Hi everyone. In today's video, we're going to learn about the biblical worldview, which is basically a way of looking at the world and understanding and making sense of the world through the Bible. There are many things that any person will observe if he or she looks around in the world. For example, what this slide is trying to convey is that the world is a place of great beauty. If you look outside, you see the animals, the birds, the aquatic life. You look at the stars and the galaxies, and there is a tremendous amount of beauty and complexity in the universe. On the other hand, our world is also a very painful place, there is a lot of suffering, there is a lot of evil. There is a lot of disease, death and so many unpleasant things. And what we are trying to understand by noting these observations is how can we make sense of these observations. Everybody looks at the world and tries to make sense of what he or she sees. So these are some observations of the world. The world is a place of great beauty. It's also a place of great pain.

The physical world is a world that is characterized by precise, scientific, mathematical law. Nature works according to laws, and these laws can be expressed in the form of abstract mathematics. And perhaps one person who was in the thick of things in discovering these laws is Albert Einstein. And on more than one occasion, he expressed his surprise, or he expressed his amazement at the fact that there seems to be a mathematical order and a mathematical structure to the universe. The obvious question is why. So whether we look at the laws of physics, whether we look at the complexities of genetics, there is a mathematical order which calls for an explanation.

This is a bee. A male B has one parent, which will be a female, but a female has two parents, that is a male and a female. So if I look at this male and female, well, the total number of parents will be three because this male has one parent, and the female has two. So you have a total of three parents. So now in this generation, I have one male and two females, so the male will have one parent, the female will have to and so that takes the total number of individuals to five. And then the pattern continues. Each male has one parent, each female has two parents. So we now get eight and this will go on. But now notice a trend here. Two can be written as one plus one that is the sum of the preceding numbers. Three can be written as one plus two. Again, the sum of the preceding numbers. So here you see that every number in the sequence is the sum of the preceding two terms. And if we continue this sequence of generations of bees, the same pattern will continue.

Now, these numbers form a special sequence called the Fibonacci sequence. Now, what I want to point out here is that there are mathematical patterns in nature, even where you don't expect them. So in the generations of bees, we find these Fibonacci numbers. The strange thing is that this is the same numbers are found in different aspects of the biological world. For example, here you have a tree. Some trees branch in the form of Fibonacci numbers. If you notice the number of petals of these flowers, you can see here, lower left there are three petals here that are five petals, three, five to one are Fibonacci numbers. Thirteen is a Fibonacci number, eight is a Fibonacci number. So the same pattern that was observed in the generation of bees is also observed in plants and in trees, in pine cones and pineapples. You'll find the number of facets also turns out to be a Fibonacci number. This is a spiral that is constructed by subsequently drawing squares, and the side length of each square is a Fibonacci number. So when you place these squares next to each other, you get a pattern, and thus you get this spiral. So this is also associated with Fibonacci numbers. And then we have some shapes in nature. We have some shells that follow the same spiral pattern.

Many people have also looked at the human body and observed certain patterns related to Fibonacci numbers here. Now the question is why or how, or why is it that our universe has these features, there is a mathematical order, and you have the same order or the same theme in different contexts. Normally, if you look at a work of art, or a work of design that somebody has made, then if there's one person who has made many things, you might find a common theme in all of them, and that seems to be the case with nature. Similarly, mathematical patterns speak of a mind that is behind it. So these are various observations about the world around us. And as we will see, the Bible says that the world has been created by an intelligent and a wise God, a creator. So it's not surprising that we find these kinds of patterns.

Think of a completely different fields. When you look at social progress or economic progress, quality of life, you'll find, again, a pattern in this world. There are certain nations with a certain kind of history that have a very high standard of living and there are other nations, again, with a different kind of history that have a different pattern of living that have a lower standard of living, that have a lower index of quality of life. Now, the obvious question is, why are these patterns there in the world. Is it completely random? Or is there some explanation for it?

