No Yoke, Son!
By Chris Maakestad
I am the way, the truth and the life; no man comes to the Father but through Me. – John 14:6
Jesus is our Jubilee! In Luke 4:18-19, He said that He came to set the captives free and to break every yoke. In John 8:32 He said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
The truth of His Word sets us free from the heavy yoke of confusion, doubt, and uncertainty that tries to hide the Gospel and weaken our faith.
Freedom in Jesus brings understanding, salvation, wisdom, direction, and strength in our daily lives. He wants us to know the truth in every area of our lives.
The most foundational of all truths is the uncompromising reliability of Scripture. From this source, we find answers to the origin of the universe, the meaning of life, and what happens after we die. The Bible alone provides consistent, reasonable answers from the God of the universe.
It is His unchanging Word. We can put our trust in it.
The Bible is a unique volume composed of 66 books penned by 40 different writers over 1500 years. Yet it has one consistent story line running all the way through, because it has one ultimate author: God. No man could have ever done this.
The story that runs through it all tells of God's wonderful plan to rescue men and women from the devastating results of the fall, which left us with the sin nature we are born with.
God devised the perfect plan for redemption – conceived in eternity, revealed through the prophets, and carried out by His Son, Jesus Christ.
The key lies in understanding that God dictated the Bible to His scribes, the men who wrote down and assembled His words. This process is described in 2 Peter 1:20, 21: “Knowing this first: that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.”
God designed the Bible to interpret itself. It's like a picture puzzle: You really can't see the picture until you put the pieces together.
And when you do, you find that God’s Word is Truth, uniquely and completely.
While other religions depend on subjective experience and blind faith, we find countless evidences for the Bible's divine inspiration and authority.
Time and again, God authenticates His Word, fulfilling what He spoke by His prophets down to the minutest detail at His perfect moment – so that we can know He orchestrated it all.
The first prophecy in the Bible in Genesis 3:15 is the promise of the Messiah who would save us from our sin and reunite us with our Father God. Many other prophecies followed, giving the exact details of His coming and of His redemptive work.
If you examine the mathematical probabilities of one Man fulfilling all the Messianic prophecies within a lifetime, you will find that it is utterly impossible. Now consider the fact that, only on the day that He died, Jesus fulfilled 33 of those prophecies (see graphic).*
As the centurion said in Mark 15:39, “Truly, this Man was the Son of God.”
Sin is rebellion and disobedience to God. God is altogether holy. Sin can’t exist in His presence.
Romans 5:12 says, “Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
Jesus was the only Man who lived a perfect life so that He could be our perfect sacrifice for sin. This was God’s genius plan to bring us back to Himself.
“But God demonstrates His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Now we can apply Jesus’ sacrifice to our sin and be part of God’s family: “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name” (John 1:12).
These truths from God’s Word may directly contradict what you were taught and what you have trusted in all your life. You may also have big questions about the Bible’s accuracy and relevance, especially regarding our origins and your relationship to Him. You are not alone.
The theory of evolution has now been taught as scientific fact in our educational system for an entire generation, and the devil has used it to undermine the truth of the Bible and even the faith of some Christians.
The theory of evolution is still only a theory. In fact, it is a theory that is not even backed by good science. It more correctly falls under the category of pseudo-science.
The “deep time” (millions of years) factor that supposedly proves the theory is built on hoax after hoax, from bias upon bias, and one presupposition after another.
But what are the facts? One fact is that all over the earth, we find millions of dead things in various sedimentary rock layers that were laid down quickly by water.
For fossils to form at all requires rapid burial and sedimentation. The fossil record shows mass burial graveyards all over the earth where many different species of animal died suddenly, and are found all jumbled together in one place – as if they were forced together in a quick death by some sort of widespread cataclysmic event. A flood, perhaps?
Polystrate fossil
To have fossil graveyards spread all over the world would require an extremely violent, large-scale flood that covered these creatures instantly with large amounts of highly mineralized sediment.
Many polystrate fossils, such as petrified trees, extend up through “millions” of years of layers, (so, the tree was millions of years old?) and we also find folded layers sandwiched between the “millions” of years layers. Those folds are smooth, without fractures on the curves, which means the layers were all folded together while still soft.
Fossils in different locations around the world all have carbon dates in the same range: about 4,500 years. All of these evidences are perfectly consistent with the account of Noah's worldwide flood in the Bible. God knows how to preserve the record effectively!
The eruption of Mt. St. Helens in 1980 perfectly demonstrated to modern man that the major effects of a catastrophe do not require millions of years to form.
In a matter of just a few hours and in some cases days, sedimentary rock layers were laid down complete with polystrate fossils, and a mini Grand Canyon was formed by mudflows.
Previously, evolutionary scientists had no other reference to explain these same features that are also found elsewhere on the earth. This documented eruption, though locally catastrophic, was comparatively quite small.
Many dinosaur fossils have been found containing soft, stretchy tissue and recognizable blood cells inside the bones. This would be absolutely impossible if these creatures were millions of years old, as evolutionary dogma states.
Job, one of the earliest books of the Bible, describes dinosaurs. This indicates that the men living at that time were familiar with them. Dinosaurs appear as pictographs in some caves around the world, as well as in carvings in various places, such as on the pillars of a Buddhist temple in Indonesia. Pretty hard to do if you've never seen one!
The mineral levels in the oceans indicate that we live on a young earth. According to scientists who measure its decay rate, Earth's magnetic field could not possibly have existed for more than 20,000 years.
Speaking of decay rates: Genetic entropy rates show that mankind could not have existed more than 300 generatiions -- or about 6,000 years. Hmmm…where have I heard that number before? Ancient bacteria DNA, dated at 250 million years, is essentially the same as modern bacteria. So… where's the evolution? And there are many more proofs, if you're looking...
True science (invented by God, by the way) confirms the Genesis account of our origins.
I've barely scratched the surface of up-to-the-minute headlines in geology, paleontology, biology, archaeology. There is so much more – it’s staggering!
What does it all mean? When you see the veracity and reliability of God’s Word in the physical, touchable realm, then you know you can trust Him to tell you the truth about the spiritual realm. About your sinful nature that you inherited from your first ancestor Adam and your need for a Savior to forgive you of that sin and reconnect you with your Father.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty for Your sin. Then He rose from the grave to bridge the gap between you and God.
“For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
God has provided the only way: Jesus, the way, the truth and the life. But you must make that decision to give Him your life and let Him rule on the throne of your heart.
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and dine with him and he with Me” (Revelation 3:20).
What are you going to do? Will you let him in?
*Chapter 14 of Many Infallible Proofs by Henry M. Morris details other fulfilled prophecies of the Messiah and of Israel, along with other specific nations, cities, and empires.