STUDY IN THEOLOGY #1 -- The Existence of God
PROOF FROM SCRIPTURE
To begin our study in Bible doctrine we should begin with God. After all,
that's where the Book begins. The problem for the Bible believer is solved
with the very first verse in the Bible which says, "In the beginning God
created the heaven and the earth." Genesis 1:1, the beginning verse, assumes
the existence of God. The Lord Jesus Christ never questioned the existence
of God; He referred to God in a matter-of-fact way. To tell the truth, there
is not one writer in the Bible who wastes time trying to prove the existence
of God. The term God alone occurs in the Bible more than 500 times; the
Bible takes the existence of God for granted. But in this lesson we're going
to talk about the teleological argument for the existence of God, the
cosmological argument, the anthropological argument, and the argument from
congruity. These are theological subjects, but let us notice that the Bible
takes the existence of God for granted. It is never brought up as a
question.
Christians are constantly challenged by atheists, skeptics, agnostics, and
hecklers to prove that there is a God. Fortunately, we don't have to prove
it. The Bible says in Psalm 14:1, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is
no God." Any man may argue about the existence of God with his head, but the
trouble is with the heart.
It is very difficult for the natural man to believe in something that he
cannot see, touch, or feel; so in 1 Corinthians 2:14 we are told, "But the
natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are
foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned." However, anyone with any intelligence can acknowledge the
evident fact that a supreme intelligence is manifest throughout the
operations of nature, history and the universe.
Christ says in John 7:17, "If any man will do his will {God's will}, he
shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of
myself." That is, a skeptic's trouble is heart trouble. It has to do with a
bad life and an immoral attitude. Now, it is true that you have moral
atheists and moral skeptics and moral sinners, men who do good because they
have found that it pays to do good. Or, they might do good because they
cannot do evil and get away with it. Or, they might do good to soothe their
conscience. Or, they do good so that they can brag about their self-
righteousness before their fellow man. We have always had moral sinners,
moral atheists and moral skeptics, but the only real difference between them
and the immoral sinners is the difference between brand new garbage cans and
old ones. They all have the same contents.
They have a joke about the Dial-a-Prayer service. The atheists have a Dial-
a-prayer service where they dial a number and nobody answers. They also have
one about a dead atheist who was lying in a coffin and one of his buddies
came by and looked at him and said, "Poor old Bill. There he is, all dressed
up and no place to go."
Being an atheist takes a great deal of faith. As a matter of fact, it takes
a great deal more faith to be an atheist than to be a deist or a theist--a
believer in God. To be an atheist a person has to deny a first cause. And in
order to deny this, you have to deny your rational powers. Anybody who knows
about the laws of thermodynamics (and in particular the second law, the law
of entropy) knows that if the universe had been here more than ninety
billion years it would have run down; by now it would be wasted out and
burned out. How much more if it had been here "forever" without a first
cause? If the universe had been here for more than, say, a hundred billion
years, it would have burned out at least fifty billion years ago--by the law
of breakdown. For example, the magnetic field around the earth is decreasing
at such a rate that it could not have been here for more than ten thousand
years at a maximum.
To be an atheist takes a great deal of faith. Now, we realize that in a
country where "freedom of religion" is allowed, a man who is an atheist can
be called "religious" and he has the freedom to express his views, which is
perfectly all right with us. We couldn't care less. If a man wants to
exhibit his ignorance, that's his business. If you want to display your
stupidity, you're free to do it. However, you're not free to demand a
respectful hearing from those of us who have some sense. In America we need
to distinguish between liberty and license. Granted, a man has the liberty
to be an atheist if he wants to be. If you want to go to hell, that's your
business; but don't expect those of us who have some sense to listen to the
claptrap put out by Rousseau, Voltaire, Celsus, Porphory, Tom Payne and
Robert Ingersoll. We have better sense. The Bible begins with God, And,
although the Bible is not a textbook that attempts to prove the existence of
God, the Bible opens with the positive statement that God does exist. Then,
the first proof for the existence of God is what we call the scriptural
proof.
There are other proofs which we shall also discuss: the proof of nature, the
proof of conscience, the argument from cause, the argument from design and
the moral argument, but the first main proof is from God's word. "Thy word
is truth." David said in Psalm 119:160, "Thy word is true from the
beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever." David
said, "Thy word is true from the beginning," and the beginning takes God for
granted--"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth." So the
Bible begins with God and takes His existence as being a fact. "The fool
hath said in his heart, There is no God." He didn't say that in his head.
Any man with any sense, a man who is half intelligent or half rational, can
see immediately that there is a God. The man who says there is no God simply
says that down in his heart because of a bad life. Now, it's true he may
have cleaned up temporarily, but he may have plans for later or he may be
trying to cover up a skeleton in the closet from thirty years back. There's
more to it than just a college education, science, religion and all that
foolishness. All right, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God."
Anyone with any intelligence would acknowledge the evident fact of a living
God.
The greatest proof, apart from scripture, of the existence of God is the
daily fellowship that a born again person can have with God in prayer. Those
of us who know God can sing, "And He walks with me and He talks with me and
He tells me I am His own, and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other
has ever known." We know there is a God because we talk to Him daily. He
hears our prayers and answers the prayers of our heart. The Bible says that
we are to commit everything to Him in prayer. Why would anyone be dumb
enough to tell you, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall
find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you" when there is nobody there to
answer, nobody there to give, and nobody to open the door? Rather stupid,
don't you think? Could it be that the four billion people who have been
saved since the time of Pentecost have all been deceived? Have they? When
they can write down lists of hundreds of prayers that have been answered?
Comfort in sorrow. Comfort in tribulation. Money sent in when they needed
it. Jobs obtained when they needed them. People in their family healed when
they were sick. Peace of mind and peace of heart in the face of certain
death and torture and pain. They were all deceived, were they? It's an
illusion, is it? Well, if it is an illusion you'd better get submerged in it
about a hundred and fifty fathoms deep because it's a permanent illusion.
I, for example, have been saved for nearly 20 years. I lived on this earth
18 years as an unsaved man. I went to church nearly all my life, but it was
just "churchianity," not Christianity. I found Christ as my Saviour after
hearing the Gospel for the first time in Sunday School in a Bible-believing
church--after years of attending church services in formalistic churches
where no Gospel was preached. I was finally told about my sinful condition
and my need of the Saviour, and I received and believed Him. Don't tell me
there is no God. I sought Him and I found Him. He heard me and answered my
prayer; He delivered me from all my sins and saved my soul; and He commanded
me to commit all the problems I had to Him in prayer and in thanksgiving and
to make known unto Him all my requests with supplications. Why? To play a
joke on me? Well, it's some joke, isn't it? Like a converted drunk said to
an atheist, "If it's a delusion, it's a funny delusion. I turned my whiskey
bottles into food and clothing for my family, my bad temper into a
charitable disposition toward my fellow man, and it got me to stop by church
on Wednesday night instead of a bar. It's some delusion, isn't it?"
So when we talk about these things--matters of apologetics--we are talking
about something that is real. If you were in a dark room and you held out
your hand in that dark room three times a day and somebody put something
that you needed in your hand three times a day, wouldn't you guess after a
while that there was somebody in the room with you? Would you say after
thirty years that the whole operation was an accidental "coincidence"? I
mean, you talk about rational powers and being dishonest rationally and
intellectually, what do you call that?
Atheists, the worms are going to get you. Imagine a man giving himself
credit for what he has and the worms wind up with him. Don't you find that
rather ludicrous? The Bible takes the existence of God for granted. The
first proof is scriptural. The Bible speaks of "God" over five hundred times
using the name of God, and it uses the word "Lord" over three hundred times.
PROOF FROM NATURE
The next proof we have for the existence of God is from nature. We find this
great passage in Psalm 19:1, "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the
firmament sheweth his handiwork." No man could gaze at the universe and
think that it came together accidentally unless he had set himself up as his
own god and looked at everything relatively, as Einstein did, or unless he
had set up his own moral standards in order to avoid the moral standards of
God. "The heavens declare the glory of God."
Romans 1:20 goes even further and says, "For the invisible things of him
from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the
things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are
without excuse." The man who will accept scripture will readily acknowledge
the existence of God. He will have proof for the existence of God and there
will not be any doubt about it. The invisible things are clearly seen. When
Christ wanted to tell man what hell was like he pointed to a city dump--
Gehenna. When he wanted to show people what heaven was like he pointed to a
sinless, clean city with a park in it. When the Lord Jesus Christ wanted to
picture Himself, He pictured Himself in the Bible as the SUN, which moves
east to west, as history moves east to west, as revivals move east to west,
as the Holy Ghost moves east to west, against the rotation of the world. The
invisible things are clearly seen.
