Thanks once again to Marilyn Brown who sent in this concise explanation of Christianity. In these confusing times it is essential to be certain about basic truths, or you might be deceived into thinking you are related to a chimpanzee…..

Gibber! Gibber!

Chugley

The Thinking Chimp

WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?

Marilyn Brown

Christianity is unique among world religions in that its focus is not about man’s own ability to follow a methodology in order to reach divinity, but about man’s willingness to put aside one’s reliance on self in order to do nothing but the will of God.  Thus, Christianity is wholly focused on each individual’s relationship with the God who is the Creator of the universe.

In order that all might understand who this God is and how we can achieve this relationship, God Himself provided us with a love letter – the Bible – which is, in itself, unique.

The Bible was written over a span of 1,500 years by more than 40 human authors from all walks of life.  They were kings and farmers, historians and fishermen, priests, prophets and apostles.  It was written in three languages – Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek; and in four geopolitical regions – the Middle East, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor and southern Europe.  And yet the story-line remains consistent throughout!

This book reveals everything we need to know about God Himself, as He desires that we should know Him intimately.  He reveals how He made the universe, why He made man, why it all went wrong and just how much He loves us through His plan of salvation and restoration.  In return, He demands nothing more, nor less, than our love.  It is one of the simplest messages of any world religion, but remains one of the hardest for man to accept, because it requires the letting go of self!

A SUMMARY OF THE TEACHINGS OF BIBLE-BASED CHRISTIANITY

From the very first verses of the Bible, it is clear that our Creator is pre-existent and eternal:  “In the beginning God…..” (Genesis 1:1).  He was already present at the beginning of time.  It is also clear that there are three persons in one Godhead.  The opening verse,  in the original Hebrew, utilizes a plural word for God – Elohim – which translates as “Gods”, which introduces us to God the Father; then:  “…the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2), which introduces us to God the Holy Spirit; then, “God said, ‘Let there be light’….” (Genesis 1:3), which introduces us to God the creative force who would later be revealed as God the Son.  This triune relationship would become much clearer with the teachings of the New Testament.

In six days, God created a perfect world within a perfect universe with no death, nor pain, nor suffering. 

Day 1:  God spoke, and the dark, empty, watery world was flooded with light which divided the darkness and gave us day and night;

Day 2:  God spoke, and separated the waters with space so that some hung above the earth in a protective canopy, giving us the heavens and the earth;

Day 3:  God spoke, and the waters covering the earth separated so that dry land appeared, giving us earth and sea.  He spoke again, and the earth became green with grasses and rich with fruit trees;

Day 4:  God spoke, and the heavens were filled with stars and planets, and the sun and the moon He set to rule over the day and the night;

 Day 5:  God spoke, and the waters were teeming with marine life and the skies were filled with birds;

Day 6:  God spoke, and the earth was filled with every kind of land-dwelling creature.  Then, on the last day of the Creation week, God created mankind in His own image to be His children and His friends and to care for His creation.   The first two humans were named Adam and Eve and God placed them in a place of surpassing loveliness – the Garden of Eden – where all of their needs would be supplied and where they would have complete dominion and live forever, as would every living creature.

God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in friendship, giving them total freedom, with one exception.  There was just one tree in the whole of the Garden of Eden whose fruit they were not to eat.  God warned them that, if they ate the poisonous fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they would die.

God had also created beings to live with Him in Heaven.  These are a hierarchy of angelic beings – the highest order, Cherubim, which are closest to God; the Seraphim, which serve around God’s throne; and Angels, which serve as God’s messengers.  One of the highest Cherubim was Lucifer, who decided that he wanted to be just like God, his Creator, and receive all the praise that was due only to God.  His rebellion caused Him to be thrown out of Heaven and down to the earth and, with him, by choice, went one third of all the other angelic beings.

Lucifer, now called Satan (the adversary), saw his opportunity to take over the world and persuaded Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  She gave some to Adam who, instead of refusing because God had forbidden it, also took the fruit and ate it.  As the name implies, this fruit opened their spiritual eyes so that they recognized, for the first time, that they were naked and they hid from God.

The poison from the forbidden fruit would eventually physically kill Adam and Eve, who had been destined to live forever, and would also destroy the intimacy that mankind was meant to have with his Creator.  This physical and spiritual death would now be passed on from generation to generation, becoming the sickness of all mankind.  Thus, just as God had warned, death entered the perfect Creation and the intimacy between God and man was severed. 

The authority over the world that God had given to Adam and Eve now passed into the hands of Satan.

However, so great was God’s love for the people He had created, that, when He saw what had happened, He did not immediately put Adam and Eve to death as they deserved, but, In order to cover the result of Adam and Eve’s sin – the awareness of their nakedness – God killed animals and took their skins for a covering.  Thus, the shedding of innocent blood became the only way that mankind could, once again, be acceptable in God’s sight.  And, in His great mercy, God promised that, one day, He would personally restore everything to its once-perfect state.   

Another tree which grew in the Garden of Eden was the Tree of Life which was intended to ensure mankind’s eternal health and well-being.  But, now that sin and death and decay had entered the world and, as history has shown, would only get progressively worse and worse, access to this tree would have been disastrous.  So God expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and blocked its entrance with an angel to stand guard.

God warned Adam and Eve that life would, from now on, be difficult, requiring hard work, and there would be pain and suffering.  To Satan He issued a warning that, one day, he would be utterly defeated by One who would crush his head.

