INTELLIGENCE CAN BE A STUMBLING BLOCK TO FAITH

I wrote this blog back on 6/8/2009 and thought it worth being repeated here.

Become Childlike

“O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever, and for revealing it to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way.” (Matthew 11:25-26)

Stumbling Block to Faith

Great learning and superior Intelligence is one of the greatest stumbling blocks to the salvation of souls. Great Intelligence seems to make them incapable of discerning the simple, as they are always in search of the higher learning. How sad it is that such great minds cannot contain the mustard seeds worth of faith that it takes to believe.

Great Learning

It is surprising to discover how vast unbelief is among the “most educated” men and women in Universities. It is amazing how many professors of theology do not truly believe. Their great learning has confused and deceived them. And these same prominent teachers promulgate their post-modern views upon the receptive and impressionable minds of the students, who unbeknown to them have the views and thoughts of a faithless generation imposed upon them as a result.

Post-Modern Dilemma

Pastor Neil Ryan of the Unley Park Baptist Church in South Australia said,
 'The Post Modernist says, “You can’t be sure of anything you’ve been taught these days...” Can you understand why the world today is leaving the Church in dray loads? Because there’s this suspicion that Christians claim to have the truth. A Post Modern World is very suspicious of anybody who says, “I’ve got the truth.” And so the Church, all of a sudden which for Ni on two thousand years old, look to have something that could offer hope to the world, but now the world is saying, “you know what, you’re arrogant. Give me David Attenborough, give me Philip Adams, give me Richard Dawkins, because at least these people have the humility to talk about the mystery and the wonder and the awesomeness of things they don’t know about. You lot seem to talk about everything you know and give no room for what you don’t know.” And there’s this stark divide between the Church and the rest of the world, because of this whole shift of the way we think today as a Post Modern People. So we come back to the original question, "where does the average person go looking for hope?"'

Hope to No Hope

This really does put into perspective the dilemma the Church is facing in these last days. This deceptive shift in thinking from ‘find the truth and live by it,’ to the ‘believe what you like because there is no absolute truth view,’ is turning out to be the greatest mass shift of thought from having a hope in the reality and truth of Christ, to having no hope at all because you don’t need hope, when you die that’s it, you are no more. This has been the greatest deception satan has ever accomplished on this earth and is probably been his greatest hour thus far in history.

Pride Gets in the Way

The Holy Spirit cannot settle and dwell in the heart of a learned man until they humble themselves and accept that they are a mere creation, and everything that they are, the gifts that they have, was given to them by the Lord. This is very hard for them to swallow. Because of their pride, they believe that their own minds are their gods, and they find it so debasing to bow down to the true one and only God, let alone bowing down to His Son Jesus who was born a man just like them. But we know from Scripture that Jesus was God in man, proven by the virgin birth and His resurrection from the dead. But to the ‘learned,’ this is but a fairy tale. All we can do for these men is pray that they lose faithfulness in themselves, and fall at the foot of their saviour. 

The Unity of the Church

The only way we can prove that Jesus is the Christ is by the churches unity and oneness. “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:23) Our unity will prove to the world that God sent Jesus and that God loves the world just as God loved Jesus. “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34-35) It is because of this lack of love for one another as a Church and the divisions in the Church, that men don’t believe in Christ or believe that we are sent from God. It is because of the some 45,000 denominations of the Christian Church world-wide that God has not been able to pour out His Spirit upon all flesh, so that we can see the last great world wide revival before the return of Christ. It is because of the unforgiveness among leadership and among Christians in general that satan is overwhelmingly defeating the Christian Church.

Repent Church

We must repent. My first book, God’s Heart Cry Revival, really does make it clear as day what we need to do as a Church to see God’s Holy Spirit poured out over the whole earth. God’s Heart Cry for Revival pleads with God’s people to respond to the call of God to live on His terms and set our hearts upon laying hold of His presence.

In Christ

Robert Cartledge

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Responses to Unbelievers Part 2

In this blog, I am including a response I made to Lisa who commented on a photo that I commented on. I acknowledged God as the Creator of the nature we were appreciating, but Lisa found my comment insulting for some reason.

