QuestionsPartII

LIFE'S MOST PROBING QUESTIONS

1. Does The Bible Teach Evolution?

To answer this question we must define evolution. To the scientist the theory of evolution customarily means a process by which the whole universe came about through a progression of interrelated phenomena. In biology or zoology the theory of evolution supposes that existing animals and plants have their origins in simpler forms that have been progressively modified through successive generations over extended periods of time.

Scientific evolution ELIMINATES belief in God, or special creation the origins of all life to the action of random chemical and physical forces.

One major fact nullifies the theory of scientific Evolution. There has never been one observable case of any creature shifting (or evolving) from one biological class to another or from one phylum to another. There is NO case where we have remains or fossils of an animal that died during the evolutionary process. The Reason is Clear. The Bible says that God made each animal "After its kind" through a special act of creation for each one of them.

We think the greatest example of this truth is the MULE. The mule is a cross between a donkey and a horse. Mule is born sterile. They are Unable to reproduce. In other words, the horse and the donkeys were close enough in the biological ladder to interbreed with each other, but their offering could not continue the breeding process. Even that close link could not reproduce. Certainly nobody has ever breed a bird with a snake or an ape with a man. There is NO reproductive evident to support EVOLUTION.

2. Is Reincarnation Taught In The Bible?

Definitely NOT! Reincarnation is an Eastern concept that speaks of the transmigration of the human soul. In certain cultures it is believed that the souls of those who die come back as animals. In Nepal they teach that the evil men come back as dogs, so they beat the dogs unmercifully. In India cows, rats, and grasshoppers are viewed as people who have been reincarnated.

The concept of reincarnation comes from the Hindu belief that life and death make up an eternal wheel. Each individual is attached to the wheel, and attached to each individual is a Karma or Fate. People supposedly purge their Karmas by successive incarnations. There are no understandings, no rules, no reasons, just mindless fate and hopeless attempts at the cleansing of guilt.

The Bible Does not teach this at all. The Bible says, "It is appointed for men to die, but after this the Judgment." (Hebrews 9:22). In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, when the rich man died, he went to Hades. When Lazarus died, he went to paradise, called by the Bible "Abraham's bosom." There was no thought of coming back unless God allowed them to come back.

When Jesus Christ was on the Mount of Transfiguration, He met with Moses and Elijah and He talked with them. (Matthew 17:1-3). Moses had been dead for 2000 years, but he was still Moses. Moses did not come back as King Tut. Moses was Moses. He never lost his identity. The Bible teaches that when you are born you have the identity you will have for all eternity.

You are never going to lose that identity. You are absolutely accountable for what you do in this life. There is No second chance and No opportunity to come back and purge you of sins and wrongs you have done. All have an equal chance, but the chance lasts only during this lifetime.

3. Where Do People Go When They Die?

Their bodies usually go into the ground, and they go back to the dust from whence they came. The Spirit of man goes into an everlasting state, because spirits are immortal and cannot die. As we understand the Bible, at death those who are Christians go to be with the Lord, to a place of bliss called Paradise. Those who aren't Christians go to a place of suffering and torment called hell. They wait there for a final judgment, while those who are dead in Christ wait for their final reward.

The Bible does not teach the soul will SLEEP. For example, Jesus told about the rich man, and the beggar named Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31). When he died, the beggar (Believed in God) and went to a place called Abraham's bosom, where Abraham and other Old Testament saints comforted him. When the rich man (did not believe in God) died he went to hell, or Hades. He asked Lazarus to come over and give him a few drops of water, saying he was tormented in the flames. In this story we note that both men were CONSCIOUS. They knew their own identity, and they recognized other people as well.

There was some kind of torment. Since fire does not hurt spirits, it is possible that the fire may be symbolic. It could be a fire of remorse, of thinking what could have been, yet was missed. Hell is also pictured as outer darkness, where there is loneliness and weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 8:12). There is another reference to a lake of fire. (Rev. 20:14-15). Whatever hell is, it consists of eternal and unending anguish apart from God and all that is good.

