Tuesday 27 March 2018

God, Jesus, & Creation

 God, Jesus & Creation
“He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.” Job 26:7
Job got it right.
In the above photographs, one taken by Apollo 17 from the vantage point of the moon we can see that the Earth is indeed suspended over nothing.
The second picture backs this up. It was taken by the space probe Voyager billions of kilometres from earth, as it left the solar system.
The Voyager picture also shows how small and potentially insignificant earth looks to be in the vastness of the cosmos.
The late Carl Sagan who convinced N.A.S.A. to take this picture said,
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” Carl Sagan.
Sagan is right if you think in strictly human terms that “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” is all we have. But it is not all we have. There is more.
There is a God who created it all.
Physicist Dr. Paul Davies who once promoted Atheism, after examining the evidence around creation said,
“[There] is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all it seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the Universe. The impression of design is overwhelming”Dr. Paul Davies.
Stephen Hawking by far one of the greatest minds ever to live, commenting on how the universe began said,
“It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us,” Stephen Hawking.
These men have looked into the heavens and come to the same conclusion as the Psalmist who wrote,
“The heavens declare the glory of God; 
the skies proclaim the work of his hands. 
Day after day they pour forth speech; 
night after night they display knowledge. 
There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.” 
                                                                                      Psalm 19:1-3.
The Apostle Paul speaking the learned men in Athens said,
“Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.  
For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. Now what you worship as something unknown I am going to proclaim to you. 
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.  
And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.  
From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.  
God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  
‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 
“Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by man’s design and skill.  
In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.  
For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” Acts 17:22-32.
The book of Acts then goes on to note how those who had listened to Paul reacted. It noted,,
“When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”  
At that, Paul left the Council.  
A few men became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others”Acts 17:22-34.
Thus my question to you the reader becomes if you were listening to the Apostle Paul that day which group would you be in?
Would you sneer at the thought of the resurrection? Would you want to hear more on the subject? Would you, do you believe what Paul said?
The choice is yours. Please think about it.

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