Releasing the New Generation, Part 2

You see him and says, I will give you a drink of water so that you'll never thirst again. Sees the woman with the alabaster ointment and tells her that her sins are forgiven and they all go and say, come and see him, come and see him.

They knew that personal relationship with him and your life is going to have to show it. What does it take to convince the next generation that the gospel message is true? It'll take more than just an argument. Hello and welcome to Let My People Think. This week RZIM's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, brings us the second half of his message on the importance of empowering the next generation with the truth of Jesus Christ. Although part of that challenge is being able to give an answer, we also must be able to live an answer. We know what the word of God sounds like, but what does it look like?

Here's part two of this message titled Releasing the Next Generation. You see, the word will always give you the sovereignty of your imagination. The visual will circumscribe your imagination and basically impose upon it to get you to see the way the person wants you to see.

Sound bites are not truth. It is not at all accidental that since the invention of the television world, harnessed by people mainly who use it to seduce other young minds, that now we see that plague of pornography that is destroying millions of young men and ultimately destroying homes. The visual will never fully satisfy.

It'll only leave you for more and more kinds of hungers. It was William Blake who said this decades ago about the eye. This life's dim windows of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole and goads you to believe a lie when you see with or not through the eye. This life's dim windows of the soul distorts the heavens from pole to pole and goads you to believe a lie when you see with or not through the eye.

What the Blakean was warning was this. We are intended to see through the eye with the conscience. When we start seeing with the eye devoid of a conscience, we reconstruct and reconfigure reality to our own desires. This is a dangerous phenomenon in our times. The visual is hijacked truth and we now think we know the truth when we see something. The visual has the capacity to make a person think of themselves more than what they actually are. Look at the 1980s and the devastation of the television evangelists in their own personal lives. People sitting in the front row actually saw them as icons.

In the back private rooms they were completely messed up financially and morally but on the stage they looked very, very well made up. I'm not demeaning it. I'm just telling you be careful of it. The visual has extraordinary capacities. I love to think of the fact that I can sit in my living room and watch the landing on the moon.

It's marvelous. I love to think of the fact that I can sit in my living room and see the three tenors performing somewhere in Greece or Italy and enjoying it. I love to think that I can sit in my living room and watch a royal wedding and see all of the pomposity and all of it and see how grand these things are.

I love to be able to get onto the internet and look at the works of Michelangelo and so on and enjoy it right at my desk. Yes, it's good but it is fraught with danger because the eye can seduce you. All you need to do is take a look at the lives of the rich and famous on television and you'll find out how messed up most of them really are. I remember one young man whose father I shall not name. He's a very famous actor. This young man has come to know Christ and he sat across the table from me and talked about his father. He said, my dad was in this television series glorifying country living and glorifying the farm and the family and prayer around dinner and the breaking of bread and communion and the graves near the home going and thinking and all of this.

He said, his television series was one of the all time most winning ones. He said, but my father lived exactly the opposite in his private life and I'll never forget coming home from school as a teenager one day and my uncle waiting at the door and sitting me down and telling me, your dad's gone. He's left your mom and you and your 11 year old sister now have got to take care of her. Go upstairs. Your mom's lying in bed.

She is so intensely depressed. She cannot believe what has just happened and this young man sitting across the table with tears running down his face said to me, I never ever believed that would happen to my dad and he said, you know what Ravi in my dad, I had both my dad and my mom because he's the one who took me to school. He's the one who made my lunches.

He's the one who took care of me and all of a sudden I found out that his life was so duplicitous and suddenly fell apart on the whole family. Television's power to make you into thinking you're a petty potentate. You're just an ordinary human being. It seduces both the one on the platform and the one on the view in the viewing. And so be very careful of how we handle this because young people, if you do not monitor your viewing, it will monitor you and you in this generation will never be able to harness your imagination for the good. You see, in reality, nothing is so beautiful as the good. Nothing is so monotonous and boring as evil, but in the world of entertainment is the other way around. Fictional evil is intriguing, attractive, fictional good is boring and flat.

