Thinking atheists have always presented arguments that perceivably disprove God’s existence and destroy the faith of Christians. These arguments can be intelligently answered if you familiarize yourself with them. Discover practical tips to reach the mind and win the heart through Christ’s Method alone!

Michigan Conference Campmeeting 2021: How Much More?

<p>Thinking atheists have always presented arguments that perceivably disprove God’s existence and destroy the faith of Christians. These arguments can be intelligently answered if you familiarize yourself with them. Discover practical tips to reach the mind and win the heart through Christ’s Method alone!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

Wes Peppers

01 The Prophetic Rise of Modern Atheism

You are about to enjoy a presentation recorded at the 2021 Michigan Conference Camp Meeting held at Cedar Lake, Michigan.

We pray that the Lord will bless you as you listen.

So I used to be an atheist at the age of 22.

And I actually was going to commit suicide.

And Before I did that, I wanted to study the Bible to prove that there was truly no God.

And at the same time, my uncle gave me a set of Amazing Facts study guides.

He was the only Seventh-day Adventist in my family.

And he came into the church through a public evangelism series in my little home church a number of years ago.

And people today, they like to say, well, you know, public evangelism just doesn't work.

But I wouldn't be here and you'd be listening to somebody else if it wasn't for public evangelism.

How many of you came into the church in some capacity connected to public evangelism?

Alright, that's like more than half the room or at least half the room.

And so it's very, very exciting to see public evangelism still works.

And the last couple of series we've done, we've had thousands of people coming into our churches because they wanted to hear a message.

Alright, so we're going to talk about atheism.

And today, we're going to talk about what God's answer is for atheism.

Did you know that the rise of atheism is a prophecy in the Bible?

And many atheists think that they have these ideas and these concepts that are new.

And the concept of atheism was predicted before it even happened.

And so, a lot of Christians today are very scared of atheists because they say, oh, they're so intellectual.

Well, if you know how to ask the right questions, I've had hardcore atheists sit across from me with a blank stare on their face because they didn't know how to answer the question that I asked them.

And so I'll share with you some of those things this week as well.

In fact, I've studied with many of them and baptized many of them into the Adventist church, and that was through the grace of God.

But the reality is that most atheists are just simply looking for answers.

They want to know that something is real and purposeful and meaningful.

And they want to have some level of intelligent evidence.

And the truth is, there's a lot of intelligent evidence for Christianity.

I want to share with you before we start a famous text that you're all familiar with.

And I want to show you something that most people don't think about when they read this text.

Hebrews 11, verse 1, the Bible says, now faith is the substance of things...

So what many people think faith is is a whole bunch of stuff that you can't see, that you can't feel, that you can't touch, and it's just pie in the sky.

And many times atheists think that hope is a weak thing.

But I want you to look closely at the text.

In other words, what we build our hope on that we can't see, is built by those things which we can see.

And there is plenty of both as we're going to see this week.

But we're not building our hope on cunningly devised fables as the Apostle Peter says, but we have substance and evidence on which to build our faith.

I mean, if you have substance and evidence in your life that God is true.

I suppose if you were to compile all of the stories and so forth in the world, I mean, how can you explain some of these things?

So anyway, that's just a little intro, and we're going to dive in here.

This topic today is going to be pretty intense.

You'll have to pay extra attention to follow along.

It's not like the 2300 day prophecy by any means, but there is a pretty good logic to it and you need to trail the whole thing to get it in the end, but the rest of the week won't be like that as much.

So if you leave here today and you're like, whew, I want to go to 1 of these other easier seminars, just come back tomorrow, alright?

But it'll be good, and you'll see what's going to happen is that at the end, it's all just going to come together in 1 place.

And you're going to be like, whoa, that was intense but powerful.

Father in Heaven, what a joy it is to be in Your presence.

And we thank You, Lord, for the privilege we have to gather here and study Your Word.

We pray that You would open our hearts and our minds to Your sacred truth and that Your Spirit would come and be our teacher today that we recognize that we have nothing good in ourselves, but we recognize that all good is in You.

