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God is a brilliant designer
If we observe the remarkable world in which we live we can see the work
of a brilliant designer. When a baby is born healthy and sound, many people
instinctively exclaim: “Thank God!” That’s because there is no way that
such a complex, harmonious, and interdependent set of designs could have
happened by accident. There is no current plausible explanation for the
fantastic design of nature. We can see that there must be an intelligent
designer who also has the power to create marvelous designs from atoms
to galaxies. Human beings have a most remarkable design, and therefore
we must have a designer, namely, God.
God is a communicator
If there exists such a powerful, intelligent Creator-God, then he must
also have the power to communicate with us. Nature tells us quite a bit,
but it leaves us with only an obscure idea of what God is like. The human
mind is defeated in its attempts to reason out the nature of God on its
own. The God who designed all of nature has chosen to communicate with
us.
Jesus' amazing claim
Jesus Christ did not say: “God is over there, and if you are good you
can meet him.” He said in completely unvarnished terms: “I am the way,
and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through
me.” He said things only God could say, and did things only God could
do. He told the future, he commanded the weather, he insisted upon his
eternality, he forgave sins, he healed the sick, and he raised the dead.
Make no mistake: he claimed equality with God. These could be the words
of an insane person or a brilliant fake, but Jesus silenced those charges
by predicting both his death and the fact that he would defeat death by
rising from the grave--and rise he did!
The evidence
Anyone who wanted to disprove his teaching could simply have produced
his body in the first century--but no one did, because the grave was empty.
Accusations that the disciples stole the body are silenced by the fact
that his disciples were willing to die for him. Ten of the twelve original
disciples did so, along with thousands of others in just a few years,
leading to hundreds of thousands over the centuries. Would Jesus’ followers
have done that if they knew he was a fake? Jesus’ followers are still
dying for him today. More people were martyred for believing in Jesus
Christ in the twentieth century than all other centuries combined. Were
they all crazy, or were they just grasping the deep satisfaction for their
souls that comes from meeting God personally?
A unique book
The record of Jesus’ life and teaching are found in the sixty-six books
of the Bible. The Creator-God’s communication to you about himself is
probably already on your shelf (in an old translation). It is the most
published book of all history, still weekly beating out the number one
title on the New York Times bestseller list. Read the gospels for yourself
in a modern translation. The Creator-God who made you is speaking to you.
He wants to tell you who he is. Are you listening?
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