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THE
BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?
EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?
GOD
- MAN
Is Jesus really God?
RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?
SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?
TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.
SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.
FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?
GUIDANCE
How does God guide?
REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.
BORN
AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?
SAVING
FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven
ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?
TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?
MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.
THE
CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the
new millennium.
PURPOSE
How
can I find a great purpose for living?
IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of
God.
SELF-ESTEEM
How
can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.
LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.
THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.
Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.
The answer to our problems
Islam recognises the problem caused by our sins in our relationship to God, but comes up with a different solution that depends on our own moral efforts. However, the Bible declares that the problem is too great for that. It could only be solved by God's action, not ours. And God has resolved it in a most wonderful way. He came in the person of Jesus Christ to take upon himself the penalty for our sins through his death on the cross. In other words, Jesus came not merely to reveal God's character, and teach us his truth, but to reconcile us to God. "Christ died once for our sins. An innocent person died for those who are guilty. Christ did this to bring you to God" (1 Peter 3:18). "But God showed how much he loved us by having Christ die for us, even though we were sinful" (Romans 5:8). "For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his risen life" (Romans 5:10). Christianity is not the story of our search for God. It is the story of God's search for us and the depths to which he was prepared to go to bring us back to himself.
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"It
is Gods love, demonstrated so powerfully in the sacrifice of Jesus
on the cross, that makes forgiveness a possibility"
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Because this was the main purpose of his coming, the New Testament letters give far more attention to the death and resurrection of Jesus than they do to the manner of his coming into the world or the wonderful life that he lived. It is God's love, demonstrated so powerfully in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, that makes forgiveness a possibility. It is here that the uniqueness of Christianity becomes most clear. Other religions either deny the need for forgiveness or give inadequate attention to how it may be achieved. This is one of the reasons that music and singing are prominent in Christian worship. It flows out of the gratitude of hearts that know they are forgiven.
The attraction of the cross
Dr. Michael Green, writer, evangelist and adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury, asks a pertinent question:
Where else in the religions of the world do you hear of a God who undertakes salvation for his people by personally bearing responsibility for their wickedness, and allowing it to crush him?
Themes of the suffering, wounded god do appear in some pagan literature, but in the cross of Jesus we have it in reality.
Jesus, in referring to his coming death, said, "I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). As this is such a significant point in Christianity, I would like to give some examples of its effect on the lives of three people from differing religious backgrounds.
Dr. Kali Charan Chatterjee wrote:
It has often been asked of me why I renounced Hinduism and became a disciple of Christ. My answer is that I was drawn almost unconsciously to Christ by his holy and blameless life...The excellence of his precepts as given in the Sermon on the Mount and his love for sinners won the admiration of my heart...But the doctrine which decided me to embrace the Christian religion and make a public profession of my faith was the doctrine of the vicarious death and sufferings of Christ. I felt myself a sinner and found in Christ one who had died for my sins - paid the penalty due my sins...this was the burden of the thought of my heart, Christ has died, and in doing so, paid the debt which we could never pay.
Toyohiko Kagawa, a Japanese Christian leader and dedicated social worker who was imprisoned for his Christian principles during World War II, said:
I am grateful for Shinto, for Buddhism, and for Confucianism. I owe much to these faiths...Yet these three faiths utterly failed to minister to my heart's deepest needs. I was a pilgrim journeying upon a long road that had no turning. I was weary. I was footsore. I wandered through a dark and dismal world where tragedies were thick...Buddhism teaches great compassion...but since the beginning of time, who has declared, 'this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for remission of sins?'
Dr. David Rahbar, a Muslim scholar, wrote a letter to Muslim and Christian friends to explain why he had become a Christian. After some discussion about the justice and mercy of God, and whether it is consistent for a God of love merely to sit in heaven and be our judge, he says, with considerable insight:
Only in love does justice transcend itself and become loving sacrifice: giving what is due and then giving more...In our search for the truly worshipable, we must therefore look in human history for a man who loved, who loved humbly like the poorest, who was perfectly innocent and sinless, who was tortured and humiliated in literally the worst manner, and who declared his continued transparent love for those who had inflicted the worst of injuries on him. If we do find such a man, He must be the Creator-God Himself. For if the Creator-God Himself is not that Supremely suffering and Loving Man, then the Creator God is provenly inferior to that Man. And this cannot be...
Such a man did live on earth nearly two thousand years ago. His name was Jesus...When I read the New Testament and discovered how Jesus loved and forgave His killers from the Cross, I could not fail to recognise that the love He had for men is the only kind of love worthy of the Eternal God...
The Creator-God and Jesus are one and the same being. May all people know that truly divine love.
A missionary friend has shared the following story with me. A Chinese teacher invited her to his home for lunch so that they could talk about life after death. "I believe there is life after death," he said. "If we have lived a good life we are rewarded by being reincarnated into a happy and prosperous situation. If we have done wrong we are punished by having to come back as a dog or some other low form of life." "But what," my friend asked, "if sins could be forgiven?" The teacher replied quietly, "If sins could be forgiven, that would make all the difference in the world!"
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With so many Religions, why Christianity?
The character of its founder, Jesus
The analysis of our real problem
The answer to our problems
The way by which we see forgiveness
A victory over evil and death which has already been won
The kind of commitment it asks of its members
