Share the gospel by answering questions. 

1. Is God Real?

The simple answer to this is “Yes, and He’s given pointers to His existence all over the universe.”

Psalm 19:1 says The heavens declare the glory of God.” Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “God has set eternity in the hearts of men.” The Cosmological, Teleological, Ontological and Moral Arguments all point to the existence of God. So does the life and witness of Jesus. So does the personal testimony of billions of Christians.

Many people haven’t heard these things. Giving them these answers starts to show them something fresh and new to consider.

2. Is the Bible true?

Most people in our society have heard a lot about the Bible, but they’ve rarely heard it defended by an informed and gentle source. Few of our neighbours have had a friend walk them through the Bible’s claims for itself. Or how it was composed. Or its historical, prophetical, archaeological or transmission accuracy. They don’t know about the Massoretes or the Talmudim and how carefully both groups transcribed the pages of the Old Testament to ensure no errors crept in. They don’t know that we have nearly 25,000 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament that enable us to reconstruct the original documents more reliably than the next ten or twenty ancient books put together.

People are surprised when a credible friend walks through a few pages worth of this information with them.

3. What about other religions?

Religious tolerance has become a cardinal virtue in our day. The common consensus is that all religions basically lead to the same place. When people compare the top ten religious systems to each other. They all espouse different gods, different paths to him, and different after-lives. When a person gets through looking at these together, their only conclusion is, “These are all so different; they could all be wrong, but only one of them could be right.”

Our world needs this information! And when we give it to them, hearts soften because minds are opened.

4. The problem of suffering.

The number one question everyone has is, “If God is so good, strong, and caring, why is there so much suffering in this world?” Understanding the nature of free will doesn’t cure the pain of suffering, but it does provide a moment of intellectual satisfaction and opens the possibility of trusting God.

Learning that our world doesn’t make sense because we’ve entered into its story in the middle of a crisis helps people understand that this crisis is temporary and that one day all will be restored to the way God intended it in the beginning.

That God didn’t author evil, doesn’t like or approve of evil, and is working as lovingly and diligently as possible to restore us to the Paradise He created in the beginning, is a good answer.

But church people these days may need some coaching before they can express this great truth to their friends, please do ask if you would like to talk about this more.

5. Which is correct: evolution or creation?

Western classrooms teach evolution with such security that it is hard for anyone to confidently raise their hand and say, “Excuse me, there is a God who created all this!” Christians feel unequipped to explain the scientific accuracy behind the Genesis 1 account of creation.

What if they could know for certain that an omnipotent being created the earth? That Einstein’s theory of relativity requires that our universe had a beginning? That the Big Bang theory requires that the beginning was created by something outside our four-dimensional universe? That quantum mechanics and string theory point to dimensions outside ours, from which such a Creator could come? Imagine people understanding the impossibility of non-theistic evolution because of recent discoveries in microbiology.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth is more than religious poetry. It’s scientifically plausible, accurate, and trustworthy. Helping neighbours to understand this empowers them to make an intellectually credible response to the God who is calling them to follow Him. Evolution is a statement of faith, faith in a scientific set of assumptions.

6. What happens when I die?

The Bible’s teachings on eschatology is one of the least-understood doctrines in most churches.

Because of our desire for tolerance, we rarely grapple with the reality of the permanent torment of Hell; or that of all the Bible’s teachers, Jesus had the most to say about it.

Life in eternity must be preached, understood, and shared with our neighbours!

Passive agnosticism may be the most prominent religion of our day. Knowing about the incredible opportunities of Heaven and the unspeakable horrors of Hell is motivating and sobering and can push people out of passive mode into making a decision. 

In answering questions about life after death, we have only two sources to consult. Either we turn to human experience, or we turn to the Word of God. If we turn to human experience, we find many guesses, many ideas, many theories—but no sure answers. That’s because, in the nature of the case, no human has a sure answer. The only people who have the answer are dead! That leaves us with the Word of God. In God’s Word, we find ample, abundant answers. God, who knows the future, knows what happens when we die, and he hasn’t left us to wonder about it. The Bible is filled with information on this subject, so much in fact that we can offer only a brief survey in this chapter.

If you want the answer in one sentence here it is: What happens after you die depends on what happens before you die. Consider what the Bible says in Hebrews 9:27, “It is appointed for men to die once but after this the judgment” (NKJV). This is an appointment no one will miss. As someone has noted, the statistics on death are appalling. One hundred out of one hundred people will eventually die. We are all terminally ill with a disease called death; we don’t know when the end will come.