How to Pray Great Prayers

Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers

"Call to Me and I will answer you and tell you great and incomprehensible things you do not know." -- Jeremiah 33:3, HCSB

Some say God's "phone number" is JER 33.3, referring to this great promise of Jeremiah 33:3 that God will give great answers to our prayers. The context of this promise is the great prayer of Jeremiah in 32:16-25. In that passage, we notice three characteristics of great prayer:
1) Pray to a great God.
Jeremiah speaks of God's great character in verse 17: "Oh, Lord God! You Yourself made the heavens and earth by Your great power and with Your outstretched arm. Nothing is too difficult for you!" He speaks of God's great covenant in verse 18: "You show faithful love to thousands..." He speaks of God's great counsel in verse 19: "the One great in counsel and mighty in deed..."
2) Pray believing God still acts today.
Notice that in verse 20, Jeremiah not only remembers God's signs and wonders in Egypt, but goes on to say that God continues to "do so to this very day."
3) Pray believing God keeps His promises.
Jeremiah prayed in verse 24, pointing out that God was allowing the city of Jerusalem to be conquered just as He had promised would happen. God warned them that they would be punished, and they were, as Babylon laid siege to the walls of Jerusalem (see Jeremiah 32:2). But God also promised that after 70 years, He would punish Babylon and bring them home, so they had a future and a hope (Jeremiah 29:10-14). Jeremiah reasoned that if God kept His promise of punishment, He would also keep His promise of grace. Thus, believing they would come back one day, Jeremiah told the Lord in verse 25 that since God told him to buy property for the future in the land of Judah, he would buy it, even as they were about to be taken to Babylon in exile.
Can you pray believing God when all hope seems lost? If you can, you can pray a great prayer!
Notice what "great and incomprehensible things" God showed him in chapter 33. In Jeremiah 33:7 God promised a return from captivity, and in 33:15 God promised a Messiah: "In those days and at that time I will cause a Righteous Branch to sprout up for David..." God always does more than we can imagine.
So let us pray great prayers to our great God!

Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers

When Life Is Unfair and God Is Silent

Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers

The ancient prophet Habakkuk was troubled by the very contemporary problem of why God didn’t seem to do anything about evil.

We can identify with Habakkuk. Life seems unfair, and when we pray, sometimes it seems like God isn’t hearing us and isn’t doing anything about it.

It’s kind of like getting stuck in quicksand. When a person gets stuck in quicksand, the harder they try to get out, the deeper and faster they go under. The harder they try, the worse things get because the nature of quicksand is to pull them down the more they move. Likewise, the harder you try to fight your problem, the more you feel like you are sinking. Let's look at how Habakkuk dealt with it.

I. Habakkuk’s complaint (1:12-2:1)

A. Life is unfair (1:13a)

Habakkuk could not understand why God was using Babylon to punish Judah. Judah was bad, but Babylon was worse. It didn’t seem fair. So Habakkuk said, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?” He was referring to Babylon’s total depravity.

Sometimes life seems unfair like that to us. When an umpire or referee makes a bad call, our sense of justice is offended, and we want to jump up and shout “unfair!” We demand for a correction. We want instant replay and the ability to reverse a bad call.

On July 26, 2011, the Atlanta Braves were playing the Pittsburgh Pirates. The game was tied 3-3 after 19 innings. Umpire Jerry Meals was behind the plate. Julio Lugo was on third base. Relief pitcher Scott Proctor was batting. Proctor had 2 strikes on him and hit the ball to third base. The third baseman threw the ball home, and the catcher Michael McKenry got the ball and tagged Lugo on the leg before he even got to the plate, but umpire Jerry Meals called him safe, anyway. The instant replays clearly showed that Proctor was out, but the umpire called him safe. A lot of the Pirates players had to be restrained, they were so upset they wanted to attack the umpire.

