Print run: 138,000 copies
Magazine Looking at Life’s Big Questions
p6
ISSUE XI
My Special Brother
p5
Heaven for Sure
Hit Diff Pray
Meet You at The Ploughing > Lessons from The Farmer p8
Slánú domsa?
ISSUE XI
> Seán Ó’ Blancháird p4
Doubting Atheist > by Paudge Mulvihill p13 “That’s older than my Cub!”
Gaeilge
Irish Opinion
Christianity
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XI
Contents
ISSUE
4you.ie Magazine Published in Ireland by AONTAS © MMXVI Editor Paudge Mulvihill
aontas
Correspondence to: 4you Magazine, 72 Rowan Drive, Castlebar, Co. Mayo
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
Page 3
Illegal Dumping
Page 10-11
Why Believe the Bible?
Page 4
Slánu Donhsa?
Page 12-13
Testimony
Page 5
Daring To Presume
Page 6-7
Do This In Memory
Page 8-9
See you at the Ploughing
by Mark Loughridge
Seán O’Blancháird
5
From Atheism to Christ
Page 15
Free Offers & Resources
by Paudge Mulvihill
by Jonny Pollock
Books, Bibles & Booklets Sports Cartoon Strip
by Ruth Chipperfield
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Ploughing Championships
Contents
Design: OpenBook Ireland www.oscail.net Printer: Printbridge Publisher: www.aontas.ie
z å 4 you.i e Mag a z ine Issu e X I E d itor i a l In this edition of the 4you Magazine we are delighted to present you with articles involving both urban and rural perspectives, a feature on the National Ploughing Championships, life stories from several people around the country, the topic of Heaven, free book and Media Resources and sports humour. Guest writer Ruth Chipperfield writes tenderly about her special needs brother on p6. Seán O’ Blancháird writes on p4 (as Gaeilge) and Paudge Mulvihill reveals his journey from Atheism to Christ. One of the main aims of the 4you Magazine is to encourage you to read God’s Word for yourself. We can provide you with a free gospel or Bible -see our Resources page (p15) for details. You could start reading one of the Gospels in the New Testament and get to know more about God’s answer to human need— that is, relationship with God restored through the death & resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
quote s
Q of
inspirat ion
mountains Before the
were born, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting
you are God ps a lm
S
Here is a quote from John’s Gospel Chapter 17, verse 3 (also written as ‘John 17:3’)—
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Up look
“Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
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4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
by Dorothy Little
Page 13-14
Phone: 094 9023702 Email: 4youireland@gmail.com Web: www.4you.ie
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Dr. Voddie Baucham
the Words
of life
www.4you.ie
Another
BrickWall Illegal Dumping -a Parable
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by Mark Loughridge
llegal dumping, that is when people dispose of their rubbish without using an approved landfill site, is regretfully happening more often, and the result is a spoiling of countryside and extra cost to the taxpayer as the mess has to be cleared up. But in this story there is a parable for each of us to consider.
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e all have rubbish in our lives which we want taken away. Not milk cartons and crisp packets, but the debris of guilt and the garbage of wrong decisions. Guilt haunts us, conscience pricks at us, and regret for the past robs us of joy in the present. The rubbish is the evidence of where we have gone our way, not God’s.
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hose who engage in illegal dumping will be found out and will have to pay the fine. You’ve heard the stories about roadside rubbish being searched, addresses being found, owners traced and fined for their illegal dumping. So it is with the garbage of our lives. There is a way to deal with it, but too often we don’t want to use it—it looks too costly, and so we go for our cheap
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here is one way to deal with our rubbish. Imagine a free waste disposal service. Imagine someone who would take the guilt of your sin and take it to a place where it would be incinerated forever. That’s what Jesus Christ did in the crucifixion—which appropriately may have taken place at Jerusalem’s rubbish dump. He offers to take the debris of your sin, the guilt of your ungodly choices, and to do away with it. And because He is God, it is legal dumping—the appointed method for dealing with our sin. For us it is a clean, safe, and final solution to our sin.
“Imagine a free waste disposal service”
e deal with it in the wrong way and engage in ‘illegal dumping’. There are lots of wrong ways to deal with this garbage which the Bible calls sin. We sweep it under the carpet, pretending it isn’t there. We dump it on others, blaming them. We seek to offset it by doing good works—the equivalent of filling an illegal landfill site and planting flowers over the top. Or sometimes we engage religious or spiritual advisors who assure us that if we do what they tell us, it will be dealt with.But if their way doesn’t match God’s way, it’s like using illegal bin-men. We may act in good faith, but still end up coming short.
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alternatives. But one day we will be found out, presented with all our spiritual rubbish, and we will have to pay the fine ourselves. There will be no hiding.
