Bible Questions with Michael Pearl
Episode 065: How do I share the Gospel of Jesus with an Atheist?

Episode Transcription:

Michael Pearl:  Hi! I'm Mike Pearl and I'm here in the bright room with all the lights to answer your bible questions today. Jared is behind the camera and you've been sending in questions, so Jared is going to give me the question and I'm going to try and answer for you. So, what's the first question today, Jared?

Jared:  How do I share the gospel of Jesus Christ with my atheist college classmates?

Michael:  OK. Atheist, huh? Well, I used to minister on the street a whole lot to college kids, college campus kids, and to the military way back during the Vietnam War, back during the '60s and early '70s, on up into the early '80s. And if we went out the street and talked to 10 people, two of them were going to claim to be atheist. That was during the hippie movement and following it. Also went to Memphis Academy of Arts, which was a prestigious art college. Got there on a scholarship. Half, two‑thirds of the people there claimed to be atheist. So it's a subject we had to deal with quite a bit.

Now, I read different books by atheists. I have enjoyed reading books. I think Eric Frahm was one of them. I can't remember some of the others.

It's interesting to see the mind of the atheist. It's obvious anytime you read one that he is in a state of conflict. He's in a state of great conflict. He's really preaching to himself more than he is to his audience. Trying to convince himself that there is no God. There's always a motivation and agenda there, when someone claims to be an atheist.

One of the things that I would do and was quite effective, because many times I would come across someone that said they were atheist; 45 minutes later they were praising the Lord Jesus Christ for His grace and mercy in saving their soul.

So, one of the things I would do ‑ and let's go here to the chalkboard, Jared ‑ is, I would say to a person, "You say you're an atheist?" OK. The word atheist is [writing on chalkboard] "No theist" ‑ no God, no theist.

Now, when a person claims that there's no God, what he's saying is that there's no God inside of him, there's no God in his knowledge, no God in his experience. But he's saying more than that. He's saying that there's no God in me. He's saying that there's no God a hundred billion light years away. He's saying that there's no God anywhere in the solar system of the universe.

That's a pretty big bite for someone to take.

So, [on chalkboard] I draw this circle right here and I say, "OK, this circle represents the sum total of your knowledge, and this circle represents the sum total of my knowledge."

Now, this person's gone to Memphis State University. OK. So there are some things you learned in the Science department that I don't know. I'm a blank over here. I didn't learn that. So if you told me that there was a certain piece of equipment or machinery in a certain room, I couldn't dispute that because I've never been there. That's knowledge you hold that I don't hold.

But I say right here, I have knowledge of God. And yet you're saying that I don't have any knowledge of God. That there is no God, that my knowledge is false.

Now, I'm also saying that out here, [drawing on chalkboard] way out here somewhere, many millions of light years away, is a throne on which God sits and that he is omnipresent. He's everywhere. He's omnipotent, all powerful, omniscient, all knowing. [laughs]

I can't spell and write at the same time. And so, I say that God is everywhere. He said he's not.

Now, I ask him, "How can you know that there is no God on the back side of Mars or the back side of the universe somewhere? How can you know there's no God?"

His answer is, "How can you know there is?"

Well, we've got a stalemate there, right? How can I with my limited knowledge claim there's a God? But the question is, how can he with his limited knowledge claim there's not?

Here's the way I know there's a God. I can't go out there and I can't see what can't be seen. God is unseeable. I can't give him any empirical evidence ‑ something to touch, handle, and see, an experiment that he can repeat ‑ that there's a God.

But, what if I said that the God, of the universe, has penetrated my area of knowledge in revealing himself to me. So, he's revealed himself to my consciousness, my mind, my spirit. So, I know Him. I know Him, not because I have all knowledge, but because what little knowledge I have, He's made himself known in my experience. So, I know God.

So, how can you, the atheist, say I have not experienced this, that I don't know God? He's basing that on the fact that, in his limited knowledge, which he would agree is less than one percent, just as my knowledge would be minus one percent, so how can he say that there's not? The question is how can I say there is a God?

My answer is that the way God has revealed himself to me is multiple facet.

First of all, it's through nature itself. That is, when I walk through the woods and I find a wristwatch lying there ‑ say I'm squirrel hunting and I find a wristwatch lying on the ground. I don't pick it up and say, "Wow, if you give a hickory nut tree enough years, look what it'll produce! A piece of equipment that runs in sync with the universe."
I don't say, "Well, look what the squirrels have done." I say, "Oh, some man has been here and lost his watch."

