Altar’d: Faith Building Evidence Leading to New Life

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Chapter One

Rescued

On a beautiful, warm summer day, a group of friends, on a weeklong vacation, are enjoying the Florida sun, beach, and warm southern ocean waters. The beach that day is filled with happy people relaxing on beach towels, while others are playing catch with their kids or smiling from ear to ear as they catch a wave on a boogie board close to shore. Ah yes, the free roller coaster of God that comes by every ten seconds. There are bright-red umbrellas up and down the shoreline and an occasional lifeguard post. However, today, there are no guards on duty.

On this hot summer day, with perfect water temperatures, there is a group of swimmers, or, shall we say, waders, who are attracted to some fellowship just outside the surf. They had tried swimming close to shore, but after the first couple of waves tumble them over a few times like a washing machine, they find it a bit more relaxing by venturing just beyond the cresting surf. After they finally push through the crashing waves, they get to a spot where they can relax and hold a conversation. Sometimes, however, these waves are not consistent, and a couple of them crest over farther from shore, taking our recreational swimmers under once again. So they decide to wade out just a bit farther until they reach a more peaceful spot. Ah, finally. Relaxation.

Eventually they hear someone from shore trying to get their attention. The swimmers mumble to each other, What did they say? One of the swimmers thinks he hears, Come back in a little closer. These swimmers, who are Northerners, look at each other, shrug their shoulders, and comment to themselves, Hey, we’re fine; leave us alone. So they wave off those yelling to them. After all, they’re having a great time. A little while later they get a little farther out, but not so much that it seems significant, and they vaguely—once again—hear someone calling from shore. They cannot hear what is being said, but they’re pretty sure someone is saying that they should come in closer to shore. At the moment they are in the middle of a great conversation, so they agree, after they wrap it up, that they will begin their journey back to shore.

A while later, as the waders get a little sidetracked in their conversations, they look back to shore and, to their surprise, the umbrellas they saw lined up along the shore earlier now look like little dimples, and the people look like ants! Immediately, panic sets in; they are overwhelmed with anxiety. What these Northerners do not realize, and had missed on the local news that day, was that there was a rip current warning, which is both a very dangerous and yet common occurrence. A rip current is a strong flow of water heading away from shore and out to sea. The riptide develops when certain wind and weather conditions affect the flow of water outside the surf. Dangerously, this water moves out to sea much faster than one can swim. People die from these dangerous rip currents each year. The locals knew the danger, but those outside the region did not have the knowledge to realize they were in danger. They have now been perilously pulled out to sea. The reality is this: these Northerners had been in danger the whole time, but did not know it! Because they did not possess the proper knowledge of the sea, they did not understand the warnings.

This group of swimmers also did not possess the local knowledge about what to do after being caught in a rip current. Perhaps what I share next will save someone’s life. If you ever get caught in a rip current, you cannot beat it by swimming against it. No one can swim fast enough to overcome a rip current. You have to have the knowledge—counterintuitive to what it seems should be the case—to let it take you out to sea as you swim sideways, which will be, in fact, diagonally heading out to sea due to the flow of water. Many times, a rip current will not exist up and down the entire shoreline. There will be a flow of water like a river, but if you can get out of the flow, you have a chance to swim back in. If you don’t have this knowledge, you will exhaust yourself swimming against the current—until you have nothing left. Unfortunately, without this valuable knowledge, these Northerners, in complete panic, desperately try to swim back to shore and thus place themselves directly in the path of the rip current. When they sense they are not making any progress and their strength has run out, they come to a very critical realization.

They cannot save themselves.

A rescuer is needed.

Finally, they have come to the correct realization. It is then that a person is ready to be rescued.

You may be thinking: Jay, what are you talking about? What is the point of this story? The point is that this story is about everyone, including me. This is an incredibly important understanding, which we all need. What God deeply wants us to know is that we need to be rescued, and that He has paid the price to rescue us. God desires that we would live a life that is grateful to Him, but before we can be filled with gratefulness we need to know why we are to be grateful! And here lies the problem. In order for those swimmers to be rescued, they needed first to know that they needed to be rescued. The people on shore, who had the local knowledge, tried to give them the warning, but without a proper understanding of the danger, and their need, they did not heed the warning message that could have saved them.

Many in the world today are caught in a rip current that is taking them away from God. They are living life outside of the surf and outside of the life that God desires for them. The problem is they don’t realize they need the message from shore that would save them from the deadly current. With their lack of knowledge they may think they are good enough swimmers to save themselves.

