NJIAT - Apologetics

Meeting the Challenge of Unbelief

By Dr. Robert A. Morey

Introduction

America is no longer a Christian nation. The government, the courts, public education, the arts, global companies, medicine, the banks, and the media are all under the control of people who are openly hostile to Christianity. They will tolerate any belief system - except for Christianity. They promote unbelief as a virtue and faith as a vice. They call evil good and good evil. The Christian today must meet the challenge of unbelief in every area of life.

I. Two Ways To Meet The Challenge of Unbelief

A. Compromise:

Some Christian apologists compromise with unbelief by adopting its starting point (human autonomy) and its first principles in metaphysics (monism), epistemology (rationalism), ethics (pragmatism) and aesthetics (subjectivism).

There has always been the temptation to join righteousness with wickedness, light with darkness, Christ with Baal, Jerusalem with Athens, the Bible with pagan philosophy. But the Bible condemns all such attempts (2 Cor. 6:14-18).

A survey of the Bible demonstrates that the OT prophets never looked to the surrounding religions and philosophies for the truth about God (Isa. 8:20). They rejected the gods of the heathen as demonic in nature and origin (Lev. 17:7; Deut. 32:17-18; Psa. 106:37) Jesus did not borrow from the pagan religions of His day. The Apostles never appealed to Greek or Roman “reason” as the source of their doctrines. Their theology rested upon the principle of sola scriptura (I Cor. 15:3-4).

The NT teaches that no one seeks after the true God, not even Socrates, Plato or Aristotle (Rom. 3:10-18). The philosophers never found God (1 Cor. 1:18-31). The gods of the philosophers are demonic in origin and nature (1 Cor. 10:20). The philosophers suppressed the truth at every turn and invented false religions and philosophies (Rom. 1:18-25) Since God’s revelation is true even if this means that all men are liars (Rom. 3:4), the Christian is to obtain his worldview from Scripture alone (1Cor. 2:1-16).

Church history reveals that compromising with unbelief has always been the mother of all heresies. Arianism, Modalism, Gnosticism and Molinism were all products of compromise with pagan philosophy.

B. Confrontation:

The prophets and the Apostles boldly and lovingly confronted unbelievers with the Gospel message that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23); that they cannot save themselves by good works or religious rituals (Tit. 3:5); that God so loved the world that He sent His Son to die in the place of sinners (John 3:16; 1 Cor. 15:3-4); that by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone we can escape hell and enter heaven (Eph. 2:8-9).

Faith is a matter of “obedience” to the divine command to repent and believe the gospel (Rom. 16:25-27; Acts 17:30-31; 20:21). God’s commands are not “suggestions” open to negotiation. We are to submit, not argue. We are to obey, not rebel.

II. Different Kinds of Unbelief

A. Religious unbelief: The person already has a belief system:

1. A world religion: Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, etc.

2. A “Christian” cult: LDS, SDA, JW, etc.

3. The occult: magic, witchcraft, Wicca, Voodoo, reincarnation, astrology, etc.

4. Religious liberalism or humanism

5. New Age, globalism, environmentalism, animal rights, etc.

6. A philosophy

7. Psychology

8. Mysticism

B.The Challenge: Three tasks in your witnessing:

1. Refute their present religious belief system so that they will be open to consider the Gospel. Charles Spurgeon called it, “Wheeling away the rubbish.”

2. Presenting the gospel of the love of God in Christ for helpless sinners. Jesus paid it all. Salvation is thus the free gift of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

3. Answering their objections to the gospel.

C. Secular unbelief: The person claims he has no belief system: