Questions about God, Jesus and the Bible

When the Bible talks about faith, it isn’t about believing in something that isn’t real, or believing hard enough to make something happen. The Bible describes faith as trust: a relationship, giving your loyalty to someone else. God is faithful, and he calls us to be faithful to him and to one another.

No. The Gospel is free, and so is everything in our Learning Centre. God’s grace can’t be bought, and nobody has the right to sell it to you. If anyone tells you that your giving decides how much God blesses you, walk away.

Acknowledge that you need to be saved from your sin and rescued from death. Turn from following yourself and the world, and follow Jesus. It is simple, but also deep and profound. The Bible uses the words repent and believe. We turn our entire lives around and become disciples of the Master, living as subjects in his kingdom. In other words, his house, his rules.

This comes down to faith, which means we take God at his word. If we enter into a relationship with the Lord Jesus and give him our full allegiance, our sins are forgiven and we are made right with God. This is God’s promise to us, and he cannot lie.

Probably not. The main fear people have is that because they have sinned horribly, they have lost their salvation. The good news is that you cannot do enough right to get yourself into the kingdom of heaven, and equally you can’t do enough wrong to get yourself out. The real question is: have I entered into a relationship with the living God? As long as you have that relationship, you belong to Jesus, and no one can take you away from him.

Optimism is not a bad thing. Optimistic people are generally happier, recover better from illness and enjoy a higher quality of life. But however optimistic you are, you’re going to die, and no amount of optimism will change that. Hope is the confidence that, because of what God has done and who he is, we can be sure of our ultimate future. Christians face death like everyone else, but for us, death is not the end.

You can’t. If you follow Jesus, you are guaranteed difficulties and suffering. If you reject Jesus and somehow scrape your way to the top of the heap, you’ll still die. The good news is that we can experience eternal life now and be part of the new creation still to come.

The simplest argument is probably from creation. Stuff exists, and there’s no reason for it to exist outside of God. We know the universe had a beginning, which leaves a binary choice: either nothing did it, or God did it. Which is more logical?

Believing that God exists is a starting point, but it doesn’t automatically establish Christianity. The next question is whether God has made himself known, and why we should trust Jesus in particular. The decisive issue is his resurrection. The first Christians proclaimed that Jesus had risen from the dead, and Paul openly said that if he hadn’t, their faith was worthless. Christianity rests on a claim about what happened, which invites us to examine whether it is true.

Yes. The Old Testament, the New Testament and Jesus’ own words say so emphatically. The reason the Sanhedrin sentenced him to death is that he claimed to be God.

The Apostle Paul says Jesus died for our sins and was raised on the third day. But the reason he was sentenced to death is that he said he would sit at God’s right hand and come on the clouds of heaven, a claim only God can make. He was crucified for claiming to be God.

Yes. The word Trinity isn’t in the Bible; it describes what the Bible reveals. There are three persons who are addressed as God and act as God, yet there is only one God. Early scholars coined the word Trinity to describe what they saw in Scripture.

In the Old Testament, God revealed his name through the four Hebrew letters YHWH, which we pronounce Yahweh. Most Bibles translate it as LORD. In the New Covenant, God has given us the name of Jesus, the name above every name. So the name of the Trinity is Yahweh, and we approach God through the person of Jesus.

This is one of the most profound moments in the whole Bible. Jesus says the Father has put all things into his hands. Think about the scale of that: everything is in Jesus’ hands. And what does he do? He picks up a towel. This reveals God’s nature and how he uses his power.

No. The religions disagree with one another on fundamental points, so they can’t all be true. Saying they all teach much the same thing usually shows how little we know about what they actually teach.

Science can neither prove nor disprove God. It’s like using a six-inch ruler to prove quantum theory, or a thermometer to measure the size of the universe. It’s the wrong tool. That said, God is entirely logical, and reality points to him.

The Bible says God has made himself known to everyone through creation, and fully through the person of Jesus. Perhaps the better question is: what is the evidence that there isn’t a God?

If evil is a sign that something is wrong, then we sense that something should be right. If there is no God, there is no evil. Stuff just happens. People die. There is no morality. Things are only evil if good exists, and if good exists, God exists.

The Bible doesn’t give many details, but it explains it clearly. Humanity rebelled against God and teamed up with the wicked one. God warned us that if we chose against him, we would die, and our death has infected the entire planet. Sin and death are behind all the evil we see around us.

Part of the tragedy of sin is that it has consequences: people get hurt, and people die. God stepped into this evil in the person of Jesus the Messiah, and though evil tried to recruit him and overcome him, it failed. That means there will be justice and restoration, but we must be patient until that day comes.

No. Jesus refused to play by the world’s definition of power and instead overcame sin, death and the devil through apparent weakness. What the world calls power is part of the darkness. When God turns on the light, we’ll see who really has the power. However much darkness you throw at a light, it won’t go out.