But why do we persist in illegal dumping? As with household waste, we think that dealing with it properly is too costly. If we are to have Jesus deal with our sin it will require following Him, and for some the cost seems too high—at least until the day comes when they stand in court before the Judge of all the Earth and are handed back the rubbish they dumped and hid and are told to pay for it themselves. There is a God-appointed and God-approved way to deal with our sin; let’s use it.
“We dump it on others, blaming them” 3
Gaeilge
Slán ú d o m s a? C é n c ha oi ? S eán Ó’ Blancháird
Agus an méid seo léite agat, ar mhaith leatsa do shlánú pearsanta a chinntiú? Ar mhaith leat a bheith ceart i láthair Dé beag beann ar an gcostas? Mura maith leat, níor thug tú leat tábhacht na leathanach atá léite agat. Léigh arís iad mar sin, go mall agus go cúramach ag iarraidh ar Dhia an fhírinne a nochtadh duit. Má tá Dia tar éis an easpa atá agat a nochtadh
agus más mian leat síocháin le Dia, caithfidh tú aithreachais d‘fhoilsiú os comhair Dé agus creidimh inár dTiarna Íosa Críost.
Caithfidh tú aithreachas a dhéanamh.
Má chuir Dia do riachtanas ar do shúile duit agus
Caithfidh tú muinín a chur in Íosa. Ar an gcéad dul síos caithfidh tú glacadh le hÍosa an Críost, Mac Dé agus creidiúint gur thug Críost é féin don bhás ar son na ndaoine míchráifeacha. Sa dara
Deir an Bíobla: má admhaíonn do bhéal gurb é Íosa do Thiarna agus má chreideann do chroí gur thóg Dia ó na mairbh é, slánófar thú agus deir sé nach bhfuil “duine dá nglaonn ar ainm an Tiarna nach slánófar”. Má chuireann tú muinín ó chroí in Íosa mar shlánaitheoir agus má aithníonn tú é mar Thiarna, is leatsa féin iad na gealltanais seo.
Maidir le peaca, is athrú iomlán atá i gceist agus caithfidh athrú intinne a bheith agat. Tá ort admháil gur peacach tú in aghaidh Dé atá naofa, grámhar. Caithfidh athrú ó chroí a bheith agat – fíorbhrón agus náire faoi shalachar an pheaca, agus treoir do shaoil a athrú. Tugann Dia dúshlán do dhaoine: dea-oibreacha is dual dá n-aithreachas a dhéanamh. Mura dtugann tú cúl láimhe le gach aon pheaca ní thabharfaidh Dia maithiúnas duit. Má dhéanann tú aithreachas is i dtreo eile ar fad a bheas tú ag dul agus fíordhual agat i saol atá sásúil os comhar Dé.
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dul síos, má chreideann tú i gcumhacht agus i ngrá Chríost, déanfaidh sé thú a shábháil. (Lch. 27) Agus ar an tríú dul síos, ciallaíonn sé muinín as Críost, ag brath airsean amháin chun tú a chur i gceart i láthair Dé. Is bródúil ár nádúr ó fhréamh agus bíonn an claonadh sin ag tathant orainn iontaoibh a chur inár ‘maitheas’ féin nó inár reiligiún. Ach níl an dara rogha agat. Caithfidh tú gan do mhuinín a chur i rud ar bith eile ach i gCríost amháin mar féadann sé slánú síoraí a bhronnadh ar an dream a thiocfas i ngar do Dhia tríd. má tá dúil do shlánaithe múscailte ionat, tiontaigh chuig Chríost – agus tiontaigh anois! Bí ag guí - os ard de rogha; tabharfaidh sé seo cuidiú duit a bheith soiléir faoina bhfuil ar bun agat. Inis dó gur peacach caillte, anbhann tú agus iarr ó chroí ar Chríost thú a shábháil agus a bheith ina thiarna ar do shaol. Beidh sé do do neartú chun do chúl a thabhairt ar pheaca agus bheith ag maireachtáil ar a shonsa.
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Heaven
D a r i n g to Pre s u me Jonny Pollock
One of the questions that I often face is, “How do you know you Sin demands justice. It’s a feeling we all understand. With God this
are going to Heaven?” Isn’t that a bit presumptuous? Or at least a bit arrogant? In this article, we will discover what God says about Heaven, who will be there, and how we can be sure that we’re going.
The Bible outlines for us a clear fact that after death we will stand before God. This judgement is something that has faced humanity since the beginning. The Bible talks about the final judgement being one that results in separation: on one side you have eternity with God in Heaven, or on the other an eternity separate from God, in Hell. These terms, Heaven and Hell, invoke an emotional response from many of us. Where will we end up? Has my life been good enough? Or, how can I be sure where I am going?
