How to help make the Gospel make sense to agnostics and atheists

Recently, I was at Okinawa, Japan to participate at the All Asian Creation Conference 2018.  Not only was I given the opportunity to listen to speakers from all over the world, I was also given the privilege to deliver a talk on one of the simultaneous sessions that were held.

My talk was all about how combining the Law with creation science in the goal of delivering the Gospel message would cause a person to reflect more on the Good News.  My respondents for the study were Filipinos.

Creation science talk have become essential in the past years as many people have started to question the existence of God due to the proliferation of atheistic science.  The big bang and the theory of evolution have become the accepted explanation for origin which gives no need for God as Creator of the universe.  By arguing mostly through obvious design in things around us and within us, creation science claims that design is proof of a designer, and that the universe's Designer is God. Countless Christians today have testified that they have come to know the Savior through creation science talks.

We at Living Waters-Asia understand that sin is the reason why man is separated from God and why he faces an eternity of anguish in Hell. Yes, we see the value of what creation science does to a person... proving the existence and power of God, and this is actually a prerequisite to saving faith (Hebrews 11:6 "And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.").  But can we include the Law with creation science towards the delivery of the Gospel?  

In this study, we were not creating a "technique" that will bring in "better" results in our Gospel-sharing.  Results are in the realm of the Holy Spirit.  The Christian's realm is in the obedience to the call of the Great Commission.  What our aim was in this study was to see if God will bless the combination of the Law and creation science in the delivery of the Gospel, two elements that we have seen He has been using throughout time to bring people to Himself.

Using the experimental method and quantitative analysis, we found that combining the Law and creation science with the Gospel message made people we shared the Good News to, to think that what was shared to them was worth reflecting on later in the day, compared to when the Law and creation science were separately used in the presentation of the life-saving message of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.  As to why this is so, a careful analysis of the Gospel message made us arrive to the following explanations...

For creation science, we realized that although it proves to people that God does exist, there seems to be lacking a strong connection to the message of salvation that the Gospel declares.  It's like this... "Okay, you've proven to me that God exists and that He is very powerful through your creation science talk.  But why do I need salvation which your talk of the Gospel implies?"  We see here that the need for salvation is not fully explained by creation science.  In the minds of people where this approach is used, a gap in the message seems to make the Gospel less sensible.  No wonder why there are people who claim to be creationists but not Christians. This is probably the reason why groups we had administered this approach showed lesser intentions to reflect on the Gospel message later in the day than the group where both the Law and creation science were used in the Gospel presentation.

With the use of the Law, on the other hand, the reason we see why people would still show a lesser intention to reflect on the Gospel message later in the the day aside from the possibility that their conscience have made them uncomfortable and are now in denial of it, was, also, the absence of an important element. If a person, even if it was proven to him that he had offended a certain moral law, if his belief is that no moral law Giver exists, and therefore, no one to make him accountable for his actions  someday, or if he does believe in the existence of God, but he, nonetheless,  fails to grasp how powerful that God is, the need for salvation as the Gospel implies will be lesser for him. So what happens here is that a presentation of the Gospel with the Law needs what creation science brings to the table.

When we combined the Law with creation science, what we observed was a statistically significant tendency of people to have the initiative to reflect on the Gospel message later in the day.  The reason was obvious... the Gospel message made total sense now.  Let me explain that in reverse... "I need the salvation that Christ has made available through His sacrifice at the cross (the Gospel) because of my offense of the Ten Commandments (the Law) which an ever-existing and all-powerful God (creation science) has given for man to obey."  The declaration of the Bible that "it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31)" starts to become so real for a person with the combination of the Law and creation science with the Good News.

We saw this applied by the apostle Paul in the message he delivered at Mars Hill (Acts 17).  His audience (Greeks) were serving and worshiping an "UNKNOWN GOD".  He started his sermon by declaring who God is... the Creator of the universe.  You see, the Greeks do not know the God of the Jews, and so, they were introduced first by Paul to the God of the Jews.  This is what Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis calls as what creation science does... "making Jews first out of Greeks".  Then Paul declared the Law to his audience, specifically, the commandment against idolatry as that was the predominant sin of the people listening to him.  Only after that did he deliver the Gospel message for at this point, the Good News really is good news.

Specially when we are trying to share the Gospel to agnostics and atheists, people who have been poisoned by the teachings of secular science, it will be good if we can employ this model.  These people have so many arguments against the existence of God, so we must prove that they're wrong using creation science.  After that, let's show them how they have offended the Creator with their sins using the Law, so that when we get to the Gospel, things will make sense for them as to why they need to repent of their sins and trust Christ for their salvation.  You can watch Ray Comfort using this approach by clicking the links to these two videos: Evolution v.s God and The Atheist Delusion

From there, we let the Holy Spirit do the work that only He can do.

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