God is; God is supreme ruler of all; God is Creator and Sustainer of life; God is actively involved in human affairs; God has a great plan of salvation for all of humanity. This is the heart and core of the Christian religion.
This is the sure foundation on which millions of Christians have based their faith for almost two thousand years. This is the driving force that led countless thousands to offer their very lives by refusing to compromise with their faith and abandon their God. This is what empowers millions today as they tackle painful challenges, suffer persecutions and confront death.
But what if God did not exist? What if God were simply an illusion? What if atheists were correct in believing that the only thing that exists is an eternal universe that expands and contracts forever and ever, from which life emerged accidentally?
If atheists were to be correct, the cherished Christian belief in a loving God who reveals His will through the Bible and who created everything would be a grand illusion. Consequently, Christianity would be just a fraud; there would be no God-determined right and wrong; everything would be, indeed, relative.
Within a godless society each individual could choose his own set of principles that he/she could modify according to his/her convenience. The atheist philosopher, Jean Paul Sartre, expressed this disturbing reality quite eloquently when he wrote the following: “On a shattered and deserted stage, without script, director, prompter, or audience, the actor is free to improvise his own part” (Killinger, 1960, p.64). The improvisation Sartre refers to would be, for many, rampant immorality, unbridled narcissism and raging competition. The French philosopher Voltaire adds in the same vein that, “If God would not exist, then all things would be allowed” (Pomeau, 1995, p.660).
Unfortunately, this reality has already prevailed in our world during the past century with horrific consequences. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot and others have proven that human beings without God can turn into ferocious beasts bent on conquering, plundering and destroying. History has shown that man, without God, can bring about the enslavement of countless millions under futile ideologies that will ultimately bring about oppression, cruelty and national and international disasters.
Fortunately for all of humanity, God does exist. Proofs of God’s existence abound for those who are open minded and who want to look at the evidence with a spirit of humility. What follows is a brief list of most of the arguments that have been offered by theologians and philosophers for thousands of years to prove God’s existence.
God is the First Cause
Everything is in motion, from the galaxies in the heavens, to our earth and moon. All around us everything reveals energy, dynamism, and changeability – that is motion. All this motion, back in time had a beginning.
Science tells us that there was a beginning referred to as “The Big Bang.” The beginning of matter, energy and motion is the Prime Mover. That is the First Cause: God.
Order and Design in Nature
Order abounds in creation. This implies that there is an “Orderer,” someone who is behind the amazing and wonderful order we see everywhere in nature.
Nature abounds in design and purpose. The multitudes of systems that operate and co-operate in the universe imply a Creator. Design abounds in the smallest of organisms. Human organs are designed to perform certain functions and to cooperate with all other organs in incredible harmony.
There is beauty even in the strangest of creatures. Animals are born with instinct, and they have an innate ability to adapt to different environments. All order and design points in the direction of Someone who willed it and who maintains it all. Miracles
Miracles have been a trademark of the Judeo-Christian God since the beginning. Countless witnesses have testified and written about God’s mighty works as they are recorded in the Bible. In the New Testament, Christ witnessed to God’s power by performing great healings and by bringing people back from the dead. Later, His followers continued manifesting God’s power by doing other mighty works as recorded by faithful and truthful witnesses.
Countless Christians throughout the ages have received wonderful answers to their prayers that no physical explanation could explain away.
Fulfilled Prophecies
The Bible abounds in prophecies and in opportunities to test God’s existence. For instance, God enunciated many prophecies relating to Israel and Judah and many other nations. The warnings that finally led to the captivities and punishments of both nations came to pass each time. The punishments prophesied against other nations such as Babylon and Assyria came to pass as well.
Judah’s was to return from exile and it occurred as well, as described in Ezra and Nehemiah. After two thousand years of Diaspora, the Jews are back in the Promised Land as prophesied in the Old and New Testament. A thorough study of countless fulfilled prophecies points strongly in the direction of the existence of an all-knowing Sovereign God.
Jesus Christ’s First Coming
Many Old Testament scriptures foretold in detail the coming of Christ and many of the events surrounding his coming. All the prophecies were fulfilled is astonishing detail as is discussed in a later entry. Christ was indeed the Messiah and God in the flesh. Not only does that prove that God exists but that He lived among men and manifested His great power at times before thousands of witnesses.
The Ten Commandments
Up to Sinai, humans were slaves to oppressive gods that demanded blind submission and offered no guiding moral law. Elohim revolutionized the ancient world with Ten Laws that could heal minds, human relations and societies. While the Canaanites and other Middle Eastern societies decayed in their self-abandonment, Israel flourished, for as long as they submitted to the Great Code.
The God of Israel was not just interested in being worshipped, as were the other demonic gods, He wanted the best for His people as well. Thus, He offered them a set of laws that would bring about mental peace, social harmony and freedom from the disastrous consequences from sin. No human mind could have ever conceived such a brilliant package.
The Ten Commandments are from God.
The Greatest Minds Believed
Unlike what many atheists propagate, most of the greatest intellects of the past reached the same conclusion: God exists. The fathers of Science such as Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Gilbert, Copernicus and lastly Einstein held a firm belief in God and openly professed their belief. The 20th century’s greatest scientist, Einstein declared that, “…the harmony of natural law…reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection” (Albert Einstein, in Iain, 1982, p. 57).
The greatest writers, philosophers, artists and musicians also expressed total assurance in the existence of a higher power and many lived very devout Christian lives. Great human minds looked at the evidence and concluded that there is a Mind greater than their own who created and sustains all. Thousands of years ago, an omnipotent Being introduced Himself forcefully, and reassuringly, into the affairs of men as the “I AM” (Exodus 3:14). Consistently since then, He has given undeniable evidence that He is absolute. He also asserts that He creates and sustains all things and that He, and only He, determines right from wrong, and that, because of His love for humanity, life has great meaning.
Lastly, this great Being promises a new Heaven and a new Earth as the eternal inheritance for all humans who are willing to submit to His will.
This is the first, grand truth of life. This is the sublime and reassuring reality shown by Philosophy and Science, supported by the Bible, testified to by dozens of truthful men who witnessed God’s presence and power and who wrote faithfully about it and who willingly died for it. This is the glorious truth accepted and defended by most of the greatest minds that ever lived.
God IS and, because He is, our life has meaning and our future holds in store great promises of eternal life and glory.