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he Bible is not silent on these matters, yet to understand what the Bible teaches, we must look at who the Bible says will be in Heaven, and how we get there.
Firstly, we need to understand that Heaven is filled with the glory
(presence) of God. Further to this, we need to understand something of who God is: God is holy, perfect, and pure. We learn from the pages of Scripture that God cannot abide sin, and therein lies a problem, for Paul clearly states in Romans 3:23 that we all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of God. Paul goes further in 1st Corinthians 6 and lists a whole list of people who will not inherit God’s Heaven. So we have stumbled on the first hurdle. By our nature, and by our thoughts and deeds, we have fallen short of God’s standard of perfection— and if perfection and perfect holiness is God’s demand for Heaven, then we are in quite a bit of trouble.
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hankfully—and deeply rooted in the grace, mercy and faithfulness of God—He has made a way. It wasn’t a list of rules, or a set of hoops to jump through; it wasn’t even a religion. God’s way was a person. Throughout the Old Testament, beginning in Genesis 3:15, we have a promise that someone would come to destroy sin, Satan, and death itself. This promise is built upon as God pulls back the curtain further and further, until we see this promise fulfilled in all its glory in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. He came into this world, not born into our nature, but in perfect purity. He was, and is, the only true innocent that has walked this earth. He never sinned, either in thought or action, never disobeyed God, never rebelled, and never broke God’s laws. Yet the Bible tells us that He was condemned to death, and crucified by man. This reality, although barbaric and horrific, was exactly fulfilling the demands of God’s justice. On the cross, Jesus cried out, “It is finished!”, but to understand this, we must first understand what was finished. www.4you.ie
is exactly the same, only on a cosmic scale. Each and every sin is rebellion against God. Regardless of who was hurt, or who was offended, all sin is open rebellion against God. Sin isn’t a list of little mistakes that we make, but the condition of our hearts before a holy God. We are corrupted, broken, and filthy in the sight of God. More than this, God demands justice to be enacted upon us because of this sin, this rebellion. Even more than this, it is something we deserve. Yet on the Cross, Jesus stood in our place as our substitute, and bore God’s wrath, His righteous anger, and punishment for our sin. His death paid our debt, and the ransom for our release, so that we could be free. As if that wasn’t enough, for those who believe and trust in Christ’s work for their salvation—and His work alone—they are to be clothed in His righteousness, His perfection. He pays for our sin, and we receive His perfection in the eyes of God.
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What this means is simple:
”I give them Eternal Life”
for those who are truly saved by Christ and Christ alone, our salvation isn’t dependent on what we have done, what we do, or what we will do in the future. When Christ cried, “It is finished!” He was declaring the good news that salvation was complete in Him. That salvation is wholly dependent upon His work, and is given by God’s grace. In John 6:23, Jesus is clear in this: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” Further to this, Jesus says in John 10:28, “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” So salvation, then, is dependent on Christ and His work alone, yet in a near unbelievable beauty, there is more. This truth gives us an incredible confidence and assurance if we have trusted Christ alone for our salvation. In 1st John chapter 5, John speaks about being born again, and knowing this by the change of our hearts and lives. Verses 11-13 sum this confidence and assurance up well: “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
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he Bible teaches that God wants true believers to know that we are saved, and have received eternal life. He does not want His children to live their lives fretting over whether they are His children or not, but that we can be certain of His love, His eternal life, and His salvation—not by our works or earning, but by His grace. Can we presume, then? Of course we can! Yet, not in our strength, merit or works, but upon His amazing grace. 4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
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One life Intellectual Disabilities
Do This in Memory h
”One problem: He has the brain development of a tiny child...”
On
Sundays in our church at Fairview, in north Dublin, the first morning service—the ‘preaching’ one—was what we called the Breaking of Bread. This was Holy Communion, in its simplest form. Everybody who was there, who was a follower of Jesus, was invited to join in by eating a little piece of bread and drinking a sip of wine. This practice was based on the Bible account of the Last Supper that Jesus ate with his disciples before He was crucified. He asked them to continue to have this meal, a simple one in which the basic ingredients would have been bread and wine, in His memory until He comes again for His church. The bread would remind them of His broken body, the wine would represent His blood. Easily understood symbols, representing the most awesome universe-shaking event.
These followers of Jesus, called Christians, were
and are people who have asked God for forgiveness because of Jesus’s death for them and because of his resurrection. The sharing of bread and wine is a celebration. Gordon witnessed this each week, and naturally assumed that he would share whatever his family and friends were doing. He saw, without understanding the reasons for it, that it was both serious and happy. He wanted to be fully part of it.
