Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith

by Ravi Zacharias

In the quest for the truth, you need to know what you believe and why you believe it. Who Made God? offers accessible answers to over 100 commonly asked apologetic questions. Bringing together the best in evangelical apologists, this guide is standard equipment for Christians who want to understand and talk about their faith intelligently. Part one answers tough questions about the Christian faith such as:• Who made God? • How can there be three persons in one God? • What is God’s ultimate purpose in allowing evil? • Where did the universe come from? • How long are the days of creation in Genesis? • Did Jesus rise from the dead? • Are the records of Jesus’ life reliable? • Does the Bible have errors in it?Part two answers tough questions about other faiths, including Islam, Mormonism, Hinduism, Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, Reincarnation, Buddhism, and Black Islam. Relevant stories, questions for reflection and discussion, and a comprehensive list of suggested resources help you dig deeper so you can be prepared to give careful answers that explain the reasons for your faith.

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Paperback, 239 pages

Published September 8th 2003 by Zondervan (first published August 26th 2003)

tags: theology, reference, faith, philosophy, christianity, christian non fiction, religion, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“HOW CAN A GOOD GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL? This question assumes that God sends people to hell against their will. But this is not the case. God desires everyone to be saved (see 2 Peter 3:9). Those who are not saved do not will to be saved. Jesus said, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37). As C. S. Lewis put it, “The door of hell is locked on the inside.” All who go there choose to do so. Lewis added: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in hell, choose it.” Lewis believed “without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”5 Furthermore, heaven would be hell for those who are not fitted for it. For heaven is a place of constant praise and worship of God (Revelation 4–5). But for unbelievers who do not enjoy one hour of worship a week on earth, it would be hell to force them to do this forever in heaven! Hear Lewis again: “I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts, ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will,’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’”6 God is just and he must punish sin (Habakkuk 1:13; Revelation 20:11–15). But he is also love (1 John 4:16), and his love cannot force others to love him. Love cannot work coercively but only persuasively. Forced love is a contradiction in terms. Hence, God’s love demands that there be a hell where persons who do not wish to love him can experience the great divorce when God says to them, “Thy will be done!”

― Ravi Zacharias

“C. S. Lewis’s musings before his conversion: My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal; a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, my argument against God collapsed too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist—in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless—I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality—namely my idea of justice—was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning; just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known that it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.2”

― Ravi Zacharias

“Even the once-doubting Sir Lionel Luckhoo, identified by the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful attorney in the world, was forced to conclude after an exhaustive analysis of the evidence, “I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“The radically changed behavior of the disciples after the resurrection is the best evidence of the resurrection,” declares Thomas C. Oden of Drew University. “Some hypothesis is necessary to make plausible the transformation of the disciples from grieving followers of a crucified messiah to those whose resurrection preaching turned the world upside down. That change could not have happened, according to the church’s testimony, without the risen Lord.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“As Paul Little has pointed out, “If God were to stamp out evil today, he would do a complete job. His action would have to include our lies and personal impurities, our lack of love, and our failure to do good. Suppose God were to decree that at midnight tonight all evil would be removed from the universe—who of us would still be here after midnight?” 23”

― Ravi Zacharias

“When I personally ponder Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15), these five broad categories of evidence—the reliability of the New Testament, Jesus’ supreme self-understanding, his miracles, his fulfillment of prophecy, and his resurrection—immediately come to my mind. To me the record is clear. Jesus is an actual figure of history, whose convicting and comforting words and whose awe-inspiring and compassionate deeds have been reliably preserved for us in the Gospels. He is someone who not only saw himself in transcendent, divine, and messianic terms, but who also fulfilled all the attributes that make God, God.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“If you are already a Christian, then you also have a task before you—to articulate the truth about Christ, to defend it, to share it, to preserve it, to pass it along to the next generations. As J. B. Phillips so powerfully renders 2 Corinthians 4:6: “God, who first ordered light to shine in darkness, has flooded our hearts with his light, so that we can enlighten men with the knowledge of the glory of God, as we see it in the face of Christ.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“As I have sought to articulate the case for Jesus in my personal encounters with skeptics and in my preaching at church services designed to reach spiritual seekers, I find myself consistently dealing with five strands of evidence that weave a cogent and convincing apologetic for Christ. Each one of them answers a specific question that is either on the lips or lurking in the back of the minds of people who are investigating whether Christianity can withstand intellectual scrutiny. They”

― Ravi Zacharias

“ARE THE RECORDS OF JESUS’ LIFE RELIABLE?”

― Ravi Zacharias

“Because of the foundational importance of the New Testament, my analysis of its reliability consumed much of my two-year investigation into Christianity when I was a skeptic. I subjected the Gospels to eight tests they might face in a court of law—the intention test, the ability test, the character test, the consistency test, the bias test, the cover-up test, the corroboration test, and the adverse witness test—to determine whether they could be considered trustworthy.23 My verdict was that their essential reliability is beyond serious doubt.”

― Ravi Zacharias

“DID JESUS EVER CLAIM TO BE GOD?”

― Ravi Zacharias

“QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say I am?” How would you answer this question? What evidence would you use to support your conclusion? What evidence for the reliability of the Gospels is most compelling to you? Why? If Jesus believed he was God and fulfilled the attributes of God, then what are three implications, first, for other religions and, second, for yourself?”

― Ravi Zacharias

“DID JESUS REALLY PERFORM MIRACLES?”

― Ravi Zacharias

“One of my favorite examples involves Dr. Peter Greenspan, a Jewish obstetrician-gynecologist who also teaches at a medical school. The more he read books by critics who were trying to attack the prophecies, the more he recognized the flaws in their arguments. Ironically, concluded Greenspan, “I think I actually came to faith in Y’shua [Jesus] by reading what detractors wrote.”36”

― Ravi Zacharias

“DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD?”

― Ravi Zacharias

“As Julie Andrews once sang, “Nothing came from nothing. Nothing ever could.”

― Ravi Zacharias

Ravi Zacharias

Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias was born in India in 1946 and immigrated to Canada with his family twenty years later. While pursuing a career in business management, his interest in theology grew; subsequently, he pursued this study during his undergraduate education. He received his Masters of Divinity from Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. Well-versed in the disciplines of comparative religions, cults, and philosophy, he held the chair of Evangelism and Contemporary Thought at Alliance Theological Seminary for three and a half years.

He has multiple other doctorates and degrees from a variety of colleges and seminaries.

For 35 years Ravi Zacharias has spoken all over the world and in numerous universities, notably Harvard, Princeton, and Oxford University. He has addressed writers of the peace accord in South Africa, the president's cabinet and parliament in Peru, and military officers at the Lenin Military Academy and the Center for Geopolitical Strategy in Moscow. At the invitation of the President of Nigeria, he addressed delegates at the First Annual Prayer Breakfast for African Leaders held in Mozambique.

Dr. Zacharias has direct contact with key leaders, senators, congressmen, and governors who consult him on an ongoing basis. He has addressed the Florida Legislature and the Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Texas, and has twice spoken at the Annual Prayer Breakfast at the United Nations in New York, which marks the beginning of the UN General Assembly each year. As the 2008 Honorary Chairman of the National Day of Prayer, he gave addresses at the White House, the Pentagon, and The Cannon House.

Commentator Chuck Colson referred to Zacharias as "the great apologist of our time."
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Who Made God?: And Answers to Over 100 Other Tough Questions of Faith

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Ravi Zacharias

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