Whatever you are going through, the answer is absolutely not. The Bible is emphatic that God loves the world. God loves sinners. God loves you. The question is, will you answer his call and follow him?

Pain and suffering are real for everyone, and Christians are not immune. Our suffering is not a sign that God doesn’t love us. Jesus himself suffered horribly, but he wasn’t unloved for a second. God’s love for us is constant, whether we are hurting or not.

That’s such a difficult question, and there is no single answer. You may fully recover; others may not. You might see others healed whilst you aren’t. What we know for sure is that we are guaranteed forgiveness and new life in this season between Jesus’ resurrection and his return. Healing is messy, interconnected and often beyond our understanding. The one thing we must do is remain faithful in suffering.

What does God feel like? Sometimes we become so aware of his presence that it feels almost physical. Sometimes he shows his presence and power through healings, signs and wonders. But God has made himself known through Jesus, the Bible and reality itself. If we keep our eyes on these, we will discover something more powerful than feelings.

The Bible is 66 ancient documents, translated from foreign languages and written within different cultures over about fourteen hundred years. On top of that, it reveals the mind of Almighty God, which is beyond anything we will fully understand. So perhaps it’s a mistake to expect it to be easy. The good news is that the wonders of the Bible are hidden for us, not from us, but we need to be intentional about seeking the truth.

Pilate famously asked Jesus, “What is truth?” with the truth standing right in front of him. In a biblical sense, truth is what is complete and agrees with reality. As Christians, we are called to live in the truth: to live in step with who God is and how he wants his kingdom to work.

In theological terms, reality is the true nature of existence as it actually is, created and sustained by God. It includes both the material and the spiritual realms.

God only has broken sinners to work with. Most of us are hypocrites in one way or another, and if you’re not, you’ll certainly have something else to be ashamed of. Either way, you’re still welcome.

No. The church is the continuation of Israel, made up of Jews and Gentiles following the Jewish Messiah, who is personally the new temple, the new priesthood and the final sacrifice. On the day of Pentecost the fire of God fell, and instead of consuming the sacrifices it empowered them to testify that Jesus is Lord. Believing Israel followed their Messiah as part of the new temple, and the gates were flung open for the Gentiles to join them.

That depends on who you belong to. If you belong to yourself, or in other words the devil, you will share in his destruction. But if you belong to Jesus, he has promised that when you die, you will be with him until the resurrection.

We have no idea. Maybe tomorrow, maybe six thousand years from now; only the Father knows.

A great deal. The Bible doesn’t give intricate details, but the big picture is the renewal of all creation, the resurrection of our bodies, the judgement and the end of evil. It’s something to look forward to, and we should be ready because we don’t know when it will be.

Yes. The last days are the time between Jesus’ resurrection and his final return, so we are two thousand years into them. Think of it as the last season before Jesus returns.

It depends what you mean by the world. This evil world system will end one day and Jesus’ new world order will take its place. When it does, the creation around us will be entirely renewed, and heaven and earth will be joined together once again.

No. He will renew all of creation. Everything visible and invisible will be restored to how God wants it.

It depends who you ask. For some, it is the church being snatched up into heaven whilst all hell breaks loose on earth. For others, it is the final return of the Lord Jesus, the resurrection of the body and everything being made new.

If by true we mean a timeline of what’s going to happen, then no. If we mean a revelation of who Jesus is, how he cares for his church in these evil days and what will finally happen, then definitely yes.

Armageddon means the mountain of Megiddo, a place where significant battles took place in Israel’s history. Popular culture sees it as a battle, but in the book of Revelation it symbolises God defeating his enemies once and for all.

They already have. The Apostle John warns that there are many antichrists. They have come and gone through history and are around us today, working at different levels of wickedness. It’s a mistake to look for one great evil ruler as a sign of the end. History is far more likely to end with the sudden and unexpected appearance of the Lord Jesus.

It is not an injection, a microchip, a barcode or any other technology. It is a sign of loyalty to someone other than God. In the first century it was most likely ash from an altar to Caesar on your hand or forehead, which allowed you to trade in the market. Today it could be any allegiance to something trying to replace God. The smart move is to wash it off, metaphorically, and follow Jesus.

We don’t have the frame of reference to say where heaven is. It is the space God fills, connected to the earth but different from it. Heaven does not contain God; God contains heaven, as he does this physical reality.

Hell is hugely debated. The Bible is clear that a final judgement will cleanse creation of all evil, including human evil. It will be quarantined either in a tiny, insignificant place, like the crack in the mud C.S. Lewis described, or it will simply cease to be. To understand hell, we have to set aside the medieval imagery and wrestle with what the Bible actually says.