Apologies for the lack of updates for such a long time. I had been writing a sermon through my computer; however my computer crashed and I had lost a mood for blogging my sermons and Christian stories I had said I would put. So here is a new start, to continue my aim in creating this blog in the first place, mainly to show the love of Christ, add in stories and Christian doctrines, to show why this is indeed, simply, Truth.

Some time ago I had a debate with a Chinese Muslim, once a Christian in a renowned church in Malaysia. He had converted to Islam because he wanted to marry a Malay woman. After a small chat, he had begun questioning my faith after we had some talk that delved into the topic of religion, and so began a talk that quickly became an intense yet calm debate.

Now he commented that if a God indeed exists, He is surely a sadist. How else would there be so much suffering in the world yet nothing divine is done to help the poor and needy? Look at all the death and how the poor suffer, the evils in the world so great it is impossible to fathom. He took this idea through the general principle that a loving God would not allow so much suffering to exist; surely He would do something about it. My answer was He does. That surprised him, as he explained that if that were so, our world would not have so much pain and suffering. I responded by saying that God does not approve of it, and far be from it that He is the cause, as humans are the cause of the sin in this world. It would be like telling the Land Transport Authority that they are the fault of the accidents that happen on the roads everyday. Same goes for God, you don't blame God for human sin, man brought it upon himself. He continued to extrapolate on that matter by continuing to insist that God is a sadistic God. After all, he said, since He knows the future and everything, why does he put people through suffering? It would be extremely unloving of a so called loving God to make people suffer. Why can't I be Bill Gates' son instead? Why must I have a normal job and not great wealth? I responded in an almost joking way, I couldn't help but laugh at the Bill Gates comment. Because, I said, God can use suffering in a way to strengthen our faith. Faith with no foundations will be taken for granted, it'd be pointless if we all lived happily and simply give up when things come crashing down on us. Not to mention it would make people appreciate the insurmountable good that God gives in the midst of suffering. The Israelites took God for granted and look how it left them? To be overtaken by Babylon. Thus God can make a use for this for the better good, as He has done countless times. Plus lets say if God made you Bill Gates' son, you wouldn't have married your wife, add to the fact that you just might become a spoiled brat with all those riches. What you have know makes you happy right? Even though you aren't rich, you're still a decent person and all. Riches may have changed you for the worse. Although this friend is a very open minded person, he seemed indignant when I gave my response, though I knew I struck a cord when I mentioned his family. We took a break, drank a bit, and then continued.

At this he tried a new approach: if God really can change people, as you claim He did for you (I had told him a brief background of how I was before) and so many others, why not just take away the part of people that sin? You can't. He questioned why not. Because, we have free will, and we do whatever we want with that free will, and God, all powerful could take that free will away from us, but He won't, because He loves us and as bad as the decisions we make, He still respects them. Besides, it would be immoral. That really surprised him. Immoral you say? I'm sure you are wondering why it would be immoral for God to make us sinless by taking away the part of us that sin. Well then it'd mean God would have to take away our entire bodies as every part can sin, and our free will would be taken away as well. Then it would be completely pointless to have created humans then. Humans, angels and even Lucifer himself was created and had free will, and although the usual notion is that angels are pure spirit beings who are messengers, soldiers and musicians among other professions, Lucifer and the angels who fell with him clearly sinned, they were not perfect, they were susceptible to sinning. Thus except for God Himself, everyone is able to sin should they choose to; free will has a possibility for sinning and for humans, "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" as stated in the book of Romans. He still did not get my point, which annoyed me because he's at least thirty years older than me yet doesn't get a concept that I completely understand. He insisted again, God can take away the part of the humans that sin, so why put humans through the suffering? I briefly repeated what I said as it completely answers his question and added a bit more. You can't, because free will always will have the possibility of sin in it, when God created man, God did not create sin but had created the possibility of sin, a risk He took because He did love us and we failed Him. So as God always has done, he fixed a way for us to be saved, He cleaned up after our mistakes, He took up our yokes. That is truly love. He seemed to get my point this time and took a sip of beer, and went on.