Atlanta Braves announcer Chip Caray said on the air, “Folks, this is one that will be talked about for a while.” Bryan Jordan said, “This may be one of the worst plays we have ever seen by an umpire.” Boy, was he ever right. The next day even the news stations were talking about the bad call. But no matter how much the Pirates fans fussed about the unfair call, the Braves still won the game.

Sometimes, life is unfair like that. We get upset at a bad call in a ballgame, but what about the 12.4 million people in Somalia and the Horn of Africa who are in danger of starving to death? A drought has caused hard-working farmers and cattle owners to lose their crops and their cattle, and wander with their families in search of food. But warlords and terrorists are preventing relief organizations from getting food to the refugee camps. How do we explain that?

B. God is silent (1:13b)

Habakkuk went on to complain, “Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?” As the evil empire of Babylon destroyed nations and cities that weren’t as bad as them, God seemed to do nothing.

C.S. Lewis wrote in his book, A Grief Observed, of how he felt God was silent when he lost his wife. He said that when he prayed, he felt like God had slammed the door in his face and bolted the door shut.

In Habakkuk 2:1, the prophet wrote of keeping watch on the “ramparts,” that is, the lookout tower on the city wall, waiting for an answer to “this complaint.” Actually, the Hebrew word is stronger than “complaint.” A more literal translation would be “rebuke” or “reprimand.” Strong words for God, and many people who struggle with the problem of pain and the question of suffering and evil in the world are just as harsh in their condemnation of God. “Where is God?” they ask. He’s abandoned us. He’s silent.

What is the answer to all this? Habakkuk strained to get an answer, and beginning in Habakkuk 2:2, the answer came.

II. The Lord’s answer (2:2-20)

The Lord gave an answer in verses 2-4, and then elaborated on the answer in the rest of chapter two. In verse 2, the Lord let him know that the answer was so significant that it should be written down on “tablets” and a “herald” should run with the news to share it. The answer came in two parts, in verse 3 and verse 4.

A. Wait on the Lord (2:3)

The first part of the Lord’s answer was to have patience, and learn to wait on the Lord. “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.”

Billy Graham says, “Tears become telescopes to heaven, bringing eternity a little closer.” (Billy Graham in Quotes, p. 337) Through patient waiting in our suffering, we get closer to God.

God plans to work in His timing. The Lord was letting Habakkuk know that it would prove true, not false, and would certainly come. But he had to await the “appointed time.” He had to “wait for it.”

We know from history that in the appointed time, God judged Judah and God judged Babylon as well. Jerusalem and all of Judah fell in 586 B.C.; Jerusalem’s gates and temple were burned down, and the people taken into exile. But in 539 B.C. Babylon fell, as the capital was captured in a single night by the Persians.

In verses 6-20, the Lord goes into detail about the wickedness of Babylon and how He planned to punish them. These verses have two sections of five “woe’s” upon Babylon. Each of the two sections end with a statement about God’s greatness in contrast to Babylon’s sin.

In verses 6-8 he pronounces a “woe” upon the sin of greed. In verses 9-11 he pronounces a “woe” upon the sin of exploitation. In verses 12-14 he pronounces a “woe” upon the sin of cruel violence. Then in verse 14 he says, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

In verses 15-17 he pronounces a “woe” upon the sin of drunkenness and debauchery. In verses 18-19 he pronounces a “woe” upon the sin of idol worship. Then in verse 20 he says, “But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.”

It’s hard to wait on the Lord when life seems unfair and we don’t see Him doing anything right now, and He seems to be silent. But we must learn to trust Him and wait.

Isaiah said those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength and soar on wings as eagles (Isaiah 40:31, KJV). So wait on the Lord. One day the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. Don’t give up. Keep waiting upon the Lord, for despite all of the evil around us, the Lord is still in His holy temple, and we need to be silent in worship before Him.

B. Live by faith (2:4)

Verse 4 is the key verse of Habakkuk. Talking about the pride of Babylon, the verse begins, “See, he is puffed up; his desires are not upright…” The HCSB translates it, “His ego is inflated.” Then the key part comes at the end of verse 4, the words that they should write down, the words the herald should run with and proclaim. Here it is: “the righteous will live by his faith.” The apostle Paul quoted this part of the verse in Romans 1:17 and made it the theme verse of his letter to the Romans, and it is also quoted in Galatians 3:11 and Hebrews 10:38. It can be translated two ways: “the righteous will live by his faith” or “the righteous will live by his faithfulness.” Either way, it means basically the same thing, because if we have real faith we will be faithful.

For fifty-one years Bob Edens was blind. He couldn't see a thing. His world was a black hall of sounds and smells. He felt his way through five decades of darkness. And then, he could see.

A skilled surgeon performed a complicated operation and, for the first time, Bob had sight. He found it overwhelming. "I never would have dreamed that yellow is so ... yellow," he exclaimed. "I don't have the words. I am amazed by yellow. But red is my favorite color. I just can't believe red.

"I can see the shape of the moon—and I like nothing better than seeing a jet plane flying across the sky leaving a vapor trail. And of course, sunrises and sunsets. And at night I look at the stars in the sky and the flashing light. You could never know how wonderful everything is." (Max Lucado, God Came Near.)

Your life may seem like a blind alley right now. But hold on. Dr. Jesus wants to open your spiritual eyes. He wants to perform faith surgery. Will you let Him? If you do, you will live… by faith.

At the beginning of this sermon, I said that Habakkuk’s problem was like getting stuck in quicksand. Now, the person who knows how to handle quicksand knows that he should not fight it. Instead, he should paddle underneath, moving an inch here and an inch there, slowly getting to the bank.

That’s the way many of are problems are. If we strike out in anger against God and fight it, we will just sink into despair and bitterness. But if we will learn to wait on the Lord and live by faith, we can make it. Even though we cannot see the shore right now, if we will just hang on, and keep on paddling underneath even when we feel like giving up, in time, if we’ll be patient, God is going to bring us home. (Adapted from Tony Evans’ Book of Illustrations, p. 239.)

In 1856, Henry Brown, a slave in Richmond, Virginia, decided he didn’t want to be a slave anymore, and he was going to take a huge risk in order to be free.

Henry Brown found himself a box, a wooden crate, and postmarked it to an abolitionist in Philadelphia, which was in free territory. Henry Brown got inside the box, sealed the box from the inside, and mailed himself to Philadelphia.

Henry Brown was banking on the U.S. Postal Service to deliver him. He was in slavery and needed to be free. The abolitionist got the crate. When he opened the box, Henry Brown stood up, after being in that box three weeks, and said, “How do you do, sir. My name is Henry Brown and I was a slave. I heard about you being an abolitionist, so I’m entrusting my future to you.”

That was a big risk. It was an oxygen risk, a risk of being discovered, a risk of going hungry. But when Henry Brown stood up in Philadelphia, he was a free man. It was worth the risk. (Tony Evans’ Book of Illustrations, p. 42.)

Waiting on the Lord and living faithfully in spite of our troubles is like that. It’s hard. It’s a risk. But it’s worth it, because in the end, God will deliver us. Henry Brown entrusted his future to an abolitionist he had never met, in a land he had never visited. How about you? Will you trust your future to God, even though you haven’t seen Him, to take you to a land you haven’t seen yet? That’s what it means when it says, “the righteous will live by faith.” Will you?

Copyright 2011 by Bob Rogers

Flying the flag of baptism

A few years ago when Georgia changed it’s state flag, I was entering Candler Hospital in Savannah, when I looked up and noticed the new flag flying at the hospital. As I entered the lobby, I commented to the man at the desk, “I noticed they’re flying the new Georgia flag.” He waved it off and said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s just a piece of cloth.”

But he was wrong. It’s not just a piece of cloth. It means something. Just ask some of the people who passionately debated the change in the flag. Don’t say it’s just a piece of cloth. Don’t say it’s just a symbol. The flag has great meaning.