4. What Is Sin?

Sin is falling short of the glory of God. We sin when we do not do what God wants us to do, or when we do what He does not want us to do. The word Sin in Greek is Hamartia, and it means, "to go apart from a mark." If you were to shoot an arrow at a target, and you missed the bull's eye, you would be missing the mark.

The mark of God is Perfection-Total Perfection. Anything that falls short of His Perfection and Holiness is Sin. The Bible says, "There is none who does good, not one." (Psalm 14:3). "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." (Romans 3:23). "They go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies." (Psalm 58:3).

But in Jesus Christ there is perfection. It is only in Christ that we can hit the mark. Jesus is the only sinless man, and there will never be another. When we trust in Christ, we take his Sinlessness upon ourselves. That is the only way we can enter into heaven-without any sin. The Bible says, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin." (I John 1:7).

As we are walking with Jesus, whatever sins we commit by our contact with the blood of Jesus is continuously forgiving the world as we confess them.

5. How Does Jesus save me?

He saves us by His Death from all our sins: Past, Present, and Future. We all have broken God's law, and the wages of sin is Death. (Romans 6:23). Jesus Christ NEVER sinned, so as a sinless "Second Adam," He was able to die as a substitute for all human sinners. Therefore God was able to preserve His righteous law and government by punishing the breaking of the law while offering a pardon to those who had broken it.

The Apostle Paul said that Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the Law. (Gal. 3:13). The word redeemed means to buy back a slave in the market place. Mankind was in bondage to the curse of the law, which is Death. Under this analogy, the death of Jesus was the "Ransom" to set us free from the bondage of the law, sin and death. So, in a sense, Jesus is our substitute and our ransom.

Our salvation has three parts. First, at the moment we receive Christ in Faith, His Death cancels completely all of our sins. In Christ our position before God is sinless. We are totally absolved from all our past sins, just as if we had never sinned. This is salvation of our spirit. Then as we walk with Jesus day after day, we have present salvation, and we grow in holiness. The goal of the Christian is to grow up in Christ. This is our ongoing salvation.

The third part of salvation is the future, where we will lose these bodies, which are always being pulled by sin, and we will get brand new bodies. (I Co 15:42-44).

6. What Is Justification By Faith?

The Apostles Paul said, "By grace you have been saved through Faith, and not of yourself, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." (Eph 2:8-9). We are justified because of the unmerited favor of God.

That is what Grace is -- favor we did not work for. We have faith in the fact that Jesus Christ died for us, that He rose again, and that He offers us eternal life through believing in Him. When we do believe this, Jesus comes into us, lives in us, and we become identified with him through His sacrifices. Then, when God looks at us, He does not see our sin; He sees the blood of Jesus. And He says, in effect, about each of us, "This person has not done anything wrong." The blood of Jesus covers him. Therefore, I pronounced him righteous." That is justification by faith."

You have to be Born Again to be saved. There was a man named Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by night. He told Nicodemus, "Unless, one is Born Again of the Water and the Spirit, he can not enter the Kingdom of God." (John 3:3).

7. If I Sin, Will I Lose My Salvation?

An act of sin does NOT cost you your salvation. (I John 1:7,9) "If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin... If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Acts of sin or rebellion will take away the joy of your salvation. When David committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed, he LOST the JOY of salvation. When he wrote (Psalm 51:12) about it, he said. "Restore to me the JOY of your salvation." He had NO JOY, because he had rebelled against God. Then he said, "Do NOT take your Holy Spirit from me."

(Psalm 51:11).

Even though he had committed adultery and had been responsible for an innocent man's death, by this clear statement he still had the Holy Spirit. But, David did not get away without being punished. He had a rebellion in his own household and actually lost his throne for a time. Nevertheless, God FORGAVE and Loved Him because David was Repentant before the Lord.