The problem is the current is too strong. The reality is we all need a Savior.

Imagine for a moment…you have been caught in a rip current. You are out to sea, and your strength is running out. Hypothermia can set in, even in warm water temperatures, if you are in it long enough. Your muscles are not working well, and you are beginning to drown. You are desperate. You are about to give up. Your life is flashing before you. You are thinking of your spouse, family, and children. You are beginning to cry out and maybe, for one of the few times, pray. "God, help me!! . . . God, if you are there, will you help me! God, I want to live. I know I have not lived life the way you have wanted, but if you save me, if you will help me, I will give my life to serve you!" Here is the question of this book:

If God saved you, would you offer Him your life?

In brief, that is what it means to be Altar’d There are two audiences in mind for this book. First, it is for believers, to increase their confidence in the rescuer’s message and, as a result, fully offer their lives to the one who rescued them. The second audience is all whom those believers deeply care about. Most people who do not yet believe are not going out to buy themselves a book to find faith. It is the responsibility of the believer to become an agent of rescue and follow their rescuer by sharing His message with all whom they care about.

Perhaps you received this book because someone cared about you enough that they purchased a copy and had the guts to give it to you. They likely know the ocean and already have realized they could never make it back to shore on their own strength, so they have raised their hand to the rescuer—and rescued He has. I am one of those people. I thought I was living the dream, but really, I was out to sea. Soon I will share with you my story. All I will tell you for now is that the greatest thing that ever happened to me was realizing I needed a rescuer, and through humbling myself to be rescued, I received a new, exciting, purposeful life.

The purpose of this book is to convince people there is a God who sent a Savior to rescue people who desperately need to be rescued. The hardest part about rescuing those outside the surf of God is helping them realize their need to be rescued. The beauty is that once a person discovers their need, and is rescued, they can and should become so impacted by the experience that it radically alters their reason for waking up each day and taking up air on planet earth. In short, their life becomes an offering to the One who has rescued them. They may even become a rescuer!

What has been said to this point is straightforward and perhaps even bold. This message, regarding our need to be rescued, comes from the Bible. So if the Bible is true, then the message also is true. So then, the strength of this message relies on the authenticity of the Bible. This then leads to a question: How can we know whether the Bible is true?

Questions for Discussion

1) What would you describe as the beliefs and habits in our culture that are pulling people away from God?

2) The waders did not think they needed help from those who had the local knowledge. How important is humility in recognizing our need for God and growing in faith in Him and why?

3) Please share with the group about your family, career, and story of faith at this point in your journey. With humility, simply share your faith history and where you are in terms of God and faith. This will help us understand one another better as we go through this journey together. It may be good to set a timer at five minutes per person and give each person a one-minute warning, or set an appropriate time given your group’s needs and time frame.

4) In general, have each person respond to the essence of these questions: When it comes to the Bible, how would you summarize your current knowledge? What is the Bible to you? What have you been taught regarding the Bible’s accuracy and truthfulness?

Chapter Two

Putting the Bible on Trial

Let’s start with some basic questions.

How can one know if a God

who rescues even exists?

There are many in the world today who are quite uncertain whether there is a God, and even if there is, they wonder whether there is a source of truth to accurately discover more about Him. In addition, very common today is a belief that it is up to each individual person to define what is their truth . . . versus there being a trusted source to guide us in truth. Some of the debated ideas today—abortion, gay marriage, pornography, the legalization of marijuana, and more—are often debated on what many believe is an equal playing field. The field of public opinion. If there is not a moral source that can be trusted, then it makes sense that all that remains is our personal opinions. So a very important question follows our first question.

Does God truly exist, and if He does,

can the Bible be trusted to

accurately contain His message?

For many, the conclusion is that the Bible is simply an interesting book with some good information, but ultimately, it cannot be trusted to accurately contain God’s message for today. This common position could be described as follows: "Where I agree with the Bible, it has some good, even wise, advice. But where I do not agree, it probably needs to be updated. I mean, it is rather old, isn’t it?"

