Over the centuries millions from every nation and culture have experienced a spiritual awakening resulting in life transforming certainty that Jesus Christ is the only way to heaven, and all other philosophies and religions are darkness. What makes these people so annoyingly sure? Is Christianity the opiate of evolutionary retards, or is it liberation from the devolving depravity of mankind? This global phenomenon defies analysis by tradition, religious heritage, intelligence, social status, psychology or age.
How could this ancient Jewish carpenter have such a volatile and persistent impact on the world? He claimed, not merely to represent, but to literally be “The Way the Truth and the Life” and he clinched it with “No man comes to the Father but by me.” If that wasn't outrageous enough, his disciples proclaimed that the universe was created through Jesus Christ, that he is the force holding together all matter, and if you don't believe in him you are actually dead. (Jn 14:6; Col 1:16-17; Eph 3:9; 1 Jn 5:12)
Jesus professed to come from another dimension, warning that our response to him would determine our ultimate destiny, either eternal torment or eternal blessedness. He categorically ruled out religion and reincarnation as options. (Gal 6:15; Jn 5:39; Lk 16:22; Heb 9:27)
Jesus said, “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” Could anyone be more provocative and uncompromising? Either he was a diabolical genius or the only Savior of humanity. It's foolishness to simply dismiss him because the story “seems” absurdly illogical and implausible. The risk is too great to ignore. If the witness of Jesus is true, the implications for us personally are staggering. Therefore, I could never blindly trust another person's testimony regarding the truth of Jesus, heaven and hell. I must know for myself beyond a shadow of doubt.
I will not waste your time trying to convince you of the validity of authentic Christianity, because it cannot be done. My intention is to help you discover it for yourself. But the question is: How desperate are you? I can verify, that if you seek God with brutal honesty, you will encounter Him with unequivocal certainty
For now, set aside such burning questions as “Why is it so difficult to find Him? or “How can a loving God allow evil?” If you want to know the truth you must divest yourself of pride and self-sufficiency and embrace the heart of a little child. Pride and self-sufficiency are illusions that have hijacked and corrupted our software, originally designed for love and dependence on God. Note, we need a child-like heart, not a childish mind. This is not about intellectual suicide, it's about true enlightenment and satisfaction.
THE ROLE OF LOGIC
In our pursuit of God, we must understand the role of common logic. There are inherent flaws in the way most of us process information. Logic that makes sense in a limited framework is foolishness from an eternal perspective. “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God shown the world's wisdom to be utter foolishness? (1 Cor 1:20)
God is not illogical, but our logic is limited to the scope of our vision. Common logic leads to God's existence, but it's incapable of knowing God. Intimate knowledge of God occurs in our human spirit, not the brain, and such knowing supersedes mathematical deduction. Our need for absolute security cannot be satisfied by reason. We are complex integrated beings and our mental faculties were not designed to operate disconnected from our spirit.
Humans receive information from three “voices.” Physical sensation is the voice of the body. Reasoning is the voice of the mind. Conscience is the voice of the human spirit. If your logic processes data only from the five physical senses and disregards the conscience, you will remain imprisoned in spiritual darkness.
Love, evil, goodness, beauty, perfection, consciousness, impressions of immortality and our ability to have this discussion, confound “objectivity” because these abstractions reveal a reality beyond physiology and our five senses. Where does our sublime longing for God and the sublimated need to worship originate? If our philosophy of life is based on what seems reasonable to our five senses we are deceived. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”
True understanding is a state of the heart, not an achievement of the mind. But sadly, our culture idolizes "dispassionate" analytical thinking, unaware that human reason cannot be divorced from emotion and intuition.
Even empirical science cannot escape intuition. Physicians, selected from the best and most balanced minds are in a continual state of disagreement over medicine. Why? Because pure unbiased objectivity is a myth. Einstein understood this. It wasn't detached logic that led him to deep scientific discoveries, they were birthed from subjective experience. “A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. That means it is not reached by conscious logical conclusions.” (Albert Einstein) If that's true of science, how much truer is it of God!
Einstein interpreted his intuitive experience by logic, but he could never impart it to anyone. He could only offer dead equations. Christians have a similar dilemma. We speak a language that can only be understood through shared spiritual experience. “No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. . . This is what we speak, not in words taught by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit . . .The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Cor 2)
CAN ABSOLUTE TRUTH BE KNOWN?
When Jesus said he came to bare witness of the truth, the Roman governor sneered “What is Truth?” Jesus told him “Everyone that is of the truth hears my voice.” You can only perceive truth if you treasure truth in your heart. Convoluted philosophical theory declares absolute truth to be unknowable. They are right. To the darkened natural mind it is unknowable. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not. ” (Jn 1:5) You can, however, experience Absolute Truth with unassailable assurance, not because you have analyzed it, but because you have become mystically one with it. “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” (1 Cor 6:17) If you haven't met the Author, the Bible will frustrate you, but when He dwells in you, scripture is illuminated and affirmed with unmitigated certainty.
When Peter's eyes were opened to Truth incarnate, Jesus said, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this unto, but my Father who is in heaven.” Only personal spiritual revelation can reveal ultimate reality. That's why the Bible says, “No man can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.” You may blindly parrot the words, but only God's Spirit can give you the vision to actually see the truth. "I can guarantee this: No one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." (Jesus Jn 3:30)
Wisdom is defined as “insight into the true nature of reality,” and Jesus said, “Wisdom is justified of her children.” In other words, all the concepts birthed from Wisdom are self verifying. Absolute Truth needs no human verification or defense. It simply stands on its own. When we encounter God there is no question. Job, did not receive a single answer to his desperate questions, but after one encounter with God his questions became irrelevant, as he humbly admitted, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too incomprehensible for me to know. I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, But now my eye sees You.”