If you CONTINUE in a course of known sin, you will lose the assurance of your salvation. However, you will NOT know if the Holy Spirit is with you because you will be at Odds with God. The Bible says, "Anyone born of God DOES NOT continue to sin." (I John 5:18 NIV). It does not say that a Christian NEVER commits an act of sin, but that he does not continue in a course of sin, Refusing to confess and Repent of his sins. So if someone has been born of the Spirit of God, there will be something inside of him drawing back to repentance every time he sins.

The phrase "Once saved, always saved" is not found in the Bible. Our salvation is Past, Present, and Future. That implies a continuous relationship and an unfolding process rather than a fixed state. The person who has given himself or herself to Jesus Christ and has truly repented from sin can find repeated assurances of the eternal covenant given to His people by God who cannot lie. Jesus said, "My Father, who has given me them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand.

(John 10:29).

So, we are secure in the hand of God, and we are to rest secure in the Lord. God has put His Spirit within us. He has given us His Word. Jesus Christ is at the right hand of God, constantly making intercession on our behalf, and God has sent angels to watch over us. In other words, tremendous helps surround us. We should be reminded ourselves that we are secured, that God loves us.

But, there at the same time, there should be a healthy fear of falling. We should NOT presume on God and say, "I am saved, so I can do anything I want to." Paul condemned people who were teaching that a person could sin boldly so that God's grace could abound. If we are truly dead to sin, then we are NOT going to live in Sin any longer, but we will aim to serve God. We should walk with reverence, because God is a consuming fire, and awesome Being.

8. How Can God Send People who have Never Heard the Gospel to Hell?

God does NOT send people to hell because they NEVER heard of Christ. He sends people to hell because they have SINNED. The judgment for sin will be in relationship to how much they knew. A person living in America has maximum spiritual privilege. Therefore the spiritual standard of America would be the gospel of Jesus. But someone who grew up in an uncivilized jungle might be held to account for the fact that something in his CONSCIENCE told him there is a Creator worthy of his worship. The Bible says his conscience will either accuse him or Excuse him on the day of Jesus Christ. (Romans 2:14-16).

9. Will Babies Who Die Without Being Baptized Go to Hell?

Babies who are not baptized will not go to hell because they are not guilty of anything. God will judge people on the basis of what they did in light of what they KNEW. Babies have NOT done anything wrong because they DO NOT know the difference between right and wrong. And also they have NOT sinned. To be guilty before God, a child has to understand that what he or she is Doing is Wrong.

Some children who are nine or ten years old are old enough to know Jesus Christ and be saved, because they are old enough to know the difference between right and wrong. Children do reach an age where they are old enough to be held responsible for what they do. When that time comes, they will be judged by the same standards as everyone else.

10. Why Aren't the Wicked Punished for What They Do?

David addressed this question in one of his Psalms. "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a native green tree." (Psalms 37:35).

"For I was envious of the boastful, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked...For there are no pangs in their death, but their strength is firm... When I thought how to understand this, it was too painful for me---Until I went to the sanctuary of God, then I understood their end. Surely you set them in slippery places; you cast them down destruction." (Psalms 73: 3-5; 16-18)

The only thing we can add to what David said is that God permits a period when the wicked have a chance to repent. God's patience is meant to lead them to repentance. (Romans 2:5-7).

But instead, they often presume on God and say, "He does not know what we are doing. We are getting away with it." And this seems to be true, for a time. But they will spend eternity in hell. Eternity is so long, and life is so short!

It is often true, too that their own evil catches up with them. There is a statement "What goes around comes around." If you deal with evil people, it will come back to you.

Can you imagine anything more horrible than the latter years of a Mafia Don waiting for someone to do to him what he has done to someone else, always in fear for his life, always in torment that someone will hurt him, just as he has hurt other people? Not having anyone to trust or count on, not knowing when the assassin's bullet is going to come?

This is true of so many of the wicked. They will usually be punished on earth while they live, even if it is not obvious to rest of us. It may be nerve problems, or diseases, or a child who disgraces them, or a wife who torments them. Rest assured, no one gets away with evil. Judgment always comes. Only the timing is uncertain.