We looked at how John the Baptist preached, being as he preached before Jesus' first coming, and given that we reckon the Kingdom's coming really quite soon, then we technically could be counted as today's John the Baptist - it's our responsibility, as Christadelphians, to spread the beliefs that we have before Jesus comes back. Anyway, back to subject. We looked at John's 'punchline' - "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." [Matt 3:2] We looked at the kingdom aspect of that phrase, and looked at how to describe the kingdom, and why anyone would want to be in it - to some the contemplation of eternal life wouldn't be attractive at all! The kingdom is perfection on earth, and being as God's purpose with humans is that 'The earth shall be filled with the Glory of God.' [Num 14:21], we can assume that that's what the kingdom will be all about. We also looked at the spirit of oneness - "I [Jesus] do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you Father, are in me." Zeph 3:9 "For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech, that all of them may call upon the name of the Lord and serve him with one accord." So the Kingdom's good because we will all be one (in purpose) and glorifying God - our Maker and the One who actually deserves to be praised. We looked at how you could have a egotistic (big word!) approach to wanting to be in the Kingdom by saying "I want to be in that Kingdom, because everything will be perfect for me," and we know this is the completely wrong approach - we should be thinking about how we will be able to glorify God in the way we should and the way he wants us to, and have the close relationship with God that he planned for humans in the beginning (although mankind completely destroyed it.)
We went from this to look at what sin is. In James 1:14 it says that "Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire." This shows that sin comes from humans, and that it's us that makes us sin (killing two birds with one sin - this quite clearly contradicts the supernatural devil theory). We also looked at Gen 6:5 - when God looked and saw that "every intention of the heart was only evil continually." This shows us that sin is a state where we aren't in tune with God and his thoughts. We are evil continually, but we decided that when we're talking about this to Normals we shouldn't point the finger, but say "I am a sinner and I need to repent of it." This way we're not doing the typical 'YOU'RE CONDEMNED TO DEATH UNLESS YOU DO SUMMAT ABOOT IT, MON!' (although maybe not quite in that wording...)
We looked at where sin started - the Garden of Eden and the forbidden fruit - and what the first sin meant for mankind. It a) made humans dying creatures, so death is a result of sin b) got Adam and Eve their curses, which still stand today - pain in birth for woman, and labour to actually live (get food) for the men c) gave us the 'knowledge of good and evil' - previously we'd only had the knowledge of good (no one can have the relationship they had with God without having a knowledge of good!) so the fruit basically showed us there was a way other than God's.
But we realised we were getting quite involved for a first conversation with a Normal, and remembered that we should always keep it a) simple and b) in plain english (no Christadelphian jargon!) and c) make it interesting and show you believe it by not being 'apologetic' about it and sounding like we're defending our faith, but that we are really truly sure of what we believe and that we live by it - actions speak louder than words! Daniel told us an amusing example of how we can't predict what questions people are gonna come up with when we talk to them about our faith ('So, where do aliens come into all this?!'). Also we shouldn't keep telling them that we don't believe in the Trinity and that we don't believe you go to Heaven when you die - it leaves people wondering what on earth we do believe!
Rodger suggested a possible opening for a catchy and intriguing line about our beliefs:
"I believe in the Bible, and did you know that the middle verse of the Bible is Psalm 118:8 where it says "It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man." So when it comes down to it all, God is the middle of our religion, not us." We all really liked this suggestion.
After that we talked about how we would talk to people who had a religion different from ours. WE decided to first find out how much we agree on, eg the Bible, eternal life, Jesus, God as one or many?
To finish up, we brainstormed all our basic beliefs, and came up with this:
- Creation
- God and the Bible (people can always go back to the Bible later if they feel like it - makes our beliefs more accessible). Also we said you could maybe say 'I believe in the Bible, God's message to us, which bit do you wanna hear about first?!' [If they say Revelation, explain to them that you need to have a good understanding of the rest of the Bible to understand that, and that even you don't really fully understand it yet.]
- Jesus was the Son of God who had the ability to sin but didn't, so was perfect.
- we need to be baptised (and therefore to repent)
- Jesus will come back
- So death doesn't have to be the end (be careful who you say that too though)
- Resurrection (of Jesus and of potentially us)
- God's Kingdom on Earth (we have a chance to be in it)
PS If we're ever unsure about what to answer a person, always remember it's ok to say that we'll get back to them on that - they'll respect us, especially if we actually do come back to them. Or alternatively, in the campaign or meeting situation, we could ask if we could go and find someone who is 'better placed to answer than me'.
I know it's tres tres late! Completely forgot! Sorry! Also, I'm not too sure it's actually intelligible because I did it over two days and my notes weren't very intelligible either... Have fun interpreting it...