A quandary arose. Boys and girls generally weren’t
expected to share bread and wine until they were old enough to understand the story of the Gospel and to 66
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
by Ruth Chipperfield
choose to follow Jesus. That wasn’t a rule – we didn’t have rules. It was more a question of being guided by what the Bible said. Communion wasn’t an empty rite of passage; it was a personal response. So there was no rule about an absolute age limit, either upper or lower. My mother began to speculate that, since he couldn’t fully understand communion, Gordon might not be eligible to join in; he certainly hadn’t been invited to. The leaders of the church – that is our local church, not The Church Universal – hadn’t had this issue to consider before, so when Gordon’s parents raised it there was a lot of prayer and of reading relevant parts of the Bible. In the end the decision was made, perfectly and simply. Gordon did what Jesus had asked him to do.
One problem: Gordon
“The kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”
has the brain development of a tiny child... but Jesus said “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these”. Another problem: Gordon can’t do theological discussions. He’ll never understand the Gospel fully... but Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. A third problem: Gordon can’t pray proper prayers or ask for forgiveness; it’s too abstract. When he has hurt his mother, he offers to shake hands. His mind can’t see Jesus... but Jesus said, “whoever comes to me I will never drive away”. References: Matthew 19:14, Matthew 18:3, John 6:37
www.4you.ie
One life My Special Brother
Extract taken from: ‘Gordon: Business As Usual’ by Ruth Chipperfield and is available at amazon.co.uk
Gordon
Well, every word in the Bible is there for a pur- God’s Holy Spirit can speak to the infant, to the per-
pose, for our instruction, our comfort, our joy, our reproof, our morality, our relationships, our work ethic, our delight in creation, our eternal salvation, our earthly peace. Could God have overlooked the Gordons of this world? Of course not. Gordon is covered by many more writings than those I’ve quoted above. My kid brother had learned up to the full of his understanding, from his mother and father, that Jesus loved him. Her singing to him when he was little had, while he was yet unaware, filled his heart with the knowledge of God. He started to take bread and wine, in full and glorious fellowship.
son with brain-injury, to the one who is demented, with perfect clarity according to their need. So, that was Gordon sorted. I don’t mean that trivially. Answers to the questions were found in God’s Word, and that was enough. Will and Lydia had peace in the deepest parts of their minds, and their spirits were at rest.
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Gordon as a boy playing bus conductor (Clontarf, Dublin)
While on this question of limited understanding,
I remember visiting a very elderly friend in Portrush, in Co Antrim. He had had a long life as a missionary, travelling the world. His wife, a brilliant and Godly woman, was deep in dementia. Ernest Lloyd and I talked about dementia. His beloved Jessie couldn’t hold a conversation with him, she couldn’t ask a question, or answer one. Where was she? In spiritual terms, how can a person who has an intellectual disability be taught about God’s love, in a way that gets past that dense curtain and means something to them? The Bible has the answer to that: “He (God) has put his Spirit in our hearts”... “The Spirit helps us in our weakness”... “He (God) who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes. God is revealed to us by His Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 1:22, Romans 8:26, 1 Corinthians 2:10
www.4you.ie
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
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national ploughing championships
Back home,
the father had lost interest in the
farm. He often
put down his tools and stared down the
A farmer went to sow seed... road...
The first inter-county ploughing contest in Ireland was between Wex-
ford and Kildare on 16 February 1931 in a 26-acre field at Coursetown, Athy. Since then the National Ploughing Championships has expanded to over 800 acres with 1,400 exhibitors and is the largest outdoor event in Europe, with 281,000 visitors in 2015.
Ploughing prepares the soil for growing crops, and stories about
281,000
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800 acres
he Bible explains that God is eternal, holy and righteous, but by contrast it says about us that – “ALL have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Romans 3 v 23. We might not like to admit it, but we have a sinful nature which is shown by the sins we commit. Whether these sins are public, or secret, they are all known to God. Our sinfulness is so serious, it is punishable by eternal death. The Bible says “For the wages of sin is death…” Romans 6 v 23.
1 Creator
The simple answer is – NOTHING! Sinners cannot fix their own sinfulness. The only One who can help us is God Himself, and amazingly, He has! The Bible
1,400
8
visitors
ploughing and sowing date back to Bible times. Even Jesus Christ, the Son of God, spoke about such things. We read in the Holy Bible, in Luke’s Gospel, ch 8 v 4 - 15, about a farmer sowing his seed. When He spoke of this farmer sowing, the Lord Jesus taught a spiritual lesson. He explained that the seed is a picture of the Word of God, the Bible. The seed fell into different types of ground, and grew up in different ways, representing the various responses to the Bible’s message from those who hear it. How will you respond to the message of salvation in the Bible?
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
exhibitors
So what can we do about this big problem?
www.4you.ie
Image © thievingjoker
2016 Venue: Tullamore, Offaly Sept 20 - 22
“That’s older than my Cub!”
