Ravi zacharias pdf free download

There is no way such a being could get bored or lonely. Boredom is impossible in such a being. How can God be three and yet one? It would seem that God could be one and not three, or three and not one.

But he cannot be both three and one at the same time. It would be a violation of the most fundamental law of thought, namely, the law of noncontradiction. First of all, the Christian belief in a Trinity of three persons in one God is not a contradiction. A contradiction occurs only when something is both A and non-A at the same time and in the same sense.

God is both three and one at the same time but not in the same sense. He is three persons but one in essence. He is three persons but only one in nature. It would be a contradiction to say that God had three natures in one nature or three persons in one person. God is like a triangle. At the same time it has three corners and yet it is only one triangle. Each corner is not the same as the whole triangle.

Or, God is like one to the third power God is one God, manifested eternally and simultaneously in three distinct persons. God is love 1 John But to have love, there must be a lover Father , a loved one Son , and a spirit of love Holy Spirit. So, love itself is a triunity. Another illustration of the Trinity is that God is like my mind, ideas, and words.

There is a unity between them, yet they are distinct from each other. Of course, the Trinity is a mystery. It goes beyond reason without going against reason. We can apprehend it, but we cannot completely comprehend it.

This question assumes that God sends people to hell against their will. But this is not the case. God desires everyone to be saved see 2 Peter Those who are not saved do not will to be saved. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened. For heaven is a place of constant praise and worship of God Revelation 4—5. But for unbelievers who do not enjoy one hour of worship a week on earth, it would be hell to force them to do this forever in heaven!

But he is also love 1 John , and his love cannot force others to love him. Love cannot work coercively but only persuasively.

Forced love is a contradiction in terms. It would seem that love and justice are incompatible attributes. If God is just, he must punish sin. But if he is loving, he would forgive sin. How then can he be both? The attributes characteristics of God are not contradictory. He is both absolutely just and yet unconditionally loving. Each attribute complements the other. In his love, God sent his Son to pay the penalty for our sins so that his justice could be satisfied and his love released.

And sin against the eternal God demands eternal death see Revelation — So when Christ died for our sins see Romans , the Just suffered for the unjust see 1 Peter that he might bring us to God. Thus, there is no contradiction between absolute justice and unconditional love. To illustrate, God is like the judge who, after passing out the punishment to the guilty defendant, laid aside his robe, stood alongside the convicted, and paid the fine for him.

Jesus did the same for us on Calvary. By the way, my grandson just graduated from college and is preparing to attend seminary to study apologetics defending the faith. Soon he will be prepared to answer the same kinds of questions he asked. One can only wonder what he would be doing if no one had answered his. Read 1 Peter and Colossians Given that these verses are addressed to all believers, what can we do to put them into practice?

When, if ever, should questions asked by unbelievers not be answered? Consider Proverbs and Matthew in your response. And what does it say about God that such things occur? Just think what the friends and relatives of the almost three thousand people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, , must have wrestled with.

Pollster George Barna was once commissioned to inquire of people what one question they would ask of God if they had the opportunity. I approach this subject with some hesitation in view of the fact that a proper treatment requires a full book, not just a short chapter. Abbreviated treatments always run the risk of superficiality. I urge the reader to supplement my brief treatment with some of the more exhaustive works cited in the endnotes and in the suggested resources listed at the back of this book.

Before getting to the questions, it may be good to record a few preliminary thoughts about evil. Evil is the absence or privation of something good. Rot, for example, can exist only as long as the tree exists.

Tooth decay can exist only as long as the tooth exists. Rust on a car and a decaying carcass illustrate the same point.

Evil exists as a corruption of something good; it is a privation and does not have essence by itself. It exists only in another but not in itself. Evil may not be an actual substance, but it involves an actual privation in good substances.

It is one thing to understand what evil is. It is an entirely different thing to understand how such evil can exist in a world created by God. Common sense tells us that all three cannot be true at the same time. If God were limited in power so that he was not strong enough to withstand evil, the existence of evil would be easier to explain.

But God does claim to be all-powerful. But evil is not an illusion. It is real. God is good, God is all-powerful, yet evil exists. This is the problem of evil in its most basic form. Prominent thinkers like David Hume, H.

Wells, and Bertrand Russell have concluded, on the basis of their observations of suffering and evil, that the God of the Bible does not exist. Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing: whence then is evil? Certainly Christians agree that what Hitler did to the Jews was a horrible crime.

What is the moral measuring stick by which people and events are morally appraised? By what process is evil distinguished from good and vice versa? The reality is that it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point that is absolutely good.

