Eric's InfoCenter: Goals

I. To challenge Christians to uphold and apply God's Word in all theatres of life.
(To seek, by God's grace, to be "100% Christians" rather than "5% Christians.")
II. To confront the lost with their imperfect nature, the futility of their
rebellion against God and the free gift of forgiveness found in Christ!
III. To encourage good citizenship and wise government according to biblical principles.

Purpose

"Ah, there's the rub. What does it mean to have a biblically trained mind? Many Christians think of biblical faith in very narrow terms. We think of it as religion - as something expressed in church attendance, prayer, and worship - without much relevance to the larger world outside.

But that's not the biblical view. The biblical view is that faith has to do with all of life. Every decision we make reflects what we believe and what we value.

A vivid example can be seen in the life of Abraham Kuyper, a great Dutch theologian [and prime minister] in the early part of this century. Kuyper argued that to stand against a comprehensive secularism, we must articulate a Christian philosophy that is equally comprehensive. We must see Christianity as an all-embracing system of thought that gives us a perspective from which to view every part of life: family, church, work, politics, science, art, and culture.

In short, Christianity must be a world-view: a view of the entire world, an intellectual grid through which we can interpret everything we see or read or do. God created the world, and everything in the world relates in some way to Him.

...When we have a Christian view of all of life, we won't merely absorb a secular outlook on ethics - or on any subject, for that matter.

Instead, we will learn how to challenge the false views of life that are rampant in culture."

(Colson, Charles, A Dance With Deception (Dallas: Word, 1993), p. 22-23.)

According to Christian pollster George Barna very few Christians today, even "intellectual" ones, have what may be described as a consistent Biblical view of the world. We do not see reality through God's eyes. We go to church an hour or so each week, perhaps spend a few minutes each day reading our Bibles, and maybe even spend some time during the week with Christian literature. But for the vast majority of Christians, this time is dwarfed by the amount of time we spend listening to and learning from secular sources. From our newspapers to television, schools and science journals, radios and even our friends we learn to think as pagans.

This imbalance is exacerbated by the fact that most Christian sources have themselves become compromised for the very same reason. If a pastor or teacher or "Christian psychologist" or friends at church are also getting most of their information from secular outlets and learning to think with unbiblical presuppositions, they can hardly be the uncontaminated salt and light Christ commands us to be.

Christianity has been pushed steadily towards the fringes of Western society. This means that for anyone seeking to "think God's thoughts after him" (to quote the Lutheran theologian and astronomer Johannes Kepler), they will have to make an active effort on their own to study and educate themselves in the Bible and what it has to say about science, history, morality, and most importantly, theology and salvation. Passive acceptance of all you are told, even within the church, will prove dangerous to your faith in a compromised and fallen world.

This means, first of all, reading and knowing the Bible inside-out. That is not a job to be left to the "experts" or your pastor! One of the most frightening things I keep hearing from weak, compromised and inconsistent Christians is that the Bible cannot be trusted and must be "interpreted" by experts. This opens the door wide open to cultism and license, and all kinds of abuse in the name of "Christianity."

In my experience with respect to the Bible there are only two types of people: those who accept it as the Standard against which all things are to be judged, evaluated and interpreted, and those who use their own mind as the standard against which the Bible (and everything else) must be judged. Cults and compromised "Christians" take the latter position, as do atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, etc. The latter position is that of humanism, which exalts the human mind above all else, including God. It is arrogance incarnate.

Humanism exists among these compromised Christians because it allows them to believe whatever they want to, and still make some sort of claim to Christ. (Whether Christ will make a claim for them at the Judgment is something else entirely.) Want to engage in promiscuous sex? Just throw out the appropriate verses. Same for homosexuality. Radical feminist? Just rewrite any verse you don't like. Want to be "intellectually respectable" in the eyes of the world? Trash Genesis. Take any position you want to today and you can dredge up some "expert" to justify your ignorance or rebellion against God.

