Good morning,
Nearly 30 years ago I went to bed as any normal person. Sure, we had theological discussions at college, but to me the Bible was like any other book. To me, believing the Bible would be like brainwashing myself. I had no clue how anyone could possibly believe. But that night 30 years ago, Jesus came to me, spoke into me, and did something to me: He gave me faith. The next day, I believed that God exists, and that Jesus is his son. What was dead one day had become alive the next day.
Faith, it says in Hebrews 11, is a substance, faith is something, it is a spiritual component, something that Jesus is the author of! Faith is the spiritual component that it is a prerequisite for you to be able to draw near to God. It is “faith” that enables you to believe that God created the world through his Word.
Faith is something you have, believe is something you do! A bike is something you have, riding your bike is something you do.
If you hear someone saying that Adam never existed, claiming that he is just a myth, an imaginative figure, then there is nothing strange about that, because it isn’t something we can understand. It is something you “believe,” and if you don’t have faith then you can’t believe it! Then you are just standing there with the latest scientific findings and can’t make sense of Creation based on the latest research trends. That’s just the way it is.
That’s why it’s pointless to debate back and forth about Adam and Eve, the virgin birth, that Jesus is the only way to God or that Jesus is coming back, with people who don’t have the substance, the spiritual component “faith.” Because what faith has revealed to you is just a mystery and foolishness to those who have no faith.
You can never convince someone that God created Adam. You can’t talk their ears off until they start believing, or win a debate on whether Adam existed or not. The only way to gain insight into whether Adam actually existed or not is to get that substance, faith, in your heart. That doesn’t mean that you fully understand it after that either, but now you believe in something you can’t explain, and it isn’t a question anymore; it’s obvious.
Talk about Jesus instead! That’s the only way to gain insight that Adam was created by God.
There is no point in our future pastors being instructed by teachers who don’t have faith. Although it’s not dangerous either, since the future pastors who do have the spiritual component already know their teachers are wrong!
This discussion is not a new one. Paul was already having it in his day:
“For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Cor. 1:21-24
These days, leadership training tends to consist more of exams, essays and grades. I’m not against instruction, I have spent 6 years at the university, but the power doesn’t lie in the test results, but in life with the Holy Spirit, and there is no exam for that!
Those who are training our leaders have to (more or less) do or have done what Jesus did: Preached for the unreached people, won individuals for the kingdom of God, healed the sick and cast out demons, prophesied, spoken daily in tongues, and been compelled by a longing to pray and fast to go deeper in life with the Spirit of Jesus. The teachers who had and continue to have those experiences have no problems with who Adam and Eve were.
Good morning!