More specifically, if God does not exist, there is no ultimate basis to judge, for example, the crimes of Hitler. Seen in this light, the reality of evil actually requires the existence of God rather than disproves it. There was no sin, no evil, no pain, and no death. Yet today the world is permeated with sin, evil, pain, and death.

What brought these things about? The fact is, such a scenario would mean that we were not truly human. We would not have the capacity to make choices and to freely love.

But who would want that? There would never be any love either. Love is voluntary. God could have made us like robots, but we would have ceased to be men. God apparently thought it worth the risk of creating us as we are.

God wanted Adam and all humanity to show love by freely choosing obedience. This is why God gave Adam and all other humans a free will. He will not do anything to coerce their decision. God made evil possible; creatures make it actual. Even natural evil—involving earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, and the like—is rooted in our wrong use of free choice. We must not forget that we are living in a fallen world, and because of this, we are subject to disasters in the world of nature that would not have occurred had man not rebelled against God in the beginning see Romans — There will be no natural disasters or death in the new heavens and earth when God puts an end to evil once and for all see Revelation The fact that humans used God-given free choice to disobey God did not take God by surprise.

Freedom is preserved in that each person makes his own free choice to determine his destiny. Evil is overcome in that, once those who reject God are separated from the others, the decisions of all are made permanent. Those who choose God will be confirmed in it, and sin will cease. Those who reject God are in eternal quarantine and cannot upset the perfect world that has come about.

The ultimate goal of a perfect world with free creatures will have been achieved, but the way to get there requires that those who abuse their freedom be cast out. Just because evil is not destroyed right now does not mean it never will be. In view of the above facts, the existence of evil in the world is seen to be compatible with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God. If God is all-good, he will defeat evil. If God is all-powerful, he can defeat evil.

Evil is not yet defeated. Therefore, God can and will one day defeat evil. Justice will ultimately prevail. Those who enter eternity without having trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation will understand just how effectively God has dealt with the problem of evil. Some skeptics may be tempted to rebut that it should not take all of human history for an omnipotent God to deal with the problem of evil.

God certainly has the option of doing away with all evil immediately—but choosing this option would have definite and fatal implications for each of us. His action would have to include our lies and personal impurities, our lack of love, and our failure to do good. Suppose God were to decree that at midnight tonight all evil would be removed from the universe—who of us would still be here after midnight?

Indeed, God has given us human government to withstand lawlessness see Romans —7. In his Word God has given us a moral standard to guide us and keep us on the right path see Psalm He has given us the family unit to bring stability to society e. And much more! In wrestling with the premature death of his son, Kushner concluded that God wants the righteous to live happy lives, but sometimes he cannot bring it about. God is good, but he is not powerful enough to bring about all the good things he desires.

In short, God is finite. He is limited in what He can do by the laws of nature and by the evolution of human nature and human moral freedom. Such a God is not worthy of our worship. Nor is this God worthy of our trust, for there is no guarantee that he will be able to defeat evil in the future.

As noted previously, the fact that God has not defeated evil today does not mean he is not eliminating it in the future see 2 Peter —12; Revelation 20— This is not the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best way to the best of all possible worlds. Finitism clearly goes against the biblical testimony of God. Scripture portrays God as being omnipotent—meaning that he is all-powerful. He has the power to do all that he desires and wills.

Some fifty-six times Scripture declares that God is almighty e. Nothing is impossible with God see Matthew ; Mark ; Luke , and nothing is too difficult for him see Genesis ; Jeremiah , Some people, particularly those affiliated with the Mind Sciences, argue that evil is an illusion.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, argued that matter, evil, sickness, and death are unreal and are illusions of the mortal mind. Pain, sickness, poverty, old age, and death are not real, and they have no power over me.

If they do, ask them why. Do they leave their key in the ignition when the car is parked downtown on Main Street? If not, why not? Do they buckle their seat belts in the car? Do they go to the dentist? Tooth pain is an illusion, right? Do they warn their little children not to get too close to the fire at the cookout? Do they support laws against pedophiles?

If evil is an illusion, then such things are completely unnecessary and should be of no concern to anyone. Simply denying that evil exists does not negate its reality. This explanation of evil is in itself delusional thinking at its worst.

Jesus certainly believed in the reality of evil. It is worth noting that Scripture often exhorts us to pay attention to empirical evidence by using our five senses. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.

I have a friend, Jim, who has read a few of my books on apologetics and the New Age movement. He developed a particular physical ailment one day and went to see a doctor who had been recommended to him. About halfway through the exam, Jim started to suspect that this doctor might be an advocate of New Age medicine. Pantheism is the view that God is all and all is God.

