What if Christianity is True - Part 1 - David Bercot

What if Christianity is true?

You may know very little about Christianity, and you may rarely think about it. In fact, you may prefer not to think about it. But what if Christianity is true? What will that mean for you and your eternal destiny?

Like so many Americans, you very likely hold to a secular view of life. You may even hold to a materialistic view of the universe. Now, we're going to talk about the materialistic view of the universe in just a few moments. But let's begin by talking about what do we mean by a secular view of life. What is secularism?

Well, my dictionary defines it as religious skepticism or indifference, or exclusive attention to the present life and its duties, and the relegation of all considerations regarding a future life to a secondary place. And that would sum up probably where most Americans are today, or at least a sizable portion of the population. Now, when I was growing up, when I was a boy, it would have been a very small part of the population that would have considered themselves secularists or who would have fit that definition. But today, like I say, it's close to a majority, if it's not there yet, of, "Yeah, maybe there's a future life, but I'm not going to worry about it too much.

I've got other things to focus on." To a secularist, whether or not there's a God is not a big deal. Let's just focus on what's here in front of us. Here's an example. This is George Clooney, an actor, and he says this: "I don't believe in heaven and hell. I don't know if I believe in God. All I know is that as an individual, I won't allow this life, the only thing I know to exist, to be wasted." Well, serving God isn't wasting your life. Whether we are Christians or not Christians, none of us want to waste our life. But, you know, this is the height of absurdity. I mean, either God exists or He doesn't exist.

If He doesn't exist, then secularism makes total sense. In other words, it only makes sense if you're a hard-shelled atheist, if you can absolutely prove that there is no God. But no one can do that, and we'll see why in a few moments. But so you're not even going to think about it. It's like, "Oh, I just want to focus on the present, and yeah, I'm not going to worry about the future." Well, yeah, someday you're going to face that. The most important question in life is to determine whether or not there's a God. I mean, it's just so absurd to just say, "Oh, well, I'm not going to worry about it. You know, it doesn't affect me right now."

Yes, but it is going to affect you at some point. Picture you're crossing a bridge, a long bridge, longer than maybe this picture, maybe 100 yards or so. You're in a car, and you're crossing this bridge, and suddenly you see a truck in your lane.

So what are you going to do? I mean, do you swerve and get into the other lane? Do you stay where you are? I mean, the truck's barreling down at you. You're going to have to make a decision. Now, George Clooney would say, "I don't know. I just want to enjoy my vacation." I mean, that's the attitude. "Well, I don't know if there's God. I just want to enjoy this life." Well, yeah, but you are going to face eternity. I mean, that's going to be facing you at the end of your life. So to say, "Oh, I'm not going to worry about it. I just want to enjoy this life." Well, yeah, I want to enjoy my drive across the bridge, but there is a truck that's coming, and I better make a decision of what I'm going to do.

And it's that way with life. I mean, eternity, we are going to face at the end of our life. And so we better do some thinking about it right now and not wait until the truck hits us when we die, and yeah, then we're going to be dealing with it. You probably recognize, or many of you, if you're my age, you would recognize this face, John Lennon.

He wrote a song that was popular in the late '70s. I remember hearing it on the radio a lot. The lyrics say, "Imagine there's no heaven, and it's easy if you try. No hell below us, above us only sky. Imagine all the people living for today." It's sort of like George Clooney. Yeah, just imagine there isn't a heaven or a hell. Just live for the present.

The second verse said, "Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do. Nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace." Now, that might have sounded intelligent to teenagers in the '70s. I don't know. But if any of us think very critically, I mean, I think we can see just how absurd and foolish this is. Imagine there's no countries. So what does that mean? No government? So who's going to pave the roads?

How do we have sewage?

Who keeps law and order? I mean, just no countries? Oh, everyone's going to be in peace. I mean, how can you be so naive? I mean, there have been periods in human history, places where there wasn't any government and people didn't live in peace. No, the bad guys take over when that happens.