A perfect picture of the Godhead and the Trinity, for example, is found in
the sun which contains alpha, beta, and gamma rays. The sun has light rays
that you can see and cannot feel, a picture of God the Son, the Lord Jesus
Christ; rays that you can feel but cannot see, a picture of God the Spirit,
the Holy Ghost; and rays which you can neither see nor feel, actinic rays
which picture the soul of God, God the Father. The sun, then, visibly seen,
is a representation of things not seen. So the things that are not seen are
eternal, but they are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are
made, Romans 1:20.
PROOF FROM THE CONSCIENCE
All right, the next proof for God comes from conscience. Man is born with a
universal belief in a supreme being. No tribe has yet been discovered which
lacks this. They know that some being creates and controls life. The only
kind of people who doubt belief in a supreme being are people who have been
educated out of it and have been taught relative matters so they can live
like the devil and justify themselves. There is not one tribe (isolated or
unisolated) on the face of this earth that does not believe in a supreme
being. If a man were raised on an island with the animals, he would grow up
worshipping a supreme being. You have to be educated out of such a belief.
There is no such thing as an uneducated, natural atheist. Romans 2:15 says
about the heathen people, "Which shew the work of the law written in their
hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean
while accusing or else excusing one another." The existence of God is
written in the human conscience. Whether the man has a Bible or not, or the
law or not, his conscience bears witness to the ten commandments. People
says, "What about those who don't know and haven't heard?" They know a great
deal more than you think they know. There's many a Fiji Islander, Tasmanian
Islander, or New Guinean; there's many an African in the Chad in the heart
of the Belgian Congo who knows a great deal more about God than the
professors at the University of Oregon or the University of California or
the Universities of Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee or New York.
You say, "Where do they get that from?" From having common sense. Where
would you get it otherwise? Out there in the jungle, the heathen cut off a
man's hand when he steals the first time, his other hand when he steals the
second time, and his head the third time. Why? Because they know the
commandment that says, "Thou shalt not steal," even if they do not have a
Bible.
There is no tribe on the face of this earth where adultery is not recognized
as a crime, except in the college circles and high school circles of
America. They talk about "adult consent" and "premarital sex." You are not
born with a disbelief in morals and the existence of God. You're born with
the revelation of God in your conscience which you have to drown out. The
Bible says about these educated Americans in 1 Timothy 4:2 that they have
"their conscience seared with a hot iron."
In Acts 17:23 Paul says, "For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I
found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD." Now, that was in
the city of Athens which contained the most educated, cultured people of
their day, the people who wrote the grammar text books for the correcting of
the King James text by the modern Christian schools. They were agnostic, but
conscience told them that there was a God though they did not know Him
personally. They were agnostic. (That's what the word "unknown" is. Nosis
with the alpha before it. Agnostic. Ag-nos-tic. An "unknower," or, as they
say in Latin, an "ignoramus.")
So, the heathen know about God. He is revealed in nature and He is revealed
in conscience even to those who have no scriptures. Some atheists may claim
that their conscience does not tell them about God. That's because they burn
their conscience out. For example, you stop and think about the first time
you took a cigarette or the first time you took a glass of liquor. I am not
talking about the third time, old boy, I am talking about the first time.
Don't tell me that the first time you tried a Rum Collins or a Tom Collins
or a Slow Gin Fiz or a Sidecar or a Boxcar or a Manhattan or a Bicardi or a
Bloody Mary you took it with a clear conscience! The first time? It is
doubtful that a genuine atheist can be found, for, at the best, they are men
who have stilled their conscience by blatant unbelief and by long continued
living in sin. They have burned their consciences out so they no longer warn
them.
Some men are so blind that they may deny the existence of a sun in the sky,
but that doesn't alter the fact that the sun exists and that it rises and
sets each day. None are so blind as people who refuse to see, and the
honest man will see that the inner still small voice says that God exists
and is alive. Men deny the existence of God, not because they cannot find
Him, but because they are afraid to face the responsibility of being
accountable to Him after death. There is not an atheist in the world who did
not run to atheism in order to get out of his personal accountability to
God. And that is why when Paul preached to the most educated, cultured
people of his day, the Athenian Greek scholars and the Athenian Greek
philosophers (Acts 17), they mocked when they heard about the resurrection
of the dead. No atheist could stand to have his life brought out in the open
and that is why men are atheists. That's why "The fool hath said in his
heart, There is no God"--not in his head.
