Who is God? A 2018 NCCA Talk with Ravi Zacharias

dr. LAN thank you sir I don't know where you are seated but really an honor to be here I don't know dr. geiszler is here does he see that he was with us at lunch but I do want to acknowledge him as a great teacher a great scholar a man to whom I can never repay the debt I had the privilege of studying under dr. geiszler for three years and my graduate work at Trinity and what an amazing privilege to have studied under him so when he fawns and asks you to come you're you think you're saying no to God so you say all right I will be there sandwiched between many many other demands but I just want to pay tribute to him what an extraordinary scholar may his tribe increase the story is told of Cristiano Ronaldo the football football soccer player from Portugal who was being interviewed and not known quite for his humility so they asked him what he thought his purpose and life was he said I believe God sent me into this world to teach people how to play football and one of his arch rivals of causes Lionel Messi and a very different type of man so somebody went to Messi and said what do you think of Renaldo's comment and Messi paused and said honestly I don't remember sending him that's the idea oftentimes athletes have of themselves although that story I'm quite sure is not true it was just old as a joke Messi is not that type of a person but it makes for a good story who is God how do we truly try to understand and fathom that which our finite minds would never be able to absorb I remember when I was doing my doctrinal examination for the Christian and Missionary Alliance the first question was God is perfect explain and fortunately there was only this much space in which to do the explaining because the longer the answer the greater the possibility of heresy so I just wrote one line he's the only entity in existence the reason for whose existence is in himself all other entities and quantities have the reason for their existence outside of themselves in that sense his very being in existence is perfect uncaused on dependent non-contingent all of that stuff that the very reason for his being is within himself it is impossible for God not to be God eternally and continually exists nobody defends that better than dr. geiszler himself and as I've been asked to speak here with some wonderful colleagues I know Josh McDowell is here he there he is my friend Josh he said he never goes to hear other speakers I said I hope you've brought your neck pillow with you he said yes I did so if you see him getting horizontal that'll be one of the reasons but so many great speakers to team up with and tackle a theme like this is not going to be easy so let me read for you the text or the context from which I'm borrowing my subject tonight because the overall theme is dealing with these issues it's found in a prayer in second chronicles 20 Jehoshaphat is facing a vast army he is not at all sure that he's going to be able to contend with this military might of the armies arrayed against him have you ever noticed how often in warfare people turn to God for help when they know the enemy is bigger than them when Napoleon's armies were closing in on Moscow and the spires of Moscow were burning the Czar had no other option but to fall on his face before God in st. Peter's and ask God for help to rescue them and God answered his prayer by sending a minor minor prophet the winter and that was the end of that war in 1986 when Ferdinand Marcos was facing this bloodless revolution one of the generals was a man by the name of his Slater he happened to be in an audience where I was speaking some years ago and he wrote a book called heads ax which is what their relation was called the answer evolution but he was in a tiny little camp called Camp Aguinaldo eighty-six February I believe it was he had 800 men standing in front of him and the helicopter gunships were closing in on them and it was a marvelous story told by generalists later in his book he says as they were closing in he could sense the fear in the minds of these 800 soldiers he said I did the only thing I could do I turned to Psalm 91 and asked them to bow their heads and I read he who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty and the gunships closed-in and the wearing of the blades was heard but the first one landed and the pilot defected and the second defected and the third and that bloodless revolution had come to an end as Marcos finally surrendered to the will of the people he's not amazing eight hundred people standing helplessly as the aircraft are hovering above all they could think of us to read Psalm 91 to dwell in the shadow of the Almighty as it was even as Napoleon was closing and I think history will tell us over the years how many men and women were on their knees when the enemy was much bigger and more daunting than they ever realized it's not just true in warfare it's true in the battles you and I face in life sometimes the battle seems much bigger than you and I could ever handle and as we fall on our knees what do we say to God help me I cannot handle this enemy or this challenge on my own such a HOSA fact has gathered the people together and he leads in this beautiful prayer and I want you to notice two things about this prayer it has theological in but it also has magnificent passion behind it when you can blend passion with theological integrity you've got the whole person immersed in that activity so here he is spraying a beautiful prayer that retains the dignity and the authenticity of who God is but he does it in a way that is rather unusual it is not so much that he just makes the propositions but he raises them in a question form and fills in the blanks Oh Lord our God of Our Fathers are you not the God who is in heaven you rule over all the kingdoms of the nation's power and might are in your hand no one can withstand you O our God did you not drive out the inhabitants of this land before your people