I know that I do not have to fly the flag to be an American, but I fly the flag, because I am proud to be an American. I see the 50 stars and 13 stripes, the red, white and blue and my heart swells with pride in this great nation that the flag represents.

So don’t say, “It’s just a piece of cloth.” Don’t say, “It’s only a symbol.” This cloth, this symbol, has great meaning!

There is a similar action for a believer in Jesus Christ. It, too, is symbolic of a great truth. I am referring to baptism.

I choose to be baptized to show my faith in Jesus Christ. He died on the cross to set me free from the penalty of sin. He was buried, and He rose from the grave and now lives in my life. One day I will go to spend eternity with Him in ehaven.

I know that I do not have to be baptized to be a Christian, but when I was nine years old and came to faith in Christ, I chose to be baptized, because I am proud to be a Christian. When I went under the water and came out again, I remembered his death, burial and resurrection for me. The apostle Paul put it this way: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” (Romans 6:4, NIV)

So don’t say that it doesn’t matter how you are baptized. Don’t say it’s just a symbol. This symbol of baptism has great importance as it represents our faith.

What does it mean to fly the flag of baptism?

I. It matters how it looks (Matthew 3:16; Romans 6:4).

For one thing, it matters how it looks. If somebody tried to sell you an American flag that had 12 stripes and 49 stars, would you want that? Would it matter? Of course it would! It should have 13 stripes and 50 stars. Would you want an American flag that had a green field instead of a blue field, and yellow stripes instead of red stripes? It has to look right to have the right meaning.

Likewise, it matters how baptism looks, because it has meaning. It must be by immersion to show death, burial and resurrection. Sprinkling or pouring does not have the meaning of immersion.

The Greek word baptizo means to dip, immerse. There are Greek words for sprinkling and pouring. Rantizo means to sprinkle. Epicheo means to pour. But those words are not used for baptism in the New Testament. The Greek New Testament uses baptizo, to immerse. It is interesting that the Greek Orthodox Church, which understands the Greek language, still immerses to this day.

Matthew 3:16 says that when Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water, because he was immersed. He went down into the water, and came back up.

Romans 6:4 tells us why: we are buried with Christ and raised with Christ. You cannot symbolize death, burial and resurrection with sprinkling or pouring. Only immersion shows the true meaning of baptism.

Don’t say it doesn’t matter. It does matter.

II. It matters how it is used (Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:41).

It also matters how it is used. We do not put up with misuse of the flag, do we? A person should respect the flag. We salute it, we don’t let it touch the ground or get tattered and torn. A flag should not be worn as a piece of clothing, because it’s more than just a piece of cloth. If a protester burns an American flag, we are outraged by such treatment of our flag. It matters how it is used.

Likewise, it matters how we use baptism. It must be for believers, not infants who have no faith.

In the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19, we are told to go and make disciples, and baptize them. It doesn’t say make babies and baptize them, it says make disciples and baptize them.

Acts 2:41 says that those who heard the gospel and accepted the message were baptized. In every instance in the New Testament, baptism was for believers. In cases where whole families are baptized, it is because the whole families trusted Christ. There are no references in the New Testament to baptizing babies.

Some have argued that baptism replaces circumcision, and just as a Jewish family circumcised their child as a sign of the covenant, so Christian families should christen their children as a sign of a covenant with Christ.

But Jeremiah 31:31-34 prophesied that God would make a new covenant with His people and it would be a covenant written on their hearts. Hebrews 8:7-13 quotes this passage from Jeremiah and then comments in verse 13, “By calling this covenant ‘new,’ he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and aging will soon disappear.” (Hebrews 8:13, NIV)

So if you take your practice of baptism from circumcision, you are basing baptism on a covenant that is obsolete and disappears. But if you base your baptism on a believer’s baptism from a changed heart, your base your baptism on the new covenant of Jesus Christ that will last.

Don’t say it’s just a symbol and doesn’t matter. It does matter.