Atheism is one of the devil's tools to put man to sleep without accepting
salvation. If there is no God, then I am not responsible to anyone. I can
live and die as I please. And if you don't accept the true God, you can get
yourself another one. Which really means, when a man says he is an atheist,
he is really just a liar. What he means is that he does not want the God of
the Bible. But men are incurably religious, and every atheist has some god.
You say, "Well, I'm an atheist and I worship no god at all." Sure you do,
son. You worship your brain. If you do not accept one God, you put something
else in the place of supreme authority. Your God is either the God and
Father of Jesus Christ or it is Rama Krishna or Buddha or Mohammed or Lao-
tse or the first cause or the first principle or the Great Architect or
Mahabone or something else you cooked up or it is your own noodle.
To look up and see a plane and not see a pilot and say the pilot doesn't
exist is ridiculous, and it is just as ridiculous to look into the heavens
and say there is no God just because we cannot see him. You can't see the
pilot flying a DC7 or DC9 over your head. What does that mean? Few of us
have ever seen our own brains, yet we believe we have them. A man said to
Billy Sunday one time, "I don't believe in God. I don't believe in something
I can't see." Billy said, "Have you ever seen your backbone?" The man said,
"Sure, I saw a reflection in the mirror." Billy said, "Well, I see a
reflection of Christ dying for my sins in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." The
man said, "Yeah, but I felt it with my hands." Billy Sunday said, "I can
feel the Holy Spirit warming my heart and giving me confidence in God." You
have as much evidence that God exists as you have evidence that your
backbone and your brain exist. You have as much evidence that God exists and
that Christ died as Saviour as you do that you have a brain in your head.
COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
All right, another argument for the existence of God is what we call the
argument from cause--cosmological. That is, the world is here. The first
cosmological argument for God is that the world must have come from
somewhere. Somebody or something must have caused it to come into being at
one time or another. For example, here is a book. Well, somebody must have
written it. No printing press can of itself print a book, be it ever so
modern a press with the latest technology. Somebody created the trees.
Somebody operates the universe. If all the pieces of a watch were placed in
a can and the can was shaken gently for 150 billion years, the watch would
not accidentally get together and start running. The only sensible answer,
to a man who is intellectually honest, to the problem of the existence of
the world is the existence of an intelligent being behind the order, the
cosmos. The chances that man could come into being by Darwin's theory or by
any modern evolutionist's theory are the chances you would take if a print
factory blew up in the air and came down in the form of a dictionary. We say
this with charity toward all evolutionists, who are entitled to believe what
they want to believe. Freedom of speech, son. Help yourself. But don't
expect an intelligent man to buy it. I mean, after all, education is not
brains. An education is not intellectual honesty. Education is education--
one of the greatest money-making rackets in America, I guess, outside of
sex, automobiles, and dope.
TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
This brings up an argument for the existence of God from design. This is
called the teleological argument. In the teleological argument we presume
that a watch not only exists but that it had a designer. It was planned for
a specific purpose. A watch was not designed, for example, for mosquitoes to
live in or for fish to swim in. It was designed by a keen mind for the
purpose of accurately telling the time. An examination of the world and the
things in it, both large and small, shows that each is designed by an
intelligent mind for a specific purpose in life. The colors of the birds and
the means of defense for animals are not accidents. They are the result of
the planning of a superior mind, the mind of an Originator whom we call God.
MORAL ARGUMENT
The next argument for the existence of God is called the moral argument,
sometimes referred to as the anthropological argument--the argument from the
nature of mankind. Man has an intellectual and moral nature that animals do
not have, showing that the Creator must not be merely an inanimate force but
a living, intelligent, moral being. The modern teaching being presented to
all the college students in the state universities is that if there really
is a God, He is an impersonal force. The god of modern science is sort of a
neuter energy force field with no morals. This brand new, scientific god, of
course, has been molded and made in the image of fallen man. As somebody
said, "God created man in His own image and man returned the compliment."
Which is a rather sarcastic way of saying that ever since Adam fell, men
have been inventing gods and making up gods and going to the dime store and
going down the counter bargain shopping for gods of their choice.