But The good news is, as you are a master of taking that which is not good and making it that which is good.

Help us to be able to track and understand.

So, it's very interesting that I just wrote a paper.

And I found this statistic to be very alarming.

In the year 1900, it was estimated that there were about 100 million atheists in the world.

By the year 2000, there's an estimated 300 million.

And then by the year 2020, there's an estimated 5-750 million atheists in the world today.

And the interesting thing is that in 1900, when there was 100 million atheists, it was following the French Revolution that took place in the 1700s, right?

And it was like 95% of the atheists of the world lived, guess where?

But by the time you get to the year 2000 and 2020, only like 7% of the world's population of atheists lived in Europe.

So what does that mean over the course of time?

It has increased numerically and geographically.

02 The Rocks Cry Out Since 1798

Father in Heaven, it is truly a joy to be in Your presence once again.

And thank You for all these dear saints who rose early this morning because they love Your truth and they want to learn how to better defend it.

They want to learn how to reach the hearts of others who need you.

And Lord, they're here because they have a passion for your truth, they have a love for you, and a zeal for your church.

We need your presence, not just in the room, but in our hearts to transform us for this day.

And this day, we commit ourselves to You to live for You.

So as we take a look at some of these wonderful things that many people don't even know or are aware of, we pray that You would draw near and open our eyes and our ears to You.

Alright, so we are continuing our series on atheism.

And we saw yesterday how the Bible actually predicted the rise of the atheistic movement.

From the Bible and from the spirit of prophecy, it's very clear that God was not surprised by atheism.

And many Christians are overwhelmed today.

They're just almost afraid of the atheists because they seem to have such logical arguments and the atheists will make the point that Christians can't answer their questions.

But what I've found is that almost all of the questions can be answered.

And some questions we won't know the answer to until eternity, but we do have a good framework to help us understand that in an intelligent way.

And so today we're going to start looking at some of the evidence for the validity of the Bible.

So what I'm going to share with you are 10 of the most incredible archaeological discoveries that we've had in modern times.

So there are actually many, many more, but these are some of the main ones, some of the key ones, that a lot of people don't even realize, a lot of Christians don't even realize.

And so that's what we're going to talk about today.

But I want to share with you some interesting facts about archaeology.

From Genesis to Revelation, there was not a single book in the Bible that cannot draw support from the field of archaeology." In other words, every book of the Bible can draw some form of evidence from archaeology that the Bible was telling the truth when it said what it said.

I have a Bachelor's of Science degree when I was, before I was a Christian, I was studying GIS, Geographic Information Systems.

It's basically advanced computerized map making.

And they use it for city management, they use it for defense, they use it in business, they use it in a lot of ways and it's a very new technology and you can actually make a lot of money doing it but that's what I got my degree in.

Now part the other that was half of my degree The other half of my degree was geoarchaeology.

So I studied anthropology, I studied evolution, I did several archaeological digs from the perspective of, you know, we used to do a lot of Native American sites, I got my degree in Alabama, but I do have an understanding of archaeology, and when I started to study the Bible, I told you yesterday, I studied the Bible to try to prove it what?

False, before I was going to commit suicide.

And when I began to look at some of the evidence, I had no idea about some of these biblical truths about archaeology.

That There is a lot of evidence in the archaeological realm.

I don't know if there's a few seats here and there, so we'll have to do our best.

Secondly, although archaeology in itself does not prove that the Bible is inspired, prophecy does.

So archaeology doesn't prove that the Bible is inspired.

All it can do is produce, literally, cold, hard facts.

But what archaeology does do is it proves that the historical accuracy and trustworthiness of many biblical passages, it gives the Bible credibility as a tangible, credible source.

In other words, what archaeology does is it demonstrates that, and I'm going to show this to you through many examples, that many times skeptics will say, we don't find any evidence for what the Bible says here in history or whatever.

