The Easter Difference – Only One Way

The Easter Difference – Only One Way takes us to the edge of our faith.  Is there another way to find God?

Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.”

A Scary Verse

This is a scary verse.  I was listening to a podcast and a professor from our seminary and one of his students were a mission trip and they engaged a women in conversation.  They had an opportunity to witness and she said that she didn’t believe in Christianity because she wanted more proof.  Recent studies of Christianity share that only 69% of mainline Christian denominations believe there is a hell.  Only 88% believe there is a heaven!  I have no problem with the demand for proof.  Jesus give us all the proof that we can handle in the empty tomb.  Christianity is a faith based on facts.  But this wasn’t good enough.  The woman in question told the two gentlemen from the seminary that the proof she demanded was a good life.  She’s not alone, I’ve told you many times, that’s the answer I get to the very simple question – how are you and God doing?  Almost instantly people shift to their life, trying to prove to God and to everyone around them, and to… themselves.  In your own heart, in their own heart they are still on trial.

Toyohiko Kagawa

Let me introduce you to Toyohiko Kagawa.  This young Japanese man converted to Christianity just after the turn of the previous century.  For his faith he was disinherited by his family.  There is a saying in Japanese culture, the nail that sticks up will get driven down.  Toyohiko found that out the hard way.  If you stick up for Christ in some cultures, you might just get beat down.  That is happening increasingly in our culture.  In our pluralistic society the irony that the one thing that is intolerable is if you say you have absolute truth.  Japanese society is no different.  Here’s the proof.  Toyohiko said that he was thankful for Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism acknowledging that he owed much to these faiths.  You or anyone can learn from other religions, but these all failed him in the end.  These three faiths utterly failed to minister to my heart’s deepest needs.  For Toyohiko this need was a personal, costly, and historical display of God’s mercy, which he found in Christianity, specifically in the cross of Jesus.

Want to hear more?  Watch this week’s message taken from Acts 4, The Easter Difference – Only One Way.