Got a chance to share the Gospel this weekend

I was at a family get together in north-Philadelphia. It was cold and rainy, but there was some excellent Belgian wheat beer and the discussion got really interesting. It's all my wife's family so I'm not related to any of them, but they're great people and mostly catholic, since they're of Polish decent from Long Island. We were talking about interpreting the constitution, and I mentioned that I'm an originalist because I view the Bible in the same terms.

Basically I believe that the Bible should be interpreted based on what the original authors intent was in communicating to their original audience. Then the challenge left to us is understanding how that intent applies to 21st century people. This of course led us to a discussion of textual-criticism. I summarized the key points of the discussion to: (1) A real God who was really powerful would ensure that the words He wanted to communicate, would be. (2) We have so many copies that are so close to when the original manuscripts were written, that to say we don't have accurate translations today is ridiculous.

Then my wife's 15 year-old 2nd cousin pointed out that 'all religions are really the same thing' as he's learning in his world history class that recently covered Islam, & Hinduism. I mentioned in response that those other world religions may appear in the externals to be similar, but on the internals are radically different. I then asked him to describe the 'heaven entry requirements' for those faiths and Christianity. When he got to Christianity, he said following the 10 commandments was how you got in.

I then got to share that, actually the Bible teaches that all men, including us, had sinned against God and that He was righteously angry as a result, and that the only way His wrath could be averted was via the sacrifice of His Son on the cross to pay for our sins. Our response is merely faith in that effective salvation and not a list of works. This is what separates a relationship with Christ from all other 'faiths.' We do nothing to come to God, He graciously does it all. In all other systems, the human has to do all the work.

Sadly we weren't able to get to any other conclusions during the evening as the hour was so late. But I thank God that He used me to share His amazing truth, and I pray that the seed planted in the hearers would grow to full-blown faith.

To Him be the Glory!