That's why it is so important to start from and stick to the Bible. We either learn from it or impose human opinions and speculations upon it. We need to pray for faith and understand that an unbelieving world will never admit the Bible is God's Word, so there will always be conflict and we should never give in to lazy compromises. Christians need to learn from the Bible what God has to say about the best way to handle sexuality, rather than imposing their humanistic, error-ridden opinions upon the Bible. In caring for women we need to understand the advice of our perfect, loving God regarding roles for men and women, rather than shoving our ideas down His throat. When it comes to historical science, we need to first understand the framework of history presented in the Bible, then go out and interpret the evidence within this framework (for there is no such thing as uninterpreted evidence, particularly of a historical sort).

And what of a non-Christian reading this? The conscience may convict the heart of sin, but what of the mind? By faith imbued by the Holy Spirit Christians are empowered with the knowledge that the Bible is God's Word. What about the unsaved? If the authority of the Bible is not recognized, what is the point of the Christian who offers Bible passages as a final proof in a disagreement? As Christians we need to understand that quoting the Bible carries no weight whatsoever with many people. As I mentioned at the beginning, most people including Christians get vastly more information and opinion from non-Christian sources than from Christian sources. They are given little reason to believe the Bible and innumerable "reasons" not to accept it as a perfect authority.

To reach these people today (and this includes many who attend churches!), Christians need to equip themselves to fight every battle. We should work diligently to show why the Bible is true in every passage giving reasons a secular but honest, seeking mind will accept. We must work to find the answers, and also to disseminate them.

The frustrating thing is that many of these answers already exist, but are poorly disseminated even within the Church. Why does the Bible forbid sex outside of marriage? Why does it tell of a global Cataclysm that devastated the whole surface of the earth with water? Why a thousand other things disputed by the lost in the world? If we start from the Bible and learn to think from a biblical worldview, we can show how the secular data of science, history, sociology, psychology, etc. supports the Bible and why contrary opinions are wrong.

Most public Christian apologetics these days appeal to the emotions and to the conscience. A deemphasized factor is the appeal to the mind. This, I believe, is the reason for the decline of Christianity in Western culture (and Western culture itself), the proliferation of cults and the apostasy of "rationalistic" seminaries and mainline denominations.

This web site is designed to help equip Christian soldiers (for such all Christians are) in the fight for this critical sector of the battlefield. Please understand. I am not saying all Christians need to devote themselves to intellectual mastery at the expense of their talents and gifts in other areas. I am saying to the extent that you do possess intellectual gifts, let them be submitted completely to Christ and armed for the War.

As Francis Schaeffer once wrote, modern Christians mostly see the world in bits and pieces, fighting their own little battles with little understanding of the topography of the battlefield on which Satan, angels, and the Body of Christ currently contend. There has been tragically little understanding of the "big picture," of the critical battles and the root causes of issues being contended.

Answers in Genesis, a ministry to the church, has a popular poster depicting Christianity and Humanism as two castles. Each sits on an island, armed with cannon firing at one another. The Christians are working hard but to little good. They are firing erratically, or wasting efforts in peripheral internal squabbles amongst themselves, or shooting energetically at the issues (represented as balloons) that the humanists fly above their castle. As soon as one issue is shot down (say, a defeat of some pro-homosexual legislation), the humanists just put up another issue.

But there is something else they are doing. While distracting Christians with the issues and with the symptoms and effects of various anti-Christian philosophies and activities, they proceed with the real work of Satan. For underneath the castle of Christianity rests its foundation, Genesis. Satan knows that the whole of the Bible is founded on the message of Divine Creation, and to destroy that is to destroy the Church. Thus the humanists are firing away at the foundation, causing the whole structure of Christianity to teeter dangerously. In the mean time the humanists have their own foundation, evolution. To destroy that is to destroy the whole foundation for humanism and confront the humanists with the reality of God, their Creator.

Creation and evolution are root issues today in the War. There are others. The key is to identify them and work intelligently and prayerfully at these critical points, both to shore up the defenses and to destroy the pretensions of the Enemy, so that people may see the Truth more clearly and cease their rebellion against God.

