GOD

 
 

God has Revealed His Presence to the World 

By Pastor Dan Kennedy
©	2009
pastorkennedy@gmail.com

For what can be known about God is plain to them, 
because God has shown it to them. 
For his invisible attributes, 
namely, his eternal power and divine nature, 
have been clearly perceived, 
ever since the creation of the world, 
in the things that have been made. 
So they are without excuse.   
Romans 1:19, 20

	God Has Revealed His Presence to the World
Acknowledging the reality of God and His interaction with humanity in the world has been a topic of serious personal and philosophical discussion for many years.  The urgency to truthfully come to a conclusion regarding a personal belief in the reality of God’s Presence underlies our need to answer the mystery of our very existence and the hope of eternal life, following death.  
If we accept the proposition that we came from nothing and go to nothing, the urgency of the need to understand the existence of God is diminished or seemingly eliminated.  Successfully convincing ourselves to believe that we are accountable to no one higher than ourselves or to no one other than those “consenting” with us in our unrestrictive lifestyle, allows our troubled conscience to relax its restraint in our life – we can then more freely “eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die!” – Though, sadly, we still must “pay the piper” for the outcome of our choices, which are not always that happy or unrestrictive.
Unfortunately for some, a free-spirited atheistic or agnostic belief may not be accurate at all!  The very existence of the complexity of Creation (including the reality of our own life) brings such a conclusion into serious question.  The other very real option is that God does exist; that He created us and that we are accountable to Him.
How horribly deceitful and dreadfully tragic it would be, if we had convinced ourselves to believe that there was NO God and there actually WAS a God! What if we fervently believed that we somehow came from nothing (or from a non-personal something), and subsequently also believed in the annihilation of our soul, at death?  What if, when we died, we continued to be fully aware, or “woke up” in eternity, with the reality that we actually had been created by an Eternal, Personal, Holy God, and we were going to face Him for eternity.   What if, at that time, we blatantly discovered that our earthly “atheistic/agnostic belief system” had been terribly skewed – flat-out wrong?  What if we found ourselves literally presented before the awesome Throne of the Eternal God for judgment? What if we began to comprehend that God had realistically provided humanity a way to interact with Him and obtain legitimate eternal life… and that we had rejected His provision, out of hand!  
This would be the most profound form of personal disaster…and it would be eternal!
Those who reject the concept of God and build their life on an atheistic or agnostic premise must reject a huge volume of evidence to the contrary, in hope that they somehow might be given a 50/50 chance to be right.  Annihilation and unaccountability, then, seems to be the preferred conclusion!  (Unfortunately for the unbeliever in God, even basic physics teaches that energy in any form is never truly destroyed, but follows the crucial laws governing energy transfer, so the principles of physics themselves stand in the way of total annihilation!  We will live somewhere for eternity.) 
There are Only Three Possibilities for Our Existence
Dr. Francis Schaeffer, Christian Philosopher, has written that there are only three possibilities for our existence:
1.	Complex and Complete Existence from Nothing.  [Schaeffer would take a piece of chalk and draw a zero on the board.  He would then erase the zero to emphasize his point and call it “nothing/nothing” that is said to create us.] 
That Nothing/Nothing, in this theory, is said to create all of the profound fullness of life, thought, interaction, reproduction, beauty, creativity, nature, and the massive universe.  Is everything produced from nothing, and does everything return to nothing?  No accountability is involved if “nothing/nothing” was our “creator”.  Does “nothing/nothing” continue to sustain the profound life which continues to exist?  Few of us could honestly begin to believe that anything (even the smallest non-complex particle in the universe) could be produced from truly nothing.

2.	Creation by an impersonal god (something which created life then leaves the creation to be on its own).  Little accountability, if any, is involved with an impersonal god who leaves its creation to its own powerless evolution. [How can an ultra-complex creation continue to exist without the effective, continuing presence and sustaining power of its life-giving creator?]