Another pattern that we see in the political world is that the Middle East is the most volatile region of the world. You have a conflict there between Israel and the Arabs, which never ends, although everyone wants to bring peace to the region. So, these are what we can call non-mundane, non-routine, strange or remarkable kind of facts which call for explanation.


What is a worldview?
To explain the world around us, we have the concept of a worldview. So a worldview is basically a system of beliefs that explains origins, that is where did we all come from. Then it explains identity or meaning, that is, who am I? What is the meaning of life? What's the best way to live? What should I do with my life and so on and so forth? How should I treat others? And then there is destiny. That is what is going to happen? What happens to me when I die? Is the world going to end? Is the universe headed somewhere? These are basic questions that are there in everybody's mind, and everyone tries to come up with some answer to these questions. To some extent, we may like to ignore these questions, but nevertheless, they are always there. So a worldview is a framework that tries to give answers to these questions. When we look at the world, we see things, and these things affect our worldview. It's also true that if we have a belief system, if we have an ideology, then we tend to interpret the worldview according to that. So in this video, we are going to look at the biblical worldview, and it's going to be my objective to show that the biblical worldview is the best possible explanation for the world that we see around us.


Origins
What does the Bible say about how everything started? How did everything start? And how did everything become the way it is? The Bible has something to say about that. And it can be summarized by these five words creation, fall flood, dispersion, and redemption. So let's understand briefly what these things are.

The Bible says that God exists and God is eternal. He is a Triune God, that means, although God is one being, he exists in the form of three persons. And this Triune God created the universe. He created everything that we see around us. This includes the physical universe, and also the biological universe, all the other living things, including man and woman, these were created by God. And when God created the world, everything was absolutely good. God had fellowship with the first man and woman. That's what the Bible teaches. But the Bible also says that the first human beings chose to rebel against God. They disobeyed the only one commandment that God had given them and because of that, God expel them out of the garden in which he had put them in. But God did not leave man and woman to their fate. The Bible says that God is a holy God, and He will punish sin, He will punish rebellion. He will punish acts of injustice or acts which are against His character.

But then the Bible also says that God initiated a plan of redemption, He started the execution of this plan in history. The first thing that he did is that He promised the man woman that a savior is going to come a Savior, who will have victory and a Savior who will save man, and He instituted the pattern of animal sacrifices. I mean, come to think of it. The idea of animal sacrifice seems very strange. I mean, why should you know killing a poor, innocent animal, do anything to solve the problem that I have? Because I have sinned, and I'm guilty before God. So it sounds foolish at the face of it, but at the same time, all over the world. There is this concept of animal sacrifice. The Bible says that this is with good reason God Himself instituted animal sacrifices to our first parents, and they evidently transmitted this idea to the descendants. And so the Bible records about how Adam and Eve the first man, woman, they had children, and so the population of the world increased. There were people who sacrificed as God commanded them, but there were also other people who rebelled against the way that God instituted. So this is Cain and Abel, two sons of Adam and Eve. Able followed the pattern that God gave, but Cain rebelled against it.

The Bible says that, in ancient times, people were very illustrious; that they were not ape men as secular people might prompt us to think, that they were highly intelligent and capable people. And today, there are these strange remains in different parts of the world that seem to indicate that some seem to indicate some of the projects that these ancient people carried out. So on top left is a place called Baalbek in Lebanon. It has these huge columns, which are lying unused. Now there are ruins of some structure that was evidently stupendous, but nobody knows what it was when it was made. Top right is saqsaywaman in South America. Again, you can see that these rock arrangements are not natural phenomena. There was someone in ancient times that built some structure, and what we're seeing is the remains of that. And you have these artifacts, that is even an acronym called Ooparts. That means out of place artifacts mean we do not expect to find sophisticated things in ancient strata. And yet such things are found. Well, the The bible says that this is because the ancient people were industrious. They were highly intelligent, and they carried out many projects. They lived long lives. So there was a lot that they could learn, and they could accomplish during their lives.