Or I guess the other alternative is imagine one world government that some dictator has taken over the whole earth. Yeah, that'd be real nice. I don't think too many of us would particularly want that as our future. So we can see how silly the second verse is.

But people, yeah, thought this was such an intelligent song. But, you know, the first verse is just as silly. You know, imagine there's no heaven or hell. Well, if there's a heaven and hell, you're imagining it isn't going to make it go away. I mean, you better start digging and finding out, is there a heaven and hell? Instead of saying, "Well, just imagine it's not there and there's just a sky above us."

Well, first of all, I wouldn't want that. You know, maybe if you don't, if you want to live a life apart from God, yeah, you're willing to sacrifice heaven just to get rid of hell. But for those of us who believe in God, we're happy there's a heaven. We wouldn't want to imagine life without a heaven. We're glad that God has set eternity before us and that we have that to look forward to.

So we can close our eyes to the decision. I mean, yeah, you can go through life, and so many Americans and Western Europeans, in fact, Western Europeans are far worse than Americans. Yeah, they're just going through life like, "Okay, won't worry about it, and I'll find out when I get there." Well, yeah, if you find out when you get there, it's going to be too late. I mean, you better find out now and get your life in order to be able to face eternity instead of just, "Well, I hope it's not there because I'm going to be in trouble if it is." I mean, like I say, I can't think of anything as foolish as that.

Now, I mentioned about materialism or the materialist view. Now, one definition of materialism is somebody who covets money and is all into material possessions. But there's another meaning of the word materialist, particularly in science or philosophy. And the philosophy of materialism teaches that the physical material world is all there is. What we see is all that exists. There's no spirit world. There's no soul inside of us. We're just flesh and bones, and there's no God. Everything in the universe, the stars and planets, life here on earth, humans ourselves, we all got here by accident.

So that's a materialist view. To me, that's a pretty depressing view. I mean, wow. So that's it. You know, this life is it. And once you're 70, 80, maybe 90 years or over, that's it. It's all over. There's nothing beyond that. I mean, if that's the truth, then of course that's the truth. But I think I would want to dig out and find out, really, is that the truth? You know, I'd say the average American, if you really got down to what they believe, they believe that there is a heaven. They don't necessarily want to believe in a personal God, and they want to think about God. But when it comes time to die, most Americans anyway, they want to believe they're going to go to heaven. "Hey, I'm a good guy.

You know, I've lived an okay life. So yeah, I want to go to heaven." And so they just imagine that there's a Santa Claus basically up in the sky, and you know, everyone who's been basically good and all that, yeah, everyone's going to get to have eternal life in heaven. And yeah, they don't want to bother to explore beyond that. Just, yeah, just I'll have that hope. And even if it's absurd, that's what I want to think. I don't want to think any further. Now, the materialist view is that the universe started from what is called the Big Bang.

According to this theory, billions of years ago, there was an infinitely hot and dense single point. I mean, some scientists say just something really tiny of energy and matter, just really, really compacted together. And then at some point, it exploded and created the universe that we have today that is still expanding from that initial explosion. Now, this isn't that terribly different from the biblical view of what happened. I don't know that there was a Big Bang, but we know it all started from one source, and that's God. But whether there's a Big Bang or not, it's amazing to me that so many people, they want to just stop there. "Okay, it all got here from a Big Bang."

Well, okay, if there was this highly concentrated energy and matter, where did it come from? I mean, has it always been here? If not, how did it get here? And if it hasn't always been here, what was before it?

I mean, you can't get away from eternity. I mean, either there's a God who's always been here, or there's been matter or energy or something that's always been here. I mean, some scientists say, "Well, there was a Big Bang before that Big Bang, and that's where that energy came from." Well, okay, but then how did that other Big Bang happen? Well, there was another one before that. I mean, you know, you can go on forever on that, but you're still dealing with eternity. You can't get away from it. So we were saying we can't escape eternity. I mean, I don't care what you want to believe, there's eternity that's always been here, and there's going to be eternity that's always going to be here in the future.