Israel and give it forever to the descendants of Abraham your friend and then he goes down to verse 12 o our God will you not judge them for we have no power to face this vast army that is attacking us we do not know what to do but our eyes are upon you in three framed questions he answers the questions immediately but pulls together for us these varied strands in the form of a tapestry that tells us so much about who God is are you not did you not will you not are you not did you not will you not in that prayer he answers his own questions who is God Charles Haddon Spurgeon in his commentary on Malachi makes this comment the proper study of the Christian is the Godhead it is the highest science the loftier speculation the mightiest philosophy which can engage the attention of a child of God is the name the nature the person the doings and the existence of the great God there is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the divinity it is a subject so vast that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity so deep that our pride is drowned in its infinity other subjects we can comprehend and grapple with in them we feel a kind of self contentment and go on our way with the thought behold I am wise but when we come to this master science finding that a plumb line cannot sound its depth that our Eagle eye cannot see its height we turn away with the thought I am bar of yesterday and know nothing a beautiful couple of paragraphs on the ultimate immeasurable 'ti of this infinite being this divine being we call God in 1952 Encyclopedia Britannica published its fifty four volumes set called the great books of the Western world it's one of the treasured sets I have in my own library many of you probably own it or you've seen it and these days on line of course you don't even have to own this set you can find a way to just get it right on your screen 54 volumes it sits atop the major books shelf that I had because I refer to them again and again when they were originally published the first two volumes were called us in topic on in the constant in the contracting of two words the synthesis of topics and every major theme addressed in the remaining 52 volumes are given a summary in the beginning two volumes God law justice all of these themes that Western philosophers and thinkers have addressed you'll get about 30 or 40 pages each on every one of these topics and at the end of that essay page after page after page of a bibliography on what the great thinkers in the Western world have said on that subject so if you're dealing with the subject of law you can look to see what Aristotle said on it when Plato said on it what Gibbon said or where and you can go right down to Pascal and more recent times what I want to say to you is this that as you read those essays you get a broad strokes look at how the great thinkers of the Western world have addressed the great themes but fascinate you will notice the longest essay is on God the longest essays on God and the editor-in-chief Mortimer Adler a great Jewish philosopher and I think late comer to Christ if I'm not mistaken in his latter years I had the privilege of hearing him lecture once but Mortimer Adler was being interviewed years ago by a Larry King in Y in one of his programs and Larry King looked at him and he said professor Adler I do have a question as I was going through the pages of that book looking at it the longest essays on God why is that and Adler looked like it was a question that ought never to been asked because the answer to him was so obvious he said Larry because more consequences from your life follow from this one issue than any other issue you can think of how you live how you spend your money how you think what your values are how you treat your family how you treat other people all of that hangs on the peg of who you believe God to be and that's why the longest essay is on God how do we arrive at a coherent description of this great being I can't answer the question in any way completely but I hope I can at least Lisp or nudge in the direction of what the Scriptures tell us several years ago Life magazine had its December issue on the theme who is God it had a picture of the starry hosts and the background and in big bold white letters that said who is God I remember picking that up from the stands and starting to read it was fascinating and they went talking to people about their personal experiences of who God is there were two outstanding interviews one of them was from a woman in her senior years who was now dying of cancer and as she spoke she said you know Jesus has been my Savior through the better part of my whole life and now more than ever I feel that closeness to him as I'm battling cancer and my days will soon be gone from this world beautifully said in just a paragraph that's all they were were given and then there was a minister whose life had gone wrong and now battling AIDS and he said I always preached on the grace of God I always preached on the love of Christ but my own life in private was not in keeping with what I preached and then as I found myself trapped in that lifestyle and contracting this disease he said more than ever I have learned how merciful my Savior is to me but shame I acknowledge my past but the reality is it's the love of God and the grace of Christ that has sustained me through these years deeply moving so you're reading all of this and suddenly you begin to see different views and the editor himself or herself who wrote it said they didn't believe in a personal God God was a force God was an agency as it were just some kind of power upon which we leaned without knowing very much else about this and the more I looked at it I realized if you go only to an experienced source you may get some hints of the truth but you put them all together you will get contradiction after contradiction after contradiction so if you go to the pantheistic worldview you will find one answer you go to other monotheistic