But many times they'll dig up something that says, aha, it proves exactly what the Bible said.

And in every circumstance, in biblical archaeology, every time something has been discovered, it's never contradicted what the Bible account was.

So again, every book can be supported by archaeological evidence.

There's never been an artifact recovered or an archaeological finding discovered that disproves any biblical account.

And number 3, every biblical archaeological find has always supported the biblical account and biblical accuracy.

How many of you, for you, that gives you confidence in what the Bible says?

Now, as Seventh-day Adventists, we already have confidence in what the Bible says.

We don't necessarily need archaeology, but it is nice.

Alright, I'm glad to see our class is growing, I think.

So we're going to start here with number 1.

Not number 1 as in this is the top 1, but number 1 in our talk today.

Number 1 is the city of Ebla, discovered by Pallalo, and I forget how to say his name, Matie, in the 1970s.

Now the city of Ebla is very significant for several reasons.

Because what it does is a lot of the things that they discovered there point to the Old Testament biblical patriarchs.

And so, in this city, they found 15, 000 clay tablets dating back to the year 2300 B.C.

Now, when they found these tablets, let me just jump to this.

I mentioned this, that it coincides with the time of the biblical prophets.

They provide an abundance of information on biblical place names.

So some of these tablets describe several places that are named in the Bible, such as Sodom and Gomorrah, previously thought to be mythical cities by scientists, and several other names are mentioned, such as Hazar, Megiddo, Lachish, Dor, Gaza, Joppa, Damascus, and others that are found where?

Here is secular evidence from other civilizations not connected to the biblical history that are naming the same places that the Bible talks about, which gives evidence that they actually existed.

Just because you can't find something doesn't mean it didn't exist.

And we'll kind of talk a little bit more about that later.

So, this is 1 of the most recently discovered clay tablets.

And some of those have even more specific names, such as Esau, David, Saul, and Ishmael.

Another tablet actually says the name of the city Jerusalem.

So these clay tablets are giving more and more evidence that what the Bible says happened and the places that existed are actually true.

The second 1 I want to share with you is the Hittite nation.

You have the Hittites and the Perizzites and all the ites, right?

But the Hittites are mentioned 47 times in the Bible.

For the longest time, scientists said they never existed because they literally had no evidence for their existence.

And they said, they actually said, skeptics of the Bible said, the fact that the Bible mentions some civilization 47 times and we have literally no evidence for this, is absolute proof that the Bible is a book of fairy tales.

They're just inventing these weird things and there's no evidence.

In 1906, the capital city of the Hittites and 1, 200 years of their civilization's history were discovered in Turkey.

03 Evolving Evolution and Creation’s Case

Father in heaven, we just count it a joy and a privilege that we can be in Your presence once again.

I just want to pray for my friends this morning that You would draw their hearts to You.

You would help them hear Your voice this morning and that your Spirit would come and just be in our midst.

And Lord, draw close to those who may be struggling today.

Maybe there's a struggle in the home, the marriage, maybe they're wrestling with temptation.

Whatever it is this morning, I just want to lift them up to You and ask that You would cover them with Your grace and You would just touch their heart and their mind and draw them, Lord, to You.

Make a way of escape for them in some capacity, whatever it is.

And if the situation can't be changed, then give them strength to endure and peace to be able to just experience whatever it is that you want them to know.

So we lift ourselves up to You, Lord, today.

1 in 5 Americans now claim no religious affiliation.

And some people will say, oh, I'm spiritual.

Those people are not included in that number.

Agnostics are not included in that number.

So, the percentage of people that believe very little is considerably higher, closer to like 50%.

Protestant churches across America are closing by the dozens every week.

In fact, there was 1 just down the road from my house that went up for sale.

There was a Lutheran church in Lansing that's just down the street from the Adventist church.

The pastor called me 1 Sunday when I was pastoring at Lansing and asked me to come teach Sunday school there because they wanted to know about Adventism.

The spirituality of America is declining.

And the belief of no God or just whatever is significantly increasing.