But the Bible also says that at that time, there was an anarchy in the sense that there was no organized government. People were expected to live according to their conscience. But people refuse to do that. So the world became very violent. There was no law and order, and God decided to destroy everything through a flood. So that was one man called Noah. And God told him to build an ark. A huge box like boat, and God sends the animals and, and no one is family got him. No one else was willing to believe that God's judgment is going to come. So no one else got into the ark, but Noah and his family went in, and they survived. So after Noah, I went into the ark, God sent rain. The Earth's crust was cracked, and water gushed out. There was also rain coming from the sky and the whole world was inundated. The Bible says, very clearly, that the tops of all the mountains in the world were covered. So the human population as such perished during this flood. After the flood, God opened the door of the ark. And Noah and his family and all the animals came out.

The world that they came out into was not as luxuriant as before. It would be a more hostile world. It would be a world in which there is less vegetation, climatic conditions would have changed. And so life was going to be a little harder. In the post flood world. So many of the big animals got extinct. After the flood, they were not able to survive, and we see their fossils there. There are fossils of huge animals. We have huge deposits of coal and oil. This is plant and animal matter that was buried during the flood. The receding floodwaters also created huge canyons, and gorges and as the crust of the cracked unfolded, there were mountains, big mountains and valleys that performed. This is the Grand Canyon. And there is a river that flows below. You know, this canyon was not formed by this river flowing for millions of years. The Bible implies that this cannon was formed by a huge mass of floodwaters that were receding into the newly formed oceans. So this is about the flood.

After the flood, God instituted a system of capital punishment. So there was a system of law and order, but then there was a new problem that came up. And this is called the Tower of Babel. The population that was living post flood decided that they would make a tower and a city. A tower was a religious icon, and a city speaks of politics and government. So basically, what the ancient population wanted to do was they wanted to have a one world religion and a one world government. And this religion centered on the worship of the forces of nature. The tower had a very high top from which the ancients would look at the stars and the planets. They would, you know, make up stories about the signs of the zodiac, and they would worship these things. So, mankind invented this religion that is based on various themes. These themes are basically astrology, idolatry, worship of the forces of nature, worship of other living things, and sexual immorality.

And God came, God came down, he was displeased at what He saw, and he confounded or confused the languages. So according to, according to the Bible, that is the explanation for the various languages in the world. So God split the languages. People couldn't understand each other anymore. And so they all spread out in different directions. And they went their way. And some of them managed to find fertile river basins to live in, and they established their civilizations there. So that explains the emergence of great civilizations around 4000 years ago in different parts of the world. Up to this time, we see that God deals with the world as a whole, but the world rebels. So now what God does is that he focuses His attention to one man and, through that one man, one nation. That one man's name was Abraham. So God gave Abraham covenant promises, telling him that his descendants will be the chosen people, and it is through his descendant that the whole world will be blessed. So Abraham's descendants eventually became the people of Israel.

They were in slavery in Egypt. And this is a picture of how God redeemed the people out of Egypt. The people were brought out of Egypt. They were at the border of the Red Sea the Egyptian army was pursuing before them, but God split the Red Sea and enable the people of Israel to march through the sea and crossover on to the other side. So redemption or deliverance from slavery and setting helpless people free is a big theme in the Bible. So it happened historically for the people of Israel, that is God's chosen people. And this is intended to be a picture of what God is willing to do for each human being who turns to Him.

The people of Israel came to the land that God gave them, they establish themselves as a nation. This is the temple or the sanctuary that King Solomon built. And so, the people of Israel followed God for some time, but by and large, they rebelled against God. They would follow the practices of the nations around them. These practices included sexual immorality, idolatry, human sacrifice, and oppression of the poor. So because of the disobedience of the people of Israel, God sent enemies, powerful enemies who besieged their cities, destroyed them and took them captives. So this is a relief from Assyria, showing the kings of Assyria taking the people of Israel captive. So the people of Israel were taken from their land, and they were, they were taken to Iraq and Iran and various places in between. They were resettled there. But then, God also brought the people of Israel back from those lands to their original homeland. Of course, not all of them returned. But there were many people who return, and they established the temple and its system of worship again.