frameworks you will find different answers and experience alone doesn't lead you to a coherent description of who God is in terms of actual objective measurable reality it may tell you how you think about him or how I think about him so what do we do we move beyond that to the great philosophers and as you're reading the Philosopher's unless you are very comfortable with philosophy and the terminology you begin to say really is this how obscure all of this is I biggie they begin to climb the ladder of abstraction and at some point you say to yourself I'm lost completely lost with the terminology especially if you're sitting to a day in two bait with rigorously theoretical philosophers who can argue in categories and terminology that is beyond an average person I then think of Jesus when he was asked to describe the kingdom of God taking a little child and putting a child in the middle and saying such as the kingdom of heaven unless you also become as one of these neither shall you enter into that Kingdom how do we then solve the problem if you go to experience you struggle with differences you go to philosophers you struggle with differences you go to the theologians and the judeo-christian worldview you find fascinating hell you find God is sovereign you find God is holy you find God is omniscient you find God is immutable all these extraordinary terms and they're marvelous terms until suddenly your experience runs against the reality of what you've believed him to be in his sovereignty and it doesn't sit very comfortably with you let me give you an illustration of this years ago I was I received a telephone call and my assistant came to me and said Ravi you don't know this person but I really think you should take this call somebody is hurting here very deeply so I took the telephone call the man gave me his name introduced himself and he said mr. Zacharias I listened to you on the radio and I have a question for you do you pray for people to be healed and I said may I ask you why you are asking this question and he said yes sir he said I'm lying in bed here I'm in my 40s a few weeks ago I had gone out on a picnic with my company and we were enjoying a ballgame and the midday having a lot of fun with it and as I was running around the bases it was a fun game and the guys standing at second base I thought would move out of the way when I came and just started to be intimidating towards him I put my head down hoping he would step aside he didn't and with my head full tilt against hitting against this big guy I snapped my neck and he said I am now lying in bed and I've been told by doctors I'll be paralyzed sore neck downwards for life I have a young family how can this actually happen to me I still remember holding that receiver at this distance I said my oh my where do I begin to answer this do I start by telling him God is sovereign he is completely in control that may be the destination point that you want him to get to but that kind of a conviction ultimately comes deeply as you walk the path with God and begin to see a pattern unfolding even when you cannot understand it and I know the older I get the more I see how his sovereign grace has worked in my life much more than what I thought for the wonderful decisions are made along the way how he pulls it all together you see sovereignty can seem tyrannical if it is unbounded by grace holiness can be terrifying if it is untempered with goodness and mercy omniscience can be daunting if that is also uncoupled with a relationship immutability can be torturous if it is uncertain of goodwill all these marvelous descriptions if you don't couple them with Grace Mercy a relationship and goodwill suddenly they disappear into mirror terminology isn't it interesting what you read and what you learn about the human mind years ago I remember traveling through Rome and reading in the newspapers and the english-speaking newspapers a story of a man who was prone to visiting brothels all the time in his travels and as he was a fascinating story that they chose to put into the newspaper and I was a truck driver or something and on the outskirts of Rome he stopped to visit one of these brothels because a friend in him of him had told him what a wonderful opportunity would have with one of the newest persons out there so he goes into the ratha asked for this person by name pays and he's waiting in his room and who walks in but it turns out to be his wife who's living as a prostitute he was so incensed and angry and on the verge of physical violence not pausing long enough to ask himself what on earth are you doing here that's the way our culture has become now isn't it all of our university students are trained in relativism they don't believe in absolutes they're relativists to the core they never tell you relative to what they tell you they're relativists and all of a sudden when they come out on the wrong end of a relationship and find out that whatever has been going on and they've been exploited or used then suddenly absolutes are brought to the fore and they are taken to a court of law and have to be put behind bars for their behavior for doing what for living consistently the philosophy of relativism so we like to talk about sovereignty holiness submission see mutability they're all true but somehow it gets into that pocket of our minds where they seem so theoretical we are still struggling to go beyond experience alone doesn't bring us to a unified description theologians could be wonderful in their help giving us all the descriptions that they give to us philosophers come to the aid but somehow there's a certain degree that we fall short in and say can I not go beyond this nobody understood this tension better than saul of tarsus saul had been well trained and he'd been went well school and he had come from the confluence of three significant cultures the greatest cultures of that time the Hebrews the Greeks and the Romans this man was a Hebrew by birth he was a citizen of