This IS good news – but how will you respond?
Maybe you’ll dismiss God’s immense love for you, and hope to please Him through your own efforts – but that will never work. Instead, God asks you to repent (turn around) from your sin and trust your whole life and eternity on the Lord Jesus and His sacrificial death for you. Will you believe that God has provided salvation (rescue from sin) for you through His Son? The Bible says “whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” Romans 10 v 13.
If you attend the National Ploughing Championships (September 20th-
22nd 2016) please visit one of the Christian stands such as the Gospel Literature Ireland stand. We would love to tell you more about what the Bible teaches. To find out more, view their website www.goodnews4u.net or www.4you.ie
See you at the Ploughing! www.4you.ie
Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—
100 or 60 or 30 times what was sown
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says “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” Romans 5 v 8. Even though we deserve to die for our sin, God’s only Son Jesus Christ died for us on a cross. The Lord Jesus lived a perfect life on Earth, but the Bible says that on the cross God “laid on Him the iniquity (sin) of us all” Isaiah 53 v 6. We also read that His death not only involved physical suffering, but that “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God” 1 Peter 3 v 18. Because the Lord Jesus loves us He willingly took the punishment for our sin that we deserved – death! God proved that Jesus’ death makes salvation and eternal life available to us when He raised Him from death three days later.
Check out:
www.goodnews4u.net & www.4you.ie
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
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Why Believe the Bible? The problem is that translators don’t translate from copies, but go back to the earliest manuscripts. So every translation can be checked with the earliest copies for accuracy. Add to that the fact that there are copies of the manuscripts and parts of manuscripts going right back to within 25 years of the completion of the New Testament. There simply isn’t time for the story to have grown, nor evidence that it did. Others claim that it was changed by religious fanatics to suit their agenda. But consider the extents to which a group of ‘overzealous monks’ would have to go if they wanted to rewrite the materials, for example, to make Jesus divine:
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here’s strange stuff in the Bible—as comedians, sceptics, and barstool pundits like to point out. Listening to them makes it sound like the Bible is some cross between Doctor Doolittle, Horrible Histories—the Vikings, and The Wizard of Oz. There is undoubtedly strange material in the Bible—a virgin who finds herself pregnant, a man who walks on water, raises the dead, and Himself rises from the dead, not to mention all the laws which sound so foreign to our ears, and get bandied about every time a Christian discusses moral issues on the radio. But at the heart of the issue is the question: Is the Bible believable? Or is it just a collection of myths, passed down through generations, changed along the way, so that we can no longer know what was originally said or written? Last summer Dr.Voddie Baucham spoke on this topic at a number of venues around Ireland. It was engaging, informative and thorough. Baucham was raised by a Buddhist mother and didn’t hear about Jesus until he was at university. In other words he wasn’t raised to believe that the Bible was true—yet that is precisely what he believes now. What has convinced him? He summed up his position in a memorable quote: “I choose to believe the Bible because it is a reliable collection of historical documents, written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events that took place in fulfillment of specific prophecies, and they claim to be divine rather than human in origin.” In this article I want to give a brief summary of what Dr. Baucham said in explaining the first part of his statement:
“A reliable collection…” Some say that the Bible has been translated and changed so many times that it’s completely different from what was originally written. 10
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
First—They would need to change the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. That’s over 6,000 copies of manuscripts or parts of manuscripts. (By way of comparison, Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ is attested by only 5 manuscripts, and there’s a 1400 year gap between original and first copy, yet its content is unquestioned by scholars.) So if these monks wanted to change the Bible, they would have to find over 6,000 manuscripts, change every single one of them, not show their ink work, get them all back to where they stole them from, and hope that nobody notices the change. Second—within the first few centuries after Christ, the Bible was translated into Syriac, Coptic, and Latin. That raises the total to 24,000 manuscripts, all of which would need to be altered in a way that is undetectable to eye or microscope. Third—the early church fathers wrote commentaries on the New Testament, quoting it extensively. From their writings alone you could reproduce 98% of the New Testament. So if you want to change something you have to find over 6,000 Greek manuscripts, steal them, change them, not show any ink work, get them back without letting anyone find out; find all of the translated copies, change those to match the changes they made in the originals, get those back to where they came from; and then find all of the writings of all of the early church fathers, change those to match the lies they made in the original manuscripts, get those back to where they came from, hope that nobody notices the differences on any of the aforementioned counterfeits, and never get caught. And you would have to live 200 years to do it. What is written down, is what was written down.
