Dear EFC Subscribers:

This newsletter will be a bit more personal that most of them have been.  This week I am retiring after thirty-four years as a chemistry and physics professor.  After a six-month waiting period, I will resume teaching a class or perhaps two classes to keep a toe in college teaching, but my daily schedule will be changing dramatically.  This is something that my wife Jan and I have been dreaming about for several years. I am retiring a few years earlier than one might advise from a purely financial perspective because it is my passion to use as much of my energy as possible to teach the Bible, to write, and to get the evidence for Christianity out there to serve the gospel.  Those who know me will attest that I have a lot of energy.  I ask your prayers, but also, if possible, your support, as Jan and I are stepping out on faith to pursue this ministry full time.  We can use the support of our subscribers and supporters now more than ever. Please give serious consideration to helping this ministry financially. You can use the donate button at the site or you can contact us at joakes01@san.rr.com.

This step will affect the EvidenceForChristianity website–and the effect will be positive!  I am planning on moving from sending out mostly newsy letters on a hit-and-miss basis every couple of months to biweekly newsletters with more content.  We will be sending out articles, news, links, and a variety of information.  Kathryn (Oakes) Hall has volunteered to help put together materials and my good friend Cory Wadstrom is now putting together a regular podcast series.  You can access the first podcast now through a link at the site.  Please listen to Cory’s first podcast and spread around the news that we will be posting regularly.  This should be a great tool for sharing with our friends and supporting the faith of believers.  We are actively looking for volunteers to help put together the newsletter and other works.

At EFC we are looking for someone with passion for Christian evidence with considerable website and social media skills who can come on as an intern for this ministry.  This is a great need so that we can reach more and more people through our podcasts, questions and answers, articles and much more. We are also planning on putting together short videos and can use help producing these.  Please consider contacting me if you or someone you know might be able to take on this exciting and noble task.

Some time in early 2019 we at ARS are planning a Christian Evidence summit either in San Diego or Los Angeles.  We want to pull together as many as we can who have great passion to get the evidence underlying the Christian faith together. For some of you, this is your passion and we need you.  The world needs you.  We want to launch EFC 2.0.  Up until now, a small group of mostly men, mostly from Southern California have been doing some pretty amazing work to promote the Christian faith, putting together a Christian Apologetics Certificate program ten conferences, myriad other classes, promoting the writing of books, my personal teaching ministry–visiting more than seventy countries and 150 churches.  Deep gratitude goes to Foster Stanback, Jan Oakes, Kedron Jones, Dan Conder, Brian Colon, Jaime DeAnda and Viet Nguyen. However, there is so much more need to make teaching and materials available across the world.  Please consider joining us in early 2019 for our summit to plan and dream about EFC 2.0. One definite need is for women who are interested in using Christian evidence to change the world.  If you are at all interested, please text me at 858-344-5323 or e-mail me at john.oakes@gcccd.edu.  There is much to do!

It would not be an EvidenceForChristianity newsletter without some news, and we do have some. I will be teaching in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico July 6-8 for a Bible workshop.  Also, I will be on a missionary teaching trip from July 11-Aug 1 to Vladivostok, Russia, Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, Ulan Batar, Mongolia and Bishkek, Kyrgystan (in Central Asia). This will be a grueling teaching trip, so prayers are requested. Also, we can use some help to cover the cost of this teaching trip.  In addition, I will be teaching at the Inspire Conference–a worldwide Singles conference over the Labor Day holiday ww.inspireconference2018.com I will be giving an exposition on Luke at this conference.  Also, Jan and I will be traveling to Israel October 22-29, followed by a teaching trip in Amman, Jordan Oct 30-Nov 4, Beirut, Lebanon Nov 5-8 and Cairo, Egypt Nov 9-12.  We will be posting more information for those who are interested in attending the teaching sessions.

There is plenty of new material at the web site. I recently taught a fifteen hour Old Testament Survey class which is available at the web site.  There are also several new lessons available–an Introduction to Acts, a sermon on Philippians 3, a class on Colossians from the Catalyst Singles retreat and much more.  I am including a couple of the more interesting questions and answers posted recently at the site.