Rome and he'd studied in a Greek city he had all of these within the makeup of his thinking capacity but he was trying to communicate in the scriptures as God inspired him to speak and he realized that the quintessential expression of these three cultures and that which was of ultimate essence was in different terminology to the Hebrews it was light to the Greeks it was knowledge to the Romans it was glory for the Hebrews it was light this is the light that lights every man that comes into the world if the people that sat in darkness have seen a great light for the Greeks it was knowledge epistemic you can go through Greece today and see the old columns of the library's felled to the ground but you can still see the words after Stamey from which we get the our word of knowledge and epistemology for the Romans it was glory it was a city that wasn't built in a day all roads led to Rome and this man a Jewish man by birth studying in a Greek city a citizen of Rome wanted to get to the Caesars wanted to get to the road to the Roman mind and he writes to the church at Corinth God who caused the light to shine out of darkness has caused his light to shine in our hearts to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus our Lord to give to us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus the Lord the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression God who in divers manners and at sundry times had spoken to us through the prophets in the last days had spoken to us through his son that expression of God in the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us is what the Scriptures want us to understand for you see in him the glory of the father but I want to take you for a moment into a garden where he is on his knees in agony and he is praying well how does he pray to his father three times the phrases repeated Holy Father Holy Father Holy Father you know the language which with which I grew up in India in Delhi was Hindi the word for father and Hindi is PIPA the word for mother in Hindi is Mata but you never call your father PITA you never call your mother Mata you call your father Pitta ji you call your mother Mata ji ji is the term of reverence and respect that's why they don't really refer to Gandhi as Gandhi they talk about him as Gandhiji you can omit the Pitta you can omit the Mata you cannot omit the ji if you're answering the father and saying in the affirmative the word ha means yes you're prone to say gee ha Jeana he no sir yes sir you'll never forget the ji because no matter how close that description of your father and your mother may be to you in that bond that out of their loins you were really born there is still that distance sir madam sir madam I like the way it's done in the south daddy sir mummy madam it's a term of respect that doesn't push them away but shows you the respect and the esteem in which you held them I remember as a young boy nobody ever told me to do it but in those days when my dad walked into the room we would stand up we just had that natural disposition to recognize this and my dad this is my mom in some parts of India even till this day as soon as the parent will come and they'll go towards the feet and the father will say no the mother will say no they moved them back but it is an effort to say I know who you are in my eyes you are my esteemed parent and here's Jesus Holy Father Holy Father Holy Father I want to read for you something that's deeply moving I have the permission of the family to tell you this story it happened many years ago in 1989 a man by the name of Gregory Simmons was aged 41 had a very entrepreneurial mind he'd made a lot of money in his young life extremely successful living in Atlanta and he bought a beautiful home in Highlands in this state and I wanted to plan on that as a weekend home or a retirement home and one day his 12 year old son McKittrick was now become a good friend McKittrick said dad you've never taken us to see that home yet can we go and see him they were he was a father of five the youngest was one so his wife Kristi kept the one-year-old and he took the other four she said go ahead and show the kids and take somebody with you so he took his friend and friends son I think so these went along in the car and as they approached this beautiful home McKittrick the oldest of the kids 12 so dad look at that waterfall I'd love to walk up to the edge there he said no I can't let you do it till I walk up and test it out so the request of McKittrick to go to that waterfall which was on their property Greg started to take his measured steps one at a time very carefully putting his foot down because I didn't know how soft the soil was he took one step too many and came cartwheeling down a quarter of a mile to his death his four kids random the son saw it happening in abject horror there was no way to even approach from whence he had fallen I was visiting the grandparents in Lookout Mountain Georgia and they gave me a letter that McKittrick had written after the father had died this boy was 12 and he wrote to the Weiland family in Georgia which have her prominent builders and he wrote to Barbara Whelan because she was very close to Greg and Kristy and here's what he writes dear miss whelan you don't know how much your family helped produce my father she admired your husband knew a lot he would talk about how good your faith was with God he tried to be as generous as you all have been to the church like many others and many other good things since his death true friends have been revealed your family was at the top of our list you are a great source of energy for my mother and I my father loved you all very much and was always trying to be like you my father was like one of the three men in the Bible who are given talents by Jesus remember one went out and invested them and multiplied them one took some stock that failed and came back with nothing the last one buried it and did nothing with them all of them returned in a few