In this article, I want to start with a purely fictional tale to illustrate what the mindset looks like in those of the opposition to Christianity. It is totally fictional – not Biblical, not true, but fictional.
There once was a man who lived in the outskirts of a large city, and his business was operating a print shop where he published news articles, papers, and advertisements with the printing equipment of that era. Handset type and headlines, brochures, etc., were his daily duties as his customers came and went with their requests for his services.
We have no name for him, but since this is just a story, let’s call him simply Noah Webster to give the sense of a long time ago for this story.
One rainy day – overcast, cloudy, windy it was – he was working away, bent over the work table, when a very loud and powerful explosion shook the building, slamming him against the nearby wall in his little shop. He was knocked unconscious, but after a few minutes, he came awake, shook himself, and took a look around to see what damage the explosion had done.
The place was in shambles, loose type scattered everywhere, papers all over the place; it was a mess. He blinked, shook himself again, and muttered, “Oh, dear me, what in the world happened anyway?”
Then he noticed something strange lying on another nearby table where he habitually laid his finished printing product for customer pickup. It appeared to be a huge book, but it was not in disarray like everything else in the shop. He very cautiously and curiously stepped over to the table and looked at the book with great wonder. The book had a hardcover binding with white pages showing between the covers. There was a title on the book, he noticed, with more wonder.
The book was titled “Webster’s Dictionary,” with By Noah Webster printed further down on the cover!
This was truly unexplainable! How could an explosion like that one produce an untattered book like this in a brief moment? How could the whole place be in shambles and this book show up, fully completed and bound, ready for delivery in just a few moments? His mind was full of questions. Another was just what caused the explosion since he had nothing in the place that was so explosive?
He thought and thought, and finally, he decided that he had no other choice but to believe the unbelievable.
Well, there you have the story of how we got the first “Webster’s Dictionary.”
And, we are told that the beginning of our universe was begun the same way, by a gigantic explosion, a “Big Bang!” But there was nothing there at the beginning to explode! And it did not leave the whole place in shambles, but decently and in order with a world full of things that were not there before the explosion! The planets are hanging on nothing; they move around the sun in orderly fashion, even so as to created time itself. The relationship of the earth to the sun in the earth’s orbit gives us the 24/7 now commonly called the length of a week. That arrangement in its unique operation is what gives us the factor of time as a measurement of our length of mortal existence. Just take it by faith.
But which explanation are you going to take by faith? The “Big Bang Theory” of supposed evolutionary occurrence, or “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”? (Genesis 1:1).
Psalm 14:1 says, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.'” It does not take as much faith to believe God as it does to believe the giant explosion theory, in my opinion. It becomes a matter of unwillingness to think there is Someone more intelligent than the atheist. Most atheists, in my opinion, actually have some gripe against God, which drives them to that rebellion.
God has not merely created mankind and then left him to figure it all out by himself, and at the same time, attending to survival. Psalm 19 tells us that God has plenty of evidence that He does exist and does care for His creation:
“The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them He has set a tabernacle for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber and rejoices like a strong man to run its race. Its rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end. And there is nothing hidden from its heat” (Psalm 19:1-6).
This reminds me of that old cowboy song out of the saga of the “old west.” It sings like this:
“Last night, as I lay on the prairie,
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Could go to that sweet bye and bye.
Roll on, little dogies, roll on, roll on,
Roll on, little dogies, roll on.”
And so it goes.
God has told mankind of Himself in the Book He wrote, and by the testimony of His servants, and then His only Son, Jesus Christ, that He “so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
It’s that simple. The beginning and the end stop with God, and “knowledge of the Holy One is understanding” (Proverbs 9:10b).
Contact email: andwsegetmercyu@gmail.com