Religious Symposium

Just got back from a Religious Symposium that was hosted at Klein by our Islamic club KIT. I gotta say it was a lot more interesting than I thought it would be and I defintely learned a lot about other religions I didn't know. just ask me about it sometime.

the cool part for me was that the way the meeting was run each religion had a 5 minute segment to explain to the audience (a bit less than 100 ppl were there i'd say) what they believed. I got to go third following the Muslims and Catholics (they divided Christianity up into Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Mormons<-- more about them later). I took my segment to simply spread the Gospel, below is a bit of my notes...

· God created the world and it was good, it was in a state of perfect harmony and peace, shalom
· Man sinned against God, we disobeyed what he had commanded and we broke the perfect peace and left the world twisted and broken

Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

· God out of his mercy and love and NOT out of anything we have done or could ever do came to save the world.
o Because we sinned against God and he is just and requires perfection there was NO WAY for man to get to him, not even by trying to follow ALL of his commands as closely as one can
· Jesus Christ came to earth
o Christ was God in the flesh,
Col 1:15 “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.”
o Christ came for the lost, the lonely, the refuse, the worthless and called them worthy
o He then was murdered. he was beaten til he was unrecognizable and hung on a cross to die even though he lived a perfect life and had wronged no one.

AND THIS IS THE GOSPEL
That although we did nothing to warrant it, Christ came to earth and bore our sins to the grave, dying for all that we had done as a sacrifice. Christ literally BECAME the sins of the world. The sacrifice of his blood, we are washed of our sins forever and declared blameless by God who sees not our wrongs but the one right, Jesus’ death. We were forgiven of all our sins, past, present, and future. By his death God made us right in his sight, Christ became the only bridge across chasm between man and God, allowing all who believe in him to experience eternal life in heaven at His right hand.

I had morre verse that i used like Mark 10:45, Matthew 12:34, 1 Cor 10:13 but that was my basic framework, i elaborated more as i talked. anyhow, It honestly has been way to long since I seriously was able to share the Gospel and to have an open forum like that was really great. The emphasis that I tried to support was that unlike other religions, Christianity is not a religon. Its a relationship with Christ. and that as good as we strive to be an as many things we do, we will never ever ever be good enough to be with God because he is holy and we are fallen. It was a bit humbling to study up on this message and really start to take to heart the fact that we are NOT good enough, and we never will be. I thank God for that.

I also began to understand other religions more. It finally made since that the crazy terrorists in the Middle East are in no way associated with Islam, they're just a sect that claims to be a part of it and Muslims are not extremists like those few are. And i never really considered that Buddhism or Hinduism were really still around to day or exactly what it looked like in a 21st cenutry setting, so I enjoyed hearing about that. Then came the Mormons.... We have some major differences in theologoy and they don't believe in the Trinity and also claim that above all God just wants us to be happy, whether or not that brings him the most glory. (Mormon's please correct me if I am incorrect but this is what I heard at the symposium) It was a bit ironic that the Mormons and the Christians sat on opposite sides of the pannel. But i learned a bit more about their beliefs and am able to affirm more today that they do not believe in the same Gospel that we Christians do. I also found some other interesting things about other religions, i.e. Muslims believe you don't have to be Islamic to reach heaven.

We answered some questions and the only one directed towards me was the question, "Why are there so many translations of the Bible?" which I think i did a good job answering. I went back and talked about the history of the Bible saying that it was written originally in three different languages, Greek, Aramaic, and Hebrew (I actually said Latin instead of Aramaic, whoops, but a friend did correct me.) And then I proceded to describe the methods that the more recent translations use mentioning that they all communicated the same thing but just used different wording (I should have mention a verse in two different translations here but I didn't think of it at the time, but I'll be ready next time.) such as the ESV being translated as more of a word-for-word translation and the NIV was based more of a thought-for-thought method. I made sure I emphasized that they said the same thing though, didn't want to wind up looking like we make up the wording we like best.

I'm sure there's more but thats what's coming out right now. Above all yall
ROMANS 1:16
I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL FOR IT THE POWER OF SALVATION FOR ALL WHO BELIEVE, FIRST FOR THE JEW THEN FOR THE GENTILE.
rep him always guys, peace
-matt