You can't escape that. You can close your eyes to it, but eternity is going to always be there. And if we have any sense, we're going to give some thought to eternity in this life. Otherwise, yeah, we're going to deal with eternity, but it's going to be beyond our control once this life ends. It's in this life that we decide where we're going to be in eternity. And I'd hate, and I've known people who don't believe in God, you know, on their deathbed. I'd hate to be laying on my deathbed and just hoping there's not a God, you know, because you know you're going to be facing judgment if there is a God. I mean, I would hate to go to my death having to have that hope.

Hopefully, there's not a God because I'm in trouble if there is one. Why not do some searching now in this life to see?

As I said, whether you believe in the materialist view or you believe in a creator, the reality of eternity is still there. In the end, we either have an intelligent creator who has always existed, or we have a non-thinking universe that has always existed. Either way, we have eternity. We can't get away from it. And if God has always been here, He will continue to be here, always. And if the universe has always been here, it will continue to be here for eternity. Either that, or it will collapse on itself and be reborn, maybe in another Big Bang or something similar. Or it'll be followed by an eternal empty world. But eternity is there. You're not going to escape eternity by deciding, "Oh, I don't believe in God."

Well, you believe in Him or not, eternity is something you're going to be facing. In short, either there's a meaningful eternity out there, or there's a meaningless eternity out there. But eternity is out there, whichever route that we go.

Now, where materialists are wrong is that they imagine that God is part of the universe. But the God of Christianity is someone who exists outside of the material universe. Okay, so we know what we can see with telescopes and the material universe around us. And scientists say, "Well, we've studied every inch of that, and we don't see any God there." And they think they're very intelligent. Yeah, no, no, no God. We've gone way out with these powerful telescopes. No, no God out there. I remember, and a few of you who would be closer to my age might remember when, I don't know if it was the first Russian cosmonaut, one of them who went up in space, and of course, he was just circling the earth.

I mean, not even as high as the moon. And when he got back to earth, because Russia was ruled by atheistic communists, and he said, "I didn't see any God while I was up there." Duh. I mean, yeah, you're whatever, you know, several hundred miles from earth. Well, that's not where God exists. He exists outside of this universe.

You can study the material universe your entire life, but you aren't going to uncover God because He's not part of this universe. Now, studying the universe should convince us that there is a God, that there's a grand designer, that, wow, all of this order, God here somehow, these wonderful bodies that we have that can do so many marvelous things. I mean, we can either believe this all just came about by sheer accident, or, yeah, we can look at the evidence that, hey, there's a creator. But we're not going to find the creator in this universe, although He intercedes in this universe, but He dwells outside of it. To give you an illustration, picture an aquarium.

And for those fish in there, this is their whole world. Just picture this being the universe. Okay, those fish swim around and around. And let's pretend that like this is one-way glass, so they can't see out. And yeah, they're wondering, "Is this it? This is the universe." And yeah, we hear a tale that there's these creatures called humans, and they're supposedly able to live outside of water. And somehow they breathe outside of water. You know, boy, imagine that, you know. So let's imagine, yeah, one of these fish is that intelligent that he's able to start giving some thought, "Hmm, I want to study this universe that we and the other fish live in." So yeah, I mean, swims all around, goes in and out, and nope, there's no human here.

This just apparently got here by accident. Maybe these rocks are left over from the Big Bang, you know. And so we've got them here. And I don't know if any of those are live plants. Most of them look fake. I can't tell. But if there's some living ones there, well, yeah, they just evolved. They just got here. And yeah, we have food every day. It just happens. You know, accidents happen, and it just, yeah, we somehow have food that floats in the aquarium. But we've never seen a human. I mean, yeah, there's no reason to believe there's a human. And yeah, somehow we have, we see this little contraption, and we get oxygen. But that just came about by accident.