days and the Lord was pleased with the two who had tried to multiply them but with the man who had come back with the same amount the Lord was disappointed because he didn't even try my father multiplied and lost many things but he was always trying to please the Lord he got that from your family miss whelan my daddy was a ristic and that's the way he was Genesis 1:1 says in the beginning is God and that was the most important thing to my father the beginning of my dad's life he was really special and a risk-taker that is why he was so brilliant and successful no element no one will understand why or how my dad fell into the waterfall please do yourself a favor and don't try to figure it out my daddy died for his children he was making sure it was safe for us to come up you may hear different things but only six people saw it and only three understand or understood what really happened that day I am one of those my mummy has lost her treasure chest her husband most of the others have lost Craig you have lost a best friend my grandparents lost their son for us John and Barbara lost their brother but it is different for me really different for me he was my best friend in my idol and when I got my last glimpse of him falling down the Falls I lost my most prized man on earth he was my father my daddy my one and only dad but I had a dream of him three nights ago I don't think it was a dream my daddy is all right he told me himself thank you for being a true friend I love you a lot McKittrick simmons Tyger Tyger is shining bright in the forests of the night what immortal hand or eye has framed thy fearful symmetry that's that Blakey and fearful symmetry that he addressed so often in his poetry daddy G father sir one of the great tragedies of our time more and more social workers are telling us of the absent father from the home I was speaking in a very large city that I'll leave unnamed and next to me was the police chief of that city is an overseas country and many senators and other congressional leaders were there in that country and they had asked my colleague Michael Ramsden and I to speak to them on some of the social struggles of our time and after I sat down the police chief looked at me and he said Ravi this coming Sunday is Father's Day in our country I have 18,000 law enforcement people working under me they dread this day because on this particular day I forgot what he said 70 or 80 percent something like that of the homes the young guys and gals don't know who their daddy is when you had that vast number who don't even know who the father is you got a sociological struggle in that land that shows itself with the young ones desperately trying to find connection and trying to find value and trying to find a definition of who they really are imagine a world without our Heavenly Father imagine that when I was on a hospital bed of suicide at the age of 17 struggling because I had no relationship with my dad long story long story and I don't want to belabor on that but the first time after I came to know Christ to get on my knee and pray Heavenly Father Heavenly Father that had been tough on me yet many times he had reason to be tough on me I was very derelict in my studies but in that culture you're gonna be pretty ruthless too and then he came to know Christ at the age of 57 I lost my mom she was 57 five years after that I lost my dad he was 67 I lived in Niagara Falls Ontario at that time he lived in Toronto and he got on the phone and said son I'm going to go in for elective bypass I want you to drive me I said dad Keith my older brother he said he's ten minutes away I'm an hour and a half away I'll get into the car and come right now but you get a jeep to take you to the hospital because if this is something that pains are strong you better get somebody nearer he said I want you to come I want you to come so I got into my car drove those 75 miles from Niagara Falls to try to picked him up and only then I found out why he said I wanted to see you because I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for all those years of hurt I was having a hard time driving I couldn't believe what I was hearing most importantly what a beautiful man he'd become under God so I was the last one to see him alive I took him in and as he was being wheeled and he asked me if I would just pray whatever God's will would be would happen he said I have a strange feeling I'm not gonna make it I said dad don't talk like that he said no son that's why I wanted you here to tell you I'm sorry before I left this world and he turned out to be right with us premonition we never saw him alive after that it's gone that day even of a few minutes last week I wasn't drawn on my grand my mother-in-law's 98 years old she'd suffered a stroke he asked if I could come and see her so I did she asked me to wheeler to the chapel where she wants a funeral service done she showed me the pulpit from where I would bridge before I left she said I just want to say to you thank you for loving my daughter and Margie is standing right there thank you for loving my daughter I said I want to thank you for trusting me with her all these years that protective love story gay love caring love next time you say Heavenly Father you have a bond with an eternal Heavenly Father who loves you and me so much no other worldview no other worldview would give you this concept of a loving father who gave the way you did are you not secondly did you not did you not what did he mean by that did you not protect us before ladies and gentlemen this is something we don't hear off too often because we think it is so emotionally ridden to talk about it this way but it is vitally important that you know in your heart the experience that you've had with Jesus Christ and his salvation I was speaking at Mississippi State University three days ago and at the end of that some of the faculty members took my colleague and me out for lunch and mainly scientists in the room they're brilliant some