These pictures from Answers in Genesis sum up what I'm trying to say here. Are you being blown about by every wind of doctrine? Contaminated versus pure salt?

The InfoCenter is split into six main sections. The first is Basic Christianity. It contains the ecumenical creeds, doctrinal statements, links to on-line Bibles and versions you can download, and classic and contemporary Christian literature. For anyone new to the Christian faith, this may be a place to spend some time. The Christian literature links should be useful for everyone.

The second section is Reason & Revelation. This site is devoted to the use of the mind and intellectual tools within a Christian framework. I encourage you to check this section before the others, because it provides the intellectual foundation for the interpretation of data found in the other sections. Items in this section will include philosophy, theology, logic, critical thinking, and similar topics. Doctrine, hermeneutics, philosophy of science and cult teachings are also covered here.

The next section is Creation Science. Creation Science is not an individual field of science but rather a paradigm, a different framework for interpreting historical data about our origins in the light of the Bible. Opposing it is the dominant system of thought today, evolutionism. The evolutionary mindset now controls or warps all fields of thought today in the secular world. If you have not struggled long and hard to free yourself of it (as I have), I can assure you it controls your thought processes as well. You have been indoctrinated into it without ever being told, such that you simply assume the evolutionary perspective as you think. Items in this section will include all the historical sciences, from paleontology to cosmology to paleoclimatology.

The next section is History and the Bible. Similar in some respects to Creation Science, this site deals more with recorded human history, the events of the Bible after the Cataclysm (Flood), and the accuracy of the Bible concerning historical events. Items here include archaeology, historical criticism, history, etc. This is more of a "traditional apologetics" section.

The fifth section is Social Issues. These tend to be symptoms of problems stemming from areas mentioned above, but they strike us as the most important in the here-and-now. Information here will deal with sociology, psychology, political science and controversial issues from animal rights to homosexuality to global tyranny. Constitutional Restorationist efforts, a last-ditch peaceful attempt to restore the United States of America, are described here.

The next section is devoted to the Citizen's Militia. One reason the American Revolution succeeded is because the common populace was sufficiently armed to wear down and destroy the deployed military of the strongest Empire at that time in the world. That is what the 2nd Amendment is all about - not duck hunting or protection from burglars! Since this country is no longer meaningfully a Constitutional Republic (I would suggest "Fiat Judicial Bureaucracy" as the best term for our modern form of government), any attempt to restore it to a free state will likely need to be backed with arms if Restorationist work fails. I encourage you to educate yourself on this issue of good Christian citizenship.

The next section is Web Resources for Christians, a collection of links you may find useful. Not all the links are to explicitly Christian, but all are to sites supportive of or in line with biblical teaching as far as the subject material goes (for example, the Ultimate Pro-Life Resource site).

There is also a collection of Web Tools. There are a number of amazing resources available free on the web, from automatic map tools (punch any address in and a detailed map pops up showing the site to within a few hundred feet - never get lost!) to detailed weather reports, tutorials for writing your own web page, etc. You can find these secular resources here. Feel free to make use of them.

And yes, there is a Humor/Fun/Games page. You can kick back and relax here. There are links to everything from an on-line game of blackjack to a large list of lawyer jokes. And feel free to enjoy the music page from ChristianAnswers.Net.

In addition to the main sections, I have the Council for Educational Accountability project section. It describes a proposal to bring accountability to Christian institutions in a fundamentally free-market, non-coercive manner, relying on my experience with quality initiatives in the world of manufacturing and product development.

Remember, study your Bible first. Without the proper foundation I could be a sinister cult leader for all you know, and lead you with clever arguments and misinformation into an intellectual la-la land. (It's happened to people smarter than you, I'll wager.) Trust in Christ - who has "been there, done that" and wrote the ultimate Instruction Manual - rather than the opinions of men, who often as not can't even get their VCR programmed right.

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(Created: 11 September 1996 - Last Update: 2 May 1997)