3.	Creation by a Personal God (A Supreme and Holy God who interacts with each person in the world, individually, and holds each one accountable for who they are, what they do and how they respond to Him).  Personal accountability is involved with a Personal God.  This God is also One who is Present everywhere and is sustaining the continuing life of His Creation!  

It is dangerous to put one’s faith and eternal well-being in the hope that there is nothing that will hold one accountable for what is done in this life.  It seems very reasonable that any thinking person should seek to discover whether or not there is a Personal God and, if true, to understand for what that Personal God would hold us accountable!
Today, I would like to involve our hearts and minds in the affirmation that there is a Personal God, with a very brief look at the revelation of His Salvation for us.  I would like to begin such a journey by exploring the recent change of mind of a notorious atheist.
Staunch Atheist Changes His Mind 
Every once in a while there are unique books which come across one’s path.  We found book in the local library, which has intrigued me.  It is titled, There is No A God, How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Anthony Flew with Roy Abraham Varchese, 2007, HarperOne, HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN: 978-0-06-133529-7.  A book review follows with comments:
The headline of a December 9, 2004 Associated Press story broke the story.  “Famous Atheist Now Believes in God”.  The story went on to say:  “A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half century has changed his mind.  He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.”  
“The subject of the story and of much subsequent speculation was Professor Antony Flew, author of over thirty professional philosophical works that helped set the agenda for atheism for half a century.  In fact, his ‘Theology and Falsification,’ paper first presented at a 1950 meeting of the Oxford University Socratic Club chaired by C.S. Lewis, became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last century.  Now, for the first time, he gives an account of the arguments and evidence that led him to change his mind….”
You can be certain that those fellow atheists who surrounded him and applauded his conclusions for many years have not been very happy about Anthony Flew’s change of mind.  In the following section, we will look at the facts that changed Professor Flew’s understanding about God.  He presents his new found arguments based on three primary levels:
•	Nature Obeys Laws.
•	The Dimension of Life.
•	The Existence of Nature.

1.	Nature obeys Laws.

a.	The Origin of the Laws of Nature.
i.	Why are there “laws” that are consistently obeyed by all of nature?
ii.	Where did those “laws” come from?
iii.	Why are there such complexities, consistencies, and necessary demands for such laws, without which nature could not exist?
The Origin and continuity of these Laws point to the fact that there, of necessity, must be a far Superior Mind and Power than that which exists in mere creation itself – it points to the Mind of God.

b.	The Design of Nature’s Laws and the Power to Create and Implement such number and diversity of these Laws, which hold together or allow the function of our life, planet and universe, point to the existence of a Creator God.
These Laws are often identified and known to us by the names of those who “discovered” their existence (these obviously could not “create” the laws!), or by the name being associated with their general function, such as…
•	Boyle’s law:  which stipulates that, given constant temperature, the product of the volume and pressure of a fixed quantity of an ideal gas is constant.
•	Newton’s first law of motion: which states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force; an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.
•	The Law of the conservation of energy: which declares that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant.
Paul Davies, thought to be one of the most influential contemporary expositors of modern science wrote, “Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at all levels.  Atheists claim that the laws [of nature] exist reasonlessly and that the universe is ultimately absurd.  As a scientist, I find this hard to accept.  There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted.”  (Flew, p. 111)

2.	The Dimension of Life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings which arose from matter.

a.	The Origin of Life and Reproduction.  (Life’s origin with its teleological organization.)

In Professor Flew’s final public debate at New York University, May 2004, with Israeli scientist Gerald Schroeder, Scottish philosopher John Haldane and others, Flew revealed his change of mind regarding the reality of God.  He was asked if his reversal of thought centered on the activity of scientists in the field of creative Intelligence.  The following was his answer.

