Christianity is the Right Religion Part 1

We are either talking past each other or you are ignoring what I am saying. I am not saying that Christianity is more unified than Islam, I am saying the Bible is has more unity than any other religious books. I believe you need to read from the top again. This whole time I have only been talking about the Bible's unity. Let me begin to show you what I mean by the unity of the Bible's message of salvation and Christ from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Related to my reverence for the unity of Scripture, I have long been enamored with the speeches of the saints recorded in the Book of Acts. Chapter 7 provides the longest of the speeches, That of Stephen, Who gives a history lesson on Israel and thereby points to the centrality of Scripture. In his speech he affirms his belief that the recorded events of the Old Testament are actual history. He reminds his audience that the "God of glory" appeared to our father Abraham. He reviews God's directives to Abraham to leave Mesopotamia and "go into the land that I will show you, " and explains that Abraham first went to Haran and then on to Canaan after his father died. He reiterates God's promise of the land to Abraham and his descendants, Even though he had no children at the time. He reviews God telling Abraham that his offspring would be wanderers in a land controlled by people who would enslave them for four hundred years, After which God would judge those slave masters. Stephen then gives a brief history of the patriarchs, The covenant of Circumcision, And the story of Joseph, Whom God saved despite his being betrayed by his brothers. He continues rehearsing the history through the birth of Moses and his assumption of leadership of the nation of Israel, His leading the Israelites out of Egypt and his "performing wonders and signs, " and the people's grumbling, Groaning, And idolatry. He continues all the way through Israel's dispossession of the Canaanites and assumption of control of the promised land. He closes by condemning the people as "stiffnecked" and "uncircumcised in heart and ears, " and as those who "always resist the Holy Spirit, " as their fathers had. Just as Jesus had been punished for asserting the truth, The crowds cast Stephen out of the city and stone him to death. Just as Jesus commended Himself to the Father, Stephen calls out to Jesus, "Receive my spirit. " And just as Jesus exhorted the Father to forgive His persecutors, Stephen asks Jesus, "Lord, Do not hold this sin against them. " Stephen is not only emulating his Lord and Saviour; he is not merely reciting Hebrew history for the sake of it; he is instructing his people on how essential their role is in God's plan. He explains that they are making the same mistake over and over again-rejecting and disobeying God. He is giving them a lesson in human history as a backdrop for the larger lesson of salvation history, Which began some two thousand years earlier and was continuing into the present. Part of that lesson is that God was in charge in the past, Despite the people's disobedience. He retained Moses as the people's leader even though they rejected him ("Who made you ruler and judge") (Acts 7:35). And God is still in control in Stephen's time, As evidenced by Christ's conquering of death despite the people's rejection of Him. So Stephen is summarizing this history with the people who are every bit as intimately familiar with it as he is, Because he wants to demonstrate to them that these stories are a prefiguring of what they are going through. Moses was a type of Christ, And the people in Moses' time were essentially the same as the people now. Martin Lloyd-Jones explains further: Follow the parallel. When Moses was sent to Egypt, He had a great struggle: He struggled with Pharaoh and his hosts and powers. And it was precisely the same with the Son of God when He came into the world. . . . Look at the world into which He came, A world that never understood Him, A world that was utterly opposed to Him. The whole organization of this world is against God, It is against Christ, And it is against each one of us. Look at it in its newspapers and in its films; look at it on the television; look at it in everything that is regarded as wonderful today. The Son of God came into a world like that. The whole mind and outlook of the world was the exact opposite of everything that He was and everything that He stood for. Moses liberated the people in his time-over their strenuous objections when they initially refused the command to go forward into the sea, But couldn't go back because pharaoh was on their tail. And Jesus was liberating them now. In the end, Stiff-necked people were utterly powerless to defeat God's pre-ordained deliverance. "He was rejected by the world, Just as He was rejected by members of the Sanhedrin, " says Lloyd-Jones. "But here is the message: in spite of man's rejection of Him, He is God's own appointed Savior. " We, See, Then, In Stephen's recapitulation of Old Testament history, God's guiding hand moving world events according to His sovereign story line. We witness Stephen pleading with his people to wake up and realize they are the characters in this divine story, This unified story that is headed toward its conclusion despite any of them, Or any of us, Do or say about it. It was a wake-up call, And the people failed to heed it. From what I see Jewish people have stuck the Old Testament. This shows your lack of knowledge of what the Old Testament requires, A blood sacrifice once a year for the forgiveness of sin. The Jews today do not practice this command. As far as Islam, Even Muhammed said that the Bible was the Word of God and he borrowed heavily from it. You did say you had evidence. Have any? Since I am not believing this to be true. I gave you evidence of Muhammad saying that the Bible is the Word of God. So Christianity, Judaism and Islam say that the Scriptures are the Word of God. Let me put it to you like this:God's Word is indestructible. The bomb, Though is totally new, God's Word is not. Its message stays the same and the words stay the same. The problem isn't God even though God created humans. God created humans to have fellowship with Him. The humans were perfect, But they decided to break God's command to not eat of a certain tree. They saw the tree and coveted it and wanting to be like God they ate of it.