On Monday, the staff and students at NTBI got the privilege of hearing Dr.Jason Lisle speak during the afternoon elective hour. Dr. Jason Lisle has been involved with Answers in Genesis Ministries for six years. Answers in Genesis is a ministry that comes along side churches and helps train people in apologetics. How to defend the gospel from all angles. Dr. Lisle spoke on evangelism and creation. One of the first points he brought out was that we as a nation have the largest number of churches/seminaries, christian colleges, christian book stores/ resources, and christian radio stations. But we as a Nation have become less Christian. Despite the rising statistics about the number of Christians in the U.S., The Christians that are being “produced” aren’t grounded in good soil so they soon fall away, leaving them just to claim the title of being a “Christian.”
As a first year College student, I last year, was bombarded with many statistics about young people who leave the church once they leave home. I, however, chose to come to Bible school but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t need to be prepared to give an answer. I was so privileged to have a youth pastor and a church back home in Atlantic, Iowa that prepared us heavily in apologetics and many other foundational truths.
One of the basic points Dr. Lisle made was that believers must first have a creation foundation rather than an evolutionary foundation. If you don;t have a foundation firmly based foundation in Genesis, If we as Christians don’t believe in the foundation of the gospel, how are we going to believe the power of the gospel?
If you went to public school like I did, you know full well that creation wasn’t even mentioned in biology class. What was taught to me could have been found in a Children's imagination, we came from scum and that scum formed into an ape or a fish or some other creature and then we became man with no explanation of our moral nature, the complexity of our eyes, or the art of language. Its no wonder that when you try and present the Gospel to these people that they reject you because when we defend our faith we hand them, “Just trust in Jesus and it will be ok”
Have we lost the art of apologetics? Have we lost the art of creation apologetics? Why have we shifted the emphasis to the power of the gospel and not the foundation of it? The power of the Gospel ( Jesus’ life death and resurrection) will only hold power if it first makes sense. There is no need for Jesus when you don’t see where sin came from. The beginning of the story generally helps you with the plot if you read that first.
Jeremiah 4:3 says , “...Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.” We must first ask the Holy spirit to plow out the thorns in peoples heart and work in us to help with the harvest. Creation Evangelism is a way of plowing up that ground. Preparing hearts for the gospel from the beginning. Dr. Lisle said it this way, “ You cannot separate the gospel from genesis.”
So how do we prepare ourselves for the battle that we are already in? How do we prepare the next generation for the battle they are in? Six days of the week, people learn that evolution is right and the Bible is wrong, Evolution is right and the Bible is wrong, Evolution is right and the Bible is wrong and on Sundays we learn stories. There is nothing wrong with stories, but when you teach just the stories and no way to defend them, when the storms comes and questions fly, those stories soon become just stories and its seems more logical to believe that evolution is right and the bible is wrong. When we have a biblical foundation, and have been trained to think effectively we can go to college, the work place, or even in the home and refute the questions with confidence.
It may not be a salvation issue, but a foundational issue. I hope that Everyone who was listening in on Dr. Lisle speak was encouraged to defend the faith in a more passionate way and I hope that I have highlighted everything enough that you are able to want to dig in for yourselves. With God’s help, we can fight for him. He alone will get the glory, no matter who wins the initial argument. But before you get into a heated debate, ask yourself this, “ Am I trying to win the brother, or the argument?”
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