Putting the Bible on trial

Let’s say we are going to put the Bible on trial to see if it is true and can be trusted. The first step in such a trial would be finding a pool of jurors. Clearly, anyone stating that they had already made a prior determination that it was true, or that it was not, would be eliminated from the pool of potential jurors. Individuals who are undecided would be selected to be on that jury. My hope is that if you are currently undecided, that you will ultimately trust both that there is a God and that the Bible contains an accurate recording of His message. I hope that you commit to being in the jury pool for the entirety of the trial. But no matter what you do, please don’t put this book away until you read "Altar’d at Once: The Summary Chapter" (found near the end of this book), which is a summation of the evidence presented. It is worth the wait, and I encourage you to stay the course. I’ve written that chapter to help anyone who can only make the closing arguments portion of this trial. In the full trial, evidence will be presented that will allow for a knowledgeable and convincing determination to be made. The mistake many make in our world today is reaching a determination prior to hearing the evidence. Isn’t it simply logical to hear the evidence before making a judgment? Heaven, Hell, and the very purpose for our existence are all at stake. It is too important to not devote the time needed to examine the evidence. This next story may help illustrate the magnitude of the questions we’re considering.

Have you ever imagined a world without God?

One day I was sitting in the bleachers of a district-wide track meet. I struck up a conversation with a mom with a son who shares the same class as my son. We briefly engaged in polite conversation. As we continued to chat, a door was opened to discuss things of God. It became clear during our discussion that this lovely woman did not attend church and was unsure about the existence of God. She shared her beliefs, and it became evident that they were not based on any particular source, but rather on those of her own personal opinion.

I remember asking her a question that day: Do you think life would be better without God? This question caught her off guard. She had to pause to think about it. Let’s do that. Let’s all venture down that path for a moment. If there is no God, then what? Well, to start, if there is no God then there is no Heaven and there is no eternal life. It means that when we are done here, it’s over. Simply left to rot, six feet under, in a casket, and to never see the light again. I think we all have higher aspirations than becoming fertilizer. If there is no God, are we not just like the wild animals? Not created, but rather evolved—all from survival of the fittest. So then, just as animals do not have rules to live by, we too would have no moral code to live by. Does an animal do wrong when it takes the life of another?

Without a moral imperative, anarchy is all that exists. Anything goes. Let me ask it another way. Would the world be better as a place in which everyone simply decides what is their right, or their wrong, without any moral guidance to rely on? Where would that get us? If someone is bigger or stronger than I am and wants what I have and kills me and takes what I have, who is to say that is wrong? Is that not what a lion does when it wants a prey? After all, if there is no God, then we humans are just animals. A higher form of a beast, perhaps, but nonetheless a beast. No! This is not the world I want to raise my three children in. I believe there is a God who has provided a source to guide us. That source exists for us to learn for our own good what is right and wrong.

However, my desire for a life where God is true

and there is guidance from His Word

does not make it true.

Throughout this book I will be presenting the story of God and the grand purpose He has for our lives. In the process of sharing this story I will be providing evidence, strong evidence, which will display how we can know He exists, and that the Bible can be trusted.

But before starting our trial, why listen to me?

Questions for Discussion

1) Many people have disregarded the Bible without first reading it thoroughly and examining the evidence. Why do you think this is the case?

2) If God is true, then the blessings of believing are great, and the consequences of not believing are grave. This being the case, if you could advise someone on what would be a worthy investigation of whether God is true and whether He can be trusted, what advice would you give them?

3) Think deeply. What if God and the Bible did not exist? What do you think our world would be like? Is it possible that many have not recognized how much God and the Bible have shaped our world? How is the world a better place to raise your family because God and the Bible have shaped it?

4) Perhaps this book could be used in the life of someone you know for them to consider the evidence, or even to join your study. Perhaps each person could think about who that person might be in their life.

Chapter Three

Why Should You Listen to Me?

Before I proceed, I would like to let you in on my life and what God has done to shape this message. One of the most important aspects in trusting the message of a person is how you view their personal ethos. A person’s ethos could be described as their character. Does this person really know what they are talking about, and does their life demonstrate what they believe? Simply put, do they practice what they preach? The greater the ethos, typically, the greater the believability. I hope after reading my story you will find me more believable.

I grew up with two amazing parents; they are still alive and happily married today. That fact alone means I am very blessed indeed. My parents raised their children as members of the Catholic Church and we were what I think anyone would consider a pretty typical suburban, fortunate, American family. We learned right from wrong and had a sense of morality; however, it was not what I would now call Christ-centered, but rather cultural American. When I was in eighth grade, my parents were concerned I was becoming sexually active, and although they did not approve, they helped me learn about proper protection. I remember going to confession, a couple years later, now a sophomore in high school—and still a virgin, by the way—but now with a girlfriend. I told the priest that I was still a virgin, and I interpreted his response to me as something to the effect that I still had college ahead and that such a goal was going to be nearly impossible to maintain. I took it as Good job, son, but you likely won’t make it until marriage. So I figured that if I was not going to make it anyway, I might as well give up now and get started. It