of these men and one of them just stood up and said you know what I just want to say I have known Jesus for many years and I loved all the descriptions we can give for him but I know he lives with in my heart I know he lives in my encounter with him when an intellect of that capacity who is a professor has several doctoral students sitting in front of him and he openly says that was the knowledge that he had so clearly of Christ's indwelling him in having that intimate relationship with Jesus Christ it is something you and I don't often talk about but I see the transformation of people as I go around this globe and it is not just that the transformation proves to them that God exists but the God of all evidence confirms that in that experience that he gives to you in that one-on-one relationship at the privilege of speaking at Angola prison where over 85% of them are on life without parole and to speak at the chapel there's an incredible thing and then the ultimate test of faith where you eat the lunch they have prepared for you it's true and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary has a seminary out there and the guy sitting across the table from me after the message we're doing their doctoral studies at the seminary even though they're never going to get out and the fella sitting across the table I said what are you doing is I'm doing my doctoral dissertation on Agustin I said oh wow I said let's go and get some lunch so as we stood up I said you go first he said hey man I'm not going anywhere you go first these guys are hard criminals most of them the days when it was dark in that prison were given a knife to defend themselves when they came and the warden told me there was blood on the carpet blood on the ceiling blood on the walls and he said I put a Bible in every cell I opened the seminary started a chapel so the guy who leads the music and you know on Sundays these boys are let out to go to the churches and the warden said to me once upon a time they were band of criminals now we got a band of pastors going out on Sunday night coming back I looked at this fellow and I said you let us and worship so beautifully he said yes he was a young guy look like maybe thirties I said are you on life without parole he said yes I said can you tell me how you feel about that deep in your heart you said says I cries if you knew why I was here you wouldn't ask that question the worst thing I've ever felt is because of what I'd done that brought me here but in finding Christ for the first time I'm now free in my life and I'm happy to be here because this is where I found Jesus as my savior pray for my parents who live outside and think they are free they're not they're really in bondage this incredible reality of did you not did you not meet me did you not transform me if you have never had that true sense of Christ's presence cry out to him you want to know the reality of him changing you from your hungers and meeting you where you are are you not did you not and finally he says will you not will you not also rescue us from this vast that is against us and so as I think of the pre closing moments of his prayer he is committing the future the middle verse of the Old Testament is God's answer to there to spread do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army because the battle is not yours but gods the battle is not yours but gods imagine that promise whatever you are facing now the battle is not yours when you know him it's his he carries you through he protects you he takes you into the thick of battle battle and brings you unto the other side I've gone through several battles in life especially the last year or two the toughest battles ever but at the end of each day I kneel and I say to God this battle is not mine Lord it's yours two days ago when I got off a plane the pilot looked like a guy in his forties stepped out of the cockpit and was waiting for me to walk by and he put his hand out he said are you Ravi I said yes sir he said you mind if I take a picture with you I said no sir let's do it so he steps off the plane and he takes a picture and he shakes my hands and he says to me let me just tell you something I have gone through some pretty dark days some real dark days in my life and it was your radio program and your team's ministry that really saw me through and the tears were welling up within his eyes I didn't even know his name but he looks at me and says thank you for the messages that carried me through ladies and gentlemen this is the god of Hope this is the God of all comfort this is the God who carries you through no matter what the battle is that you are facing so take a look at it now did you not are you not did you not will you not debates have been healthy illogically about the nature of the elements and the Lord's Supper is a transubstantiation consubstantiation we all know what what view of Christendom landed on which side but one of the things we have forgotten in the Lord's Supper was that there was a trance temporal ization there was a transcending of time how do we know that on the Emmaus Road when they were shattered to their hearts and didn't know what had actually happened and they knew Jesus had been buried these two disciples are walking on the Emmaus Road crestfallen and this third figure comes alongside them and he says what are you boys so downcast about they look at him in the most untrue incredible comment are you the only one in Israel it doesn't know what's happened he was the only one in Israel who did know what had happened here the only one who didn't know what happened so he begins to unpack all of history for them all of histories connecting all of the dots these guys are wowed if you asked me if there's one sermon from the mouths of Jim mouths of Jesus during the time that he was on earth you would like to have been present for it'd be a toss-up between the Sermon on the Mount and this but if you asked me to choose just one I would have taken this