“Yes, I now think it does…almost entirely because of the DNA investigations.   What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.  It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together.  The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute.  It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.” (Flew, pgs. 74, 75)

“This statement represented a major change of course for me [Professor Flew], but it was nevertheless consistent with the principle I have embraced since the beginning of my philosophical life – of following the argument no matter where it leads.
“I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the ‘monkey theorem.’  This idea, which has been presented in a number of forms and variations, defends the possibility of life arising by chance using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet.
“Schroeder first referred to an experiment conducted by the British National Council of Arts.  A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it (as well as using it as a bathroom!), the monkeys produce fifty typed pages – but not a single word.  Schroeder noted that this was the case even though the shortest word in the English language is one letter [a or i].  A [or i] is a word only if there is a space on either side of it.  If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters (the twenty-six letters and other symbols), then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is 30 times 30 times 30, which is 27,000.  The likelihood of getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27,000.
“Schroeder then applied the probabilities to the sonnet analogy.  ‘What’s the chance of getting a Shakespearean sonnet?’ he asked.  He continued:
“All the sonnets are the same length.  They’re by definition fourteen lines long.  I picked the one I knew the opening line for, ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’  I counted the number of letters; there are 488 letters in that sonnet.  What’s the likelihood of hammering away and getting 488 letters in the exact sequence as in ‘Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day?’?  What you end up with is 26 multiplied by itself 488 times – or 26 to the 488th power.
Or, in other words, in base 10, 10 to the 690th power.
“[Now] the number of particles in the universe – not grains of sand, I’m talking about protons, electrons, and neutrons – is 10 to the 80th.  Ten to the 80th is 1 with 80 zeros after it.  Ten to the 690th is 1 with 690 zeros after it.  There are not enough particles in the universe to write down the trials; you’d be off by a factor of 10 to the 600th.
“If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips – forget the monkeys – each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turn the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second [producing] random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials.  It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th.  You will never get a sonnet by chance.  The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger.  Yet the world just thinks the monkeys can do it every time.”  (Flew, pgs. 75-77)
Five Phenomena in Human Life that Can Only be Explained in Terms of the Existence of God:  by Roy Abraham Varghese (Appendix “A”, Flew, pgs. 161-183)
a.  Rationality that is implicit in all our experience of the physical world;
b.  Life, the capacity to act “autonomously” – being able to choose: to be able to make decisions and act on them freely and independently; being self-sufficient: existing, reacting, or developing as an independent, self-regulating person.
c.  Consciousness, the ability to be aware; of knowing what we are thinking about (computers don’t “know” what they are doing).
d.  Conceptual thought, the power of articulating and understanding meaningful symbols such as are embedded in language.
“Beyond consciousness, there is the phenomenon of thought, of understanding, seeing meaning….The miraculous power of noting differences and similarities and of generalizing and universalizing.”  …[You can] “abstract and distinguish and unify without giving your ability to do these things a second thought.  And you even ponder things that have no physical characteristics, such as the idea of liberty or the activity of angels.  This power of thinking in concepts is by its very nature something that transcends matter.” 
“The point here is that, strictly speaking, your brain does not understand.  You understand.  Your brain enables you to understand, but not because your thoughts take place in the brain or because ‘you’ cause certain neurons to fire.  Rather, your act of understanding that eliminating poverty is a good thing, to take an instance, is a holistic process that is supraphysical in essence (meaning) and physical in execution (words and neurons).  The act cannot be split into supraphysical and physical, because it is an indivisible act of an agent that is intrinsically physical and supraphysical.  There is a structure to both the physical and the supraphysical, but their integration is so total that it makes no sense to ask if your acts are physical or supraphysical or even a hybrid of the two.  They are acts of a person who is inescapably both embodied and ‘ensouled.’”
Note:  In Genesis 2:7 God created Adam’s body from the dust…then He then breathed into that lifeless material body something else:  the breath of life…the real “human self”.  
Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

