You might like this one. It’s one of my favourite essays by C.S. Lewis and concerns itself with “looking
at” and “looking
along” as distinct ideas. I would be interested in your perspective as it relates to the discussion…
1 Corinthians 1:18 comes to mind - "For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God".
The message of the cross might also be foolishness to those who are looking at it instead of looking along. To a spiritually fearless atheist, who's doesn't love God and is not afraid of God or Satan, the message of the cross is just pathetic people being afraid of dying and what might come after death. But many atheists WOULD love God if only there was proof of his existence. So they demand proof from Christians instead of asking God himself for whatever reason. Christians often times fail to provide proof because they are misinformed or completely uninformed about their religion, so those
lost people are delayed in being saved because of it.
Sin wreaks havoc on the world as a result of something that could have been prevented. Some people receive the Gospel and convert right away, but how many is that? Many people on here suggested that only preaching of the Gospel is needed to save people, and while that's technically true - the saved will be *eventually* saved, is anyone really going to say that ignoring people's questions and objections about the gospel's validity a good way to spread the truth?
When I was an atheist I also relied on others to prove Christianity, for various reasons, one being simply afraid of God. If God were to show me proof and it wasn't enough for me, now I'm held to a higher standard to obey God, but I'm not convinced in the proof that I've seen, so I would be stuck in the middle between being chastised by God and not having the evidence that it's actually the God of the Bible and not some other religion. I eventually learned that no amount of proof is enough, and we always need faith that God is good. I don't know if I would have been born again many years earlier if only I was given proof that I know right now. I know it's the holy spirit that does the conversion, but if he is the only one who does it then what's the point of ministering at all? Obviously we still have obligation to spread the gospel, keep others from sin and stay away from sin ourselves.
People who are looking at the gospel message instead of looking along may just need a little push into the light by a more detailed study of the Bible - that's how I was born again.
Before I was born again the main reason I didn't follow many of God's commandments was because nobody can tell which ones we need to follow or even which church is true!!! I figured if everyone is conflicted and nobody knows the truth, then it must not be that important to God in the first place. Some say we don't need to keep the sabbath because it's the old covenant, others say it's still part of the 10 commandment and it's still need to be kept (I've researched into it and found the latter to be true, but that's another discussion). Some say the Catholic church is the one true church, other's say it's been corrupted (I found Mathew 23:2-3 and drew a parallel between Pharisees in the seat of Moses and Papists in the seat of Peter). All these confusions and contradictions only drive people away from faith, cause great sin in the world, and delay their salvation.
There have been some claims of scientific proof present in the Bible, but Quran has those too, and they've been debunked. I'm not saying we should look into the meaning of the numbers in the videos I posted (that might actually be numerology) but the text structure on the Bible clearly has many layers of messages. And if they are structured in a way that only God could have designed, then that would be better than all of those alleged scientific proofs. There have been random letter code found in the Bible in the past, but those were random, arbitrarily selected letter codes, and they've been debunked. The formulas in the links and videos I posted are NOT from random letters or even random words, they are from specific words.