Answers | To Your Questions About the Bible, Theology and Christian Living

If God made everything and everybody, then who made God?
Carolyn, 8

This question is easy to answer but very hard to understand. Nobody made God. He has always existed. There was never a time before God or without God. In fact, God’s existence isn’t connected to time at all.

The Bible points to God’s existence in its opening sentence: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). God was there at the beginning of all creation.

In Exodus 3:14, God reveals His name to Moses as “I AM WHO I AM.” One way to understand that name is “I AM the One Who Always Is.” In other words, God doesn’t have a beginning or an end.

God has life in himself (John 5:26). He never needed anyone to give Him that life.

Ken Horn

Why did God make us?
Eddie, 5

God made human beings for three main reasons: to be His friends, to give Him glory, and to take care of the earth.

God created the first man and woman in His image (Genesis 1:26,27). Because they were made like Him, they would be able to have a close relationship with Him.

This image was passed down. God considers all the descendants of Adam and Eve to also have been created in His image, even though they were not created by a direct act of God as Adam and Eve had been (Genesis 9:6).

That means you and I still bear the image of God.

We, like Adam and Eve, are made to have a relationship with God. God would visit the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve lived there (Genesis 3:8). God’s goal for all people is to be their Friend, through salvation in Jesus Christ. As friends of God we can talk to Him every day. This is called prayer.

As friends of God, we can then give Him glory. That means we honor Him as we praise Him and as we represent Him before others.

God called upon Adam and Eve initially to take care of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:15). He also gave them dominion over the earth and its creatures (Genesis 1:26,28). That means we are to be caretakers of God’s creation.

Ken Horn

Jesus had a heart for children. On one occasion, when His disciples tried to keep some children at a distance, Jesus commanded them, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” (Luke 18:16, NIV). Children have a special connection with God’s kingdom, Jesus explained, because their untarnished faith makes them particularly receptive to the truth of the gospel (Matthew 18:3).

We can learn much from children and the gravity, implications and simplicity of their questions about God and faith. We invited children to send their questions to the Pentecostal Evangel. Their questions may be worded simply, but they force us to explore some of the most profound truths. We’ve attempted to provide answers that can build your faith and also be shared with your children.

Watch for these over the next 10 days on this blog.

Pastors and deacons are the primary offices in the New Testament Church.

We also find words for elder (presbuteros), and for bishop or overseer (episkopos). Pastor is the Greek poimen, which is also translated shepherd. Despite the fact various groups have created different offices for these terms, in the New Testament they are synonymous: Pastor = elder = bishop or overseer. (See Acts 20:17,28.) All of these terms refer to an individual who shepherds people, cares for a flock, and is a spiritual leader.

There can be multiple elders in a church. Pastors/elders lead, some paid and some unpaid, and some also preach and teach. First Timothy 5:17 says, “Let the elders who rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and doctrine.” “Double honor” refers to wages, or income from the ministry (v. 18).

The concept of the Trinity enlarges the concept of God found in the Old Testament and makes certain Old Testament passages more understandable. For example, some 2,500 times the word for God is Elohim, plural, instead of El, singular. There are plural pronouns used to describe the one God: “Let us make man” (Genesis 1:26); “Man is become as one of us” (Genesis 3:22); “Remember Thy Creators” (Ecclesiastes 12:1, literal); “Rejoice in His Makers” (Psalm 149:2, literal).

And, in Matthew 28:19, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (NKJV), the word for “name” is singular, representing three persons.

The plural pronouns are an indicator of the trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — the Three in One.

Ken Horn

Jesus had four half-brothers as well as half-sisters:

Coming to his hometown, he began teaching the people in their synagogue, and they were amazed. “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?” they asked. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t his mother’s name Mary, and aren’t his brothers James, Joseph, Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all these things?” Matthew 13:54-56 (see Mark 6:3)

His brother James is the likely author of the book of James and the leader of the new church in the book of Acts (see chapter 15).

Ken Horn

I am confused about the meaning of “dead in Christ” in 1 Thessalonians 4:16: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.” I have always been taught that when we die, we instantly go to heaven. If we are already in heaven and alive with Christ, how are we dead in Christ and caught up at His reappearance?

The apostle Paul makes it clear that believers go immediately into the Lord’s presence when they die. He calls this being “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8, NIV). Those who are “dead in Christ” are called “those who have fallen asleep in him [Jesus]” (v. 14), “those who have fallen asleep” (v. 15), and “those who fall asleep” (v. 13). Sleep is stressed, not to indicate lack of consciousness but because, for believers, death is simply the appearance of sleep.

The body is dead and the spirit is with Christ. When Jesus returns he brings these believers with him (1 Thessalonians 4:13), their bodies will be glorified (made incorruptible) and reunited with their spirits “in the air” (v. 17).

“For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:52-53; read the whole chapter).

Ken Horn

I have learned not to put too much emphasis on current news. The day after Mussolini died I went into the Bible college bookstore and saw a big stack of books entitled Is Mussolini the Antichrist? They were marked “Five cents each.” In Israel in 1962 a converted Jew tried to persuade me that President Nixon was the antichrist because his name in Hebrew letters as Nigson added up to 666.

Jesus did not ask us to focus on current news. He said not to be alarmed by wars and rumors of wars (Matthew 24:6). Most important is to live ready Jesus’ return (24:44). Jesus emphasized that the gospel of the Kingdom (the same gospel He and the apostles preached) must be proclaimed “in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (24:14, NIV). The question we should be asking is: “How much more can we do to get the gospel out to the many who still have never heard?”

Stanley M. Horton

The position of medical science is that exercise is a top priority for good health. Then why does 1 Timothy 4:8 say, “Bodily exercise profiteth little”? Is this an instance where science and the Bible are at odds?

No, there is no disagreement here. The context of the whole verse basically says that physical health has some value, but spiritual health is infinitely more important because it is eternal. First Timothy 4:8 in whole says, “For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come” (NIV).

Ken Horn

I have heard that the unpardonable sin is blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? How can I be sure I have not committed it?

“Every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men,” Jesus said, “but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven” (Matthew 12:31, NIV). Forgiveness was available even for those who tortured and killed Jesus (Acts 3:13-20). What can be so horrible that it eliminates the possibility of God’s mercy and forgiveness from a person’s life?

Since God is “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9), individuals must close and lock the door to God’s love themselves. They do so by hardening their heart to God’s Spirit who seeks to draw them to Jesus for spiritual rebirth (John 3:5-8). This doesn’t happen in one impulsive moment, but by a lifetime of willful, deliberate rejection of the Spirit’s pursuit. This can create such spiritual and moral darkness that people call good evil (Isaiah 5:20) or attribute God’s works of deliverance through Jesus to Satan (Mark 3:22).

People who worry about the possibility of having committed this sin demonstrate by their concern they have not irrevocably hardened their hearts toward God.

Stephen Lim