by Jennifer Bullard
The Restoration Herald - Feb 2025
A few months ago, a friend I’ve known most of my life announced she was an atheist. This friend has a rather bohemian spirit, floating through changes in jobs and homes and hobbies, thriving on unpredictable movements and experiences. Her relationship with the church has been no different in that she has been a nominal Christian, then an on-fire Christian, and now an atheist. In more recent weeks, I learned from another friend that she does not believe in hell. She’s decided the imperfections of our own bad choices in our lives result in our personal “hell” and that is resolved when we die a physical death and are united with God because God is love.
Does this opening paragraph sound like a lot of convoluted thinking? I certainly felt that way writing it! Both these friends are intelligent entrepreneurial women who have been exposed to the Truth of the Gospel. How did they get so far from it?
It brings to mind the parable Jesus taught in Matthew 7:24-27, “Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (NIV used throughout).
Departure from the Truth is born out of a self-confidence that is going to fail terribly. When we deviate from the Truth, we become consumers of beliefs and practices that fit most comfortably with our own impaired paradigms. There is only one true foundation upon which to build, and it is unchanging. Alternatively, if that one true foundation is dispensed with, one could be shifting beliefs and building on sand over and over for a lifetime.
There is only one Lord.
God has declared this from the beginning. The Old Testament prophets repeatedly condemned idolatry and repeatedly emphasized the supremacy of Yahweh. There are epic battles throughout the Old Testament as it relates to the dominion of Yahweh, such as Moses and Pharoah and the great exodus or Elijah and the prophets of Baal or David and the Philistines. When we think of these false gods we’ve studied in Scripture, they sound ancient, in particular because, for example, we don’t hear about worshippers of Baal today. Yet clearly idolatry is alive and well in the present time and not just by way of familiar references such as Buddha, Brahman, or Allah. In a time where any type of spiritual beliefs is free to be formed in the mind of the individual, the nature of that belief is as loose as the sand it is built on because it is a false god story.
God gave us powerful instruction about His identity. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up” (Deuteronomy 6:4-7). This instruction from The Only One is a true demonstration of His love for us. If God knows best, all other choices will compromise us. He is a jealous God because He desires to protect us from the sands that can wash out from under our feet. Jesus clarifies the certainty we have in the Only One in the book of John. “Now this is eternal life: that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John 17:3). Jesus describes knowing God and His Son as eternal life.
There is only one faith.
Hebrews 11: 3 says, “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” The age-old contemplations of “Where did we come from?” and “Why are we here?” are the basis for how all false beliefs are formulated, yet the Only One God has identified Himself as the Divine Creator and our Only One Faith conjoins us to, as Jesus explained, eternal life. Ephesians 2:8 says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves. It is the gift of God.”
Desmond Doss was a man of faith drafted into World War II in April 1942. Because of his devout beliefs, he went willingly but would not carry a rifle or engage in firing upon the enemy. He instead trained as a medic. In May 1945, Pfc Doss was among the U.S. troops on a ridge in Okinawa enduring what turned into one of the deadliest battles of the war. There were mass casualties, and the American soldiers had fallen back and descended 400 feet down a cliff to regroup. Meanwhile, Doss remained on top of the ridge in an unending hail of gunfire, creeping close to the enemy to gather one downed soldier after another and hauling them to the cliff’s edge, lowering them 400 feet below using ropes and brute strength. As grisly as his circumstances were, Doss, in interviews later in life said he kept praying, “Lord, please help me get one more.” Ultimately, Doss saved 75 lives and, in the process, obtained severe injuries to both legs and one arm.
How pointless it would be for Doss to pray in faith to the wrong god or lack faith in praying to the right God. There is only one faith that matters when it comes to life, and with each soldier on a ridge in Okinawa, Doss asked God in faith for only one at a time. In a belief system where it is a false god, you don’t get to ask for anything for noble reasons. It is a transactional arrangement. In a belief system where there is no God, honestly, you don’t get to ask at all. In a belief system where there is no judgment (such as no hell), there is no point in asking.
There is only one baptism that saves us.
Acts 2:38 says it is in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins and receiving the Holy Spirit. John 3:5 says unless we are born of water and the Spirit, we cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven. Finally, Mark 16:16 expressly states “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Romans 6:3-4 again refers to the life we have through Only One baptism, “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” We were or are a flawed mess without the hope of the Only One baptism that washes away our sins, fills us with the Holy Spirit, and provides eternal life.
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). God has simplified it all with such firm foundational singular Truth. It is a foundation that is the rock upon which to build our lives, our purpose, our ministries. To my friends I spoke of at the beginning of this article I would share a thought my mother-in-law recently shared with me. No matter how far you wander from God, the journey back is only one step. Only one.
~RH
Jennifer Bullard is a self-employed landscape photographer from Rush County, Indiana.
Some of the comments you hear on TV, social media, radio, etc., centers around this thought, “God saved President Trump’s life.” If that is true, why didn’t God save the life of Corey Comperatore — the fireman who was assassinated by the rogue gunman? When I hear the statement, “God saved Trump’s life/turned his head” my mind immediately goes to the wife and children of Comperatore and the other injured victims. What must they think? Was President Trump’s life more important than their injured or lost lives? No, of course not.
Let us look at the subject of interpreting providence, and what do we mean by providence? Providence is that which is directly influenced and affected by the hand of God. There are three reasons why events happen. 1) God causes them. 2) Nature affects them. 3) The freewill choices of people. All events can be categorized under these three causes.
So, after January 20, 2025, we are in anticipation of many things we have been promised by the incoming president. Reducing prices and inflation. Closing our borders. Rolling back DEI, LGBTQ. On transgender rights he would end “boys in girls’ sports,” a practice he insists, is widespread. But his policies go well beyond standard applause lines from his rally speeches. Among other ideas, Trump would roll back the Biden administration’s policy of extending Title IX civil rights protections to transgender students, and he would ask Congress to require that only two genders can be recognized at birth. Reductions in burdensome regulations. Targeting the elimination of the federal involvement in our nation’s education. Eliminating the green new deal. Improving the defense of our country.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, as much as these things sound good and make us feel better about the direction of our country they are not enough. While the new administration may be able to improve our physical life, our society still has a spiritual problem. As described in Romans 1:21-32 “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible mankind, of birds, four-footed animals, and crawling creatures.
Christian apologists have long said that the three greatest miracles of the Christian faith are the creation of the universe, the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and His bodily resurrection from the dead. To these a fourth awesome miracle could be added—fulfilled Bible prophecy.