CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES

The Existence of God

 

The first thing a Christian must believe is in the existence of God. If there is no God, there can be no word of God or no Son of God. A godless religion is no religion at all. Many believe in God, yet never take time to wonder why. Such faith is acceptable to God, but might not be sufficient for an inquiring mind. To say we believe in God because the Bible says that He is - is not enough proof, since we must also have some reasons for believing the Bible. Therefore this lesson is a listing of reasons, outside the Bible, which testify to the existence of the Supreme Being.

The Argument from Cause and Effect.

It is a proven fact that for every effect there must be a cause. We see a house, and then we know that someone must have erected it. No house can erect itself, but someone must build it. Likewise we see the universe, including the earth, sun, moon, stars, man, animals, vegetation, and everything else. These things, too, demand a cause for their existence. It is more logical to believe that the cause is a God that created them, rather than believe that they just happen by accidental change.

It is said that Benjamin Franklin, while in Paris , made a model planetary system showing the earth and the planets nearest it. Many astronomers copied it to use in their studies. One day an atheist friend saw it and asked, “Who made it?” ”No one made it,” answered Franklin , “It made itself, it just happened.” “What!” Cried the man, “You're joking!” “And so is the man who says that the universe just happened,” said Franklin .

( Who made God? Every child I have ever taught in a Bible class has asked this question. In truth, no one can answer it, save God. There are some things beyond us. We cannot conceive of the beginning of time, or the end of time, nor the boundaries of space. The world has been in existence always, or, it was made out of nothing; one, or the other; yet we can conceive of neither. This we do know: the highest of all things within reach of our thinking is personality, mind, and intelligence. Where did it come from? Could inanimate create Intelligence? In faith we accept, as the ultimate in our thinking, a power higher than ourselves, God, in hope that some day, in the beyond, we shall understand the mysteries of existence.

This coupled with the fact that He which created all has revealed Himself in addition to what we know about cause and effect. This additional information does not exist in an accidental realm of existence .)

The Problem of the Origin of Life.

Life is on the earth. Though we can not see it, yet we may see its work and realize its presence. We know that when life leaves the body, that body dies. But where did life begin? We know that life can only come from past life. The child receives life from his parents, who received it from their parents, who received it from theirs, etc. Finally, man had to receive life from some outside source. Since life cannot come from dead matter, and since it did not come by accident, we conclude that it must have originated with a living God who gave it to man and other living things.

( In the Bible, creation refers both to the act by which God created the universe and to the product of that process . Rule vs. energy. One of the first patterns that draw our attention in the creation narrative is the contrast between rule and energy, order and exuberance, instantaneous creation and biological generation. In this pattern God would bring order out of chaos. The emphasis in the creation story as well as throughout the Bible is that God controls the forces that seek to lead to termination rather than wholeness in the world. )

The Design of the Universe Implies a Designer.

Just as we look at a watch , composed of many small parts, with each part working perfectly, and agree that some person must have designed it, so may we look at such things as the blade of grass, the rose, the stars , and the human body, and say that surely some designer must have made them all. That designer must have had intelligence and ability to plan, as is seen from the perfect way in which these things are arranged. Therefore the designer must have been God.

( In the universe that God created, astronomers estimate that the Milky Way, the Galaxy to which our earth and solar system belong, contains over 30,000,000,000 suns ( stars ), many of them immensely larger than our sun, which is a million and a half times larger than the earth. The Milky Way is shaped like a thin watch , its diameter from rim to rim being 200,000 light-years” a light-year is the distance that light travels in a year at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. And there are at least, 100,000 Galaxies like the Milky Way, some of them millions of light-years apart. And all this may be only a tiny speck in what is beyond in the infinite, endless stretch of space.

The mark of design and orderly arrangement stamped on all creation within the universe is witness of a Designer; design connotes intelligence; intelligence connotes personality; that infinite personality is God. )

Evidence from the Pages of History.

In every age, and in every part of the world, men have believed and worshipped some type of Supreme Being. The idea of God is as old as man himself. How shall we account for this, except to say that in the beginning God reveled Himself to man? In addition, we must credit our Creator with our ability to recognize that we have been made in that image. This system of recognition is at the heart of every form of worship.

( Archaeological note: “The Bible represents the human race as starting with the belief in ONE GOD, and that Polytheistic Idolatry was a later development. This is directly contrary to the present day theory that the idea of One God with a gradual development upward from Animism. The Bible view has received recent confirmation from Archaeology. Dr. Stephen Langdon, of Oxford University, has found that the earliest Babylonian inscriptions suggest that man's first religion was a belief in One God, and from that there was a rapid decline into Polytheism and Idolatry. (See Langdon's “Semitic Mythology,” and “ Field Museum-Oxford University Expedition to Kish ,” by Henry Field, Leaflet 28).