The choice of a modern educated fool with a Ph.D. or medical degree is an
inanimate neuter force that does not have any moral standards. Guess why.
However, in the Bible we read in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness." And again, in Genesis 1:27, "So God created man
in his own image, in the image of God created he him;" that is, He patterned
man after God. God says in Psalm 94:9, "He that planted the ear, shall he
not hear? he that formed the eye, shall he not see?" God has given to man
ears, eyes, knowledge, intelligence and will power, for these are the things
that He, Himself, God possesses. Man, who was once in the image of God in
righteousness and holiness, is a miniature, fallen counterpart of God; man
fell, but he still retains in his fallen state the vestigial remnant of the
Godhead. Man was made in God's image, not the image of an orangutan or an
opossum or anything else in Darwin's family tree that swung by the tail.
(We'll talk about this more when we get into our lessons on anthropology,
one of the branches of theology which deals with the creation of man.)
Now, conscience teaches man right and wrong, good and bad, for his Creator
is a moral being who is holy and loves righteousness but abhors evil. That
is why the God of truth, the God of creation, the God of this universe has
been "run off the boards" by modern man. Modern man does not abhor evil and
does not love righteousness. "Modern man," per se--especially the educated,
religious, scientific type of man--is a man who believes that righteousness
and evil are relative terms which you can switch back and forth. As a matter
of fact, they are often switched back and forth in matters like those
discussed by men like Hugh Hefner in Playboy, Esquire, Genesis, Playgirl,
and the rest of the girlie magazines--what they are doing is calling evil
good and calling good evil. To such a race of degenerates the God of the
Bible can hardly be accepted or even retain His respectable position. After
all, when a man hates righteousness and loves sin, he cannot have any
fellowship with the God of truth and righteousness.
The moral argument is simple. Anthropology and the study of ethnology shows
that throughout the races, in any type of ethnic culture, there are
standards of right and wrong and, though varying slightly from culture to
culture, there is not any culture on the face of this earth that does not
consider murder a breach of moral standards. "Thou shalt not kill." "Thou
shalt not kill," not applying to national defense or personal defense but to
malicious intent and assault and battery with intent to kill an individual.
The Bible doesn't make any mistakes. You may. Your education may have taught
you and helped you to nurture a bad disposition, a dishonest intellect, and
a rotten attitude toward the truth, but that is your problem, not ours and
not the Lord's. We have the moral argument.
LIFE FROM LIFE ARGUMENT
Then, we have the life argument. That is, life comes from life, except if
you are an evolutionist. If you are an evolutionist, life must come from
death. If you are a Darwinian anthropoid, you must believe that life
originated in the pre-Cambrian fossils, although no fossils have been found,
and then gradually worked up into complex forms in the Cambrian strata and
up to the Mesozoic and Cenozoic periods; that is, life had to come from
something that was inanimate and dead. To be a good Darwinian, you have to
believe that cooling lava slung off the sun with temperatures above 1700
degrees Fahrenheit could turn into the chemical elements that would bring
forth life from inorganic matter. Man, you talk about faith! That takes some
faith! Something slung out of a mass that runs 3600 degrees, cools into a
molten lava, becomes minerals, and then these rocks produce life, do they?
Do you realize that right now man is desperately searching Venus, Jupiter
and every place he can find to try to prove that Darwin was right? Our
government has spent over fifty billion dollars to try to overthrow Genesis
1. Isn't that something? Our government has spent over fifty billion dollars
to try to find life on some other planet to prove that life is not unique to
this planet. Life comes from life and the original life must have come from
a being possessing eternal life. That is, there had to be some life existing
before physical life was created. If you are a straight thinker! Now, where
can such life be found? It can only be found in God who possesses eternal
life. Psalm 36:9 says, "For with thee is the fountain of life." The apple
tree, for example, gets its life from the parent tree; the lamb gets life
from the mother sheep. Where did they get their life from? You have to go
back to the original creation. This answers the problem of what came first,
the chicken or the egg; the answer is obvious! The chicken! Life can only
come from life. Jesus said in John 11:25, "I am the resurrection and the
life." In John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." John 10:28,
"And I give unto them eternal life." In John 5:40 He said to the educated
people of His day, "And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life."
The Bible says in I John 5:12, "He that hath the Son hath life; and he that
hath not the Son of God hath not life." All life proceeds from God.