And so you're seduced. So we've got the popularization of death of God, a stridency of willing to live with this ramifications, the gathering storm of the pantheistic worldview, the power to inform through the visual. And lastly, I would say the complete shift to a younger world. That's your world. You are the ones who are making advertising what it is. You're the ones who are getting the movie makers to make what they do because the, the word in Hollywood is this.

If you can win the attraction of an 18 year old young man, you've got a big blockbuster in the making because the influence an 18 year old young man has, these are the changes. What do we do? I'll give you three very simple responses. Number one, what is the word apologetics mean? I'm a Christian apologists. The word apologetics actually comes from the Greek Apollo gear, which means to give an answer to Peter says, always be prepared to give an Apollo gear, an answer to them that ask you and to do that with gentleness and kindness to do that.

When Peter stands up after Pentecost and they're all confused, he says, let me explain, let me give you an apologetic for this. So apologetics does two things. It clarifies truth claims and it gives answers. It clarifies truth claims and it gives answers in the light of what's happening in our world.

We are going to need one and apologetic that is not merely heard, but is also seen. You can't just give answers that are theoretical if your life is not going to back it up. Your generation is very skeptical because they have seen through the hypocrisy of words that have not been lived out. Almost everywhere I go, the young people say they've had it with church. They are tired of words.

They don't see enough change in a person's life. When I wrote the book, has Christianity failed you? We did an open forum at the Fox theater in Atlanta.

I was asked to do that subject by the young people in our staff. And I said, are you sure anybody is going to come for this? It seats about three or 5,000 in that auditorium. I forget what all of the tickets were sold out and there was scalpers at the gate selling for more money. If you wanted to go in subject has Christianity failed you?

Imagine that. And we surveyed people on the street across the country and asked them why they'd walked away from the church. And one after another, one after another, one after another, one of them said it's hollow. Doesn't work.

Doesn't work. Recently, a very bestselling author in America wrote a book questioning the reality of hell. And he made a comment. He said, you know, there's no such term in the Bible as having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That one statement told me more about that author than anything else. No such thing in the Bible as a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Do you know there's no such word in the new Testament as Trinity either, but the scriptures fraught with that. He that has the sun has life.

Come on to me, all you that labor under heavy laden. I'm the light except a man be born again. The light has come into the world and the darkness could not comprehend it. You see how God so loved that he gave, you see him walking and talking with people. You see him with the woman at the well, you see him and says, I will give you a drink of water so that you'll never thirst again. Sees the woman with the alabaster ointment and tells her that her sins are forgiven and they all go and say, come and see him, come and see him. They knew that personal relationship with him and your life is going to have to show it.

I did three open forums at the University of Iowa some years ago and the last night I was going to present a defense of why Jesus Christ is the only way drew the biggest audience who are packed out over 1500 standing lining the walls, William Lane Craig and I did that open forum. A woman who had come there by the chief organizer, he brought her, she was his neighbor, she was a medical doctor. She never goes to church, she said, but he brought her because this was a university open forum.

He brought her, she listened and sat and the next day the man who brought her was driving me back to the airport and halfway through the airport, he said to me, you know, I told you I was bringing my neighbor last night. I said, yeah. I said, you know what she said after it was over? I said, I'm afraid to say yes. I said, do I need to hear this? He said, yeah.

He said best before she got off, I said, you've not said anything. What do you think of tonight? She said just one question in my mind. I wonder what he's like in his private life. I wonder what he's like in his private life. I have to say to you, it stunned me.

It was like being caught in the headlights like a deer. What I'm asking you is this. Do men and women see Christ in you in your private life? Let your light so shine before men that they see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. Are you reflecting that beauty of Jesus?

And you know what? One of the ways you reflect that is in a life that is consistent with your teaching young people. The next point I'm going to give to you is very critical for you because it is a bridge from what I've just said to you. You need to have an apologetic first one, not merely heard, but seen second one, not merely argued, but felt you must have that sense of truth within you in what you proclaim, not just parroting stuff, but that feeling of God's presence and the knowledge of God's presence in your life.