So now you have the people of Israel, it had taken them a 1000 years. Now they stopped worshiping different gods and goddesses of the nations around them, they worshiped only Jehovah the true God as presented in the Bible. There was a lot lacking in them spiritually, but at the same time, at least in a nominal way, they were monotheist. The stage was set for the Savior of the world to come. And about 2000 years ago, the Lord Jesus Christ was born in Israel, and then He grew up, and He became a man.

He taught people about God, and then He died on the cross. The Bible says that Jesus Christ died on the cross, because he was bearing the penalty for the sins for the bad things that all of us have committed. So He was the Son of God, He came to this world in human form, and He took upon Himself the punishment that you and I deserved. The Bible also says that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead after three days and three nights, and then he met with His disciples. This is probably the tomb where the Lord Jesus Christ was buried. This is in Jerusalem in Israel. The scientists today called the Garden Tomb.

After his death, and resurrection, the Lord Jesus Christ told His disciples to spread the good news, the Gospel regarding Himself to the whole world. The Gospel message is this, that Jesus Christ, Son of God, in human form has come, and He has died, and He has risen from the dead. And therefore, in His name, all people of the world can have forgiveness of their sins, they can have access to God, they can have eternal life. This is a message that Jesus asked His followers to spread all over the world. So this is the summary of what the Bible says about origins. Why is everything the way it is today? Because God, first of all, created a perfect world, and then man sinned, because of which the world was cursed. And that was the beginning of evil and pain and suffering. Because of sin, God brought in the curse, the flood, and the dispersion. That's why we have a world today that is unstable. A world of volcanoes, a world of earthquakes, it's because of the dispersion that we have some of the difficulties today. We find it difficult to adjust to other people. We find it difficult to get along with people who are different from us in their ethnic conflicts and so on and so forth. But this was necessary for God to do to prevent united man from multiplying evil because of his sinful tendency.

At the same time, God has worked in history through the Jews, Israel as a unique nation. The reason they are unique is that God has been working in history through them, and He has provided redemption for everyone who turns to Him through the person of Jesus Christ. So that's a summary of how we landed where we are today, according to the Bible. And now we come to the next aspect of worldview, which is identity and meaning.

Identity and Meaning Who am I, or who is a human? What does it mean to be human? And how should I live, or what is the meaning of life? What does the Bible say about the things that we experience in our life? Let us look at some of these things.

The Bible says that time is something that God has created. God is eternal. So He is beyond time, but He has created time. And the Bible very clearly says that time is something linear. Time is not a cycle that goes on and on endlessly. There was an eternity past. There was a beginning in time. Time is now going on. That's the present. And then there is a future. Time as we know it will end and there will be an eternity in the future. So this is the picture of time that God has present in the Bible. There are various events. If you want to know where we are right now. We are somewhere in the middle of this timeframe. That's the church age. So this is what the Bible says about time. There was a definite beginning and there is going to be a definite end.


Space and Matter
What does the Bible say about space and matter? First of all, it says that these are real things, this is not an illusion. Some people believe that only thoughts are real, or only concepts are real and the the matter around us is something which is unreal. That's not what the Bible says. These are good and real things that God has made. He has made these things to show His glory. He has also made these things for man's benefit. At the same time, the Bible says that the space and matter that we see around us the world as we know it today is not eternal. It is not going to last forever. It had a beginning, and it's going to have an end.

