(Guidelines) Transformed Lives

Now, there is one final, well, in fact, there are really two final reasons that I offer as proof that this is the Word of God. One is the transformed lives of believers today. I have seen what the Word of God can do in the lives of men and women.

I'm thinking right now of a man who listened to this program up in Oakland, California. I know this man. This man was, and I'm not going into detail in his life at all, but he probably had as many problems, he had as many hang-ups, he was in as much sin as any man that I know anything about.

And did you know that this man began to listen to the radio program, and I hear people just hear it for the first time and are converted. That's wonderful, and I think it's possible. But this man listened to it for week after week, and he became antagonistic, he became angry.

He said to me that if I could have got to you when you told me when you were teaching the epistle to the Romans that I was a sinner, he said, I would have hit you in the nose. And frankly, friends, I think he could have done it. He's much bigger than I am and much younger than I am.

I'm glad he couldn't get to me. That's another reason to appreciate this radio, by the way. You can keep a big fellow like that at arm's length, and you can still call him a sinner.

And so this man now turned to Christ. May I say to you, it's been wonderful to see what God has done in his life. Some time ago, I read a letter of an entire family way back in Indianapolis.

Through the Word of God, they came to a saving knowledge of Christ, and an entire family is changed. May I say to you, friends, that again and again and again and again, this could be multiplied of those who had their lives transformed by coming to Christ. Now, let me give you a reason that's a rather personal reason.

And I journal impersonal, but this may be even a little more personal. When I finished seminary, I was what would be called a preacher who preached in the realm of the defense of the gospel. And I attempted to defend the Bible.

In fact, I think every message I had entered into that area. And I felt that if I could get just enough answers to the questions that people have for not believing the Bible, that I'd be able to just mow them down. And I attempted to get them.

And I found out that in certain cases, though, where I could answer the individual, that the worst thing in the world to do would be to whip a man down intellectually. The minute that you do that, you've made an enemy, and you'll never win him for the Lord. And so I found out that I was being self-defeated by that method.