You know, just a lot of molecules, they came together, and yeah, just, you know, we've got this that brings us oxygen. But you know, none of us have ever seen a human. That's pretty far-fetched. Well, that's like scientists who say, "Yeah, well, there's no God." I mean, you know, we swim around this aquarium, and there's no God. There's no God here. Yeah, He exists outside the aquarium. We humans exist outside this aquarium. And no, the fish aren't going to be able to understand us because we live in a totally different world than they do. The spirit world is not material. So the God of the Bible is not part of the universe. He created the universe.

He exists outside of the universe, but He has the power. Just like an aquarium, I can stick my hand in, and I don't know what the fish would say, "Oh, a miracle. What's that?" You know, and then say, "Oh, we probably didn't really see that. That's the tall tale." You know, yeah, God can, He can come in our universe anytime He wants and do whatever He wants with it.

So if there is a God, what would we expect of Him if God exists? Now, in this brief message, I can't cover all of the arguments for the existence of God. We're just going to barely, barely touch on it at all.

There are plenty of messages that are books written and messages out on the internet that talk about the evidence for the existence of God. But if there is a God, I don't know about you, but I would expect that He had some reason for creating us, that we're not just here, just, you know, willy-nilly.

God doesn't really care about us. I mean, if we were created, which I certainly believe we were, then God would have a reason for creating us. I'd also expect that God would communicate with mankind so we could learn about Him, know what His purposes are, what does He expect of us? You made us, so what do you want us to do? What are we supposed to do with our lives?

Surely such a God would communicate with us. Well, that's exactly what Christianity does claim, that God has communicated and that Christianity delivers on that claim. Now, probably the main way that He communicated with us was sending His Son to earth to actually become human and teach us about this other world that, you know, we like fish in an aquarium can't see, can't touch or anything, but we have evidence that it's out there. Well, we had the Son of God actually become one of us to teach us about eternity and what's expected of us.

Like I say, He was here in person, but also God has produced a book, the Bible, that reveals why God created humans and what He expects of us. I want to talk just a few minutes about this book, the Bible. Now, if you're a non-believer, yeah, you've probably heard of the Bible. Oh, that's some, who cares about the Bible? Well, let me tell you a little bit about it.

It reveals that God wants to have a relationship with us. So that's the nice thing. The God of Christianity, the God of the Bible is not some horrible master up in the sky just, you know, waiting to strike people down. He's a God of love who wants to interact with us. He wants to have a relationship with us. He's called our Father. He's not called our Master. He is Lord of the universe, but in Christianity, we relate to Him as a loving Father.

Now, this book, the Bible, this isn't some obscure book hidden in a cave or monastery. If you want to learn about God, yeah, you've got to travel to some place in Tibet, you know, and way up on a mountainside, you know, there's a book hidden in a cleft in a cave or something like that, or, you know, some strange prophet who lives, you know, in Upper Michigan or something like that, you know, we have some visitors from Michigan, sorry.

That, yeah, he has this book. No one's seen it but him, you know, but if you go and talk to him, he'll let you peek at it. That's not, I wouldn't expect that from a God who created all of us, and that's not what he's done. The book he's given us is the most widely read book in the world today.

So, yeah, this isn't something obscure. There's lots of books out there, but the most widely read book in the world today is the Bible. Not only that, it was the most widely read book of the 20th century and the 19th century and the 18th century and on and on. I mean, you can go back 2,000 years or nearly 2,000 years.

The Bible is the book that is most widely read in all the world. So that alone should make us stop and think. It's the most widely read book in the whole history of mankind, which is what we would expect if God was going to communicate to us through a book. And again, that's not the only way He communicates to us, but He has given us a book that we can see for ourselves what He wants of us, who He is, how He describes Himself.

If you wanted to guess how many copies of the Bible have been printed, it's between five and seven billion, not million, but billion. I mean, if an author today writes a book that sells five million, I mean, that's considered an extremely popular book. And some books, you know, that really, really go over the top, like Lord of the Rings, something like that, maybe have sold as much as, I think, maybe 500 million, something like that. But that's it. I mean, that's just a few books ever reach that, but five to seven billion copies of the Bible have been printed and distributed since the invention of the printing press, and it was widely circulated before there was a printing press.