Matter is not bad. We should not think that physical things are bad, and Spiritual things are good. The Bible has no such dichotomy. At the same time, matter is fallen. We ourselves have bodies today that are corrupted, our bodies decay, and they die. So there is fallen and of course aspect of matter. At the same time. It is something good that God has created. The Bible also says that matter is inanimate. The universe is not a living being, the universe does not have a mind of its own. At the same time. The universe works according to fixed laws. These laws are upheld by God. Sometimes people ask you know do you invoke God for everything you invoke God. When you don't understand something, we invoke God. Every time if an apple falls to the ground, it is God who makes it fall, but He makes it fall in a regular way which can be scientifically investigated. In exceptional circumstances, God may overrule a natural law, and there's a word for that; t's called a miracle.


What is man ?
And what does the Bible say about man? According to the Bible, we are not descended from apes. We are not separate creations of God. It's not that God has made the high class people separately and the low class people as another category. We are all one family. One family in the sense that we are all descended from the same original parents, every man not an animal, not a bird is made in the image of God. These are ideas which have profound consequences.

You know, when we go for medical treatment, we take antibiotics, and we take substances that kill other organisms. We use things that have been tested on animals, all these risks, all these medical activities that are done based on the premise that human life has more value than any other life. Well, that follows from the Bible. The Bible says that only man is made in the image of God. Man has been given dominance over the world. So, it's not wrong for us to go and colonize the place. Yes, in order to make our houses we may have to cut down trees we may have to cut down a forest. There's nothing wrong in that.

The Bible also says that man has fallen. That means man has fallen down from the original state that he is and that as he has sinned. He has rebelled against God. So people are primarily not victims. People are primarily rebels. All people have rebelled against God and that is a basic characteristic of man, that rebellion manifests itself today, that rebellion has consequences. One of the consequences of sin is degradation, and there are many primitive people living all over the world. Even when people become sophisticated, it does not change their sinful nature.

At the same time, man is also special because Christ has died for men. Crisis died for men and women. Which means that every human being is special in the sense that God has bestowed and lavished upon them infinite love. So according to the Bible, these truths ought to shape the way we treat others. Man has got a basic dignity. This is an idea that comes from the Bible. One of the main or strongest or most conspicuous aspects of our human life is the relationships that we have. And you know, there are many organisms that survive with minimal relationships, but human relationships are very strong. And the obvious question is why ?

The biblical answer is that God made human relationships the way they are, because He wanted to communicate something through them. The husband-wife relationship was made by God to illustrate the relationship between Jesus Christ and His redeemed people. The father and son or the parent and child relationship was instituted by God so that we could understand something of the relationship between the persons of the trinity, which we're commonly known as the Father and the Son. So God has given us these relationships which are very special with very special meanings. All these earthly relationships illustrate heavenly truths, and they are deliberate choices that God has made. And therefore, if we violate the pattern of these relationships, we are violating God's order and God's law. According to the Bible, structures such as a marriage between a man and a woman are not stereotypes, they are part of the order that God has made. Just as there is order in the physical universe; there is also order in human life that God has instituted.


How should we live?
What does the Bible say about how a human being should live? Perhaps there are some people who don't bother about this. They just go about their lives, just reacting to circumstances. But every thinking, sensible person will ask this question, what on earth should I do with my life?

And look at the biblical answer? The first thing that God wants anyone everywhere to do, what that includes you, is that God wants you to repent, to repent means to turn around, to turn around from sinful autonomy to God. We all live our lives as if we are God, as if we are in charge. We would like to perhaps say that, you know, it's my life and I will live it the way I want. So we have that sense of autonomy in us, and this autonomy induces us to even do things that displease God. But all the while we're living in God's universe, we breathe in His oxygen, drinking His water. Now that status cannot just go on forever without any consequences. God calls upon you to repent, to turn and submit to Him.

This is a conversation that Jesus had with the Jewish people. And they asked Him, “What shall we do that we might work the works of God?” And Jesus answered, “this is the work of God that you believe on Him whom He has sent”. God calls you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Savior. He is the one that God has sent to the world. He is God's representative to the human race. And God calls you to believe in Jesus Christ, that means to believe who He was and what He did. His person and His work. His person is He is the Son of God who came down in human form. His work is that He died on the cross for the salvation of people like you and me. He paid the penalty for us, and we ought to put our trust on Him. For those of us who consider the Lord Jesus Christ; the Bible emphasizes that believing in Jesus Christ is not just an academic exercise. It's not like how you might believe a fact in history. Paul writes in the Bible like this, I count all things but loss for the surpassing worth of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.

