An Eternal Force

"Ray Comfort said...'Geoff...an atheist is someone who pretends that there is no God.' Does that mean a Christian is someone who pretends that God does exist? I don't understand, Mr. Comfort. How can someone who so often decries hypocrisy and derision be so quick to commit those acts himself?" Andrew Douglas

The Bible says that the atheist is blind (see 2 Corinthians 4:3-4). What does that mean? First, let me address the above question. The statement "There is no God is an absolute statement." For an absolute statement to be true, we need absolute knowledge. If I said, "There is no gold in China," I need absolute knowledge that there is no gold in China. I need to know what’s in every riverbed, in every rock, etc., because if there is one ounce of gold in China, my statement is false. However, I simply need to have seen a Chinese person in China yawn, see a gold tooth to know that there is gold in China.

There is no God is an absolute statement and can only be said by someone who possesses omniscience (all knowledge). The best a professing atheist can say is, "With the limited knowledge I have at present, I believe that there is no God, but I don’t know." The Christian, however, can know that God exists because he doesn’t need all knowledge. He simply has to come to know Him experientially (an experience commonly known as "conversion").

If the professing atheist could understand that the Christian doesn’t believe in God, the argument about His existence would be over. I used to "believe" in God before my conversion. I looked at creation and believed that "in the beginning" there was a Creator because reason told me that creation could not create itself. If it didn’t exist before it came into being, how could it create itself? It had to have come about by an eternal force, commonly known as "God."

I have spoken to countless atheists, and when pressed about the beginning, they say that they don’t know the initial cause. They don’t know, but they choose to believe that it definitely wasn’t God. Fine. That’s their choice.

However, the key word in this argument is the word "faith." Dictionary.com gives nine meanings for the word faith. Here is one of them: "Christian Theology. The trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved." This is a "trust," as apposed to an intellectual” belief. There is an analogy that clearly pulls this together. I can intellectually "believe" that a parachute will save me, but if I don’t put it on, my faith i s dead. The parachute won’t help me at all. However, if I trust it (put it on), then it becomes beneficial. It saves me from the consequences of a 10,000 foot fall. In the same way, I can intellectually believe in God’s existence, but that faith won’t benefit me at all. To be saved I have to trust in the person of Jesus Christ as my Savior. I have to, as the Bible says, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." When I come to know the Lord, the argument is over.

But watch what comes back from professing atheists. They can’t see the absolute simplicity of the issue. The Bible is so right. The atheist is blind, and this blindness is willful. They cannot see because they don’t want to. Simple.