The theory of spontaneous generation has been proved to be false and
completely unacceptable to authoritative science. There is not a really
educated man (although he may wave some degree in your face) anywhere in the
world any more who believes in spontaneous generation (although you find a
few college teachers who do). Life must have a beginning. The only logical
answer, if you're logical at all, is that the beginning of life was with
God. This is what we call the life argument.
ARGUMENT FROM CONGRUITY
Finally, in our arguments for the existence of God in theological discussion
we have the argument from congruity. The theory of atheism solves no
problem; it only multiplies unsolved mysteries. If you have ever taken a
book on science and looked at what these scientists have found out since the
days of Copernicus and Galileo and before, you will find that science has
never solved one major problem that mankind had on any continent anywhere in
the world. All that science does is discover new problems and partially
solve old problems that bring up new problems that remain unsolved. A man
said, "What about the victory over smallpox?" Try diabetes. A fellow said,
"What about the victory over pellagra?" How about multiple sclerosis? Don't
kid us. Go kid the folks who spend all their time getting diplomas and who
think they're smart. Go kid them. They're gullible. Science has never solved
one major problem man ever had. The problem of disease has never been
solved. The problem of starvation has never been solved. There will be eight
million people going to bed hungry tonight and half a million of them will
be dead before tomorrow morning. If you don't believe it, travel to India
and Africa and broaden your education.
The most narrow-minded, bigoted and intolerant people in the world are these
scientists who profess to be broad-minded. There is not any evidence that
scientists have solved or ever will solve, one major problem of mankind
since the beginning. The problem of death has never been solved. The problem
of poverty has never been solved. Christ said you will always have the poor
with you (Matt. 26:11). You say, "We're working on it." Don't talk like a
fool. Of course, you're working on it. You have to work to make a living.
There are all kinds of ways of making a living. You make a living working on
those problems. Other people make a living shelling peanuts and picking
feathers off chickens. So what? The theory of atheism solves no problems. It
only multiplies unsolved mysteries.
The acceptance of the existence of God as Creator of the world is like a
magic key that fits all the facts of scripture, all the facts of science,
all the facts of revelation, all the facts of knowledge, and all the facts
of conscience and nature. This irrefutable doctrine is held tenaciously by
multitudes of souls who are willing to both live and die in the consolation
of the assurance that God is. Even the devils believe in God and tremble,
the Bible says.
CONCLUSION
So, what may we conclude in our first study? In our first study on the
existence of God we may conclude that atheism is only a giant doubt. Its
unbelief can only lead to darkness and despair and disaster for the one
accepting it. It can only lead to anarchy, paganism or international
socialism with the torture and imprisonment of millions of people who do not
knuckle down to a state as God. There is not a real atheist anywhere in
Russia or China. The god of atheism in Russia is international communism.
The god of every atheist and agnostic in America is international socialism.
There is no such thing as a man without a god. The term "atheism" is like
the term "annihilation." It is really an insensible term which has no
meaning at all. If a man does not accept one god, he accepts another; and
when you find people correcting the Bible, they are setting up their brain
and education as their god.
Acceptance of Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God," leads a sincere seeker
into the path of a fuller revelation of God Himself as a Trinity, as the
Creator, and above all, as Saviour and Redeemer. Hebrews 11:6 says, "...he
that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek him." Then, the intelligent man will come to God
in simple faith based on the revelation of God in scripture and nature,
believing and trusting that God is and that a god who would not reveal
himself is the wrong god. If there is any God up there at all, He is
obligated to reveal Himself to His creation, and this fact delivers a
deathly blow to agnostic science when we consider that men communicate to
each other by words. The thing that sets man apart from animal as a separate
species of creation is the fact that man communicates by the use of words
and sentences. Animals have only cries for help, cries for hunger, cries of
pleasure, warnings to get away, or invitations to come near, but they cannot
communicate by words. Therefore, if there is any God up there at all (and,
of course, we say that with no doubt in our own mind), theologically, it is
impossible to believe that He would not reveal Himself to His creation by
words. This is so fundamental and foundational in theological truth that
when Jesus Christ shows up in John 1, we read, "In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John says in I John
1, "That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have
seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,
of the Word of life." We Christians sing, "Sing them over again to me,
wonderful words of life." If there is a Creator at all, He is obligated to
reveal Himself to His creation. Any god who would create what you find down
here and then let this world take its course of six thousand years of
torture, abortion, bloodshed, murder, extortion, perversion, death, disease,
poverty, heartache, starvation, bereavement, war, and imprisonment, while
withdrawing himself, withholding himself and not taking part in it, should
be traded for a Model T Ford so you could make some money. Now, it is very
important for the theological student to grasp this because theism and deism
both teach in a god, but a god who is not actively interested in and
participating in his creation. If sin is a problem down here, the God of
creation would have to deal with it or he would be the wrong god. If death
is a problem down here, a god who wouldn't actively participate in the death
of his creation is not a compassionate god. Therefore, any god (whether man
believes in God or not) who is not interested in the sin, sorrow and death
of the beings he created is (I say it reverently) a phoney.