So this isn't just some, oh, ordinary book. Yeah, I'll just pick a book to read about God. I mean, who cares about the Bible? I mean, this is a unique book that stands out in human history. And it's what you'd expect. If God is going to communicate with us, if He's a creator who made us, you would expect He would give us a book that would be the most widely read book on earth. I mean, there's no other book that comes close. Like I say, if you look for second place, it doesn't even get up into one billion, let alone five to seven billion copies.

The Bible is also the most widely translated book in all human history. The complete book has been translated into 724 languages. How many languages can you name? I can't name 724. I haven't tried. I might get to 100. I don't even know if I'd get that far. But so these are languages most of us have never even heard of. And that's the whole Bible. If you take the New Testament, which is the part that talks about Jesus Christ, about Christianity, it's been translated into 1,617 languages.

And then if you took just some of the books, like the Gospel of John, I'm pretty sure it's surpassed 2,000 languages. So again, there is no other book that is anywhere in that same sphere. Lord of the Rings, like I say, which last time I looked, it was of secular books. It was the most widely read book ever of secular books.

Guess how many languages it's been translated in? 38. 38, yeah, versus 1,617 languages. I mean, like I say, there's probably no more than 100 people on earth who could even name the 1,617 languages that even exist that the New Testament has been translated in. So this is what we would expect. If God's going to communicate with us, yeah, it would be a book that's more widely read than any other book, translated in more languages so that it could reach every single people group of mankind. And it's still going into languages, like I say, of tribes who live in, you know, little jungle islands and things like that.

It's still in progress, but if the Lord doesn't return, the Bible will reach every single language that's spoken anywhere on earth. The Bible is also the oldest book in the world. The first book ever printed, the Gutenberg Press, the first book that came off of it was the Bible. It's the most influential book ever written. It's changed more lives, changed more thinking than any other book that's ever existed.

And ironically, it's also the most banned book of all time. I assume if you're in North Korea, you can probably read Lord of the Rings. You can't read the Bible, not openly. And it's been that way almost since the beginning that, I mean, first it was the Jews and it was the Roman Empire, and then it was the Catholic Church, and then, I mean, it's gone on and on. But there's always been, from day one, countries that have banned the Bible. You are not allowed to look at this book. And if it was any ordinary book, that would be the end of it. I mean, if a country banned Lord of the Rings, I doubt anyone would risk their life.

I want to get a copy of that book and read it. No, it wouldn't work that way. But the Bible, yeah, people risk their lives not only to possess it, to read it, but to translate it, to copy it, to give it to other people. It's a special book. Now, does that mean it's God's word? All these statistics I've given, you know, that doesn't make the Bible God's word. What it does do, it makes the Bible a book that everyone on planet earth should at least read. I mean, to go through life, and here's the most widely read book of all time, the most widely read book still today, translated in more languages, the oldest book we have, and you go through life, you don't even read it?

Well, yeah, you're not a very serious seeker if you haven't ever read it. It has the first and rightful claim over any other book ever written to be considered the word of God. If you want to start looking for God, obviously the logical starting place is the Bible. It's the most widely read book, the most widely translated book, and there's not even a second that comes close to it. If you've never read it, but you think you've adequately investigated the claims of whether or not there's a God, you're only kidding yourself that you haven't investigated. You're just playing games. If you haven't even read the book that claims to be from God and that is so unique above every other book, you've never bothered to read it, but you think of yourself as a thinker and, yeah, I've investigated whether there's a God.

No, you haven't investigated. So why do people, when we have the opportunity, or at least the promise in the Bible, which claims to be God's word, that we can live forever in eternity in wonderful bliss, why would someone choose to be a materialist or a secularist? Materialist, again, there is no God, it's just the physical world. Or a secularist, well, maybe there's a God, but, you know, I want to get on with this life, I'm not going to worry about it. Why would someone take that course? Well, there are several reasons, but one of the main reasons, if we want to be honest, is people don't want to live by God's laws. So, yeah, I'd rather believe there isn't a God because I don't want to live by His laws.