Lisa January 24, 2011 at 1:04 pm

My birthday is April 1 & I believe in MOTHER NATURE. Why would you take this beautiful site & photos & make your (insulting) posts about God? How about: “Wow, those were beautiful pictures!” That’s my comment. As for the God stuff – how sad that you’d rather believe in a singular entity & forget that you LIVE on THIS earth, so you should take CARE of it – not spend your time financially supporting some Church whose only goal is to gather a bunch of sheep (oh, I mean “followers”) in some belief & processes that someone essentially MADE UP at some point. Yeah, kiss the Pope’s ring – no idolization there. It’ll be a great day when you religious people who believe in God actually love ALL people, not just others who believe in your same religion. Crusades? I think people who feel they have to go to church to worship something are weak & can’t stand on their own, so they must follow. Pathetic.

 

My Reply

Yes, a Christian is a sheep, no offense taken. I am a sheep who knows the voice of the Shepherd my God, Jesus Christ. You cannot believe in God unless He draws you.

You seem to have extremely bitter and hateful views of Christianity. Sure, there has been some bad Christians over time, but these Christians are obviously not of the heart of Christ. No one can say that Jesus was not a good man and a great moral teacher. All accounts of Jesus both biblical and secular (not Gnostic, because these are false texts) talk of the holiness of Jesus. Any Christian who does not reflect these qualities of holiness are not truly Christ like. 

I do not call Catholiscism true Christianity, and the Pope does not speak for God. Your views of God and Christ are obviously based on media representations and atheist opinions upon Him, among other maybe New Age concepts (I don't know, just getting a sense of that from reading your blog). 

We are not weak by going to Church to study the Bible and worship God. We all go to something and follow something. Are you weak because you go to a concert and adore a performer? Are you weak because you go to University and study a field? Well when I go to Church I go to learn and grow in the things of God. My logic is, if God is real and true and His Son Jesus truly did die on a Cross for my sins, rise from the dead and ascend to be with the Father, then this has serious implications on not only my life, but all our lives. If His Words are true then I better listen to Him. To remain ignorant would be detrimental. So over 20 years ago now, in a search for the actual Truth, I put prejudice and opinion aside and studied everything I could about all kinds of religions, and it was not until I picked up the Bible and read the whole thing in 8 weeks, that I found the most absolute faith on this planet. 

Robert Cartledge

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Responses to Unbelievers Part 1

In this blog, I respond to a comment a man by the name of Mike made to a video I put up on Youtube. This comment took place back in January 2011. Hope it blesses you.

Youtube Comment

mike January 24, 2011 at 6:13 am

always one religious idiot.i suppose you believe in the adam and eve theory.if so,then you must belive incest is correct and legal and moral,for incest is THE ONLY way eve could have produced more children.no wonder the religious right(and left)are mocked.their beliefs are as asinine as religion itself

[I left this comment exactly as it appeared on Youtube.]

My Reply

Edmund Spencer said, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information which is proof against all argument and which cannot fail to keep man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is condemnation before investigation." 

 

Too many people today have made there judgments and based their opinions for argument from a documentary or two that they have watched or a couple of books that they haplessly scanned through, and then they act as scholars upon subjects they know little about. With such futile knowledge they debate people who have made scholarly efforts to know a subject. Therefore when these people argue they resort to insults and offense because of their lack of understanding. Learn the subject matter thoroughly before you comment, then you won't resort to using words against perfect strangers like idiot. 

 

As far as Adam and Eve goes here is the explanation if you are sincere in wanting to understand truth. "Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve's sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister marriage. Some say that you can't marry your relation. This law forbidding close relatives marrying was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18-20). Until the law was given, it was not morally wrong to do so. When Adam and Eve were created, they were perfect. That means their genes were perfect and their environment and food was perfect and pure, therefore the purity of their condition meant that their children would not mutate imperfections for many thousands of years. However, It would not take more than 3 generations before someone would have been marrying their second or third cousin and within a very short time, distant relatives." 