If you don't have that, it will all become nothing more than an intellectual activity. You know, the longest distance in life is between the head and the heart. And once you've connected the two, you have traversed the longest distance. Those were not my words, actually archbishop William Cogan said that long time ago, the longest journey in life is between the head and the heart to connect the two. And I say to you, when you have traversed that distance and connected the two, then you have not just the knowledge of God, but you have the sense of God's presence. And I, I want you to know that one of the things about the gospel that is brilliant and absolutely unique is the story of the cross. When you understand that, you understand why feeling is so critical in the Christian faith. Viewing what happened on the cross was a grim and painful reminder of the horrific nature of sin. Sin destroys, sin lacerates, sin will break you up.

And when you look at the cross and take a good look at it, you understand both the horror of sin and the magnificence of the grace of God. I had the privilege once of addressing the United Nations prayer breakfast, and they asked me to speak on the search for absolutes in a relativistic world. That's a tough subject, especially early in the morning. And so what do you do? You can't say too much about religious ideas.

They are a political body. So I said I would come if they'd allow me to deal with it philosophically, but the last five minutes that I'd be able to present why I believe what I do is there in the gospel. So that's fine. So I did, I talked on four things, evil, justice, love, and forgiveness. I said, you look for an absolute of evil. You all refer to some nations as evil empires. Where do you get the definition from? Then you talk about just societies. Where do you get your definition from? Some of you have left your families and you miss your loved ones. Where do you get your definition from? And one of you or two of you is going to blow it big time and they're going to come to you for forgiveness.

How are you going to determine whether to do it or not? Evil, justice, love and forgiveness. They're all listening. I said, I have five minutes left now. I said, where is the one place in the world that these folk converge?

Evil, justice, love and forgiveness. I said, on a Hill called Calvary. At the end of the talk, when I stood down, there was a lineup of these ambassadors and one of them walked up to me and he said, I come from an atheistic country and I don't like my job. He said, I'm here because my government has sent me and every day I wake up and say, why am I here today? For the first time I have the answer.

I came here so I could find God and I had the privilege of praying with him and pointing him to the cross of Jesus Christ. About two years ago, I was in Damascus, Syria, and I'd speak spoken three times that day. I don't know why my wife does this to me. She takes all my bookings.

I think she feels if I wear him out when he's on the road, he'll come back and he'd be too tired to complain about anything. And that morning I spoke evening. I was going to do an open from 3 p.m. or 3 p.m. I was going to have a one-on-one discussion with the leading Shiite cleric, Sheikh Hussein in Syria.

We were going to have a two to three hour discussion with an audience in front of us. I said, what has she done to me? He was a wonderful man, very cordial. And I had the right to ask him one question. He would answer it. Then he had the right to ask me one question and I would answer it. So I would ask him on his faith. He would ask me on my faith.

The audience listening in rapt attention. At the end of that two to three hours, he said something and I have the privilege of quoting him. He looked at me and he said, professor, I have come to one conclusion this afternoon. It's time for us in the Islamic faith to stop asking if Jesus died on the cross and to start asking why. I said, Sheikh Hussein, can I quote you on that?

He said, yes, you can. We have to start asking why. The biggest problem of our time, corruption, which is depravity, the best answer ever is the cross. That's why the cross, because of the corrupt human heart that offers love and forgiveness. Do you feel that in your heart? When you feel that message, you will not fear the opposition. So it has to be seen, not merely heard. It has to be felt, not merely argued.

And it brings me to the last. The approach that rescues this generation cannot only rescue the ends. It also has to rescue the means. You know, folks, what you win people with is what you're going to win them to. What you win people with is what you're going to win them to.

If you've been a person with courtesy and then you become very discourteous afterwards, they'll say, huh, nonsense. If you've been a person with a lot of razzmatazz in the gospel, that's what they'll come to. If you win them with the heart of what the gospel message is all about, that's what will stay with them.

What you win them with is what you win them to. And so I say to you as wonderful as our methods are, and we have them, we have drama, we have music, we have proclamation, we have the written word, we have eBooks, we have all these, but always remember this. Ultimately you have to point them to the final authority, the very word of God, the very word of God. And so I say to you, if you ask me today, Robbie, can you tell me something about my spiritual life? I will have one question for you and then I can answer you. I will say to you, do you have a regular study of the word in your private life? That will help me answer what your question is asking of me. If you don't stay with the word, I can tell you right now, you're wondering if you're staying with the word, even if you're struggling, you know where the answers are and you will keep coming back to it. Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee.

