John records in his Revelation of Jesus Christ that Jesus said these words:

(Revelation 21:5) And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, (examine carefully) I make (am making) all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. (KJV)

(Revelation 21:5) He who was seated on the throne said, Examine this carefully "I am making everything new!"

The point is; there are many people in today’s world who despise Christianity... who wish the followers of Christ could be exterminated from the face of the earth. They have no comprehension that the world they live in would be a vastly different place if Jesus Christ had never come into this world to begin with. The massive changes that came into the world as a result of the above list didn’t just happen….many were direct byproducts of the teachings of Christianity and had the teachings of Christ not filtered into every society on earth, every one of those cultures, including our own, would still look very much like the ancient pagan societies we all spawned from. We have detailed, in almost everyone of these categories, that as modern societies move away from Christianity…their behavior reverts more and more back to the behavior of the ancient pagans.

There is, however, one more category that has done more to individually change the world than all these others put together. In fact, as we repeatedly saw in this series, this last one is the basis for all the other changes that came into the world as a result of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ….

It isn’t just that the “Teachings of Christ” caused the ancients to stop putting out their unwanted children for wild animals, or to stop pitting humans against wild animals for entertainment, or that stopped the vicious slaughtering and raping of the barbarian, Vikings or Goths. Christ’s teachings didn’t start hospitals all over the world. Christ’s teachings aided in moving the world from Greek times when ½ of all people in the empire were slaves to today when owning another person is illegal in almost all parts of the world….

The teachings of Jesus are not in and of themselves enough to transform an ancient pagan world into world of morality, and compassion, and the rule of law, and even technological advance. There has to be something more to it…

The apostle Paul said:

(2 Corinthians 5:17) Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! (NIV)

The whole point of Christianity is not found in Christians ability to follow a set of rules for living. The whole point of Christianity of that accepting Jesus Christ into one’s life, repenting of the old sinful life, and submitting our will to God’s sovereign purpose for us

Brings a transformation from the inside out!

….if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

If you’re sitting here today and you are trying to be a Christian simply by coming to church and trying to do the right things; you’re spinning your wheels. Every once in a while I run across somebody and they talk about Christian things, and they come to church, and they like other Christian people but I’m left wondering whether they really know what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus. I wonder if they truly understand what it means to have their sins forgiven. I wonder if they have really experienced the change on the inside that makes the “old life” start to go away and the new life begin to take it’s place.

I wonder how many of you sitting in this room, this morning, may be in that no man’s land between wanting to act like a Christian but not having the transformation on the inside to give you the power to do so.

The changes that happened to this world didn’t happen just because Jesus was born…. They didn’t happen just because he taught righteous principles for living ….They happened because his death brought freedom from sin and his resurrection brought new life to those who would believe…

When Jesus said: (Revelation 21:5) He who was seated on the throne said, Examine this carefully "I am making everything new!" ..this is what he was talking about.

In the 19^{th century a prominent atheist named Charles Bradlaugh challenged a man named Hugh Price Hughes to a debate on the validity of the claims of Christianity. Hughes said he would be glad to debate but asked that each of them bring 100 people who’s lives had been transformed by the power of their beliefs. He specified that the transformation had to include a complete leaving behind of old vices and immoral behavior and a complete newness of live brought on by the persons belief. Hugh said he could immediately produce 100; but when Charles could not; he reduced the number to 50...then 20...and finally down to one. Bradlaugh finally withdrew from the debate because he could not produce one person who had been transformed by his Atheistic beliefs!}

In fact, history tells us that Karl Marx proposed Communism as a atheistic alternative to Christianity that would right all the wrong Christianity had dealt onto the world. Under Communism, without the shackles of legalistic set of do’s and don’ts mankind would flourish.

China’s Mao is responsible for slaughtering 72 million people

And we could go on, and on, and, on looking at evidence of how those who opposed Christianity have “made this world a better place“. Hitler killed 15 million people and started a war that killed millions more, Saddam Hussein killed millions, raped thousands, pulled out tongues, ran people through meat grinders..

Yet oddly He hates Christianity with a passion. Find’s it part of a great satan needed to be erased from the earth.

Osama bin Ladan would tomorrow, if he could, wipe out the entire population of New York city, yet if you ask him, he would viciously declare to you that Christianity has brought great evil into this world.

The Bible, itself, paints portrait after portrait of people who were quite bad, until the power of God reached into their lives.

Jesus told the greedy and dishonest tax collector, Zacchaeus upon his conversion, that:

The apostle Paul, persecutor of Christians, accessory to the murder of the first martyr Stephen, becomes a totally new person in Christ Jesus. He’s the one who wrote: ….if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! He is responsible for almost single-handedly takes the gospel to the Gentile world, He wrote the gospels that became the foundation for our doctrinal statements and statements of faith.

