THEME: There are
questions concerning God when large scale disasters occur. Christians need to
react in a proper way based on the Bible.
QUESTIONS:
What is the problem facing Christians after large scale
disasters like the tsunami on Dec 26, 2004?
- Question:
If God is both omnipotent and benevolent, how can disasters like this
happen? Arguments against the Bible: If God allows disasters to happen,
then God is either unable to stop the disaster (therefore not omnipotent)
or unwilling to stop the disaster (therefore not benevolent).
What are the improper responses?
(1) Atheists and agnotics: God does not exist.
- Those
who hold to a naturalistic and materialistic worldview will simply see
this disaster as one more meaningless event taking place in a meaningless
universe.
(2) Some Christians give an answer of doubt.
- They
feel helpless and do not see any action to make the siutation better.
(3) Some Christians give an answer of rebuke.
- They
emphasize that God had sent the destruction as punishment for the victims’
sins or that natural disasters are a part of God’s warning that judgment
is coming.
- While
this is sometimes correct, this is probably not the best answer at the
moment.
What are the propert Christian attitudes?
(1) A faithful Christian response will affirm the true
character and power of God—He is both omnipotent and benevolent.
(2) We must speak where the Bible speaks, and be silent where
the Scripture is silent. Christians must avoid offering explanations when God has
not revealed an explanation.
(3) Christians must respond to a crisis like this by weeping
with those who weep, by praying with fervent faithfulness, by offering concrete
assistance in Christ’s name
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THEME: Christians
need to respond to large scale disasters by: (1) affirming that God is
omnipotent and loving, (2) avoiding attempts to explain what God has not
explained in the Bible, (3) acting to demonstrate the love of Christ by
sympathy and generosity through relief efforts.
QUESTIONS:
Affirmation: How do Christians affirm the true character of
God?
- God
is in control of what happens. The disasters are permitted by God.
- Liberal
theology accommodates itself to the secular temptation by denying God’s
active and sovereign rule. This is wrong.
- Process
theology put God within the created order, struggling along with His
creation toward maturity. This is wrong.
Avoidance: What kind of explanation should be avoided?
- It
is true that all suffering is ultimately caused by sin. Adam’s sin had
cosmic implications and effects. The effects of sin are evident all around
us, most clearly in the undeniable fact of death.
- The
Bible makes clear that God sometimes does respond to specific sin with
cataclysmic natural disaster, such as in Sodom and Gomorrah.
- Despite
these truths, Christians should refrain from assigning blame for natural
evil because the Bible did not explain why specific disasters happen,
except in a few occasions like Sodom and Gomorrah.
Action: How should Christians act when disasters happen?
- Christians
respond with the love of Christ and the power of the Gospel.
- We
should mourn with those who mourn, support those affected with fervent
prayer, concern, generosity, sympathy, and participate in relief efforts.
- We
can at the same time teach the gospel and point to this disaster as only a
hint of the cataclysm that is yet to come—the holy judgment of God.
==============================
THEOLOGY: The Salvation of the ‘Little Ones’: Do
Infants who Die Go to Heaven?
THEME: Based on
the Bible, infant or young child who died will go to heaven.
QUESTIONS:
Which are the wrong answers to the question whether dead
infants will be saved or not?
- Universalists
believe everyone will be saved. This is an unbiblical heresy.
- Some
believe that baptized infants went to heaven, while unbaptized infants did
not (though they received immunity from the pains of hell).
- Some
believe that infants will have an opportunity to come to Christ after
death.
- Some
believe that elect infants go to heaven, while the non-elect do not.
What is the position of most orthodox theologians?
- Theologians,
including Hodge, Warfield, Spurgeon, Mohler, believe that Scripture teaches
that all persons who die in infancy will be saved and go to heaven.
What is the Biblical support for this position?
- The
Bible teaches that we are to be judged on the basis of our deeds committed
“in the body.” Those who die in infancy have not committed such sins in
the body.
- In an
OT example, God specifically exempted from the judgment those who “have no
knowledge of good or evil” because of their age. (Dt 1:39)
- We
believe that God graciously and freely received all those who die in
infancy – not on the basis of their innocence or worthiness – but by His
grace, based on the atonement of Jesus’ death on the cross.
==============================
THEME: The world
is hailing the Culture of Death and moving toward the death of culture. The
church must move against this trend by hailing God’s Culture of Life and
sharing it with the world.
QUESTIONS:
What does the Culture of Death represent?
- The
Culture of Death represents the ultimate degeneration of the entire
civilization, and it represents nothing less than total opposition to God
and his authority over the spectrum of life and death—indeed over every
dimension of morality.
What is the clearest evidence of the expansion of the Culture
of Death?
- For
6000 years, abortion has been something absolutely disallowed by the
medical profession in the entire western world. Yet, the medical
profession in the last generation has killed millions of babies without
major protests.
- In
the future, abortion will be extended to “pedothesia,” the killing of
children who are perceived to have no future. [KH: This has started to
happen in Holland.]
What are the evidences of the rise of the Culture of Death?
- breakdown
of the family
- culture
of divorce
- increase
of homosexuality
- revolt
against authority
- decadence
in the arts
- amoral
legislations, intentionally, publicly and officially divorced from any
moral consequence
- usurpation
of the entire moral system
What is the underlying cause of all these changes?
- Solzhenitsyn
gave the answer, “Men have forgotten God, that is how all of this
happened.”
What should the church do?
- The church
must be a Culture of Life.
- We
must recover our own moral authority, which can only come when we are
submitted to our Savior’s moral authority.
- We
must also share the light to the world.