because this connected everything they were so overwhelmed they said you know what we'll buy you dinner if you'd come in and finish this that still happens to the preacher we'll give you a free dinner if you'll come and speak but then you can't speak because you can't eat because you're about to speak so they took Jesus in do you know what happened they'd already heard the greatest sermon about the explanation of history what happened he took a piece of bread and broke it he said we've seen this before we've seen this before as oft as you break this bread eat this bread and drink of this Cup now you proclaim the Lord's death in the past until he come in the future the trans-temporal ization all of time being under the sovereign grace of God their eyes are opened at the breaking of a piece of bread and he was gone how amazing is that the past the present and the future and so I close by reminding you that we are living in times of great uncertainty not at all sure what the future actually holds but I say to you even though in my heart I look at this society in which we now live I have been a proclaimer of the truth for nearly 50 years I have never seen our culture like this never I have never seen such hate never seen such bitterness a woman who'd worked in the State Department for 30 years walked up to me after I had spoken and she said to me there's so much toxicity out here she said I no longer enjoy my job anymore we're living in troubled times but then I remember in the 1960s Mao Zedong burned the seminary library and so the name of Christ will never be spoken of here again China has become the fastest-growing Church in the world in recent memory do you know which is the second fastest growing Church in the world we were told by leaders of the Middle East Iran Iran may well be the second fastest growing Church in the world today but capita China they never thought it would happen today you go to Harvard or Princeton or Yale or whatever you think you're in China the audience so many Chinese Korean students when I did my when I did my lectureship that I think it was Cornell it was all kind of all kinds of Socratic clubs and this club and that Club in the last world is in the Chinese holy ghost Christian Fellowship not afraid they're not afraid and we spoke to a group of Chinese pastors that have come dangerously cross from China into Hong Kong I was there for the last day pastor Chinese pastor struck Yamahas church pastors said you know these people have come from America and from England and all over how many of us have paid anything for this what we've had is a feast gym symbol I was with me for that conference he said it was the most moving moment in his years of ministry he said friends does not write we can't take this free from these kind people whatever they had they took an offering to distribute it amongst the preachers that had come to speak there we just took it and put it into the Chinese ministry program in Hong Kong out there homeless things that God is doing in this part of the world so I don't give up hope for America either the day is going to come when we will see this generation of young people turning to Christ in a way because they would have spent themselves in a secularized world view and come away empty-handed to realize Christ alone is able to fill the heart and the vacuum that has shaped within them we will probably see it in our lifetime it'll happen soft noon at lunch are closed with this illustration I'm done with that 1939 on the brink of a terrible World War two King George the sixth who struggled with a stuttering voice was trained to go to the microphone but just before he went there his twelve-year-old daughter the president Queen gave him a piece of paper people realize the statement that he said is the only thing they remember from that talk as he spoke to the Commonwealth on the edge of the war but they didn't realize it was given to him by his 12-year old daughter here's what it said in a piece of paper I said to the man at the gate of the year give me a light that I may walk out into the unknown and he said to me go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you better than the light and safer than the known I said to the man of the gate of you give me a light that I may walk safely into the unknown he said to me go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God it shall be to you better than the light and safer than the mound ladies and gentlemen how do you put your hand into the hand of God by coming to him each day in his word and in your prayers you put your hand into his hand and he takes you out into the darkness so that is better than the light and safer than the known are you not my holy father did you not rescue me will you not protect me as we go into the future who is God he is the almighty creator of this world for whom yesterday today and forever are really the same and your hearts are restless until you find your rest in him he is your holy father who is the same yesterday today and forever and your heart is restless until you find your rest in him it may be lisping in the direction of the truth but when you experience him you realize that's about the best you can do in talking about who he really is the best thing I can do some of you'll do a lot better god bless you and thank you

Channel: Southern Evangelical Seminary

Views: 477,719

Rating: 4.7595696 out of 5

Keywords: Ravi Zacharias, RZIM, Ravi Zacharias talk, Ravi Zacharias YouTube, Ravi Zacharias YouTube 2018, ravi zacharias sermons, ravi zacharias videos, ravi zacharias apologetics, ravi zacharias conference, ravi zacharias god's will, ravi zacharias norman geisler, ravi zacharias speeches, dr ravi zacharias youtube 2018, ravi zacharias youtube who is god, ravi zacharias sermons youtube 2018, southern evangelical seminary, national conference on christian apologetics, ncca 2018, ncca

Id: IjGKljGxtdE

Length: 52min 5sec (3125 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 14 2019