Sometimes it’s hard for us to relate to Bible characters so let me give you some more contemporary examples:

Sergeant Jacob DeShazer was a bomber in WWII and while bombing Japan his plane was hit and he bailed out. He was placed in a 5’X 5’ prison cell and treated with horrible cruelty. His hatred for his guards grew into a mountain as day after day they tortured him.

One day someone brought a Bible into the prison and each prisoner took turns reading it. He was so moved by Jesus words at his crucifixion:

(Luke 23:34) …"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do..”

He believed and the love of Christ melted the mountain of hatred inside of him. He said: “My heart was full of joy. I would not have traded places with anyone.” When the war was over DeShazer returned to Japan…not to get revenge, but as a missionary to bring to his captors the love of Christ. He wrote the story and distributed it in Japan.

One day a broken, dejected, hopeless man was given the tract by an American stranger. He was converted…his name was Captain Mitsuo Fuchida. The man who gave his heart to Jesus Christ, that day, was the same man who spearheaded the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He became a witness of the transforming power of Jesus Christ all over Japan and America and on the 25th anniversary of Pearl harbor he brought a gift to the survivors and asked their forgiveness. The gift was a special Bible with the inscription:

Mel Trotter was the scum of the earth. He would do anything for a drink. He abused his family, he neglected his children. One day he came home and found his daughter seriously ill. He took off her shoes, went out and sold, them and drank up the money. When he came back home his daughter was dead. He was so overwhelmed with remorse that he set out through Chicago toward Lake Michigan to commit suicide. He passed a building and heard a preacher talking through a loudspeaker about how much Christ loved even the worst of people. He committed his life to Jesus and God delivered him from his addiction. Trotter set up a mission in Grand Rapids, Michigan, followed by some 50 more, that brought salvation and deliverance to thousands.

He also played a role in the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. When I was a boy, I vividly remember sitting in the bathtub, listening to the program produced by Pacific Garden Mission called “Unshackled”, the story of many, like Trotter, who’s lives had been transformed by the power of Christ. I remember hearing the story of Mel Trotter…I remember sitting there crying and committing myself to bringing that deliverance to others. If your life has been affected, in any way, by my life that ball, to some degree, was gotten rolling by an hopeless alcoholic named Mel Trotter.

John Newton is a story many of you are familiar with. An Englishman who Captained a ship that took unwilling Africans as slaves and brought them to be sold in the West. During a violent storm in 1747 he called on God for protection and was spared. He made a radical commitment of his life to Christ gave up the slave trade and came home to England. He wrote the song “Amazing Grace” by putting words to a slave tune he had heard on his ship. Gallup says that song is America’s #1 hymn.

That’s not the end of the story. John Newton became a pastor and one of his parishioners was a member of Parliament named William Wilberforce. Wilberforce spend years trying to defeat the practice of slavery in England. He wanted to quit the Parliament …..Newton convinced him to stay on. You may remember back at the beginning of this series I shared with you that Wilberforce, on his deathbed received the word that 700,000 English slaves had been freed. What he didn’t live to know was that thirty years later, here in the US, after a brutal civil war, his influence brought about the freedom of slaves here as well.

C.S .Lewis was an Irishman who’s mother died when he was young. He turned on god and became an agnostic. He decided”

“there was nothing worth pursuing besides things of the mind and pleasures of the flesh”

Lewis’s search to find truth outside of Christianity produced what has often happened in that circumstance. He discovered that the only logical path to truth is found in Christianity. (McDowell, Stroebel) Lewis became the greatest Christian writer of this century and one of the great Christian writers of all time.

That’s not the end of the story… When Richard Nixon was getting himself ready to become the only US President to be forcefully removed from office, he had a high-powered attorney who was part of his Special Counsel, and on that counsel was often called his “hatchet man”. Jeb Magruder Nixon’s re-election Deputy Director said:

I came to regard Chuck Colson as an evil genius. His brilliance was undeniable, but it was too often applied to encouraging Richard Nixon’s dark side, his desire to lash out at his enemies, his instinct for the jugular. I would have to say… Colson was one of the men.. most responsible for creating the climate that made Watergate possible, even inevitable.

If you remember those days you know that President Nixon was forced to resign and Chuck Colson went to prison. Colson read C.S. Lewis’s book Mere Christianity and for the first time realized that the only truly logical explanation for the universe is God and that true freedom starts on the inside with a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Colson, after leaving prison became a writer himself, starting with the classic, “Born Again” and became the founder of Prison Fellowship which bring the gospel to hundred of thousand of prisoners around the world.

******(Revelation 21:5) And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new.*******

1) Repent (Turn from your sins, make a U-turn)

2) Admit (you are a sinner and cannot make yourself righteous)

3) Believe (He died to forgive your sins and rose to bring you new life)

4) Accept (His free gift of forgiveness from sin and promise of eternal life)

5) Invite (Him to be you Savior and Lord of your life)