So I'll pretend He doesn't exist. So they don't want there to be a God because they don't want future accountability. Yeah, I want to do my own thing, and if there's a God, yeah, I may pay some consequences, so I'm going to just pretend there isn't a God.

And you can do that in this life. This is Elton John, a singer, and this is what he said, "From my point of view, I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. The reality is that organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings, and it's not really compassionate."

Well, it's funny, he talks about compassion, but he starts off, "I would ban religion completely if it was up to me." Well, Christians didn't ban him. He's allowed to exist and write his songs and do whatever he wants, and we're supposedly hateful, but he's the one who would ban us if he had his way. To him, oh, that's not being hateful. If you do something to Christians, that's not hateful. You know, Christians haven't done anything to him except tell him that his life is a life of sin, and that's his problem. That's why he doesn't want there to be a God, because if there's a God, he knows he's going to have some accountability. So it's just easier to believe there's not, and then say, "Well, if you're saying God says my lifestyle is wrong, well, then that's hate speech.

You're just, you know, hateful people." Christians are no more lemmings than are secularists. I mean, secularists tend to all believe the same thing. They follow the same trends in society. They dress the same way. They want to be cool. But, you know, whatever the latest thing is, I'd say they're more lemmings than Christians are. I mean, you just look around us today. We don't all exactly look the same here in this room, but we're all Christians.

Ironically, you know, people who don't like God's law, ironically, human governments put far more commandments on us than God. I mean, people think that, oh, if you're a Christian, you've got all these commandments. No, I mean, human commandments, if you were to write them out, just the commandments here in the United States and, you know, all the law books, I don't know, it'd be a skyscraper. I don't, you know, maybe the tallest building in the world. I mean, there are so many laws just in the United States alone that there is no human being who knows all of the laws of the United States. Not even if you're a Supreme Court justice. There are just too many.

There is nobody who knows them all. That's how many laws just one human government has created. In contrast, God's commandments, I mean, yeah, I mean, there's no comparison. You could, every commandment in the New Testament, I think, you know, if you didn't repeat them, just, you know, just each individual thing, I think you could fit it on one sheet of paper front and back. I mean, that's it. It's not a book of just, you know, endless commandments. Again, this is human. This is God. So, yeah, if you're afraid of God because you think, "Oh, I don't want all these commandments," well, then you ought to be afraid of living any place here on earth because you've got a lot more commandments from your government than you do that God gives.

Now, don't misunderstand me. We do have commandments from God. I mean, He is benevolent. He is loving, but He does expect certain things of us. But, yeah, it's a pretty small list compared to what man expects of us.

The Bible tells us God is love. I mean, that is His being, His essence. There are people who are very loving. I don't know that I've ever met a person I could say that person is love, but that is God. He is love. That's His very being. The only reason we love others as humans is because we are His children, that we were made in His image, but He is love.

John 3:16, it's quoted an awful lot, but it does state an important truth. "For so God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Now, if you read the rest of that passage of John 3:16 as part of, yeah, it's not just a matter of, "Oh, I believe in God and that's it," or "I believe in His Son." There's a little bit more than that expected of us. But again, it's not a huge thing, but there are commandments. But it starts with God loving us and giving the most precious thing to Him, His Son, to suffer for our sake. I mean, that's what the essence of Christianity is, a God who loves us.

And then 1 John tells us, "For this is the love of God," when that's us now loving God back, "that we keep His commandments and His commandments are not burdensome." So if you've stayed away from God because you're worried about, "Oh, there's going to be all these laws I have to obey," no, there are commandments, but again, it's not this gigantic list. And the way it works is, as a Christian, you obey these commandments because you love God. You don't obey them because, "Oh, boy, I'm going to get in trouble if I don't." It's because, "Hey, I love my Creator. I love my Heavenly Father. He hasn't put any great burdens on us. I want to do what He says."

And when you love God, you find that His commandments are not burdensome. That's why Christians are happy. I mean, yeah, we're not a bunch of lemmings just, "Yeah, boy, if we can go off and off a cliff and drown ourselves, we would be happy." No.