e.  The human self, the “center” of consciousness, thought and action.
“I exist.
“To reverse Descartes, ‘I am, therefore I think, perceive, intend, mean, interact.’”  
How did this “I” come to be?
“‘You’, are not in a particular brain cell or in some part of your body.  The cells in your body keep changing and yet ‘you’ remain the same.
To the question, “How do I know I exist?” a professor famously replied, “And who is asking?”
“The self is what we are and not what we have.  It is the ‘I’ from which arises our first-person perspective.  We cannot analyze the self, because it is not a mental state that can be observed or described.
“We realize that the self cannot be described, let alone explained, in terms of physics or chemistry:  science does not discover the self; the self discovers science.  We realize that no account of the universe is coherent if it cannot account for the existence of the self.”
How did this “I” come to be?
“Life, consciousness, mind, and the self can only come from a Source that is living, conscious, and thinking.  If we are centers of consciousness and thought who are able to know and love and intend and execute, I cannot see how such centers could come to be from something that is itself incapable of all these activities…
“It’s simply inconceivable that any material matrix or field can generate agents who think and act.  Matter cannot produce conceptions and perceptions.  A force field does not plan or think.  So at the level of reason and everyday experience, we become immediately aware that the world of living, conscious, thinking beings has to originate in a living Source, a Mind.”

3.	The Existence of Nature.
The way our planet is uniquely placed, protected, warmed and illumined in our galaxy in the universe, with the organization of all parts of life…oxygen, plants, food and surrounding living things, etc., it is as if our planet has been prepared specifically for human life.  It has been!  God created it for us and for His Glory!
In his book Infinite Minds, John Leslie, a leading anthropic theorist, gives examples of various “fundamental” and profound aspects of nature’s workings:
“1.  The principle of special relativity ensures that forces such as electromagnetism have an invariable effect regardless of whether they act at right angles to a system’s direction of travel.  This enables genetic codes to work and planets to hold together when rotating.
2.  Quantum laws prevent electrons from spiraling into atomic nuclei.
3.  Electromagnetism has one-force strength, which enables multiple key processes to take place:  … it enables carbon synthesis in stars; it ensures that leptons do not replace quarks, which would have made atoms impossible; it is responsible for protons not decaying too fast or repelling each other too strongly, which would have made chemistry impossible.  How is it possible for the same one-force strength to satisfy so many different requirements, when it seems that different strengths would be required for each one of these processes?”  (Flew, p. 116)
Anthony Flew’s Conclusions
Throughout his book Professor Flew discusses his struggle and change of mind…finally coming, as a longstanding, staunch atheist, to this very personal reversal of conclusion:
“I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence.  I believe that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God.  I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.” (Flew, p. 88)
“…It has led me to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being.”  (Flew, p. 155)
Anthony Flew closes his book with an appendix written by a theologian and scholar.  He introduces Appendix B and its author by, among other things, saying:
“…I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true.  There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul.”
“…If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat.”  (Flew, pgs. 185, 186)
[I genuinely appreciate the strength of character that it took for Professor Anthony Flew to publically reveal his change of mind about God.  This book tells of the observations and logic that brought Flew to this decision. I would recommend it for anyone’s library.]
We have reason to believe in God; we have reason not to believe in “no God”
  In His Creation, God Has Revealed His Presence to the World.
  Through the Revelation of His Word and His Son, God has Unveiled His Plan for Us .
Scripture Reading:  Psalm 19
1 i     The heavens declare the glory of God, 
          and the sky above1 proclaims his handiwork. 
2      Day to day pours out speech, 
          and night to night reveals knowledge. 
3      There is no speech, nor are there words, 
          whose voice is not heard. 
4 j     Their measuring line2 goes out through all the earth, 
          and their words to the end of the world. 
Like the rays of the sun, nothing is hidden from the “Light” of the Revelation of God, through Creation!
     In them he has set a tent for the sun, 
5       which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, 
          and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 
6      Its rising is from the end of the heavens, 
          and its circuit to the end of them, 
          and there is nothing hidden from its heat. 
7 o     The law of the Lord is perfect,3 reviving the soul; 
q     the testimony of the Lord is rsure, making wise tthe simple; 
8 u     the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; 
     the commandment of the Lord is pure, 
         enlightening the eyes; 
9      the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; 
     the rules of the Lord are xtrue, and righteous altogether. 
10      More to be desired are they than ygold, 
          even much zfine gold; a sweeter also than honey 
          and drippings of the honeycomb. 
11      Moreover, by them is your servant warned; 
          in keeping them there is great reward. 
12     Who can discern his errors? 
          Declare me innocent from fhidden faults. 
13     Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; 
          let them not have idominion over me! 
     Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. 
14      Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart 
          be acceptable in your sight, 
          O Lord, my rock and my kredeemer. 


