So often, Christians are confronted with objection after objection when trying to share the Truth of the Gospel and Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. In just about every encounter between a Christian and a non-believer about spiritual truths, the Christian will proclaim the Gospel message, only to be met with objections such as: “But what about the contradictions in the Bible I’ve heard about?,” “But what about all the violence that’s been committed in the name of Christianity?,” “But what about the other religions out there?” Such objections are often indicative of the fact that the one making the objection is still dealing with the Cost of Truth – the person is still dealing with emotional biases that get in the way of that most fundamental question – What is true?
But may be the case that the one making this objection has already dealt with personal bias and really just wants to know what belief to confidently trust in. Although objections about the Bible’s authenticity and the history of the church are important and can be confidently answered, these questions often take the focus off the key inquiry: did the resurrection of Jesus happen? Instead of answering this all-important question, a Christian will spend hours dealing with every other objection, only to find that time has run out and a discussion about the proof of the central claim for Christianity—the resurrection—never took place. In other words, the “But what abouts” amount to a “spiritual eclipse.” The objector allows their personal issues to eclipse the truth of the resurrections.
If the person you are witnessing to is truly past the Cost of Truth, the solution to dealing with the “But what about” objections is to focus on the supernatural event principle of the Test of Truth. In a previous issue of Verdict we described the supernatural event principle, but a short definition will do here. The supernatural event principal states that the only way a supernatural belief can be objectively verified is to see if that belief offers a supernatural historical event. Christianity offers the only supernatural event that can be verified—the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Either it happened or it did not. If it did not, then the Truth lies elsewhere. If it did, then there is a God, Jesus’ claims to divinity were true, His teaching of the Bible as God’s Word is true, and all other objections to Christianity are relegated to secondary issues. As Mickey Badalamenti of Aletheia International has put it, “Focusing on the Test of Truth eliminates all the noise.”
We recently had the opportunity to put the Test of Truth principle into action. This past June, Aletheia spoke at Rockpointe Community Church in Sterling Heights, Michigan and presented Aletheia’s three step approach to effective evangelism. After the presentation, a skeptical young woman who was open to Christianity approached us about the Truth of the Gospel. During the discussion, she raised many objections, such as “Wasn’t the Bible compiled long after Jesus’ death?” and ao on. While these were all important questions with equally important answers, the objections were really spiritual eclipses—they took the focus off of what was objectively verifiable—the resurrection. Instead of answering every objection she raised, which would have taken hours and kept us from discussing the proof of the resurrection, we focused on the importance of the supernatural event principle. We showed her that a Christian does not need to presume that the Bible is the inerrant word of God to have proof of the resurrection. Whenever an objection was raised, we challenged her to first focus on whether the resurrection was true or not. All other objections were secondary to that one question. Eventually, she understood that if the resurrection was a true event of history, her objections could no longer keep her from embracing the truth that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
If it’s been your experience that your witnessing is less effective because you have to deal with countless objections, we encourage you to focus on the supernatural event principle. To learn more about how to use this principle, contact us. We’d love to hear from you.