Senator John McCain was imprisoned for a symbol. Fighting under the American flag, he was shot down over North Vietnam was a prisoner of war for many years. He tells this story:

In the final years of our imprisonment, the North Vietnamese moved us from small cells with one or two prisoners to large rooms with as many as 30-40 men to a room. We preferred this situation for the companionship and strength we could draw from our fellow prisoners. In addition to moving us to new quarters, our captors also let us receive packages and letters from home. Many men received word form their families for the first time in several years. The improved conditions were a result of public pressure on the North Vietnamese by the American public. In our cell was one Navy officer, Lt. Commander Mike Christian. Over a period of time, Mike had gathered bits and pieces of red and white cloth from various packages. Using a piece of bamboo he had fashioned into a needle, Mike sewed a United States flag on the inside of his shirt, one of the blue pajama tops we all wore.

Every night in our cell, Mike would put his shirt on the wall, and we would say the pledge of allegiance. I know that the pledge of allegiance may not be the most important aspect of our day now, but I can tell you that at the time it was the most important aspect of our lives.

This had been going on for sometime until one of the guards came in as we were reciting our pledge. They ripped the flag off the wall and dragged Mike out. He was beaten for several hours and then thrown into the cell.

Later that night, as we were settling down to sleep on the concrete slabs that we called our beds, I looked over to the spot where the guards had thrown Mike. There, under the solitary light bulb hanging form the ceiling, I saw Mike. Still bloody and his face swollen beyond recognition, Mike was gathering bits and pieces of cloth together. He was sewing a new American flag.

Don’t say it’s just a piece of cloth. Don’t say it’s only a symbol.

Baptists in some countries have had their children confiscated by the state church because they didn’t baptize them as infants. During the Communist rule of the Soviet Union, Christians were either forbidden to baptize at all, or forced to wait until they were 21 years of age. Often baptisms had to be carried out in secret. Yet that did not stop them from following Christ in believer’s baptism.

In Muslim countries, baptism symbolizes death, burial, and resurrection, and sometimes it leads to the person’s literal death. Ali Mustaf Maka'il, a 22-year-old college student and cloth merchant, a former Muslim who was baptized into faith in Christ in 1995, was shot and killed in Mogadishu, Somalia in 2006, simply because he refused to join a crowd in chanting verses from the Qur’an. His story could be repeated again and again and again in the Muslim world. Some missionaries say that the greatest danger is that when they share the gospel in Muslim lands and Muslims accept Christ, they know that many of those Muslims will then be killed for their new faith.

Baptism represents death, and in some places in the world, you will die for daring to be baptized. Don’t say it’s only a symbol.

How about you? Christ died and arose for your salvation. All he asks is that we proudly wear his badge of baptism, which symbolizes our own death to the old life, rising to follow Christ. What flag are you flying?

Why should I believe the Bible?

In the runaway bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown claims that Emperor Constantine decided to “rewrite the history books” and so he “commissioned and financed a new Bible” and he “outlawed, gathered up, and burned” the existing gospels (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, p. 234).

While reputable historians have rejected the claims of The Da Vinci Code as having no basis in fact, many people wonder, why should I believe the Bible?

The Bible itself claims to be the Word of God. We read in 2 Timothy 3:16 (NIV) that “all scripture is God-breathed…” I believe the Bible is the Word of God? Why? Not only does it claim to be the Word of God, but it passes three important tests:

I. It passes the test of corroboration.

In a trial, one of the things a judge or jury look for is corroborating testimony. If one witness sees something, and another witness agrees and says he saw the same thing, it gives extra credence to the truth of his words.

The Bible passes the test of corroboration, because so many other witnesses verify what the Bible says. Here are just a few examples:

Genesis 36:20 says the Horites were descendants of Esau, but some historians doubted they existed. In 1995 Giorgio Buccellati discovered the Horite capital city beneath modern Syrian city of Tell Mozan.

According to 1 Kings 9:28, King Solomon brought back 16 tons of gold from Ophir. But nobody knew that Ophir existed. In 1956 broken pottery found at Tell Qasile in Israel was inscribed, “gold of Ophir for Beth-Horon.”

