Pastor David Keuss - Hope without Compromise

S o often in discussion with your friends over a meal, and then even in forced conversations with religionists like Latter Day Saints and Jehovah's Witnesses, what someone believes is said to be true by a person just because they believe it. Of course this is silly, for plenty of people believe wrong things about all kinds of things.  The religionist Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in blood transfusions, so they put their life at risk for no reason.  The religionist Latter Day Saint may believe Joseph Smith was a prophet, when really we know from both archaeology and from North American history nothing he said existed exists in Missouri. The same goes for other areas, your friend in discussion might believe that Apple stock is going up, only to watch it go down in a moving trend for long periods of time.  You may believe a relationship will work out when really it fails.  Dallas-Fort Worth meteorologists routinely predict what will happen in West Fort Worth is...

Over the past five years I have had the privilege to dig into the study of how we know what we know as Christ followers.  A lot of times your friends say to you when you share about Jesus' love for them, "well, that's your opinion and I respect that, but it's not my opinion" even after you have shared evidence for why Jesus is Savior.  Perhaps you used a Josh McDowell book on evidence for Christianity.  Perhaps you have handed out Lee Strobel's The Case for a Creator .  Still, a perceptive unbeliever in Jesus will want to know:  'I see Jesus is probable, and you believe in him, but how do I know that Jesus is really Savior?'  Or perhaps a postmodern neighbor would say 'how do I know Jesus will save me?'  These are questions what is called 'epistemology' the topic of how we know what we know.  I'll be doing some posts on this topic of how we know what we claim we know for a new book I've just published with a division of Tho...