Proof of God for kids

[kbachler]

1. Make sure that they understand that the Bible is a collection of books scribed by different people over a long period of time. Make sure that they understand that Abraham lived in the range of 2,000-ish BC (perhaps as far back as 3,000 BC) or about 4,000 - 5,000 years ago and 2,000 years before Christ.
2. Read Genesis Chapter 22 to them.
3. Now summarize the story:

A father - who responds to God “Here I Am” at the beginning of the story (and keep in mind that God’s name is I AM - so a parallel - an identification to God as a story character is created) - is to go to Mt. Moriah (Jerusalem) to sacrifice his son, a son born under special circumstances. A son who goes silently, carries the wood for the sacrifice, and who is to be pierced. The father and son travel to the mountain, and after traveling 3 days, leave the 2 men and a donkey at the base of the mountain (the Kidron ravine no doubt.) They go up the mountain, and when Isaac speaks, again Abraham answers “Here I am”.

When the angel stills Abraham’s hand, and the Lord blesses him, the Lord says ““By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 indeed I will greatly bless you”

Now ask, if this story reminds them of any other story?

Christ goes to Jerusalem (with his Father) to be sacrificed on the mountain. Outside of Jerusalem he sends two men to bring him a donkey to ride in on. (God’s way of tying the stories together.)

Now note - at the time of Christ, as documented in the Gospels, NO ONE connected these stories. ONLY someone after-the-fact would connect them.

But in the first story, we have God blessing Abraham greatly for passing “the test” – in essence for doing for God what God was going to do for mankind.

UNLESS someone had foresight of the sacrifice of Christ, why would they have written this story 2,000 years before Christ? Is there any one of us that will write a story that outlines a world changing event to occur 2,000 years from now? ONLY a God - OUR God, THE God, would have known this.

Logically, is there some chance that Christ could have manipulated His story and His passion to match so well the story of the sacrifice of Isaac? Yes. But given all the things that were out of His control in terms of the process and whether He would be put to death - is it more believable that He manipulated things? Or simpler to believe that God exists?

Also - look up the rules on sacrifice, and pay close attention to the Whole Offering, the Guilt Offering and the Sin offering. They correspond to Isaac, the Ram in Isaac’s place, and Christ.

The first two were to be burnt and given unto God (through the smoke.) The SIN offering was to be eaten by the priests.

You might then find selections from Hebrews where the discussion centers on Christ as the High Priest and how the old covenant was replaced with a new one…but also on

1 Peter 2:4-5 (NASB) 4 And coming to Him as to a living stone which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

and

1 Peter 2:9-10
(NASB) 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 for you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God; you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

In other words, Genesis chapter 22 and the rules on sacrifice in the Old Testament all point strongly to Christ and the New Testament to come 2,000 years later - and yet at the time they came (and prior to that) it was clear that no one understood this - it was understood only in hindsight.

This shows a revealed plan, and a revealed plan implies that the Christian God exists.

 

[Megan7]

If you guys are interested there is a really good book called “Jesus Among Other God’s (Youth Adition)” By Ravi Zacharias, which I believe is fantastic, especially for teenagers, but most importantly, I believe it’s a conversion of the heart that needs to take place and thus why ultimately I believe the Gospels to be the most powerful, so I would suggest providing them with a New Testament book.

The thing that made the most difference for me, was when I finnished High School they gave me a ‘New Testament and Psalms (Contemporary English version)’ and that book alone has been of immense value to me.

It is said that the Gospel hits us hard, and it has to be so, because it is the Word cast onto the world by God. And it is because Jesus possessed a profound vision of that reality, that even in our times, the Word gives His own validity to the past in order to integrate it into our today, and opens at the same time, a great gateway of hope towards tomorrow.

The Gospel is not always fully clear to man; it is rather like a small crystal that, in the manner of a kaleidoscope, being observed in different life moments, causes each of its different angles to emit a different light.

The Gospels I believe are of immense value, I never tire of reading them.

haha, yea, I like Ravi’s one, which is the analogy that the dictrionary came about by an explosion in a printing press. Peter Kreeft’s is good too

Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don’t wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe. - Peter Kreeft

Thank you for reading
Josh

Thanks

 

[josh987654321]

Thanks

Thank you Megan7