God vs Man's Logic

These are notes from a study I was putting together for my class, alas never to be taught now, but shouldn't you benefit from the effort?  Yeah, you can sniff these and think upon them!

Science, although it will be hotly denied, ultimate goal is to prove there is no God and that He is of no relevance.  Science is today used to address all which was within the realm of "God" yesterday.  It is now used explain everything, and if it can be explained through science - then there really is no God!  Right?

Luke 24:13-16, 25-27, 44-47

Jesus said that David wrote through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (of Psalm 110).  So Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, or "God breathed".

The Bible really does not have errors in the details.  I have a book from the era of the German "Higher Criticism" detailing for 1,100 pages the falsehoods of the Bible.  Yet, beginning with the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Ninevah Library, etc - the critic is stuck seeing most of their arguments slowly be translated away.  We do not need to water down the message of the Scriptures.  There are hundreds of ways to argue against the Scriptures and just as many to argue for the details the critics choke on.  Point is most of us are not going to be apologists (my degree) but we are going to be witnesses.

The natural man (ie most of mankind) is not going to accept the things of God.  He will never accept Scripture or God until the Holy Spirit opens his eyes, ears and heart.

God's truth will supersede the mind of the natural man.

Isaiah 44:14-17 addresses how man makes his idols.

In the end:

Man has always been about making up their own religion.  We make up what we will accept and believe.  Christians regularly do this with Scripture to create a religion acceptable to them.  Pick and chose the aspects of Christianity you like.  However, just be aware that this is of Satan, not of God.  Satan distorts the truth to separate us from God and fellowship with one another.

What better way to wrap up this than to use the speech in Job, where God says, "where were you when I .....".  Indeed it is in our vanity and pride that we pick and chose what we are to believe or not to believe, then we create new churches - if not entire denominations - because of some miniscule difference of opinion.  In the end we need to look backwards to the time of Polycarp, one of John's disciples, to see how disagreement is to be handled.

Polycarp and Anicetus of Rome, meet and had some very heated discussions.  My example choice, given the time of year, is when did Jesus rise from the dead and an observance of this be held.  Both agreed that it should be remembered but they disagreed as to when.  How so?  Well, Polycarp and those of the Apostles teaching knew when Jesus was raised from the grave.  The widespread of Christianity observed a floating day associated with the Jewish Passover.  At the time,  Anicetus realized that this was not a point to divide over and conceded to a date.  Just to make the point of this newly defined unity, he turned the leading of the sacraments over to Polycarp, to show his respect.  Today, we would have a new denomination formed!