STUFF ABOUT GOD AND CHRISTIANITY | Dr. Ron Braley
Traveling back to North Dakota after attending a Lute Society of America seminar decades ago, I encountered a young lady carrying healing tuning forks and crystals. I asked, “Why do you believe in this stuff?”
Her response was, “I dunno—it just seems right.”
God-fearing Christfollowers have a different approach and airtight alibi: We know what and in whom we believe and why.
Many things lend credibility to what we know to be true, from eyewitness accounts and personal experiences to fulfilled prophecies. They help us to have a defense for the “hope that is within us,” according to the apostle Peter, who shared his knowledge and experiences-fueled alibi with excellent results.
During the first Pentecost after Jesus’ ascension, God’s spirit enabled the apostles to preach the Gospel in their languages. Peter taught about “Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst,” who “God raised … up again.”
Peter’s preaching touched the hearts of the listeners who believed and asked, “Brethren, what shall we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent …” (Acts 2:22-24, 32-33 and 37-38). The apostle Paul was also a rock star with an airtight alibi.
Besides the thousands he shared his Christian alibi with, Paul mentored Timothy, a young Greek. In 2 Timothy 1:8-12, Paul reminds him that Jesus has “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light.” Paul is so sure of all Jesus has enabled that he writes, “For I know whom I have believed and I am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him.”
Paul’s alibi in Athens is the stuff of legend.
On trial for preaching a foreign God, Paul connected with his accusers and others by acknowledging their religious nature and mapping their “unknown god” to the one true God.
Read Acts 17:19-31, and you’ll find this golden nugget: “God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because he has fixed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness through a man whom he has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising him from the dead.”
Here’s a final arrow for your airtight alibi quiver: an unbreakable chain of custody and eyewitness accounts. Church father Irenaeus was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John, who was a disciple of Jesus. And Jesus fulfilled hundreds of ancient prophecies, was killed, resurrected and then appeared to hundreds of people, including the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:6-8).
Summary
We who believe in and follow Jesus have plenty to develop an airtight alibi. Having and living by one is essential to a healthy marriage-like relationship with God and effective evangelism, proving he is king, the only rightful one. No king but YHVH seems like a great topic, so let’s go there next time.
Meanwhile, learn well, behave well and live well.
God’s blessings and peace.
Braley, a Taylor-based minister, Air Force veteran, husband and father, earned a Master of Divinity degree from Regent University in 2018 and a Doctor of Ministry from the same school in 2021. Contact him at stuffaboutgod@ronbraley.
com.