“…of historical documents” The people writing the books of the Bible took seriously that they were writing history. Luke who wrote the gospel bearing his name and the book of Acts, writes in his preface that he investigated the events and wrote them down so that his reader could ‘know the certainty” of them. The Bible isn’t a work of mythology like the Iliad or the Odyssey, but is eyewitness testimony to historic events, people and places. Often that historicity has been questioned. For example, the Bible mentions a people group called the Hittites 36 times. Scholars used to denigrate the Bible because no eviwww.4you.ie
Pic: 3rd Century Bible portion from Chester Beatty Library, Dublin
dence for a Hittite civilization had ever been found. But then in 1884 archaeologists found proof that the Hittites were a major ancient civilization. The same story applies to the biblical cities of Ur, Sodom, and Gomorrah. People laughed at the Bible until the 1960’s, when the Elba tablets were found in Syria, bearing reference to all those cities. People used to say that Moses couldn’t have written the Pentateuch because writing had not been invented. But the Elba tablets are dated to have been written before Moses! Time and time again the Bible has been proven historically accurate.
“…Written by eyewitnesses” Some claim that the story changed in the telling before it was written. But the gospels were written by eyewitnesses within the lifetime of other eyewitnesses who could correct or corroborate any details. That doesn’t leave time for the stories to be passed on from one generation to the next before being written down. Take just one event—the resurrection of Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul says that after Jesus was resurrected, he was seen by Peter, then by the rest of the disciples, and then appeared to over 500 believers at once, most of which were still living when he was writing the letter. That means about 300 of the original witnesses of Jesus after His resurrection were still alive when 1 Corinthians was written. Did these eyewitnesses just make it up? Leaving aside the presence of hostile eye-witnesses who could have disproven everything if it was false, most of the writers of the New Testament were martyred for their faith. By ‘martyred’ I don’t mean, ‘willing to die for a belief’, like some radical Muslims today, but that the New Testament’s authors were largely killed by people who accused them of spreading lies; yet they were willing to die for what they said they saw. Paul and James were decapitated, Jude beaten to death, Peter crucified, John Mark dragged through city streets, and so it goes on. If these men fabricated the story of Jesus’ resurrection, would they have all suffered such horrific deaths for something they knew was a lie? Rather than constructing some grand conspiracy theory that balances tenuously on the knife-edge of improbability, it is much more realistic to see the Bible as what it claims to be: An eyewitness reporting of events which surprised even the authors themselves, and caused them to want to spread the story, even at cost of their own lives. Is the Bible believable? Whatever your view, this is not a question to simply ignore. Whether you believe it or not; whether you love it or loathe it, you owe it to yourself to investigate further. Voddie Baucham’s presentation can be found on Youtube. Search for “Why I choose to believe the Bible”. www.4you.ie
Poetry in Motion
excerpts from famous poems & hymns Be Thou My Vision
by Dallán Forgaill (translation: E.Hull) “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart; Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art; Thou my best thought, by day or by night; Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.
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What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Joseph M. Scriven
“What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear! What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer! O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.”
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Psalm 23 The Lord’s My Shepherd by David (metre: 1650 Psalter)
The Lord’s my Shepherd, I’ll not want; He makes me down to lie In pastures green; He leads me The quiet waters flow by. My soul He does restore again, And me to walk does make Within the paths of righteousness, Even for His own name’s sake.
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Light Shining out of Darkness by William Cowper
GOD moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform; He plants his footsteps in the sea, And rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable mines Of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, And works his sov’reign will.
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Amazing Grace by John Newton
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see. T’was Grace that taught, my heart to fear. And Grace, my fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear, the hour I first believed. 4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
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Testimony
By Dorothy Little
The historic St. Werburgh’s on Thomas Street Dublin
We went to St. Werburgh’s Church of Ireland, in Dublin. The girls were in the Girls’ Brigade and the boy in the Boys’ Brigade. Both organisations included the Bible in their programmes. We eventually moved to Crumlin and attended St. Mary’s Church of Ireland. There were three more children, all boys, added to our family.
The best explanation for this word in
The Oxford English Dictionary is “To test or prove by evidence”. I was asked to give my testimony. As you the reader may not know me and I need to prove my story by evidence, I will tell you something about my background. To do so, I will go back to my grandparents. My grandmother was Catholic and my grandfather was Protestant. They agreed that if they had any children, the girls would be brought up Catholic and the boys Protestant. They only had one child, a boy, and that was my father. My father was a carpenter working for Dockrell’s and he often had to go to England on a job. On one of these trips he met, fell in love with, and married my mother. It made her mother very angry, so much so that she did not go to her daughter’s wedding. However, they made things up later. It’s amazing what the sight of the first grandchild can do! My parents moved to Ireland as that was the best thing to do at the time.
After some time we went to live with
our Irish grandparents, as by then there were an extra five mouths to feed, four girls and one boy. I was the only one of the children to be born in that house. 12 12
4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
‘Bob’, who explained the Gospel to me and gave me some literature.
Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world”,
and in the Gospel of John chapter 5, verses 24 and 25 Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you The first real challenge in my life was the truth, a time is coming and has now the death of my father. He contracted TB come when the dead will hear the voice as did many in the 1950s, and I began to of the Son of God and those who hear challenge life, death, God, and the Bible. will live”. I challenged the unfairness of it all. I was As I left to catch my bus, a feeling of pure a fortnight from my fifteenth birthday. joy swept over me and I felt like doing I wanted to be a teacher, but we hadn’t cartwheels, but I didn’t. There is rejoicthe money so I went out to work as many ing in Heaven over sinners repenting. Much later I got the opportunity to teach others did. children the Bible stories, and I now teach older people in the “The first real challenge YWCA Club.
in my life was the death of my father. He contracted TB as did many in the 1950’s”
God does not promise us that
life will be a bed of roses, but He does give us the strength to get through all the bad times. God provided Christian young people to befriend me. I went to a club on Fridays for table tennis, on Saturto go out on our bikes, and on SunShortly after this, a friend invited me to days days for Bible study and tea, and I grew a Christian Endeavour club, and again in knowledge of the Bible and made new the Bible challenged me. We met every friends. Wednesday, and I enjoyed the company of people of my own age. One Wednes- I met the person who later became my day when the YMCA male voice choir husband, and we were marwas holding a mission, we went to it. I ried in 1960. God blessed us liked the singing. The speaker spoke of with four children, two girls some caves he had visited while on holi- and two boys. I call to mind day. The tour guide asked the people in one Christmas when our elthe group to hold onto something, and der daughter had ‘black’ meathen he switched off his powerful light. sles and went into a coma. We It was very scary. The speaker likened could not go to the hospital that to the dark of a life without God. He so I concentrated on stuffing encouraged anybody to speak to a mem- the turkey, and my husband ber of the choir, so I went and talked to did a very large jigsaw puzzle
From Atheism to Christ
with plaque commemorating Robert Emmet
which was a gift from friends; it was called The Last Supper. We sent requests for prayer to different churches. Two weeks later, when she was helped to get out of bed supported by two nurses to try to walk, our daughter just skipped off ahead of them.
Four years ago my husband had a mas-
sive heart attack just as he turned into our road. He was alone and neighbours looked after him. He never recovered, but God was with us all the way. I was given some verses which were a great help to me. They are in the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 40, verses 28 to 31, especially the last verse: “Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no-one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (NIV)
In
prayer King David in Psalm 18 thanked God for reaching down from heaven and taking hold of his life, and I believe that is what God did for me.
“those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength”
www.4you.ie
The Story of Paudge Mulvihill I was born in Castlerea, Co. Roscom- I discovered something: There are mon in 1957 and had a traditional catholic upbringing. Life was good in Castlerea; it was a great place to grow up, leaving me with many fond memories of the town.
In my early teens I abandoned faith
and declared myself to be an atheist, more out of a desire to be different than from any deep well-thoughtout reasons. Over time I came to really hate religion and felt strongly that the world would be a far better place without religion. I well imagine that had things not changed, I would have become a big fan of Richard Dawkins and the New Atheists when they became popular. I became very vocal about my atheistic views and enjoyed challenging my friends who still practiced religion. But all was to change, and change quite dramatically.
In the late 1970’s many of my friends
converted to New Testament Christianity and they thankfully turned the tables on me by challenging my atheism. They brought to me the evidence for the reliability of the Bible and the evidence for the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Of course, if the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, as the Bible declares, then He is who He claimed to be, the Divine Son of God, and Calvary was indeed the most awesome event that had ever occurred in history.
I was to discover that there are a
number of serious problems with atheism, a number of significant facts that leaves it with not a leg to stand on. Atheism seeks to support its viewpoint using science, but I was to discover that science, properly understood, does not in fact contradict faith in God, but instead both science and the Laws of Logic contradicted atheism.
in essence only three possible explanations as to why our universe exists, and therefore humanity itself. Let’s have a look at each of them.
That the world created itself by spontaneous generation:
Science has established that there
had to be a beginning, so on this point there is common agreement between the Bible and science. Those who hold to this view say that there was at one point nothing, and then there was something and that nothing caused this to happen. Spontaneous generation means that things simply began on their own without a cause. But such a notion is contradicted by the second law of logic, the law of causality, which declares that every effect has a cause. So for something to have come into being there has to have been a cause.
Did Everything come from Nothing?
