Azad Kastanian's Page

Hi Azad,
Your message this morning reminded me of the words of the man whose son was possessed. Jesus said, "If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes." The man replied, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!" (Mark 9:23-24). This was a genuine cry for Christ to help him and the Bible never says that the man was rebuked for such a request. In fact, the very fact that you show great concern about your faith reveals the sincerity of it. I doubt that someone with false faith would be very concerned.
Like I mentioned before, there are scores of prophecies that were precisely fulfilled in the time of Christ, but there are others that await fulfillment. Zechariah 12-14 talk about how He will return to Jerusalem to defend her against the nations that come up against it. I'm not sure how sensitive of an issue this is for you since I see you live in Lebanon, but you are next-door neighbors to a miracle and fulfilled prophecies. The fact that the nation of Israel exists today is nothing short of miraculous and is a fulfillment of numerous prophecies. So many of the passages which speak of Christ's return mention Israel, Jerusalem, Judah, the Jews, etc. Many Christians have tried to spiritualize these to refer to the church, but I personally believe they make far more sense if we just accept what it says. This isn't to say that modern Israel is godly, but someday I believe they will be. Why? Because the Bible tells us that in the Zechariah passage (and in Romans 11:26). There is so much more on this subject too.
Back to the Resurrection: once again, if Jesus truly rose from the dead, then His teachings are confirmed and you have no reason to doubt. This doesn't mean that you won't ever have genuine questions. God is not afraid of our questions, and I believe He enjoys when His people sincerely seek understanding. But it doesn't matter how smart some fallible professors are, if they reject Christ's word, then they are mistaken. We can have great confidence in the Son of God, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).
I hope this is helpful.

Azad, I understand that you have a desire for external confirmation of what the Gospel writers stated, but why not just trust them? You have four separate historical sources who all say the same thing - Jesus died by crucifixion and then rose again, just like He said He would. The world would like you to think that you can't trust them because they had an agenda to promote. Well, the people who say that also have an agenda they are pushing, so I guess we can't trust that statement either.
The Resurrection clinches everything Jesus said and did. If He rose from the dead, then all of His other miracles and teachings are certain. Why? Because a man cannot raise himself from the dead - God did it. Think about this - would God raise someone from the dead who went around telling people that He was the way, truth, and the life, and that He and the Father were one? Only if He agreed with His message. He wouldn't raise a false teacher from the grave, because that would lend credibility to a false teacher. No, He raised His Son from the dead, which shows that God confirmed His message.
There are external sources that correspond to these events in the Gospels, but ask yourself if you really need them. Are you acting more like Thomas who said that he wouldn't believe until he put his hands in the scars? Thomas should have believed his friends when they told him that Jesus rose from the dead. Frankly, the Resurrection of Christ is undeniable. There are so many "infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3) of this event. Here's a link to a talk I gave a few years on the Resurrection. I hope this is helpful. http://www.midwestapologetics.org/media/resurrection.mp3
Here are a couple of resources you can read to find out more: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus by Gary Habermas (http://www.amazon.com/Case-Resurrection-Jesus-Gary-Habermas/dp/0825427886) and The Impossible Faith by JP Holding (www.amazon.com/Impossible-Faith-James-Patrick-Holding/dp/1602660840/). 

Hi Azad, the Bible tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). Now this doesn't mean that we should be irrational and just have blind faith (believing without having good reasons for it). But it does mean that we won't have 100% absolute certainty using our senses (see definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1). However, we can have complete confidence in the work of Christ for our salvation and we can know that we have eternal life (1 John 5:13).
There are a lot of apologists today who try to demonstrate the truthfulness of the Bible, but for one reason or another, they skip one of the Bible's own "proofs." I call it God's apologetic: prophecy. If you look at Isaiah 40-46, God says over and over again through Isaiah that He is higher than any god and He will prove it by telling the end from the beginning. There are several precise prophecies in that passage alone. God tells Isaiah the name of the guy (Cyrus) who would send the Jews back to their homeland - more than 100 years before Cyrus was ever born. There are literally thousands of prophecies in the Bible. In fact, at the time it was written, between 25-30 percent of the Bible was prophecy. In Genesis 3:15 there is the promise of the Seed of the woman who would crush the serpent. I don't have time to write about all the prophecies and their precise fulfillment, but think about what else God predicted: Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14), would ride into Jerusalem on a colt of a donkey (Zech. 9:9), sold for 30 pieces of silver (Zech. 11:12), would be killed in the place of others (Daniel 9:26; Isaiah 53:4-6); he would die with wicked men but buried with the rich (Isaiah 53:9); he would rise again (Isaiah 53:10; Matt. 20:19).
There are so many others you could look, but here's the point. Only an omniscient (all-knowing) and transcendent (outside of time and space) Being could give prophecy like this. No other religion in the world relies upon prophecy. You won't find it in the Koran, Book of Mormon, Vedas, etc. because the people who came up with those systems do not know the future. God does. God explained it to us in advance. I would encourage you to study the prophecies in Scripture in more detail. Maybe pick up a good book that goes through some of this, just so you can see how incredible it is that God told His people in advance what would happen. My favorite book for this is Daniel (and a good book explaining it is John Walvoord's commentary on Daniel).
What does all that have to do with the big bang? Well, you already know there are numerous scientific problems with the big bang. But prophecy shows us that the Bible is true and that we can trust God. Since that's true, and God said He made everything in six days about six thousand years ago, then we can trust that too. Speaking of prophecy, Peter said in 2 Peter 3 that the time would come when scoffers (mockers) would come who would mock the idea of the Creation, the Flood, and Christ's return, and they would do it because they wanted to follow their own desires. And he said that they would follow a philosophy that said "since the fathers fell asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning." What does that sound like? How about uniformitarianism (the present is the key to the past - the way things are now is the way they've always been)? That's the underlying philosophy of the big bang and evolution. Notice which three things they specifically mock: Creation, Flood, and Second Coming. Does that look like what we see today? It's exactly the same. How did Peter know we would see this? Because the Holy Spirit inspired him to write what he did.
There is so much more that could be said, but I hope this will give you a good place to start.
May God bless you as you study His Word.

Hi Azad, I would encourage you to go to this page on the AiG website (http://www.answersingenesis.org/get-answers/topic/astrophysics) and the scroll down to "What are some of the problems with the big bang hypothesis?" There are several articles there that show why the big bang did not happen and is not feasible. Of course, the greatest argument against the big bang is that God told us He created in a different manner - in six days approximately 6,000 years ago. Dr. Lisle and I co-authored a section in our book (Old-Earth Creationism on Trial) which shows many of the problems with the big bang and how it contradicts Scripture. You can read that online here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/oect/big-bang-god

God bless!