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote that Nero persecuted the Christians, and then explained that “Christus” was crucified under Pontius Pilate, just as the Gospels record.

In 1990 a bone chest was discovered in Jerusalem that was inscribed “Caiaphas” and “Joseph, son of Caiaphas.” John 11 says Caiaphas was the high priest at Jesus’ trial, and Jewish historian Joseph says his full name was “Joseph, called Caiaphas.”

There are literally thousands of these kinds of historical and archaeological discoveries that identify people and places named in the Bible.

II. It passes the test of endurance.

The manuscript evidence of the Bible is an amazing story.

The Old Testament was written mostly in Hebrew and some in Aramaic, and copied down by hand. So how trustworthy is the text that has been copied and recopied for several thousand years? We got our answer when the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947. The Dead Sea Scrolls were a thousand years older than any other manuscripts available at the time! Scholars eagerly studied them to see what errors would have been made in all those years of copying. To their amazement, there were almost no differences. For example, when they studied the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, which is about 100 pages in English translation, they only found three minor spelling differences, similar to the difference in spelling Savior or Saviour.

The New Testament has by far the best manuscript evidence of any other ancient document. There are 5,400 ancient Greek manuscripts of the New Testament that scholars can study to figure out what the original text said. Compare that with the classical works of Plato, Herodotus, and Aristophanes, that have anywhere from one to 20 manuscripts.

At one time, liberal scholars claimed that the Gospel of John must have been written long after John's life, in the late second century. But then a papyrus was discovered in Southern Egypt of the Gospel of John carbon dated to A.D. 125. Since John was probably written at Ephesus, it had to have been written long before A.D. 125 to have time to travel to Southern Egypt.

The Bible has outlasted the empires of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Greece and Rome. It survived the invasions of the Goths and Vikings and the neglect of the Dark Ages. It survived the skepticism of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason. Over the centuries, people have attacked the people, banned the Bible and even burned the Bible, but the Bible continues to endure as the number one bestselling book of all time.

III. It passes the test of experience.

Millions of people have read the Bible and found that it spoke to their hearts.

Lewis Wallace was a Union general in the Civil War, and then became governor of the territory of New Mexico. He met the atheist scholar Robert Ingersoll and was unable

to refute Ingersoll’s arguments against the Bible. So he studied everything he could about the life of Jesus, and became convinced that Jesus was everything the Bible says he was. In the process, Wallace wrote a novel, called Ben Hur about a man who meets Jesus and gives his life to Christ.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was a Russian who was sent to the Soviet labor camps for eight years for writing disparaging comments about the Soviet leader, Stalin. There he became convinced that only the message of the Bible explained the human condition of sin and gave the solution for changing the human heart. Solzhenitsyn’s writings about the Soviet prisons and Russian history are considered some of the greatest writings about communism in the USSR.

I grew up the son of a U.S. Army chaplain. In the seventh grade, I began to read about ten chapters of the Bible every day. I could not get enough of it, I was so thirsty to read more and know more about the scripture. And the more I read the Bible, the more my life changed. Finally, in the tenth grade, I sensed that God was calling me to preach His Word.

Why do I believe the Bible? It passes the test of corroboration and test of endurance, but most of all, I have experienced it's life-changing message, and so have millions of others. How about you?

"The Shack"

The Shack by William Paul Young is the "buzz" book of the year. Young basically "self-published" the book with his own publisher, Windblown Media, and now it has sold over a million copies, mostly by word of mouth.
The book is a deeply emotional story about why God allows suffering. I believe that Young does an excellent job in answering this question in the novel, which is probably why it has sold so well. Young imagines that a man named Mack who gets a note from God, asking him to return to the shack where his young daughter had been murdered. The man does, and finds answers to his questions and doubts about God's goodness.
However, some things about the book trouble people. I know one church library in Mississippi that has banned the book, and LifeWay Christian Stores sells the book but asks readers to read it with caution. Why?
Read the rest of this review in the first comment below...

