Someone made the comment that the greatest question of our time is: Why should I be moral?

B. The current ethical dilemma in our society is well-illustrated by an incident at the U. of Calif. at Berkeley. A male student came to class wearing nothing but shoes. The authorities were at a loss as to what they should do. After all, we are a pluralistic society and who are we to impose our values on him? The student repeated his behavior for two weeks before it was concluded that he was guilty of sexual harassment!

C. Ethics is the study concerned with the question of oughtness. On what basis, or on what grounds, should I act one way rather than another? What makes an action good or bad? Is there some standard by which to judge behavior? Or, what is the good? In philosophy, this is known as the search for the summum bonum, the highest good.

How do we know God exists?

1. The only way we can know a personal God exists is through His revelation of Himself in the Bible.

2. The design of nature makes the existence of a Designer highly probable but this cannot result in absolute proof.

3. Man can reason that a God must exist, but the man doing the reasoning is finite and has been affected by the fall. All philosophical arguments fall short of proving God's existence. (though some of the arguments are quite good!).

The doctrine of the deity of Christ is a fundamental of the faith. Almost all (even critics of Christianity) agree He was a unique person.

The word comes from the Latin cultus. Any kind of ritual, ceremony, or liturgy.

In recent times it means a group or movement that deviates from orthodoxy while claiming to represent the true faith.

There are still different opinions as to exactly what a cult is. To some, it is any movement that is weird, sinister, authoritarian, or incomprehensible.

It’s safe to say that no issue in our country has been more divisive or polarizing than the issue of abortion. Whenever a society or a country is steadily and increasingly moving toward an economy of socialism abortion becomes popular as a means to control an economy. Why? Because in a socialist economy the government in self-interest must weed out those that do not contribute, i.e, the physically and mentally handicapped, even the shear number of inhabitants must be controlled.

The question of suffering relates to the larger question of why God allows evil in the world. Ultimately this is a mystery since God Himself is wholly good and is all-powerful in that He could prevent it. What we do see in Scripture is that evil and its ensuing suffering are purposeful in God's plan. It might be helpful to liken God's eternal plan to a weaving. The under side of a weaving compared to the top is often unsightly. Manytimes our perspective of things is comparable to viewing a weaving from the wrong side!

The major problem with the atheistic assertion is the nature of the man making the declaration; he is finite or limited in his own being, yet the statement: "there is no god" is an all-inclusive absolute. It is a well- known philosophical axiom that you can never arrive at an absolute or infinite beginning with the finite. Atheism makes the fatal mistake, as do all humanist philosophies, in that it makes man the ultimate judge despite the fact that man is finite.

THE PROBLEM: The interpretation of the "days" of Genesis One became a serious problem when the scientific establishment inaugurated the view that the earth was billions of years old. Think about it! If we put all scientific knowledge aside, using only the normal rules of interpretation, how would you interpret the "days" of Genesis One? It is interesting that the liberal commentators who reject the Bible as inspired, and therefore have nothing to lose, are almost unanimous that the "days" of Genesis One are normal days.

There are many reasons for rejecting evolution: lack of evidence, faulty logic, never been observed, etc. However, if the teaching of the Bible were our only consideration, would there be sufficient reasons for rejecting evolution? We think so. Why is this an important issue? Because today many theologians who call themselves evangelicals seem to see no conflict in believing in both evolution and the Bible. (By evolution we mean macro evolution as described by Darwin and his followers.) The following are some major reasons why we think this is not logically possible:

If we had no scientific knowledge of origins, and only what the Bible tells us, what would we know? The following is a brief outline of the Bible's teaching on origins. It is not meant to be exhaustive, but we think it includes the major ideas of a Biblical doctrine of creation. A Christian who believes in the absolute authority of the Bible will begin his quest for knowledge about origins with the Bible's teaching as a given. All other observed facts and assumptions of science will be interpreted in its light, not vice versa. The teachings of science will never be used in such a way where an interpretation of Scripture becomes forced, e.g. seeing the pattern and progression of evolution in Genesis One.