Dear Friends,
This week one man prayed with me according to the pattern of Luke 18:13 & Romans 10:9.
He is a young PhD computer engineer from Europe. He just accepted a job in the US as a professor and he will be moving to the East Coast of the US this summer. He wrote:
Dear Dr. Tour, I have been on a path from Atheist, to Agnostic, to believing in some sort of God-like being at the origin of the universe. But I’m stuck at this point. I’ve been trying to take Christianity (and also other monotheistic religions really) seriously. You could say I’m a cultural christian. But I can’t seem to go all the way. I’m a Computer Science and Engineering PhD, so I’m very scientifically and qualitatively minded, so the YouTube algorithm presented me with some of your work. In these videos you challenge people like me to send you an email, so here I am. Perhaps you can help me. I sure hope so 🙂 I wish you the best.________
PS- I have read some of the basic arguments for the resurrection from Dr. William Lane Craig for example. I’m hoping you will take it to the next level.
I confirmed by email that he does not yet accept the resurrection of Jesus. So we met. “Cultural Christian” is the term that Richard Dawkins recently used of himself. Anyway, I shared the simple gospel, much on the resurrection, and this CS engineer readily received. He was remarkably open. The Holy Spirit had already well-prepared the ground. We then spent 20 minutes speaking about AI and large language models, a topic that this man will be teaching in the US, and a subject upon which part of my research group has been studying and writing. I sent him a rough draft of our manuscript on the topic. The engineer is assigned a mentor to be arranged by Charles Lloyd and I sent him a copy of the “Growing in Christ” workbook. I instructed this engineer in Bible meditation, starting with the Gospel of John. Here is what he sent me after a few days:
Dear Jim, Thank you so much for the time you spent with me. Our conversation meant a lot to me. Also, I cannot thank you enough for these resources and for this roadmap “homework”. I really needed something like this. I have been following your advice and reading every morning. So far I’m really enjoying it to start my day. I do have one question though, what was the reason you recommended me to start with John’s gospel?
Thank you very much for sharing the paper. I will keep it to myself.
God bless you.______
I replied:
Dear _____, I choose the gospel according to John because it paints the most wonderful picture of Jesus Christ, the son of God. He is the focal point, as I told you, of God‘s blessing here on earth. And so I choose that gospel of the four because it focuses most strongly on the Lordship of Jesus. And then when you’re done with that book, you can go right on into the book of Acts. And then proceed through the New Testament…God bless, Jim
The gospel message really works. It works on men and women, old and children, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. There is no message like it. Why would any believer think that they could improve upon this message that God wrote?
Jesus said it best:
Acts 26:18
“...to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.”
God bless,
Jim Tour
