God Is

Part 1

God is, that is, He exists. But how do believers know He exists? It is true that God cannot be put in a test tube or under a microscope. His existence cannot be proven by sight, sound, touch, smell or taste. There are many other things that we believe in that cannot be proven by these means, such as, love. Love is real. It is not a material that can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched. But we know it exists, and that it is part of everyday reality. Love is just as certain as the wind and the sea. Love is as real to us as chocolate cake is to our taste buds, as real as the fragrance of a bouquet of flowers; as real as the sound of the ocean waves pounding the beach; as real as the sight of a summer’s evening sunset; and as real as the warmth from a fire on a cold winter’s night. If one is going to reject the existence of God, because they cannot perceive Him with their senses, then to be consistent and honest, they must also reject love, peace, and joy.

Scripture does not argue the existence of God. It merely states His existence as a matter of fact from the very first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning GOD…” (Gen. 1:1). Why? If one does not believe in God, he will not believe what the Bible, the Word of God, has to say about Him. However, God knows that all men can look to nature or creation and find enough evidence to believe in His existence. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands” (Ps. 19:1).

Paul explained it this way to the Romans, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:18-20). Today, with the abundance of evidence at our disposal modern man is also without excuse for not believing in the existence of their Creator.

The Esthetical Argument

The Bible claims…

▸ Genesis 1:31 ESV: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
▸ Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
▸ Psalm 104:1-35 ESV: Bless the Lord, O my soul! O Lord my God, you are very great! You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a garment, stretching out the heavens like a tent. He lays the beams of his chambers on the waters; he makes the clouds his chariot; he rides on the wings of the wind; he makes his messengers winds, his ministers a flaming fire. He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved.

Man has naturally within him a desire for and recognition of all things beautiful. True, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not all find a particular scene or painting beautiful, while others do. However, from where did this universal longing for beauty come? God the Creator of beauty is the source. He gave man both the desire and ability to create beautiful cities with its architecture, paintings, photos, statues as well as all other art forms. Men and women long to make themselves and others to appear beautiful. The Esthetical argument for the existence of God claims that only a Creative and beautiful God could have made man with a love for beauty.

Cosmological Argument

One of the great arguments for evolution is the belief that given enough time and chance it is possible for the universe to have come into existence from lifeless, non-intelligent, and eternal matter. And given enough time and chance, life as we known it could evolve from a single-celled organism into an intelligent human being. The idea that the complexity of our universe came about through chance is a statistical impossibility. Even forming a protein molecule by random process is unthinkable. Yet, evolutionist still believe that given enough time, even improbable events become probable.

A common example is used to demonstrate this possibility. If you have a million monkeys all banging on typewriters, in time they will reproduce all the works of William Shakespeare. However, some scientists have researched the probability of how long it would take these monkeys to produce just the first four words of a Shakespearean play. It would take 800 billion years. Remember, just because something might happen does not prove that it did happen. Furthermore, where did the monkeys, typewriters, and reams of paper come from?

A college professor once informed his class that belief in God is neither scientific nor needful in our enlightened age. “Why, we don’t have to pray for rain, we just bombard a cloud with chemicals, and it rains.” A student asked, “who made the cloud?” Every effect has to have an adequate cause. The Law of Cause and Effect demands that everything is an effect of some cause. This is often referred to as the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God. Look at any typical house on the street. Where did it come from? Has it always been there? Did someone build it? “For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God” (Heb. 3:4). And God is eternal, thus without a cause.

Some have believed that the universe is eternal. It is the uncaused cause of all things. However, as John Njoroge said, “the accepted view in science today is that the universe (time and energy and matter and all that) all came into existence at a finite time in the past. Now if that is true, they have not always existed. They do point to a reality beyond just the physical and reality has to have certain characteristics. 1) [It] has to be timeless because a creator of time; 2) immaterial because it created space; 3) extremely powerful if not all-powerful because of the nature of the vastness of the universe; 4) and it also has to be extremely intelligent given the complexity of the universe. So what kind of a cause would this have to be?”

The cause must be timeless or eternal, intelligent, all-powerful, and immaterial. The Uncaused which caused all must be either lifeless and thoughtless material or an intelligent, eternal mind. William Lane Craig explained the Kalam cosmological argument, 1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause. 2) The Universe began to exist. 3) Therefore, the Universe has a cause. The word “universe” means “one sentence.” There is one sentence which sums up the origin or cause of the Universe. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). According to the Bible, it is a timeless and intelligent God who chose to create the world and all that is in it. This includes all the laws of nature.

Belief in the laws of nature mandate that one has faith in the Lawmaker. The law of Cause and Effect demands that for every effect that we see, there must be an adequate cause. We see the laws of nature, therefore there must be an adequate cause. We have at this point two choices: 1) the laws of nature are the result of chance formed out of time and non-living, non-intelligent matter or 2) the ever-living, all wise God created out of nothing. Which choice is more logical or reasonable to believe? When the evidence has been weighed, it will be discovered that it is more reasonable and intelligent to believe in God then, it is not to believe in God. These laws in nature, as complex as they are, demand belief in an intelligent Lawgiver.

– Daniel R. Vess