We all have things in life that we treasure, it might be the enjoyment that we have, the relationships that we have, the status, the wealth that we have. But Paul says here that I counted all these things as rubbish, so that I could win Christ. So you will not have Christ unless you want Him more than anything else. Unless you understand and accept that He is more beautiful, more worthy, greater than anything else you might place your affection on. For those of us who have taken the decision to be a disciple of Jesus Christ; and God has revealed Himself to us. The biblical encouragement is this-Paul says I don't consider myself as having attained perfection, but there's one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward unto those things which are ahead. I press forward to the towards the mark, for the price of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. So Disciples of Christ are going on to perfection in Jesus Christ. So this is like the sequence of actions that God wants every human being to do. He wants you to repent, put your trust in Jesus Christ, make Him the Lord of your life, and then follow hard after Him.


Destiny
What does the Bible have to say about destiny? What is going to happen to us after we die? What is going to happen to the world? The Bible says that there is going to be an event called the rapture in which those people who are alive and who are followers of Christ will be taken away; taken away to be with the Lord Jesus Christ. They will give an account to Him of how they served Him, and then they will spend eternity with Him. In the meantime, on earth, God will allow human rebellion to run its full course. So there will be chaos in the world. There will be judgments of God in the form of astronomical and biological upheavals. And then, finally, the Lord Jesus Christ will descend.

This is the Mount of Olives, just to the east of Jerusalem. And the Bible says that Jesus Christ is going to come down on the Mount of Olives, and then He is going to judge the nations and start His role on the earth, which is going to last for 1000 years, and it's going to be a time of peace and prosperity. The cruelty and the violence that we see in nature is going to be abolished during the millennium. So you see here the Bible says that lions will also turn herbivorous, children will be able to play with wild animals, lifespans will be long, there will be peace, there'll be law and order. There will be prosperity and health. Basically, a lot of what God intended the world to be is going to be fulfilled during the 1000-year reign of Christ, which is called the millennium.

However, the Bible also says that at the end of the millennium, the world will rebel against Christ, and He will destroy the people who will rebel against Him. And that leads to the final judgment, which is called the Great White Throne Judgment. The Bible says that after the millennium is wrapped up, there is going to be a judgment in which everybody who has lived is going to stand before Jesus Christ. We all will give an account of our life and those whose names are not found in the book of life, that is those who have not submitted and brought themselves under the Lordship of God, are going to be cast into the lake of fire. Now, hell is perhaps one of the most unpopular teachings in the Bible, but it would be dishonest of us if we did not tell it like it is. The Bible says that there is a place called hell and if you land up there you're not going to escape out of there. But no one needs to go to hell because God has made a way. God has made a way for us to come to Him. He has provided the penalty, the sacrifice that is due for us, and He has provided salvation as a free-gift for us. All we have to do is receive it.

And after this great white throne judgment, after every one who is evil has been banished away from the presence of God. There will be a perfect age and eternity will be assured and in which God's original plan for mankind will come to full fruition. God will dwell with His people, there will be new heavens and a new earth. And of course, we don't know what's in store for us in this eternal city. There are perhaps lots more things that God wants to tell us and God wants to make us do. We will serve Him. We don't know much details about this, but we do know that it is going to be a wonderful time.

So this is how the Bible says the universe will come to climax. So this was the biblical worldview. It explains how things began, why things have become the way they are. What are we supposed to do with our present and where the future is headed? It is our thesis that the Bible presents the best explanation for the world around us, and therefore, we would encourage you to consider these things and consider responding to the call of the Bible to come to God to give your life to the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you very much.