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www.faithexplorer.com/FaithExplorer.pdf
NEXT IN DAY 8
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USES
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Personal
• Solidify your own Christian faith
• Tool for pass-along to others
• Bible study topics
• Counseiing and discipleship
• Link on social networking pages
• Spiritual conversation with confidence
• Non-believer wants understanding
Like seminary compressed into 100 minutes, easy to understand in plain language
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Family
• Family spiritual teaching
• Tool for dinner table discussion
• Help explain your faith to relatives
• Give spiritual heritage to grandchildren
• Inter-faith relationships
Dad and mom teach at home, open spiritual dialog with children and relatives
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Church
• Jr and Sr High youth groups
• Young adults groups
• Adult Sunday School classes
• New member classes
• Evangelism training
• Evangelism followup
• Counselling and discipling
• Pastor emails in response to questions
• Encourage family discussion at home
• Leadership training
• Resource link on church website
Trains and equips people for ministry
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Discussion group
• Neighborhood Bible studies
• Workplace discussion groups
• Youth groups
• College dorm discussions
• Home schooling and Christian schools
• Addictions recovery groups
Focuses group on the important issues, with video, discussion questions and hand-outs, easy for leader
Free group materials at
![What is progressive revelation? The God’s revelation of himself and his creation is progressive over the centuries. He parcels out information a little at a time. God began telling about himself to Adam ... he revealed more about himself through Abraham ... and then through Moses ... and the prophets. His greatest self-revelation was through Jesus Christ ... and the eye-witness apostles ... and today through the Holy Spirit within us. Not only has God been progressively revealing himself, but he has also been progressively revealing his creation, allowing us to gradually discover how to use his physical laws and atomic building blocks for our own creations. In both realms – spiritual and physical – enlightenment comes as we investigate and use each new discovery as a bridge to more discoveries. Today we know more about God and his physical world than mankind has ever known. In our next state of life – heaven or hell – we will know even more. Is Jesus Christ the only way to heaven? Before seeking answer to the question, we should determine relevance of the question. If heaven is just a fairy tale, getting the answer right really doesn’t matter. But if heaven is real, there is no answer in all of life more important than this one. Polls by Gallup and Opinion Dynamics reveal that 80% of Americans believe in heaven, 10% don’t believe, and 10% are not sure. Getting the answer right is critical ... nothing is more important! So what's the answer? As explained in Day 6, the New Testament says that the only way a person who has heard the message of Jesus Christ can get to heaven is by personally accepting Jesus as savior before life on earth ends. The alternative –active or passive rejection of God’s offer – is hell. Period. The New Testament is very explicit about it. But the New Testament is not explicit about what happens to people who have not heard this message. If God is just and love, how can he play favorites? How can most people be excluded from the possibility of salvation through no fault of their own? For answers, we need to understand two theological concepts: audience and impute. In theology, what does 'audience' mean? Messages are intended for the persons to whom they are addressed and delivered. The New Testament is the part of the Bible that contains the message for us, here today, BUT not everyone has received this message. The difference between Old Testament and New Testament is explained in Day 1. What about people who lived before Christ? Or lived – or now live – in places where the New Testament is unknown? Are these people held accountable for responding to the message to us, or are they subject to other messages or special revelation we don’t know about? God may have other ways to heaven for people outside the New Testament audience. As examples, the New Testament mentions Abel, Enoch, Job and Noah, ancient people who pleased God but lived before there were Jews, Christians, Muslims or any of today’s scriptures and religions. Other examples mentioned in the New Testament are Jews like Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets. And non-Jews, too, like Melchizedek and Rahab. The New Testament says that they are all in heaven because of their faith and obedience. They died without knowing anything about Jesus Christ!
Since these people, and many others specifically named in the New Testament, are cited as examples, we can assume that others like them will also be in heaven. They were accountable only for responding to what THEY knew about God in THIER lifetime, not for what WE know today. Revelation varies according to each person’s time and place. People are judged according to the light God gives them. But Jesus said: ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ (John 14:6-7) There are two explanations for reconciling these Bible statements: > Jesus was not referring to all humanity, but only to the New Testament audience, or > Jesus was referring to all humanity, but the benefits of his sacrificial death are imputed to people who don’t even know about him if these people are seeking God in the best way they know with their limited knowledge. In theology, what does 'impute' mean? The word impute is a theological term which means to credit to one person the righteousness of another. For example, Jesus’ righteousness was imputed to the thief being crucified on the adjacent cross. The thief had lived a life so bad that civil authorities sentenced him to death. He understood very little about Jesus, and apparently he was never baptized. But because of the thief’s last minute response to what little spiritual knowledge he had, Jesus said he will be in heaven, in contrast to the mocking thief on the other cross. The New Testament says: ‘He [Jesus] is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.’ (I John 2:2) WE DO NOT KNOW how many people throughout history have had the benefits of Christ’s death imputed to them because they lacked spiritual information or capacity to understand. How will God judge the uninformed and misinformed living today? Most people have never heard a clear presentation of Jesus’ death, resurrection and offer of salvation as stated in the New Testament or as restated in sermons and presentations like this. Will they go to hell because they never heard about Jesus ... or because what they heard was incomplete, convoluted or misleading? Jesus said that we should not judge, that we should leave this to God. But we can’t help speculating about this question. Among Christians, there is a wide range of opinions, from narrow conservative to broad liberal. > A narrow conservative opinion is that heaven is granted only to those who consciously and explicitly invite Jesus Christ into their lives as personal savior. All others – regardless of knowledge, place or time – go to hell. It doesn’t matter that we don’t understand or think it fair; God is sovereign and does whatever he wants. > A broad liberal opinion is that God’s saving grace is operative in every culture, place and time. A person receives the grace of God on the basis of an honest search for God and obedience to God’s word [Holy Spirit] as heard in the heart and conscience. That believer is a member of Christ’s body and is destined to receive the grace of conversion and explicit knowledge of Jesus Christ at a later date, whether in this life or after death. It is clear from an objective reading of the Bible that everyone must eventually pass through Jesus to reach the Father – see Day 4 for explanation of the trinity – BUT apparently there is more than one path to Jesus. Because God is present in the whole world, God’s grace is also at work in some way among all people. We can speculate, but we DO NOT KNOW how God will judge the uninformed and misinformed or what special arrangements he may have for them. But we DO KNOW how he will judge us! How will God judge those of us who know? People who raise objections about the way they think God is dealing with others usually do it as a smoke screen for their own resistance to God. Nearly everyone in the modern Western world – particularly everyone watching or reading this FaithExplorer – already knows, or has been put put on notice to investigate, God’s free offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. It doesn’t matter to us how God, in his progressive revelation, has been dealing with other people. The way he deals with us today is spelled out in the New Testament and, as explained in Day 6, a response is required. The personal response, or lack of it, is the difference between heaven and hell.](image/index_n249.png)
Clear and concise explanation of Christian faith for pass-along and discussion