There is no God-- wait, yes there IS a God!

I have heard Antony Flew's name many times over the years, because every time that I would read about a Christian apologist, it seemed that Antony Flew's name would come up as his atheist antagonist. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my newspaper in December 2004 and read the news that Antony Flew had changed his mind and decided that he DID believe in God. What a Christmas gift to the Christian world! But what it really true? I later read that while Flew now believes in God, he has not accepted Christianity. I wondered, what caused this change, and where was he now in his thinking?
Thus I read Flew's new book There Is A God, with great interest to know what caused such an outspoken atheist scholar to change his mind. I was not disappointed.
While the book is only 160 pages (plus two appendices by other authors), it is thorough and deep in its content. Flew tells his own story of how he, the son of a Methodist minister in Britain, became an atheist out of disillusionment with how God could allow evil, particularly as he saw the atrocities in Nazi Germany in World War II. Flew went on to become a professor of philosophy and a writer of many influential books espousing atheism, teaching in universities in Great Britain, Canada, and finally in the United States, where he now resides. He followed the thinking of skeptics like David Hume, arguing that we must presume atheism is true and believers must prove there is a God.
So how did this atheist scholar convert to theism? Flew explains that one belief he has always held led to the change-- his belief in the words of Socrates: "We must follow the argument wherever it leads." (p. 22). As he debated and argued the issues with Christians, he gradually changed his mind as he "followed the argument" for three basic reasons, which form three of the chapters of the book:
1) The laws of nature indicate they were designed by the Mind of God. Flew quotes Paul Davies: "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature" (p. 107).
2) The finely-tuned universe that delicately balances life indicates it was designed by a Creator for us. He points out, for example, that if the speed of light or the mass of an electron had been the slightest degree different, then no planet would be capable of human life (p. 115).
3) The origin of life itself, with the amazingly complex communication systems of DNA cannot be explained by materialistic evolution, and only make sense if designed by God.
In addition to these three major reasons, Flew also cites the big-bang theory as scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning (p. 136). As for the problem of evil, Flew leaves the question open, but prefers the popular Christian explanation that "evil is always a possibility if human beings are truly free" (p. 156).
So has Antony Flew become a Christian? The best answer is not yet, but he is leaning that way. He says, "I am entirely open to learning more about the divine" (p. 156) and then he expresses his admiration for the person of Jesus Christ and the intellect of the apostle Paul, saying that if you want an omnipotent God "to set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat!" (p. 157).
The book has an appendix by Roy Abraham Varghese, giving a critique of the "new atheism" of bold writers such as Richard Dawkins. Appendix A is good, but even better is Appendix B by N. T. Wright, which explains why we should believe in Jesus Christ. Wright convincingly argues for belief in the authenticity of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a way that impresses Flew himself as "absolutely fresh." (p. 213).
I would agree. As much as I enjoyed Flew's book, I must say that Appendix B by N.T. Wright was worth the price of the book. My prayer is that Antony Flew will finally follow the argument of Wright as it leads him to embrace the claims of Jesus Christ on his life.

12-year-old talks about his pet and God

Facing the Giants

Today my wife, son and I went to see Facing the Giants, the new movie made for only $100,000 by Sherwood Baptist Church in Albany, Georgia. They only used one camera for the filming. A "B" film? Not at all! That one camera not only caught some good angles, but some good acting, lots of action and heart-felt emotion. This is like The Purpose-Driven Life meets Remember the Titans. It's a film that will make you laugh and cry and feel good and inspire you to trust God. Therein lies the problem. The Motion Picture Association rated this "PG" instead of "G" because it might offend some people because it has a strongly Christian message. Interestingly, the controversy over rating the film "PG" caused Sony Pictures to notice it, and distribute it in 435 theaters this weekend. If audiences in those theaters react the way they did in Savannah today, the Hollywood media giants may be falling, too. The crowd (half-full theater at the early 1:15 p.m. showing) in our theater laughed, cried and applauded at the end. Amen! David, got another pebble?