Every person on the planet intuitively recognizes Christ because our spirits originated in heaven,(Gen 2:7) yet our egotistical, wounded, angry, indoctrinated hearts contradict and displace the voice of God. But, when we become vulnerable enough to receive the Holy Spirit, “The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” Such invincible knowing eclipses mind and emotions.
When we've been offended by the counterfeit, we instinctively fear the truth, but perverting the truth does not invalidate it. Don't allow the dysfunction and hypocrisy of some Christians to dishearten you. You can know the Truth and still be emotionally and morally broken. In fact the prerequisite for receiving the truth is a “broken heart and a contrite spirit.” (Ps 34:18, 51:17) Until you are aware of your desperate need for God's mercy, the truth will not penetrate your heart.
WHAT IS FAITH?
The universe is a manifestation of the spoken thoughts of God. His thoughts are the essence of creation, and we His created image, are defined by our thoughts. As a man “thinks in his heart so is he.” (prov 23:7) We were designed to live by receiving and processing God's thoughts. (Rom 8 :14) That's what believing is! And that's why believing is a life and death matter. Repentance is to change one's thoughts, and when our thoughts harmonize with Jesus Christ, who is life, then and only then, do we possess life.
There is a great gulf between beholding the Truth and our feeble attempts to explain it. We must concede that any explanation of God, regardless of its accuracy, falls pathetically short of the whole truth, because words are merely inert symbols of the incomprehensible. Believing them is what gives words power, and you cannot believe Jesus words without supernatural faith.
Faith is not an intellectual leap in the dark, it is a supernatural endowment. Even though all humans have a capacity for faith, the Bible says that not everyone actually has faith. (2 Thes 3:2) This is a vital distinction that many fail to grasp. Trusting and believing are fundamental to human nature, but neither trusting nor believing is faith, they are actions. Biblical faith is a noun defined as “substance” and “evidence.”(Heb 11:1) Faith has actual existence that transcends our three dimensional world, and it's incomparable. It's described as a fruit of the Holy Spirit and a gift found only in Jesus Christ. (1 Tim 1:14; Gal 5:22; Eph 2:8) Believing is our mental response to faith. Trusting is our emotional response to faith. Without this divine gift your believing and trusting will default to some futile false security.
REALITY IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS
Quantum physics has envisioned a shocking possibility. The universe may be nothing more than a hologram or a symbolic manifestation of energy. Physicists are convinced that reality differs dramatically from its appearance. This resonates with Jesus' message. He came to earth to proclaim another reality called “The Kingdom of God,” and was adamant that our current world is an evil illusion. According to scripture, there is a kingdom of light and a kingdom of darkness. All else is incomplete and transitory, but heaven and hell are eternal. I can deny it, distort it or misconceive it, but I cannot create an alternative reality. I can only choose life or death.
Have you considered the possibility that humanity has been captivated by a colossal deception? Jesus, “The Light of the World,” was sent to a planet defined as the “region and shadow of death.” That which is advertised on earth as reality, is in fact darkness and death. We have all been born into psychological, intellectual and spiritual darkness, and intuitively sense something is tragically wrong. We struggle to avoid the decadence and emptiness of life, but it constantly haunts us. Thoreau said it well, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Yet, how frantically we conceal it. Shakespeare too was acutely aware of the vanity of agnosticism. “Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth)
Thankfully, God is not some principle or force explained by quantum physics. The universe is not God, it's only an expression of Him. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” God is a person with fathomless and extravagant love for you. An authentic heart to heart relationship with Him is the true physics of reality, and the only enduring satisfaction.
If, however, Jesus is so loving and the only way to heaven, why is there such pandemic opposition to Him? Wouldn't you expect more people to embrace him? Why are evil repressive regimes so terrified of Jesus and the Bible?
Jesus came to set us free from something profoundly evil, and the irrational resistance to Him is evidence of a cosmic war against the truth. Spiritual darkness is not simply absence of light, it's the depraved state of entities who have rejected God and are virulently anti-Christ. They are ingeniously wicked and devoid of truth, and therefore can only manifest illusion. Humanity had been seduced and enslaved by their counterfeit reality that breeds intractable selfishness, fear, pride and lust. “Truly the hearts of the sons of men are full of evil; and madness is in their hearts while they live.” “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked : who can fathom it?” (Ecc 9:3; Jer 17:9) This is the state of humanity. It is not subject to man's opinions or noble acts, and failure to comprehend it will forever seal your destiny as a legal slave of Satan.
Those who heard Jesus, “were astonished at His teaching, for He taught them as one having authority,” not bravado or the self-confidence of a motivational speaker, but a palpable certainty that comes only from God. I share that authority in spite of my imperfections, because I have experienced the literal presence of Jesus Christ. Once I was blind but now I see. Once I was dreaming, but now I'm wide awake. The impact of knowing Him is that sensational, yet I am incapable of convincing you.
Jesus often punctuating his sayings with: “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” There are only two kinds of people, those who can hear Jesus Christ and those who cannot. If you cannot “hear” the gospel you are not hopeless! Your ears can be opened. But, again, I ask the question, “How desperate are you to know the truth?” You will only believe what you are willing to accept. Accept nothing less than absolute assurance. When you “see” Him there will be no question.
“If you seek the LORD your God, you will find him if you look for him with all your heart and with all your soul.” (Deut 4:29) "So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Jesus)
Copyright 2010 by Hayden Humphrey
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