Sep 24 2019 29 mins
Episode 22 – Four Options for Everything that Exists Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. In John 14:6, Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The goal of Anchored by Truth is to encourage everyone to grow in the Christian faith by anchoring themselves to the secure truth found in the inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God. Script Notes: You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.” Nehemiah, Chapter 9, verse 6, English Standard Version For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the Lord, and there is no other. Isaiah, Chapter 45, verse 18, English Standard Version Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created Revelation, Chapter 4, verse 11, English Standard Version ******** VK: Hello! I’m Victoria K. Welcome to Anchored by Truth brought to you by Crystal Sea Books. Today I’m here with Crystal Sea’s founder, RD Fierro, and we are beginning an entirely new series on Anchored by Truth that will discuss how we can be sure that the God of the Bible exists. RD, the notion that there is a God who exists and created everything didn’t used to be very controversial. But it seems like today there are more and more people who object to very idea of a transcendent God. RD: Unfortunately, I agree with that observation, but the good news is that – according to the Pew Research Center - an overwhelming majority of Americans do believe in God. (90%) The bad news is that a lot of the people who do believe in God do not accept the God of the Bible (33%). But back to the good news - 56% of Americans still believe in the God of the Bible. VK: Ahhh. It’s the old good news – bad news – good news cycle. Well, I suppose one of the takeaways from that kind of research is that unlike in previous decades there are plenty of missionary opportunities available without ever leaving home. While foreign missions are still important part of the church’s mission, it’s increasingly important to witness to the people around us. In fact, there may never have been a more important time in history than now for us to be able to provide cogent and understandable reasons for our faith. RD: True dat. And that was a particular area of interest for me when I wrote my book The Prodigal’s Advocate. In the midst of a fantasy story I wanted the reader to see some of the classic lines of reasoning that are used to support a belief in the God of the Bible. VK: So for the next few episodes we want to introduce our listening audience to The Prodigal’s Advocate, right. Right now we’re still a little ways away from releasing the full version of the audio book, but the hard copy and the e-book are available now from a variety of sources including Crystal Sea’s website. Why don’t you take a minute to set the stage for the extract that we’re going to play today? RD: Prodigal’s Advocate is a fictional adventure that takes an in-depth look at the reasons people give for either believing or not believing in God and Jesus. It does so by following a man in his mid-thirties – the Prodigal - through a series of experiences he has following his death in a tragic accident. The Prodigal goes to a humongous amphitheater where he finds himself in a crowd of people all of whom are waiting to be called to face judgment before the One Without Shadow. And while he’s in this amphitheater he has a series of conversations with others in the crowd there and he quickly discovers that people’s experiences after death aren’t the same for everybody. In this extract from the audiobook the Prodigal is talking to an elderly lady named Maria who had seen the Prodigal’s wife before she was called into the great hall of judgment. ---- Prodigal’s Advocate Extract VK: So in that scene the Prodigal is starting to learn that our experiences after our life on this world are going to be related to what we did on this world. That’s one of the points in the book where the Prodigal is discovering that some people – the Advocate’s followers – will spend eternity in a blessed exploration of a heaven. Sadly, the Prodigal also learns that not everyone will share that destiny. RD: Exactly. That’s one of the reasons we founded Crystal Sea – to help people understand that our lives on this earth are what prepare us for an eternal hereafter. And since the Bible tells us that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the standards that would gain us entrance into heaven on our own – that we need an Advocate to represent us for the Judge – who is so perfectly filled with light He’s called the One Without Shadow. VK: And thankfully we do have an Advocate available in Jesus. But in order to accept Jesus as our Advocate we need to be confident that He was indeed the Messiah – the Anointed One – sent by God to be our Advocate. And we get that knowledge from the Bible. But in our culture today there’s an artificial construct that has been created that says that we can either believe in the Bible through faith – or believe in science. But you say that it’s not necessary to view the world that way. RD: It’s not necessary. