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FROM THE PASTOR'S STUDY

Topic: Theology Proper

The Biblical Apologetic

by Darrel Cline
(darrelcline biblical-thinking.org)

Most folks think that God exists, and they are correct. The rational foundation for that thinking is the law of cause and effect (Romans 1:20). On the other hand, a few folks think that they can get away with denying that God exists. However, the fact that everyone operates within that law's domain all day every day makes them subject to the justice of being asked why they reacted to the notion of God the way they did. The justice of it springs from the fact that it is unjust to use a law for selfish purposes and then reject it when it makes demands that are outside of the boundaries of one's own selfish interests. The very notion of justice demands that law apply equally to everyone in their situations, not just to those situations where the law will bring benefit. So, because the nay-sayers use the law of cause and effect when it suits their interests, they are accountable to the interests of true justice to be asked why they deny the existence of a sufficient cause to explain personhood within the boundaries of our awesomely huge universe. The reason that I mention personhood is simply that atheistic evolution cannot show any true case of person arising from non-person. Personhood is an effect that has to have a sufficient Person as a cause.

But, this is not about atheists. The Bible rightly calls them willfully ignorant fools. There is no hope, even in God, for someone who is willing to simply use laws, people, and things as long as it suits them and to reject those very same laws, people, and things, when they demand of them what they don't want to give.

This is about the problem of deciding which god is the true God. That God exists is without legitimate refutation. He is, by all laws of logic and reason and true science, a given. However, even the apostle Paul, who set the biblical position down with clarity in Romans 1:20, did not argue that creation could tell us much more about God than that He is and that He is powerful. That leaves the door pretty much wide open for all kinds of competitor-gods. After all, all that needs to be for a person to claim personal deity is some following. As long as people are willing to be led by demonstrations of power, there will be multiple claimants to the lofty position of deity.

So, how do we decide which God/god to acknowledge?

Isaiah set forth what his God declared to be the telling "effect"...the "effect" which is a straight-line logical argument back to the legitimate "Cause". That "effect" is demonstrated efficiency in detailed accuracy of prophetic statement. The logic runs like this: If we know that the universe is as complex as it is, given what we know about the eyes of flies and the DNA of donkeys, and if we know that the universe is as huge as it is, given the results of the Hubble telescope, anyone who can accurately tell us in particular detail what the future course of this enormous complexity will be simply must be omniscient. And, since omniscience is a characteristic of God, if we can find someone who can accurately predict the future within the complexity of a universe that has almost six billion living human beings (that we know of), each making countless determinative decisions every day that set their own set of cause-and-effect realities in motion, we have discovered the true God. Isaiah was not bashful in declaring that the true God was the One Who could announce the end at the beginning. In other words, the true God would have no problem telling us the last chapter of human experience at the time of the writing of the first chapter. God declares that there is none like Him, telling the end from the beginning. So, is there any real evidence that the God of Isaiah is the Ultimate God?

Certainly. If you read the nationally syndicated comic strips last Easter, you were made aware of the fact that the Hebrew prophets made a prophecy of the transpiring of 173,880 days between the edict to restore and rebuild Jerusalem after its destruction by Nebuchadnezzer and the identification of the Messiah. It goes without saying (except by willful gainsayers) that anyone who could predict two events that would be separated by 173,880 days (314) had to have been in contact with the God of Omniscience. The probability of such a prophecy just occurring without the involvement of Deity is zilch. The "logic" which establishes the existence and identity of the true God and which leaves all nay-sayers without excuse is that only God could tell such a thing and then have it occur just as He said.


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This is article #313.
If you wish, you may contact Darrel as darrelcline at this site.