Sunday, I went out to Lakewood with my cross from about 1:00 to 2:30- the first time in a little over a month. I feel the rust has started to form a bit and needs to be sanded off.
My wife bought me the John MacArthur Study Bible for my birthday (mid October) and I started reading it shortly thereafter. I started with the New Testament and when I finished that, I read the Old Testament. I finished the entire Study Bible about a month and a half ago. At that point, I wanted to follow MacArthur's reading plan to memorize the New Testament.
He suggests reading the same portions of the NT for about a month straight and if you divide it up correctly, you will have read through the entire NT in three years and really know it. He also recommends making note cards for each chapter of a book and writing down the main themes of it. I did that for my first portion of reading, but haven't done it for the second portion.
Five weeks ago, I read Matthew, chapters 1 through 7, almost every day for four weeks. In the beginning I made the note cards and I believe I initially read the accompanying notes in the Study Bible. I also have been listening to John MacArthur's sermons on the related text during that time (although I am now on to my section portion of Scripture and am still listening to sermons from the first portion).
Reading the same thing for four weeks can be tough, but I want to give this a real go. A week ago, I moved on to Matthew, chapters 8 to 14, but I wasn't reading through all 7 chapters every day. I was reading one to two chapters chronologically in John MacArthur's Study Bible and then when I read chapters 8 to 14 in MacArthur's Study Bible, I read those 7 in the ESV Study Bible.
I noticed last week that something was different about my reading and that I wasn't quite retaining it as I had the first 7 chapters. Then I went out on the street on Sunday with my cross and met an atheist and his friend. I found myself stumbling over a lot of the questions being presented to me.
Yesterday, I read straight through chapters 8 to 14 in Matthew and realized I would have been much better prepared had I been reading the entire 7 chapters every day, instead of one or two chapters a day. I am not saying that the accompanying notes and commentary do not have their place (indeed, I need to read them to understand the text), but there is something to be said about the continuity of the way the Gospels are organized. When I am going through reading the notes, I need to read the entire portion I have set aside, not just a chapter or two.
Back to the two young men I met on the street. Initially, they had walked past me earlier and one of them looked at my cross and said he was ready. On their way back, Steve and Jeff stopped and engaged me in conversation and inquired further about the cross. Turns out one of them was an atheist, and I was getting the same vibe from his friend.
To start off, the one young man did not believe in God. I told him he had all of creation to testify to the existence of God, and he rebutted with evolution. Paul said in Romans 1:20: "For His invisible attributes, namely, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."
I told him evolution was just a theory, to which he countered it was fact. He also told me the human eye, which has 137 million light cells, just evolved by chance.
The young man denied the miracles of Jesus and eventually came to outright deny Jesus even existed- they were just stories passed down through the years- "the greatest story ever told." Another hanging point seemed to be that the Bible was written by man. I told him it was written by God, through man.
At some point, I asked him if he considered himself to be a good person. He responded he would, and I asked him if he thought he had kept the Ten Commandments. He responded he hadn't and that no one has. I skipped over the part of asking specific questions (Have you ever told a lie? Have you ever stolen anything? Have you ever looked with lust [which is the same as adultery]? Have you ever hated [which is the same as murder]?), which I think was a mistake. I skipped to saying we would all be guilty before God on Judgment Day, to which he agreed. I asked what God should do to us if we are guilty (heaven or hell), and he asked, "Doesn't He forgive people?" He admitted hell and I was able to explain the cross- how Jesus bore the penalty for our sins and the necessity of repentance.
Our conversation spun off into a host of different things, among them about how much harm religion has done. I told him those aren't true Christians who are doing harm. We also talked about the existence of life outside of the earth, where heaven and hell physically were, and the age of the earth.
This young man also wanted a "sign" from God. This is where remembering Matthew 12 would have been useful. Jesus said in Matthew 12: 39-40, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." I told him he had the miracles of Jesus, but he doesn't believe Jesus existed, so we are back to square one.
One question I asked was if hell existed, was there something someone could do to deserve hell. The one young man responded he didn't believe in hell so I proposed it as a question that if hell exists (even though I know it does), is there anything one could do to deserve hell- for example, what about Hitler? Does Hitler deserve to be in hell? He responded yes. I like to ask this type of question to show people that they do draw a line in the sand- except whose line is it- theirs or God's?
Our conversation went in to some other things and looking back, I now wish I would have said certain things in rebuttal. I also wish I would have pressed the real reason he was not going to heaven and headed for hell- because he had sinned against a holy God and deserved His wrath. I feel I failed to make that abundantly clear by not going through the Law. It's been over a month since I had been out on the street and I can definitely tell by reviewing our conversation.
What should have been a witnessing encountered turned into a friendly discussion about my beliefs. I have noticed this before- people seem to be interested in probing me to find out what exactly I believe and that becomes the theme of the conversation. I have to really make sure the focus stays on Jesus Christ, the cross, and His death and resurrection. Apologetics have their place, but the number one focus has to be Jesus.
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