In pantheism all reality is viewed as being infused with divinity. The distinction between the Creator and the creation is completely obliterated in this view. Everything is relative. Of course, philosophers have long pointed out the philosophical weakness of such a viewpoint, for it amounts to saying that it is an absolute truth that there are no absolutes.

A major problem with the New Age pantheistic worldview is that it fails to adequately deal with the existence of real evil in the world. If God is the essence of all life-forms in creation, one must conclude that both good and evil stem from the same essence God.

The Bible, by contrast, teaches that God is good and not evil see 1 Chronicles ; Psalm ; ; —9; Matthew Habakkuk ; Matthew I had the opportunity to converse with former guru Rabi Maharaj, and he spoke at length of the ethical dissatisfaction he felt regarding a monistic, pantheistic worldview, especially as it pertained to the problem of evil.

My growing awareness of God as the Creator, separate and distinct from the universe he had made, contradicted the Hindu concept that God was everything, that the Creator and the Creation were one and the same. If there was only One Reality, then [God] was evil as well as good, death as well as life, hatred as well as love.

That made everything meaningless, life an absurdity. Many New Agers believe that people create all their own realities—both good and bad—by the power of the mind. Every belief we hold is shaping what we experience in our life.

Similarly, one cannot condemn terrorists who blow up passenger jets, because the people on these jets create their own reality. Why cry? Many New Agers base their ethics on reincarnation and karma. The process of reincarnation continual rebirths is said to continue until the soul has reached a state of perfection and merges back with its source God or the Universal Soul.

If one accumulates good karma, he or she will allegedly be reincarnated in a desirable state. If one accumulates bad karma, he or she will be reincarnated in a less desirable state.

Many New Agers explain the existence of evil in our world strictly in terms of karma. Where is the divine and the sacred in this? There are numerous problems with the doctrine of reincarnation.

Practically speaking, one must ask, Why does one get punished for something he or she cannot remember having done in a previous life? Further, if as we are told the purpose of karma is to rid humanity of its selfish desires over many lifetimes, then why has there not been a noticeable improvement in human nature after all the millennia of reincarnations? Why has evil continued to grow? Still further, if reincarnation and the law of karma are so beneficial on a practical level, as New Agers claim, then how do they explain the continued social and economic problems—including widespread poverty, starvation, disease, and horrible suffering —in India, where reincarnation has been systematically taught throughout its history?

Certainly reincarnation is unbiblical, going against what Scripture teaches about death and the afterlife. Trusting God in a World of Suffering There are other inadequate explanations for the problem of evil we could examine, but they are not as prominent today, and space forbids further exploration.

Sometimes, as a parent, I have to make a decision for my son or daughter that may involve a little pain like paying a visit to the dentist.

From their perspective, they may not fully understand why I insist on this visit. I assure them that, despite the discomfort and even pain , it is in their best interest to go to the dentist. Sometimes we humans wonder why God allows us to go through certain painful circumstances. But just because we find it difficult to imagine what reasons God could have does not mean that no such reason exists. From our finite human perspective, we are often only able to see a few threads of the great tapestry of life and of the will of God.

We do not have the full picture. That is why God calls us to trust him see Hebrews God sees the full picture and does not make mistakes.

He has a reason for allowing painful circumstances to come our way—even if we cannot grasp it. If finite humans can discover some good purposes for evil, then surely an infinitely wise God has a good purpose for all suffering. Just as we evaluate a trip to the dentist in the light of the long-range benefits of such a visit, Scripture admonishes Christians to evaluate present sufferings in the light of eternity. An example of this is the life of Joseph.

His brothers were wrongly jealous of him see Genesis , hated him , 5, 8 , wanted to murder him , cast him into a pit , and sold him into slavery Even though evil things happened to Joseph, God had a providential purpose in allowing them.

Joni Eareckson Tada, who broke her neck in a swimming accident and became quadriplegic, said her tragedy drew her much closer to God. All this is said with a view to emphasizing the need for faith in the midst of this world of suffering.

God is most assuredly working out his purpose in our midst, and we must trust him! I like the way Gary Habermas and J. Moreland put it. And if we do, we will see how readily it can revolutionize our lives: daily anxieties, emotional hurts, tragedies, our responses and responsibilities to others, possessions, wealth, and even physical pain and death. All of this and much more can be informed and influenced by the truths of heaven. I must tell you that the one thing that has sustained the entire family is a top-down perspective.

Death, evil, pain, and tears will be a thing of the distant past. How might a top-down perspective help you wrestle with evil and suffering? How do you think you go about acquiring such a perspective? The culturally dominant view in our society—even among Christians—came to be that science and Christianity are not allies in the search for truth, but adversaries.