After two years of research and writing, volume 3 of The Christian Story: Finding the Church in Church History is now in final phase of editing with Illuminations Publishers.  It covers the years 1500-1725, including the Reformation.  As with the previous volumes, the book will include a number of essays. We will be publishing some of the essays in volume 3 in the next few newsletters.  Hopefully, it will make you want to get the book when it comes out late this summer.

Please keep us in your prayers, and if any of the requests above find resonance with your personal vision for your life, please contact me.

John Oakes

Question:

If I understand correctly, God’s will is not always done. This is implied in the Lord’s prayer (in which Jesus prays, “your will be done”). To complete my understanding, we are also given the free will which may sometimes triumph over God’s will. When this happens and God allows it, I would assume that He allows it although He doesn’t will it, and the two are not necessarily in conflict.   If my premise is correct, can you please help me better understand how James 4:15 applies here? In the NIV translation, it uses the word “will” instead of “allow”, does this mean that if God doesn’t will it, it won’t happen?  The reason I asked is because there is a bigger question on how far God may be responsible in allowing or willing evil or harm to happen. If James implied that everything can only happen if God wills it, this is contradictory to how I understand God, who plans only to prosper us and not to harm us (Jeremiah 29:11). But then there is also the entire Job story, which makes Jeremiah even more difficult to harmonize.   Perhaps there are semantics or translation problem here but would appreciate it if you can shed some light.

Thanks!

Answer:

On the one hand, I believe that your understanding of where God’s will fits with our free will is spot on.  God gives us the ability to do things which violate his will.  Your use of the Lord’s Prayer is a great way to see this truth. One way to put it is that it is God’s will that we have free will.  Therefore, ultimately, God’s sovereignty is not violated, even if we do not obey him, as his sovereign will is that we be allowed to disobey him if we so choose.   It is not that our will “triumphs” God’s will but that our will violates God’s will for our lives and he allows this to happen because he loves us enough to give us a choice.

On the other hand, I believe that you are not understanding James 4:15 correctly, which is causing your confusion.  What James is telling us is that when we make decisions, we ought to ask what God’s will is in making our decisions.  We ought to acknowledge God’s desire and plan is rather than simply directing our lives according to our desires.  Besides, we should be aware that, ultimately, God is in control.  If he chooses that our life will end at a give time, then, if he so chooses, then he can call us home, as they say.  Whether God will intervene, or whether he will allow our will to determine the final result of our plans is beside the point.  The point is that we always ought to ask, first, what is God’s will, not our own will.  In Romans 12:1-2 we are told that if we present our lives/bodies as living sacrifices, then, over time, we will come to understand what God’s will is in any particular situation.  I believe that this coming to be sensitive to God’s will happens to us over time.  However, if we have the attitude James is calling us to have, then we will learn to be more in tune with God’s will and we will not so arrogantly act as if God has no place in our decisions and in the direction our lives take.

I believe that what actually happens in this world is complicated.  There is God’s will and desire, there is our own personal will and desire and there is also the wills and desires of those around us.  We could add the will of Satan and his demons.  Exactly which is the cause and effect of every single thing that happens is not something we have an exact prescription to explain it to us.  We have to live in a permanent state of not having the exact answer to every question about such things.   However, the admonition of James is that we should be sensitive to God’s will as we make our plans and we should not be  arrogantly make our own plans, because “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).  You should be aware that James 4:6 is the background and context to James 4:13-16.  Notice James 4:16; “As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”  This is the explanation of the passage in question.

God wants us to keep his desires and plans for us in mind at all times.   James does NOT imply that “everything can only happen if God wills it” in this passage.  God has plans to prosper us (Jeremiah 29:11), like you say,  but sometimes we thwart those plans by sinning.  Also, sometimes he purposefully allows hardship in our lives, rather than “blessing” in order to teach us and to help us to become what he wants us to become (James 1:2-4).   Sorry about that, but life is complicated and we cannot figure out the exact cause and reason for everything which happens.  Our job is to trust in God’s providence and to do our very best to be sensitive to what his will is and to move in a direction consistent with his will as we understand it, the best that we can.