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. There is every reason we can have confidence in both the Bible and in science properly understood. Our faith in the God of the Bible does not require us to suspend our intellectual faculties and take some kind of leap into a nonsensical abyss where we believe something in opposition to logic, reason, and evidence. To the contrary, faith in the God of the Bible is not only entirely reasonable, it is necessary to formulation of a coherent world view. Today, too many people see Christianity and science as being at odds with one another, but in truth they are not. A lot of people today have forgotten that many of the giants of real science through the ages – men like Sir Isaac Newton who formulated the laws of motion and gravitation, Louis Pasteur one of the 3 main founders of bacteriology and who disproved the notion of spontaneous generation, and Carl Linnaeus father of modern taxonomy – were ardent and devout Christians. In fact much of modern science was based on the idea that there was a Creator who valued order and design so it would be possible to study the universe in a disciplined fashion to discern that order. VK: In fact one of C.S. Lewis’ most famous quotes was that science – or at least how we view science today - originally became possible because the first scientists had confidence that a God of order, purpose, and design had built the universe in such a way that it was possible to discover what we generally think of as the Laws of Nature? RD: Yes. But in that same quote Lewis also began to worry that the original search for those laws was becoming corrupted as scientists began seeing their studies, rather than God, as being supreme. The exact quote was “Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator. In most modern scientists this belief has died: it will be interesting to see how long their confidence in uniformity survives it. Two significant developments have already appeared—the hypothesis of a lawless sub-nature, and the surrender of the claim that science is true. We may be living nearer than we suppose to the end of the Scientific Age.” C. S. Lewis, Miracles: a preliminary study. VK: So part of what you want to do through Crystal Sea and through this radio and podcast series that we’re calling Anchored by Truth is to address the concern that Lewis was expressing. We want to re-establish the harmony that used to exist between a belief in the Bible and a proper understanding for how we view His created order – the universe. I mean if God created the universe we would expect to find his fingerprints on it and in it. And one of those fingerprints was the revelation that he made to His supreme creation, Man. The revelation that is found in the Word of God, the Bible, as well as the Incarnate Word of God – Jesus. RD: Yes. But even before we come to the Bible it’s possible for us to think about what we can glean about the necessity for the existence of God just by what we can see in the created order. Christian scholars distinguish between two types of revelation – general revelation and special revelation. General revelation is exactly that – general. It is available to all people all the time. It’s the revelation that comes to us through nature. The classic verse in the Bible that describes general revelation is Psalm 19, verses 1 through 2. “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 reveal knowledge.” Verse 4 says that “their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.” Special revelation is the Word of God as revealed to His people. The Bible. The universe tells us that God exists but it doesn’t tell many things about His nature such as the composition of the Trinity. VK: So, today you want to discuss what is revealed by general revelation – or at least you want to launch that discussion because some of it will have to wait for our next episode. Well you say that one of the things that general revelation tells us is that there is a God – a self-existent being who possesses the power of existence unto and by Himself. And whose existence accounts for the existence of everything else. RD: Exactly. I really like the way that RC Sproul used to begin his discussions of how it’s possible to demonstrate that God’s existence is a logical necessity. RC used to start by saying that as long as you believed that anything existed – even just a pencil or old shoe – that from that single fact you could deduce that a self-existent God was necessary. VK: This sounds interesting. So today you want to begin with RC’s line of reasoning? RD: I do because I think it’s so easy to follow. RC said that after thinking carefully about the subject, he came to the conclusion that there were only four possible explanations for everything that we can see around us – on our earth or in the farthest corners of the universe. VK: And those four possible explanations are... RD: They are: 1. Everything that we see around us is an illusion 2. Everything that we see around us was self-created 3. Everything that we see around us was created by something or someone who is self-existent. 