As Charles Thaxton and Nancy Pearcey point out in their book The Soul of Science, 2 for more than three hundred years between the rise of modern science in the s and the late s, the relationship between science and religion can best be described as an alliance. Today it is cited only as an example of how not to do history of science. Historians of science now recognize the indispensable role played by the Christian faith in the rise and development of modern science.

Science is not something that is natural to humankind. Why is this so? It is due to the unique contribution of the Christian faith to Western culture. Thus, the world is a rational place that is open to exploration and discovery. The idea of a warfare between science and religion is a relatively recent invention of the late nineteenth century, a myth carefully nurtured by secular thinkers who had as their aim the undermining of the cultural dominance of Christianity and its replacement by naturalism—the view that nothing outside nature is real and the only way to discover truth is through science.

They were remarkably successful in pushing through their agenda. But philosophers of science during the second half of the twentieth century came to realize that the whole scientific enterprise is based on certain assumptions that cannot be proved scientifically, but that are guaranteed by the Christian worldview: for example, the laws of logic, the orderly nature of the external world, the reliability of our cognitive faculties in knowing the world, the validity of inductive reasoning, and the objectivity of the moral values used in science.

I want to emphasize that science could not even exist without these assumptions, and yet these assumptions cannot be proved scientifically. They are philosophical assumptions, which, interestingly, are part and parcel of a Christian worldview.

Thus, theology is an ally to science in that it can furnish a conceptual framework in which science can exist. More than that, the Christian religion historically furnished the conceptual framework in which modern science was born and nurtured. We are thus now living in an era of renewed interest in the relations between science and Christian theology. Indeed, during the last quarter of the twentieth century, a flourishing dialogue between science and theology has been going on in North America and Europe.

Especially significant have been the ongoing conferences sponsored by the CTNS and the Vatican Observatory, in which prominent scientists like Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies have explored the implications of science for theology with prominent theologians like John Polkinghorne and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Not only are there professional journals devoted to the dialogue between science and religion, such as Zygon and Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, but, more significantly, secular journals like Nature and the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science also carry articles on the mutual implications of science and theology.

The dialogue between science and theology has become so significant in our day that both Cambridge University and Oxford University have moved to establish chairs in science and theology. I say all this simply to counteract a cultural myth, a myth that is rooted in ignorance and rejected by most scholars today—the myth that science and Christian faith are inherently adversaries rather than allies in the quest for truth.

Christians should beware of accepting the easy answer of the first camp. It is very tempting for religious believers to try to avoid the whole problem by asserting that science and religion cannot come into conflict, so why worry about it?

But this answer can be seen to be unacceptable once we examine it closely. For anyone who opts for this first answer must espouse either a double-truth theory, according to which something can be scientifically false but theologically true, or else complementarianism, the view that science and theology are two nonoverlapping domains science tells us facts, and theology gives us value and meaning.

But the double-truth theory is incoherent, since there is objective truth about the way reality is. But if there is objective truth about the way the world is, it makes no sense to assert, for example, that while it is scientifically true that the universe is eternal and uncreated, nevertheless, it is theologically true that it had a beginning and was created. Therefore, one cannot avoid the possibility of conflicting truth claims in science and religion.

After receiving his master's degree in divinity from Trinity International University, Zacharias was ordained by the Christian Missionary Alliance. Slideshare uses cookies to improve functionality and performance, and to provide you with relevant advertising.

If you continue browsing the site, you agree to the use of cookies on this website. See our User Agreement and Privacy Policy. See our Privacy Policy and User Agreement for details. Submit Search. This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book.

If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site.

Start by pressing the button below! Sense and Sensuality Home Sense and Sensuality. Introduction Few figures in literature merit both genuine admiration and profound pity as much as Oscar Wilde.

Its pages are chock-full of fascinating insights and solid, practical, biblical advice. Ravi Zacharias Books Pdf Ravi Zacharias Mp3 Download Free Ravi Zacharias Messages Praise Pastor training ministries and materials, books, manuals, online articles, dvds, audio, bible institutes, online bible institutes, bible study tools, online learning. Understand where we came from. The Pastor's Study program was designed to maintain all his sermons.

The Pastor's Study is a productivity tool to help a pastor organize his daily tasks. Document all his sermons. Presentation Manager offers a Powerful and Flexible solution for displaying slide show presentations on large screens using video projectors, typically in the following environments:- Church sermons and song items- Performances such as concerts-.

Put all of your Bible study material into one convenient location. Search quickly on those resources related to a topic you are studying. Import sermons , talks, online research, essays etc. Features include: Easy navigation, a search.