Sir Flinders Petrie said that the Original religion of Egypt was Monotheistic.

Sayce announced (1898) that he had discovered, on three separate tablets in the British Museum , of the time of Hummurabi, the words “Jahwe (Jehovah) is God.”

Leading anthropologists have recently announced that among all primitive races there was a belief in One Supreme God: ( See Dr. Schmidt's “Origin and growth of Religion –Facts and Theories”). From “Halley's Bible Handbook, New Revised Edition, Pg. 62”.

Acts 17:24 -29 “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. 25 Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. 26 And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, 27 so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, 'For we are also His offspring.' 29 Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising.” A note from the Apostle Paul's great sermon in the Areopagus of Athens , which recognizes the instincts we have received from the creator .)

Evidence from the Conscience of Man.

The fact that man has some conception of right and wrong, some sense of duty and a guilty conscience when he fails to do what he believes to be right is some evidence of a moral governor of the universe. Unlike the animals, man alone has this sense of duty and morality. If there is no God we are at a loss to account for this characteristic. But when we accept the righteousness of God as a moral law, it is perfectly clear.

( Let each one list all his physical needs, desires, and appetites, even those that may become depraved, degenerating into base lusts. There is not one to be imagined that cannot be satisfied in the physical world. Think, carefully before leaving this point; can you imagine a need, a desire, a hunger, a thirst or any physical craving that cannot be gratified in the physical world? You cannot!

However, there is something in a man which the physical world, with all its provisions, does not satisfy. Consider the man who continues to accumulate material possessions after the necessary demands of life have been acquired. It is an inborn desire which forces us to continue to seek satisfaction. Some attempt to fill this desire with the physical; some with philosophy, others with branches of science or metaphysics. However, neither material things nor philosophical theories can gratify the desire of which we speak. It rises above all of these and leaves a gap unfilled, questions unanswered, and the spiritual hunger unsatisfied . It originates in the image we were created in. That which was created, seeks out naturally the very nature implanted within. )

Evidence from the Existence of Man upon the Earth.

The fact that man, with all his complex parts, exists upon the earth is evidence of the fact that God is, for if there is no God, how else can we account for man's existence? To resort to the theory of evolution from lower animals is no answer, for this theory has been exposed time and again. This point is well expressed by W.L. Oliphant in the Oliphant - Smith debate in the following words: “Something can not come from nothing; but something is; therefore something always was. Thinking beings exist, but thinking beings could not come from unthinking being; therefore thinking beings have always existed. Now I ask my opponent to tell us what this eternal;, rational, or thinking being is. We say God. What alternative does my opponent offer?”

(Let this point be illustrated by simply considering any book, the Bible itself for example. It is made up of combinations of twenty-six letters of the alphabet. But suppose that each of these alphabetical letters should be cut out by itself, then the whole scattered about a large room, a fan turned on, and the letters allowed to arrange themselves by chance. How long would it require these thousands of letters finally to arrange themselves over the floor into their present arrangement as they occur in the Bible? Can one imagine such an arrangement ever taking place?)

Artistry and Craftsmanship.

One result of believing that God created the universe is that the visible world is regarded not simply as a set of data but as someone's achievement. This accounts for the images of artistry and craftsmanship with which biblical writers portray creation. One can scarcely talk about Genesis one, with its elaborate symmetry and ritualistic pattering, without thinking in artistic terms. God first creates three settings and then, in the same order, fills them with appropriate agents.

The overall effect is that of an artist filling a canvas. However, the favorite image of Biblical writers in this regard is that of building and architecture. The sheer solidity and permanence of the earth leads to the metaphor of God's laying foundations for the earth. Creation is a building with a cornerstone. An atmosphere of careful planning, functional soundness, and aesthetic harmony.

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• These are a few of the most outstanding reasons why any rational and right thinking individual should believe in God. Now, let us turn to the problem that the atheist faces. The following are a few of his great problems:

 I. To say there is no God is to assume full knowledge of everything, for the one thing, if there is anything we do not know, might be the fact that God is!

 II. To say that there is no God is to say that the universe is an accident and “just happened”. This is a greater miracle than God. Which is the most reasonable answer, God or an accident?

 III. To say that there is no God is to be forced to account for the idea of God; the origin of life, design of the universe, conscience of man, man's worshipping instinct, and the fact that man exists. The atheist is unable to give an intelligent explanation of any of these things.

IV. In the mind of the unbeliever there must always be the possibility that God is and that he is mistaken. What could make man more miserable?

 Psalm 14:1

“To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

The fool has said in his heart,

" There is no God ."

They are corrupt,

They have done abominable works,

There is none who does good.”

Next: THE UNITY OF THE BIBLE!