After explaining that to him, he still did not give in and instead tried another way to disprove my claims by asking me whether I believed the Bible was the inspired Word of God due to my referral to the book of Romans. As a Christian, obviously my beliefs come with the assured belief that the Word of God is true. After giving him my obvious answer he gave me a question that several Christians I know cannot answer properly, lest they do not know the answer. He stated a well known fact of ancient literacy that he said would also apply to the Bible. That although the Bible claims to be divine, it was written by human hands and thus it is prone to be contaminated, and the Da Vinci Code clearly says it has been revised many times and is not the Word of God but a book made by men to strengthen political power. Okay, I replied, first and foremost, the Bible was not written to strengthen political power. With the Old Testament in it, there was no hope of the book to give political power back in the old days, it would have given them laws to govern properly, most unlike the societies that Israel had fought with. There would be no political power through that, it would have made people more pure instead, not enhance greed for power. And in the New Testament it fits perfectly with the Old Testament, not contradicting with it but fulfilling it perfectly. I gave a brief rundown to him of why I believe the Bible is divine: Sixty six books in perfect unity, written over thousands of years by at least forty authors and they all unfold one continuous storyline of a fall, and a master plan of hope and redemption, one central message in a book with more diversity than any other book. Add to the fact that the Bible has continually been proven right historically, mainly through archaeology. King David, the Hittites, Sodom and Gomorrah are all mentioned in the Old Testament. Now except for the Bible, no other sources in the world had mentioned them. So critics had charged the Bible by saying that since there was no proof of them, the Bible must be false and exaggerated, evidence that human hands have lied through these pages. Yet only recently, a piece of pottery from an enemy of ancient Israel had mentioned King David of Israel in it, speaking of a victory over his descendants. Relatively recently discovered records of the Hittites were found along with the Hittite library. Five cities are mentioned in the Old Testament and their positions were proven in recent digs. Even more intriguing is that two cities excavated were found to been have completely destroyed, fragments the only evidence of the cities of before. In the Bible Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed because of their sin. Mere coincidence? Again and again the Bible has been proved right archaeologically. Though granted some prophecies are vague, most prophecies of the future range from detailed to unbearably detailed, and all (except those speaking of the future yet to come) have been fulfilled, all details in accordance with Scripture. Don't even get me started on how two hundred predictions of the Messiah were fulfilled by only one man, Jesus Christ. Fair enough he said, but I didn't answer his main question. I did not, so I tried: every single manuscript of the books of the Bible that have been found are all 99.5% similar. Now people may wonder, if that's the case and since the Bible is said to be without error, how can that be? Well, that 0.5% of differences is extremely minute. For example, in the modern Bible and many manuscripts, Galatians ends with the word amen. However some manuscripts did not contain that amen. In the Gospels, and epistles (letters written from the apostles) many manuscripts, when referring to Jesus, simply had his name there. In the other manuscripts, some verses had "Lord" added in before Jesus' name. They had just added more detail, nothing which supported the argument of an error, no matter how small. Only in a two sections of the Bible in John and Mark are there stories not mentioned in the earliest manuscripts. Still, these are not contradictory, but complementary. It does not disprove Scripture and still does not have any error. Other than this, all the manuscripts for the books of the Bible were in striking concordance with each other. Written by human hands over centuries but still uncontaminated... only a Divine Mind could have done that.

He had accepted my arguments but did not believe, as the Qur'an (or Koran, the Muslim holy book) states that the book was given to the Prophet Muhammad to be the pure and untouched book from God, given as Scripture from Moses and Jesus time had been contaminated. Even though I had just as well as proven that the Christian Bible was pure and unchanged through several sources of evidence through brief explanations, how much more if I had gone into details with more sources? Many people claim they don't believe because the Bible is full of contradictions and errors. I doubt they have even read it. There is nothing like it on earth.

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