Thomas Carlyle makes a statement, if Jesus Christ were to come today, People would not even crucify Him.

They would ask Him to dinner, hear what He had to say, and make fun of Him.

Why is it that people are getting more and more bold in their attacks against Christianity?

And I'm going to say this sweetly and kindly with a smile on my face.

Well, it's just the devil's in all these people.

Well, maybe it's because God isn't fully in His people.

Maybe it's not so much that the devil is in all these other people as it is that God is not fully in His people.

"...And when they had set them in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this?" What had they just done?

"...Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit..." Notice it says, "...Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit." "...He stood up in their midst and said, Rulers of the people and elders of Israel, If this day we are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man, by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all, and by the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole." And then he goes on and he says, "...this stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone, no where is salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." Now, verse 13, "...when they saw the..." what?

"...the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled, and they realized that they had been with..." who?

"...when they saw the boldness..." There are a lot of avenues today that are bold.

But they are bold in many of the wrong things.

They are bold in telling people that they're going to go to hell or get cancer and die because they eat cheese.

I'm not saying you should eat cheese or you shouldn't eat cheese.

But we're bold in a lot of the wrong stuff.

And I want you to notice, when the power of God was displayed in the life of Peter, and God worked miracles through Peter, do you think God can work miracles through us?

I'm not preaching Pentecostalism or any of that.

But I'm telling you, we're told that At the end of time, the miracles that we saw at Pentecost are going to be repeated.

There'll be healings and all these other things.

There were those things in the Advent movement in the early days.

But They saw the boldness of Peter and John.

They saw that Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit.

They saw that these men had been with Jesus.

Not just that they associated them with Jesus when He walked on the earth.

But they saw that Jesus was living in and out of these men.

Verse 14, so they saw that, and then they saw this.

And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could do what?

It's because the world does not see the power of God in the lives of His people.

There is no display of the character of God.

In Psalm 19, you see 3 evidences of the great glory of God in the universe.

Number 1, The heavens declare the glory of God.

And the firmament, His handiwork, day into day utter speech.

04 Reasonable Evidence and Common Sense

Father in heaven, we just kneel before You this morning with our hearts encouraged by the truth of Your Word this morning.

I hope that everyone was able to spend some time in Scripture today and kneeling before you in prayer.

And if not, there's still time to do that.

For we are told in the spirit of prophecy that no man or woman is safe for a day or an hour without prayer.

And so help us to develop that rich habit of communing with you and not allowing that communion to be broken.

To be drawn nearer and nearer to your throne.

To understand that your high priestly ministry is essential in our lives every single second of the day.

And that we can always turn to You when we have need.

We don't look to the computer or any other piece.

These are just, these are challenging times in which we're living, but You're a God who has overcome even greater challenges.

We saw from prophecy that God knew ahead of time the rise of what?

Series

Adventism: The Answer to Modern Atheism

04 Reasonable Evidence and Common Sense

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

04 Where to Preach Powerful Biblical Appeals

55m

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

03 When to Preach Persuasive Appeals for Decision

58m

Reasons to Believe

05 The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

50m

His Invitation

02 Reconciliation, Unity, and Latter Rain Power

1h 3m

The Cure for the Common Sabbath School

04 How to Teach an Engaging Sabbath School Study

1h 2m

Christ our Righteousness

Christ our Righteousness - Part 1

47m

Prophetic Preaching and Persuasive Appeals for Decision

02 The Science of Soul Winning Appeals - How to Say It

52m

His Invitation

03 Reconciliation, Unity, and Latter Rain Power

1h 3m

Religious Liberty Under Pressure

When Churches Gain Control

57m

Mastering Your Anxiety

02 Mastering Your Anxiety

51m

Strength Through the Storm – Better Brain, Better Habits, Better Life!

01 Food, Mood, Cravings, and Immune Health

1h 3m

Principles for Succesful Soul Winning

Interpersonal Relationships - The Art of Hospitality Part 1

42m

Sound Doctrine