Job is a great example of this principle.  We know the reasons behind what happened to Job, but Job is not aware of the reasons behind his suffering.  When he doubts God and demands an explanation for the why, God says to him, “Brace yourself like a man.” (Job 38:2).  It is not for us to know God’s will in every situation, but it is our job to trust in him because “faith is being certain of what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1), and one of the things we cannot “see” is sometimes God’s will in any particular situation.

John Oakes

Question:

Why God has allowed the discovery of vaccines and antibiotics to cure illness? If diseases are punishment from God then if we cure them we go against the will of God who want to punish us. If vaccines and antibiotics are discovered because God want to bless us, then why did God contradict Himself by sending diseases and then sending the cures of the same diseases he has sent? And if vaccines and antibiotics are a blessing from God why did God deliver these blessings only after thousands of years and after millions of people already died from these diseases?

Answer:

I believe that there is more than one false premise in the arguments above.  First of all, it certainly is not true that diseases are a punishment from God.  In fact, in John 9, the people assume that the blindness of the man is because of someone’s sin.  Jesus refutes this belief.  He was blind, at least in part, so that God’s glory could be revealed in healing him.  Disease is not because of sin.  Christians get sick equally often as non-Christians.  No one lives forever.  All of us die.  Neither is death evil, nor is sickness evil.  This physical life is accompanied by many kinds of suffering.  Disease is as “natural” as the sun rising and setting.  In fact, bacteria are essential to life of advanced animals, putting oxygen in the air and nitrogen in the soil.   The premise that disease is a punishment from God is not correct.  Therefore, the invention of vaccines is not a contravention of God’s will.  Has anyone in all history ever been given an illness by God due to their sin?  I suppose that this has happened at times. One example is found in 2 Kings 15:5 with king Azariah.  However, as I understand it, this is certainly is not the pattern.  Disease is natural.  Believers are equally likely as non-believers to get an infectious disease and all–whether sinner or saint–will die.

[an aside: Some have publicly stated that AIDS is God’s punishment on homosexuality.  This is wrong on so many levels, I can hardly get started in my refutation of this outrageous claim.  First of all, it assumes that a specific disease is God’s judgment for a specific sin. This is presumptuous to a breath-taking degree. Who gets the right to say this?  Second, it assumes that homosexuality is somehow worse than adultery or premarital sex or any other kind of sex outside of the God-given gift of sex between a man and a woman in a committed marriage. Where did this idea come from? Third, given that most of the victims of AIDS are not homosexuals, this claim is both wrong and extremely insensitive.]

God gave us freedom of will as well as intellectual ability.  God is not against us talking by phone or flying by plane or taking antibiotics to prevent disease.   What verse in the Bible even hints that it goes against God’s will for us to cure a disease or to put a splint to help a broken bone to heal.  In fact Jesus showed compassion for those who were sick, and Christians do so as well.  For us to help avoid suffering through medical science is within the general will of God.

God wants to bless us, but the existence of disease does not contradict this fact.  The blessings of this life are more spiritual and emotional than physical.  In any case, God did not intend us to live forever in these bodies.  Therefore, the fact that some of us die by accident or by heart disease or by pneumonia does not violate the will of God.  Neither does it prove that God does not want to bless us.  I have been greatly blessed by God.  I could write many paragraphs describing the blessings of God in my life.  Yet I do get sick and I assume that I will eventually die of one of those sicknesses, unless I am killed by an accidental death before sickness gets me.

As for vaccines, what would you propose?  Should God have dropped vaccines out of the sky?  Like I said, God gave us intellectual ability.  He gave us the ability to discover natural laws through science.  But he did not simply drop those laws onto our laps.  He gave us intellect and the ability to create ideas and to research and understand the world.  What a wonderful thing.  Thank-you God for creating the laws of nature and for giving human beings the ability to discover such laws and to use them to relieve human suffering.  And thank-you to Pasteur and Jenner and Salk for helping to discover the cures for some of these diseases.

So, the two incorrect premises in the question above are these.

1. That diseases are, as a rule, a punishment on us for our sin.
2. That God’s desire to bless us means that there can be no suffering, illness or death in our lives.

John Oakes