 

Mike, you don't have to accept that explanation, and you more than likely won't, but wisdom is always to keep an open mind about areas of reality, that you may not fully understand. Noone knows everything, actually Einstein and other great minds said one person may not even know 1% of everything that is. Is it possible that in the 99% of what you don't know that God exists?

Robert Cartledge

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For the Atheist Part 2

This blog is part 2. As I said yesterday, my appeal today is to the atheist to let us reason together. I want to put on the table that the question of God and His reality is reasonable.

Two Explanations

As discussed yesterday, there are only really two explanations for the existence of all life and the universe. Either "Chance, Time and a Primordial Soup" did it, or God created it. It does not seem at all reasonable to me, that an honest seeker of the truth of the existence of all life and the universe, would try to push the God hypothesis out, when it is compared to the alternative, namely: "Chance, Time and a Primordial Soup". The God hypothesis is clearly a more plausible explanation. It's either nothing made everything, or God (Higher Intelligence) made everything.

Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup Conundrum

To believe in "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" to perform the miracle of creating all that is, is to give "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" the very same powers of which God has. If the atheist believes that everything that is came through "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" this would then mean that an atheist would have to believe that "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" is God, which they can't believe because they are atheists. So then the only alternative they have is to say that "Nothing" caused everything to come into being, that everything came from "Nothing". This again gives "Nothing" the very same powers as God by having the power to create everything. So now the atheist is in a real conundrum, they can't even believe in "Nothing", because "Nothing" is now endowed with Godlike powers. So the poor atheist cancels his belief system out, because even his belief in "Nothing", is the same as believing in God.

11 Organ Systems

Let's be honest, the complexity of which we see in life forms and for them to actually exist is a miracle beyond words. The complexity of the human body for example, with it's some 11 organ systems, that are all dependant upon one another to survive is a miracle of design. It's either all those systems came into being at once for the being to survive, or else it would die within seconds, according to the slow evolutionary process. So which system did the single celled amoeba evolve into first, and then how did that system survive until it was joined by another? If the 11 organ systems came into existence all at once, then what we have here is not evolution, but a miracle of God like proportions. For all 11 organ systems to evolve at once, in a short enough period of time, so that the human would not die, would require more than a warm soup, it would require something greater than the combined genius of every medical expert on the planet. Medical science has not the mental capacity to comprehend just how 11 systems could be created independently and then wrapped together to form a human.

Creative Genius Genesis

To attribute creative genius to the level of complexity we see in living things, is to bestow upon "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" godlike powers of creation like that spoken of in the Book of Genesis. Except, by claiming that "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" created it, you don't end up with a god that is superior to you in every way. You end up with an impersonal, unintelligent force, which is a miracle worker with freakish powers to cause everything else to exist, but doesn't know that it itself exists.

Clearly Seen

But did the god's "Chance, Time and the Primordial Soup" really create everything that is? Is it truly conceivable to think that the wonders of the universe were not caused by intelligence? Is it possible, with mans limited ability, to explore the universe, or travel at light speed, or teleport to the other side of the universe, or even search the deepest recesses of the earths oceans, is it possible that God is somewhere where man cannot see Him as they would like. We can't see air, but we know it's there, because we breathe. We can't see God, but we know He's there because we exist. "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." Romans 1:20-21

Great Complexity

The reasoning mind tells us that if we see a bike, we know that it had a designer, or if we see a ship, we know it had a builder. Mankind look at the human eye, study its complexity, and from that develop lenses for photographic equipment. We see the eye holding greater complexity than the bike or ship, yet the atheist will say "the eye evolved by chance over billions of years, and it had no designer," yet the eye is more complex than anything humans have ever been able to invent. Scientists look at DNA and admit that the amount of information packed into a blob of DNA the size of the tip of a pin is greater than the entire works of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, yet scientists have no concept of how Nature packed it all into such a small amount of space. Can scientist pack systems of information into microscopic Hard Drives that small? Of course not, they're not smart enough. Yet somehow, DNA evolved by chance over millions of years, unguided and without any intelligent interference. 