	  God has Unveiled His Plan for Our Salvation - so We could Reestablish our relationship with Him as His Children, and Live with Him Forever
I write this for a message to be delivered on Passover (Exodus 12, 13; Lev. 23:4-8), according to the Jewish lunar calendar.  Almost 2,000 years ago on that year’s beginning of Passover, Jesus was crucified; at around 3 pm in the afternoon, when God covered the land in darkness and Jesus died, the sacrificial Passover Lamb was also slain in each Jewish home participating in this solemn ceremony.
Passover vividly reminds those who have put their faith in the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,” that God has consistently, throughout the ages, from the beginning of Creation, revealed His salvation to the world.  It shows us that the Creator God has consistently unveiled His plan for reestablishing communion with a broken humanity.  
Passover is but one more reminder of the revelation of God’s love, the Suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53), and supreme sacrifice for us.  “When I see the Blood, I will pass over you.”
	The Blood of an animal’s life was shed to clothe Adam and Eve when they left, sinful and ashamed, from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:21).
	The Sacrificial Blood of the flock was shed in the acceptable offered by Abel (Genesis 4:3-5).
	The Sacrificial Blood of clean animals was shed in Noah’s offering to the Lord following he and his families’ deliverance from the Great Flood (Genesis 8:20).
	The Sacrificial Blood of lambs and of the flock and herd was symbolically offered by the Patriarchs of those who had faith in God, from Abraham until their families were brought to Egypt (Ge 22:2,13; 31:54; 46:1; Job 1:5)
	The Sacrificial Blood of a Lamb was established at the Passover, when Israel’s bondage was unshackled from Egypt and they were established as a nation (Exodus 12).
	The Sacrificial Blood of lambs and of the flock and herd was ceremonially established through Mosaic Law, for the symbolic atonement of sins both of individuals and for the nation (Le 1:1-7:38; Heb 10:1-3).
All these Blood Sacrifices were a picture of the Redemption from sins that He who was to come, would do, to give His life to reconcile sinful mankind to God.
	The Sacrificial Blood of Jesus Christ is the final Atonement for the sins of mankind (1Co 5:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 10:1,11,12).
John 1
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, xthe Lamb of God, who ytakes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’

1 Corinthians 5
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Hebrews 10
11 And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

God has Revealed His Presence to Us; He has also Unveiled His Plan for Us to be Reunited with Him as His Children and to Live with Him Forever!
1 Peter 1
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, 5 who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, 9 obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. 

God has revealed Himself to us through the bountiful evidence of His Creation, whether we are simply walking in a forest observing nature, peering thoughtfully into the depths of the universe through a powerful telescope, casually enjoying the harvests of nutritional blessings, or analyzing the most critical scientific data.
God is not chagrined at the challenge of “science”.  He created science.  He formed nature’s Laws.  He reveals His Presence to us in the vastness of space, in the observations of nature clear for all to see, and through the observations of His Design seen by Nanoscientists using atomic force microscopes.
God is here, and He is seeking reconciliation with us in this fallen race.  Will we repent of our sin, turn to Him, and receive His redemption and transformation, by the Power of His Holy Spirit?
He is here and He is not silent.  Will we reach out for Him?
--------------
He [Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, 
the firstborn of all creation. 
For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, 
visible and invisible, 
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—
all things were created through Him and for Him. 
And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 
And He is the head of the body, the church. 
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, 
that in everything He might be preeminent. 
For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 
and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, 
whether on earth or in heaven,
making peace by the blood of His cross.
Colossians 1:15-20
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
John 3:16-18


And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
Hebrews 11:6

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