| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Great thoughts from great Christians” Our Bible verse for today: “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen.” Acts 1:1-2 (NIV) Our thought for today: “It just makes sense” Throughout history some of the most brilliant men and women of all time have considered the claims of Christ and have concluded it must be true that Jesus is the Son of God, he died upon the cross for our sins, he arose from the grave, and by means of faith in Him we too can have eternal life. A serious and open-minded study of the Bible consistently leads the best minds to faith in Christ. The Gospel writer Luke was a physician, a learned man of medicine. He came to faith in Christ and then he wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the books of Acts. Luke wrote Acts to a man named Theophilus, whom Bible scholars believe to have been an important and influential public official. Again, a learned and intelligent man. The Apostle Paul had a considerable intellect. At one point he hated Christ and he hated Christians. But once he was converted, he spent the rest of his life as a passionate advocate for the cause of Christ, leading many others to faith in Him and starting numerous churches. Often the greatest enemies of Christianity end up becoming the best preachers and evangelists. There are too many examples of this to list them all here this morning but some of the prominent names you might recognize who were once atheists or agnostics, and who then went on to be champions for Christ would include Saint Augustine, John Newton, C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, and Lee Strobal. Another was Malcolm Muggeridge. Muggeridge was a brilliant and somewhat eccentric British author, journalist, media personality, socialist, and agnostic. He scoffed at the Christian faith and thought it was silly. What eventually convinced him otherwise was the fact that so many great minds before him had considered the claims of Christ and concluded that the Bible had to be true. After his own conversion Muggeridge wrote: “… the greatest artists, saints, philosophers, and scientists through the Christian centuries have assumed that the New Testament promise of eternal life is valid … To suppose that these distinguished believers were all credulous fools whose folly and credulity in holding such beliefs has now been finally exposed, would seem to be to be untenable; and anyway, I’d rather be wrong with Dante and Shakespeare and Milton, with Augustine of Hippo and Francis of Assisi, with Dr. Johnson, Blake and Dostoevsky, than right with Voltaire, Rousseau, Darwin, the Huxleys, Herbert Spencer, H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw.” Placing our faith in Christ for the forgiveness of our sins simply makes sense. One of the best and most helpful modern books on this subject is “The Case for Christ” by Lee Strobal. If a person has any doubts about the truth of the Gospel, this book will help to answer those doubts. God Bless, Pastor Jim |
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