I want to close with a simple little illustration and a verse of a hymn. It was a long time ago that if you read the book, a man for all season, Sir Thomas Moore, actually written by a distant relative of mine, Robert Bolt, Robert Bolt's brother, Sidney Bolt at Cambridge is married to one of my dad's cousins. And so we, I've never met Robert, never met him, but I met Sidney Bolt and talk to him about this book.

It's a great book. Sir Thomas Moore, a man for all seasons. You remember Thomas Moore was in prison for not supporting the King in an immoral act. And the King said, give me your blessing and you'll be free from prison. He wouldn't.

So he was incarcerated. One day, his daughter Meg comes to the president. She says, father, we can have you back home.

If you will just make one statement and say to the King, it's okay. It's all right. We want you back. We want you back home. Tell him it's all right, please.

We want you back home. And he looked at his daughter and he says, Meg, you don't understand something. The word is a very sacred thing, Meg. And when you give a person your word, if you should open up your hands and drop your word like that, you shall look down and not find yourself again. If you give a person your word, it's like cupping something in your hand.

And if you open up those fingers and let that word drop by Meg, you shall look down and you shall not find yourself again. He had given God his word and God had given him his word. He was not going to make words cheap and affirm something that was wrong just to get out of prison. The word is something very sacred and that's why the Bible says the scriptures cannot be broken and that the word of God abides forever. So I say to you in the proclamation, whatever means we use, let us make sure this is the ends and in the means we cannot use non-Christian ways for Christian ends or you end up with a messed up gospel. It was Charles Wesley who wrote the hymn in which he has these words, O thou who came us from above, the pure celestial fire to impart, kindle a flame of sacred love on the mean altar of my heart. There let it for thy glory burn with inextinguishable blaze and trembling to its source return in humble prayer and fervent praise. Jesus confirmed my heart's desire to work and speak and think for thee. Still let me guard the holy fire and still stir up thy gifts in me, ready for all thy perfect will my acts of faith and love repeat till death, thy endless mercy seal and make my sacrifice complete.

It's a changing world, dramatically changing world. God needs you as young men and women who will understand the times and know what to do. He needs you not only to be heard, but your gospel to be seen. He needs you not only to argue for the message but to feel that message.

He needs you not only to have the right ends in sight, but also to find the right means so that you do not violate the very sanctity of the ends ultimately. If this world is going to change, it is going to need youth to do it. And I'm convinced that the reason you are even here in an afternoon like this is because you believe on the value of what it is you're committed to.

And let me tell you something, whether it's in Tsinghua University in Beijing where I have spoken, or whether it's at Yale where we did an open forum, or whether it's to Bollywood actors and actresses, they're all looking for answers. And the Word of God is the surest thing because it upholds the centrality of Jesus Christ. This world needs its young people in sync with the truth. I hope you will be that kind of person. And may God use you and bless you, trust him to call you and empower you, and you will be a world changer. May God richly bless you.

Thank you very much for listening. You've been listening to RZIM's founder, the late Ravi Zacharias, in a message titled Releasing the Next Generation. To purchase a copy, call us at 1-800-448-6766.

Or you can order online at rzim.org or rzim.ca for those listening in Canada. One goal we have here at RZIM is to reach students. And we do this through conferences such as Reboot, Refresh and Remind. These conferences are geared towards high school and college students.

And many of these are being held digitally right now as well. And the purpose is to help train young believers to better understand their faith so that they are equipped to defend it. To find out more about these events or others, be sure to check out our website and please continue to keep our team and these students in your prayers. What questions do you have that you'd like answered? Whether you have questions of your own or just want to become better equipped to answer questions from family members or friends, be sure to check out our podcast called Ask Away. No question is off limits and you can send us your questions by email to askawayatrzim.org. You can listen to episodes of Ask Away on our website. Let My People Think is a listener supported radio ministry and is furnished by RZIM in Atlanta, Georgia.