to encourage you or even if you're not a student here to fill out that card leave a question to say here's what I'm wrestling with there's a spot on there to say hey I want to grab coffee with someone from CSF or there's a spot if you want to grab with some of the other great ministries there fill out some of them will contact you we would love to follow up with you if you're a community person here thank you for coming fill out the car we love you to be engaged at the University if you want someone to pray with you we will have people over on this side of the stage to pray with you if you are someone here as a question back here we have some food we have some drinks we have some things set up in the back a panel professors just who will stay here to all hours of the night answering questions for you there's an RM resource table in the back if you're looking for books Ravi and Abdul will be down here in the front last thing tomorrow night here on campus we are doing an open question and answer time with the panel professors at the CSF building over across from the library at the intersection there you know a lot of you of your students who you've been through our building before we'd love for you to come over to christen student fellowship building for just an open time of question and answer tomorrow night thank you for coming drop your cards off in the back at the doors as you leave thank you so much [Music]

Channel: The Bible-smith Project

Views: 579,044

Keywords: The Bible-smith Project, Project, The, Bible-smith

Id: DseIM5MlpS0

Length: 172min 20sec (10340 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 02 2016