To carry out His two-step plan, God raised up one nation, Israel.  To this nation He gave a written Law to show them what He expected of them in order to keep them separate from all other nations.  Under this system of the Law, it was essential that sinless animals shed their blood in order to cover the sins of the people, just as had been essential for Adam and Eve, and to prepare them for the ultimate sacrifice which God Himself would provide.  God also raised up prophets to explain exactly what He planned to do by sending His Messiah (Christ/Chosen One).   This is the basis of Judaism and the foundation of Christianity.

God made it clear that the Messiah, whom He called His Son, would come to earth the first time to pay the price of and cover our sins once and for all by the ultimate sacrifice of shedding His own blood, thereby reconciling us to Himself spiritually.  The problem of physical death would be conquered by His rising from the dead and returning to Heaven, thereby defeating all the works of Satan. 

He would come a second time to take back authority over the world from Satan, thereby eliminating all evil and restoring the world to its original state of perfection.  The job of the Jews (Israel) would be to tell the whole world that a Saviour had come and would return.

Just as God had promised through His prophets, the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem in Israel.  So that He was free of the poison which courses through all of humanity’s veins, He was born to a virgin named Miriam (Mary) by the power of the Holy Spirit.

He taught His disciples that He was the Son of God – the promised Messiah – and that He had come to die in our place, shedding His own, sinless blood as the ultimate, once-and-for-all sacrifice for the whole world’s sin. 

He also taught that all of us could be reconciled to God by being born again by the Spirit of God, which means repenting of our sins and believing that He, the Lord Jesus Christ, has died in our place.  He taught that this was the only way to restore us to a right relationship with God and the reward would be the gift, for everyone who believes, of eternal life and friendship, once more, with our Creator.

Jesus taught that the greatest commandments are these:  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind……You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Matthew 22:37-39).   Love is at the very heart of Christianity!

Because Jesus was both fully God and fully human, He was able to heal the sick and raise the dead,  but, because He claimed to be equal with God and that God was His Father, the Jewish leaders were enraged.  They expected the Messiah to be a military leader who would free the nation of Israel from her enemies, not to come from a carpenter’s family and be a preacher about the kingdom of God. 

Israel’s leaders had ignored the prophecies which told them that their expected Messiah would first have to suffer and die before returning as a righteous judge and conqueror.  So they plotted to have Jesus put to death and He was crucified on a Roman cross, just as God had promised through His prophets, for the sin of blasphemy.

BUT, on the third day after His crucifixion, He rose from the dead and appeared to His disciples and many others, thereby crushing the head of Satan and claiming victory over death.  The risen Jesus assured His disciples that, one day, He would come back to take all believers to be with Him forever.  He was then taken up into Heaven.

Once He returns, all unbelievers will be removed from the earth and God will restore the earth to its former glory, justice will go forth over the whole earth and nothing and no-one will harm anything else in all of creation.  Peace will be complete.

This is the time that Christians are looking forward to and believe is almost upon us.  Anyone can be a part of this glorious future by the simple act of repenting of his/her sin and committing one’s life into the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ!

Marilyn Brown was born in Sydney, Australia.  A darkly unhappy child and passionately enamoured of horses but unable to own one, by the age of 10, she was suffering from ulcerative colitis, a stress-related illness, causing ulceration of the bowel.  She managed to scrape through the Leaving Certificate at the Methodist Ladies’ College, where evolutionary biology and geography were two of her subjects.  At the age of 21, an on-again/off-again relationship drove her to hand her life over to a God whose Word was not particularly relevant as science had proven that its opening chapters were not.  Classical singing lessons produced a passion to succeed in this field and, at the age of 30, she and Max, her life-long friend and husband of 6 years, set off for England to pursue the dream.  But the Lord had other plans.  Instead of continuing her training, the colitis, which had come as acute attacks at times of stress, now became chronic.  It was Max who directed their search for answers to the Lord, buying books on Christian healing for them to read.  It was through these books that the Lord led them both to be baptized with the Holy Spirit which, soon after, prompted Marilyn to question whether David Attenborough’s Life on Earth, showing on U.K. television at the time, were the whole story.  Could the Biblical version have any support at all?  As the Lord always does, once we display an interest in the truth, He will see to it that we find it.  It took very few pages of a thick tome, The Creation/ Evolution Controversy, by D.L. Wysong, for the truth to burst the bubble of the evolutionary lie.  From that moment, the passion of Marilyn’s heart has been to point people to the absolute, unshakeable truth of the Bible.  The worsening level of the colitis would send Max and Marilyn back home to Australia where they began attending Hills C.L.C. (now Hillsong), then only 12 months old.  Here they would be nurtured and encouraged to hold fast to the Word of God and would provide an Australia-wide network of prayer as the illness continued its grim progress over the next 10 years, culminating in a perforated bowel that would place Marilyn on life-support in hospital.  However, after 12 years, without any fanfare, the Lord moved and the colitis began to recede so that now, contrary to all medical expectations of this disease, there have now been 19 years that have been free of colitis.  When finally able to return to C.L.C., the Church that had once been Bible-based and Christ-centred seemed to be shifting away from these foundations, subtly at first and now, of course, in a landslide.  It was time to move on.  Marilyn continues to constantly strive to be equipped to impart Biblical truth to whomever should ask questions.  “…and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you…..” (1 Peter 3:15)