The God of the Bible, on the other hand, meets all the requirements. He
comes down--God manifest in the flesh, I Timothy 3:16--and becomes a man.
Christ calls Himself the "Son of man" and a man of sorrows "acquainted with
grief," a man who was "wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our
iniquities," the chastisements of our peace was upon Him, and "with His
stripes we are healed." I say this only to point out to the student or
teacher of the word of God that the God of the Bible is the only god who can
meet the requirements of human nature. Any other god is a bitter
disappointment and a charlatan. Any other god is a "conman." The God of
revelation is the only god who can satisfy the longing of the human heart,
for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the only god in any
religion who is actively interested in coming down and sharing the suffering
and sorrow of His creatures, dying in the place of His creatures, and
offering to His creatures eternal life as a free gift. This puts all other
gods on the bargain counter with used Edsels and worn-out yo-yos. They are
hoaxes. They are tragic substitutes for the real thing because they cannot
satisfy the yearning of the human heart.
God is not subject to the microscopic scrutiny of man. God is the subject of
revelation. John 1:18 says, "No man hath seen God at any time; the only
begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."
First John 4:12 says, "No man hath seen God at any time." The Lord said to
Moses in Exodus 33:20, "Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man
see me." Now, Moses talked to God and had a revelation of Him, but he did
not see the Lord's face directly. Jesus, who is a real man in the Bible, was
God's Son, coming down from heaven to reveal God the Father to sinners. So,
when He spoke to Philip in John 14:7-10, Jesus said that He is the
revelation of God. He said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
Catholicism says, "Join thyself." Buddhism says, "Annihilate thyself." Pagan
wisdom says, "Man, know thyself." Mohammedanism says, "Man, submit thyself."
Modern education says, "Man, realize thyself." But Jesus said, "Deny
thyself," and, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me;...for my yoke is
easy, and my burden is light" (see Matt. 11:28-30). In John 17:3, we read
how God and Christ His Son have eternal life to give. We read, "And this is
life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent." You say, "What about all these other religions that
profess the same thing?" Easy. Try them out and you will find them to be
hoaxes. Try them out and you will find that they do not give you victory
over sin. They put you in a passive state where you pretend you don't have
any sins when you still have them. At the great Congress of Religions at the
World's Fair in 1932 (when scores of religions got together to talk about
their ecumenical magpie mess to try to bring all men together under the
Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man), after nearly a week of
discussion, Joseph Cook stood up in that group of dignitaries (which
included Roman Catholic cardinals and bishops, Greek Orthodox elders and
patriarchs, Protestant deacons and preachers, Mohammedan teachers of the
Koran, and Buddhist and Hindu gurus) and said, "How cleansest thou this red
right hand?" Now if you don't recognize the quotation, it's from Macbeth.
After Macbeth commits is murder he says, "How cleanseth thou this red right
hand?" That is, "Now that I have sinned, how do I get clean?" There was no
religion that could tell him how to do it permanently. The Romans told him
to confess it, get contrition and absolution for it, do penance for it, but
he couldn't know for sure the thing was gone because he could only hope for
heaven and could not know for sure whether he was going to hell or not until
he was dead. The Protestants told him to live a good life to amend for his
sins. The Buddhists insisted that if he had followed the noble eightfold
path he wouldn't have committed the sin, but that never solved the problem.
The problem was having sinned against an eternal being who lives forever.
How do I pay for it unless I make an eternal payment? That is the problem.
They had no answer for it. There is no answer for it, unless what the Bible
says is true. "The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all
sin." And again, "In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the
forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:14).