4. Everything that we see around us is self-existent. VK: Ok. Some of those possibilities sound like they’re pretty easy to understand, but a couple sound like they will take a bit of explanation. But you say that it is fairly easy to demonstrate that two of those possibilities are logically impossible. Which two are those? RD: The first two. The possibility that everything we see around us is an illusion or that it has been self-created both involve inescapable logical contradictions. So while they are speculative possibilities in reality they can’t be a valid explanation for the created order that we see. VK: Well, let’s start with illusion then. How do you go about showing that everything can’t just be some form of a giant or wizard or angel’s daydream. That everything we can see or perceive isn’t just some kind of an elaborate illusion. RD: Well let’s start by supposing that everything we see is some kind of an elaborate illusion. The first question we’d have to ask is – who or what is having the illusion. An illusion would require a being to have the illusion. So the possibility that everything we see is some kind of an imaginative figment is – in reality – logically impossible. To be an illusion there has to be something or someone to perceive the illusion meaning that something exists beyond the illusion. VK: That’s pretty straightforward. And you say that similarly the possibility that everything we see is self-created also involves a logical contradiction. RD: If does. The most basic law of logic is the law of non-contradiction. A cannot be A and non-A at the same time and in the same relationship. Well, before anything can do something it must first BE something. Doing requires a doer. Creation requires action. It requires doing. So for anything or anyone to create something, anything, much less the universe it would have to first exist. So the concept of self-creation involves doing before being. That’s simply impossible. VK: And yet the possibility that for years was embraced by scientists. They just didn’t call it self-creation, they called it spontaneous generation. And some scientists today when writing about the origin of the universe still drift into using the language of self-creation. RD: Yes. I’ve read articles about the universe’s origins where the writer will use language like “the universe sprang into being” or such-and-such a principle shows how something can come from nothing. Either the writer is just being incredibly imprecise or they’re just not thinking very clearly. It there ever was a time when nothing existed then the only thing that could come of that is nothing. Nothing is NO-THING. No atoms, no molecules, no sub-atomic particles, no space, not even time. In truth we can’t even envision true nothingness effectively because as existing beings even using our imaginations means that we are acknowledging our own existence. VK: Again, that seems pretty straightforward but when you start thinking about it very much it kind of gives you a headache. And if you have a headache that means you have a head. So the fact that anything exists today is a graphic demonstration that there has never been a time when there was absolutely nothing. Of course, as believers in the God of the Bible we know that God has always existed, but unfortunately for today we don’t have enough time to discuss God’s self-existence in detail. So we’ll save that for next time when we’ll take up the final two possibilities for explaining the existence of the created order -of everything that we see around us. RD: Sounds good to me. Just as a note, for listeners who would like to hear more about RC Sproul’s explanation for how to present an effective defense of the Christian Faith they can go the Ligonier Ministries website and look for the teaching series on Defending Your Faith. VK: Sounds like a great time for a prayer. Since we’re spending some time meditating on the marvelous creation that God brought into existence out the power that He alone possesses – today let’s pray a prayer of adoration for the Creator. ---- Prayer for adoration of the Creator – Gwen VK: Next time on Anchored by Truth we’re going to continue our discussion about how we can confident that the God of the Bible actually exists. And because a lot of our radio episodes are linked together in series of topics we want to remind listeners that if they missed any episodes or if they just want to hear one again, all of these episodes are available on your favorite podcast app. To find them just search on “Anchored by Truth by Crystal Sea Books.” We hope you’ll be with us then and we hope you’ll take some time to encourage some friends to tune in too, or listen to the podcast version of this show. If you’d like to hear more, try out crystalseabooks.com where “We’re not famous but our Boss is!” (Bible Quotes from the English Standard Version) Nehemiah, Chapter 9, verse 6, English Standard Version Isaiah, Chapter 45, verse 18, English Standard Version Revelation, Chapter 4, verse 11, English Standard Version https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/ https://creation.com/cs-lewis-science-began-with-belief-in-a-lawmaker