Christians get to enjoy life because they find that God's commandments are not burdensome. Ironically, the benefits of Christianity in this life far outweigh the benefits of secularism. In other words, even if there wasn't an eternity, you know, when I look back on my own life, I mean, there were periods when I wasn't walking with God, and by far the happiest periods of my life was when I was walking with God.

And, you know, if someone were able to prove right now, I'm 73 years old, so most of my life is behind me. If someone were able to prove, and it's not doable, but if it were, that here's absolute proof, there is no God, I wouldn't feel like, "Oh, man, I wasted my life." I mean, I look at my life and, "Hey, I'm glad that I wasn't a junkie on drugs and, you know, that life was so hard, the only way I could deal with it was to take drugs and just drop out." No, I had a life that's been meaningful, that I never had a desire, "Oh, man, I got to get on drugs or alcohol or something to make all of this disappear."

I'm glad that I have a wife I've been faithful to, that I don't have the guilt of adultery. I don't have a broken marriage behind me. I'm glad that, you know, I'm not dealing with lung cancer because of smoking all of my life. I mean, Christianity, just in this life, has brought me endless benefits. So, yeah, if someone could prove right now there's no God, it's not like, "Oh, I wasted my life." No, it's like, "Well, I'm happy that I lived the life I did. I'm happy I did a lot with my life, was able to do a lot to help other people to share God's love, and there's no if there isn't a God, then I was able to share human love with them, and I have no regrets of that."

At the same time, Christianity holds out the promise of eternal life. Now, nothing that atheists can promise us compares to that. I mean, even if there's less than a 1% chance that Christianity is true, wow, just for that 1% chance of eternity, to be able to live forever, I mean, if someone came up with a formula that you could live an extra 50 years of this life, oh, I mean, people would go to all kinds of lengths. Man, I could gain 50 years. I mean, they would do just about anything to do that. But eternity, to just live forever and in a wonderful place, I mean, if there's any chance of that being true, it's the most absurd thing in life to not dig out and see, "Yeah, I want to hear more about this.

I want to know more about that." And this is where we go to the Bible to learn more. If you live your life as a Christian and it turns out that Christianity is wrong, what have you lost? I know for me, I've lost nothing. Maybe a few illicit pleasures, but I've gained a lot of lifelong joys at the same time. So I'm, you know, I certainly have nothing to regret. But what if you decide to ignore the Bible and God, like so many people have? What if you decide, "I'm just like George Clooney. I don't know. Maybe there's a God. I'm just not going to worry about it. I'm going to focus on this life."

What if it turns out that Christianity is true?

Well, the consequences are eternal. I mean, either way, you're going to deal with eternity. You're on that bridge and there's a truck coming. The truck is eternity. And yeah, you can decide that right now I'm going to do something to prepare for that, or I'm going to just ignore it and what happens is going to happen, which I don't think any of us would do with that truck.

If there's a way to study, if there was a scientific way to know what to do, we would find out, you know. We would try to make an intelligent decision. And yet what's the most important decision of all? Is there a God? And if so, what does He expect of us?

So few people want to find out. Well, in the next message, I want to talk about the Bible. We've talked a little bit about it today. I've mentioned what a special, unique book it is. And all of those unique things, you know, being translated in more languages than any other book, more widely read, more widely printed, all of those are wonderful facts. They don't, in themselves, prove the Bible as God's word. But one of the things that really made me believe in the Bible as God's word are the fulfilled prophecies. The Bible contains hundreds of prophecies that have been fulfilled that go beyond what any human could do. So the next message, we're going to look at just a few of those prophecies.

We're not going to go through a hundred of them. We're just going to pick, I don't know, six or seven of them. And the seventh or sixth, whichever it is, the final one we'll be looking at, to me, I don't think there's an answer. It's such a marvelous prophecy that we are seeing in front of our eyes.

I don't know how it could come about by a mere man. So we'll be talking about that in the next message.