Spontaneous
generation also flies in the face of a basic law of science that says “ex nihilo nihil fit” (“out of nothing, nothing comes”). We are asked to believe that 15 to 18 billion years ago the universe exploded into being, with absolutely nothing existing before the Big Bang. This theory starts with nothing, then there is a mighty explosion, and the result is the universe as we know it. The question that must be asked is: What exploded? The idea that the universe came into being by way of a great explosion, when there was nothing there to explode, is absolute nonsense. It is sheer irrationality. It is unscientific and illogical. 4you.ie 4you.ie Magazine MagazineIssue IssueXI XI
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from Atheism to Christ
Quotes from Scientists
That the world is self-existent, also contradicts the Law of Causality which states that for every effect having always been:
T
his is the more common view held by those who deny the existence of God. In this view there was always something, then that something exploded in the Big Bang resulting in the universe. This view also fails the tests of logic and indeed the laws of science. This theory claims that several billion years ago all that existed was compacted into a ‘point of singularity’. In this ‘point of singularity’ was compressed all matter and all energy. Then, for reasons unknown to those who claim this theory, it exploded, and out of that explosion came this wonderful complex universe that we know. This is extremely strange thinking. Can anyone point to an explosion that did not create anything other than chaos and destruction and yet atheistic science would have us believe that all the beauty and complex intricacies of our universe came about through an explosion!
there has to be a cause. Simply put, when something happens, something caused it to happen. So what caused the Big Bang?
The third—and wonderfully satisfying—explanation for our existence...
is that there is a glorious super-natural eternal Being who created all things, God Almighty. As I journeyed out of Atheism into Christianity I discovered something very significant about the human heart, something about my own heart. The atheist is not an atheist because of any lack of information or knowledge. Paul the Apostle in Romans chapter one makes it clear that God has given to all mankind sufficient evidence of His existence, both in the beauty and splendour of creation and also internally in our consciences. So compelling and all-sufficient is this evidence that Paul tells us that we are left “without excuse”. My atheism, and indeed all atheism, is a matter of choice. I chose atheism because I did not want the alternative, a Creator God to whom I am accountable.
On Biogenesis: “Omne vivum ex vivo” translated “All life can only come from existing life” -Louis Pasteur “In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.” -Albert Einstein “The most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” -Isaac Newton “When the answer is simple, God is speaking.” -Albert Einstein*
Now, of course, there were others
Paudge & his wife Emer
Even one of the basic laws of science,
the scientific law of inertia, shows that the ‘point of singularity’ could never provide the answer to our existence. The Law of Inertia declares that things which are at rest will remain at rest unless they are acted upon by an outside force. So, for example, a golf ball sitting on a tee will remain on the tee until something or someone causes it to move. The point of singularity would have remained motionless unless acted upon by some outside force, so, if we accept this theory, we are still left with a huge question: What caused the explosion? And for good measure we can throw in the question: Where did the point of singularity come from? Also, as with the proposition above, this notion
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4you.ie Magazine Issue XI
factors that brought about my atheism, but they were very much secondary reasons. Like countless thousands of others I was less than impressed by Catholicism; in my experience it just did not present a good picture of God, so I threw the baby out with the bathwater. But thankfully I was to discover that the Lord is infinitely more wonderful and glorious than the God I had learned about through Catholicism.
If you are like me, those many years
ago, and have adopted atheism because of a bad experience with religion, can I encourage you to take another look? Can I suggest that you read the Gospels? If you would like a copy of the book --- please see the free resources page (page 15) and send in your request.
* Einstein Quotations from: The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 www.4you.ie www.4you.ie
free RESOURCES
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on this page are offered completely free of charge. No cost, no catch. Limitations are simply: one copy per person (aged 18 and over), while stocks last, and delivery is only within the island of Ireland. We will endeavour to meet every request. Simply email us on: 4youireland@gmail.com or fill in the attached postcard & post it back to us.
Ultimate Questions by John Blanchard Best selling booklet tackling big questions like ‘Is there a God?’ in a concise way. 32 pages
Is Anybody Out There? Short booklet examining the subject of are we alone in the Universe? 40 pages
The New Testament Second section of The Bible beginning with the arrival of the promised Messiah (Jesus) to Earth. 200 pages (avg.)
Gospel of John Personal account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by the apostle John. 70 pages (avg.)
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or www.4you.ie
• Read the Scriptures Online: www.net.bible.org or www.inscript.org • Bible PC Software: www. e-sword.net The Bible -Inspiration by God 4 You Read God’s Word for yourself in modern English. Its message has brought hope & inspiration to millions. Contact us to receive your free copy. Fill out Postcard or Email. the Word of God freely given
Reaping RACE Sports-fun comic strip
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‘A cheerful heart is good medicine’ -Proverbs 17v22
Joshua chapter 3 says that the People of Israel were to cross over what river?
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“My kingdom is not of this world”
xJesus Christ
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-: R E A C H I N G O U T :- with the Love of God