In other words, that's testimony, even though I haven't seen the man, that's testimony that there has been a man, a human being with intelligence, to have created this object right here. So, when I come across an intelligent universe, I see an intelligent designer by that. So, just plain reason, common sense, would indicate a designer present in the universe.

But beyond that, the God of this design has revealed himself to me through a book. [writing on chalkboard] A book which he inspired and produced. I can't talk, [laughs] I can't talk and write at the same time. A book which he inspired and produced that speaks of Him. That book is the Bible.

The atheist will say, "Yeah, but there are many holy books in the world." That's true. And, "There are many books that claim to be from God." That's true.

But this one particular book that I'm speaking of vindicates itself to be "The Book of God." It proves that it's what it claims to be.

How does it do that? By doing something that's impossible. Predicting the future.

This book is full of prophecies that do what Nostradamus would only have wished he could have done, or Jeane Dixon, or Edgar Cayce, or somebody else. This book gives fine details of the future. Three, four thousand years ahead of time. Prophecies that you can test. Clearly test. Go to your library, look it up. Go to Historial. Look at the areas where it spoke of Tyre and the destruction of Tyre. Go to Babylon. Go to Rome. Look at what the Bible said about Gaza, about Ashkelon, about Ashdod.

Great details are given about events that will occur in the future. Some of those prophesies weren't fulfilled for 200 years. Some were fulfilled 1,000 years later. Some were fulfilled 3,000 years later.

One great prophecy in Isaiah was only fulfilled in 1996. It was a prophecy of Jews being taken from Ethiopia in airplanes and brought back to the land of Israel. That prophecy was fulfilled out of Isaiah, just 15 years ago.

So, this book is a book of prophecy. That proves that God wrote it. No one else could have written it but God.

When I open this book and read it, it speaks to my spirit and to my intellect, and convinces me that there's a God out there. So, having believed upon that God, having confidence in what that book says, I've experienced a psychological, emotional, soulish, spiritual transformation inside, which made me a new creature. It's given me an abundance of life. It's multiplied my humanity many times over.

By believing upon this God of this book, it made me a joyous and more righteous, more tolerable human being.

Now, let me turn here in the Bible to a passage in Romans, if I can locate it right quick. This is not my Bible and you know how hard it is to find something if you're not looking in your own Bible. Romans chapter one, I think it is. Romans chapter one, yeah, verse 28, found it.

He said, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." So, rejecting God is an act of spiritual suicide. Saying there is no God is damaging to the human soul.

He said, "They are filled then with unrighteousness." In other words, the atheist becomes filled with unrighteousness ‑ filled with fornication. If I were living in fornication, pornography, and drunkenness and drugs, I'd deny there was a God too, so I could sleep at night, so I could enjoy my sin.

And then he says, "Wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death."

So, most people by far, 99 out of 100 people or more, who call themselves atheist are not really atheist ‑ what they are is agnostic.

Many times, I've had a [knocks on wood] so‑called atheist admit that, "OK, OK," they say, "I can't say there's no God, but you can't say there is."

So, I said, "If you can't say there's a God then that would make you an agnostic." [writing on chalkboard] In other words, no knowledge. No knowledge. It means I have no knowledge that there's a God. If you have no knowledge that there's a God and I have knowledge there is, that makes you the student.

And so, I'm here to share with you the wonderful message, the discovery that I've made ‑ that in fact there is a God who is alive and can live in each one of us. So, there are no real atheists because their knowledge is limited. No matter how intelligent they are, their knowledge is limited.

So, there are no real atheists. They can claim they are, but what they really are is agnostic. In other words, they are students who haven't learned yet the truth that there's a God out there.

So don't be cowed, don't be put off by someone who claims to be an atheist. Just let the joy of the Lord flow through you and tell them your own experience. You don't have to be an intellectual, because they're just human beings too and they're hurting inside and they've got these sins in their lives and they're held prisoner by them and they want to be made free.

They're just trying to throw a wall up and put you off. They are trying to appear more enlightened than you are to try to shut you up. They're not enlightened at all. That's what the Bible says. And that's found that to be a very effective approach down through the years as I've dealt with many people who've claimed to be atheist and many of them today are fine Christians, in Christ.

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