Conclusion

All in all, I believe that in an effort for men to avoid being accountable to a Holy God, they have blocked their minds to just how clearly evident it is that God is behind the creation of all life. I pray that men open their minds and reason this knowledge without prejudice and hostility, and let the evidence point them to the obvious truth.

In Christ

Robert Cartledge

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For The Atheist: Part 1

My appeal today is to the atheist to let us reason together. I want to put on the table that the question of God and His reality is reasonable.

The Question of God's Existence

The question of God's existence or non-existence is the most important question that men can ask. To be dogmatic and rigid in relation to this question is not going to change the truth of the reality. So what I'm saying is that we should approach the subject firstly with a reasoning mind and secondly without hostility. If we are hostile it proves just one thing, that we are not discussing the question to find the truth, but rather we are discussing the question to impose our ideology upon someone. At the same time however, we hold what we believe by conviction, and these convictions must be expressed. But let's do it with mutual respect.

Touchy Subject

To the atheist I ask, if the subject of God's existence makes you hostile, then you must ask yourself why? If the notion of God makes a man bitter and angry then, obviously, you are no longer wrestling with the subject as an atheist, but as an anti-theist, in other words, as a hater of God. The reason most anti-theists hate God is simply because of a distorted view of who the Christian God is. They create their own concept of god and then hate on the god they created. [but I'm not covering that subject in this blog today]

Core and Origins

To study any subject reasonably we must break a subject down to its core and origins. The theory of Evolution/Big Bang/Primordial Soup etc, tells us that it is clearly evident in the things it has evolved from. The Bible tells us that God is clearly evident in the things He has made. Therefore we must go back to the origin of the universe, to its inception to validate these two theories with reason.

The Origin of the Universe and Everything in it

The origin of the Universe has only 2 theories for its beginnings.

1. Either all existence came out of nothing (keep in mind that world renowned biologist Richard Dawkins emphasised, "that we evolved from Absolutely Nothing"). Then the universe (which is "Absolutely Nothing") came together to a single point, then expanded and stretched (Big Bang) to grow as large as it is right now. After this explosion, a primordial soup came into being and a single celled amoeba emerged in that primordial soup. From this amoeba, evolved all sorts of life forms. This happened by chance, for no apparent reason, over billions of years, until existence is where it is today. 

or...

2. All existence was created out of nothing, by a higher form of intelligence who we call God, and this existence was created with purpose, intelligence, emotions and a will to live.

[You may think I'm belittling the Evolution theory by my wording of the theory, but after studying it for 30 years, everything I wrote of their belief from nothing, has been stated and restated over and over again by many scientists who promulgate it.]

Usually an atheist won't want to agree to these 2 theories of the origins of Life, yet these are the only 2 possibilities that are seemingly reasonable.

The atheist will usually try to discredit theory 2 by stating, "If God created the universe, then who created God." They state this argument in an attempt to deny the possibility of God, to leave what I believe is a less plausible and less reasonable explanation, that being Time, Chance and Nothing creating the universe.

Who Created God?

Firstly, God is Spirit and "His" Spirit is uncreated, unlike matter which requires creation. 

Secondly, to ask who created God takes us down a road of infinite regressions, meaning, whoever created God, must be God. But who created that God? Whoever created that God is God. But who created that God? Whoever created that God is God. etc. But according to the Bible, there is only one God, He who created the Universe.

Thirdly, The things God has made speak to His nature. God made an unending universe that baffles our minds to think about, a universe whose distance is without beginning or end. He did this so we can understand His infinite unending nature. He's an eternal God without beginning or end like His universe that He created. 

Fourthly, He also created the universe in 3s, speaking to His triune being, The universe consists of Time, Space and Matter; Time consists of Past, Present and Future; Space consists of Length, Width and Height; Matter consists of Solid, Liquid and Gas. And for God to have created them He has to not be a part of them. So to understand who God is, we must understand that He is not like humans, or any physical life form that he creates, but rather He is the life giving energy source of the universe and exists outside of time, space and matter.

More tomorrow... 

 

In Christ

Robert Cartledge

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