I woke up early this morning. It was still dark, so I got to watch the sunrise over the mountains. I’ve seen this hundreds of times, but it never fails to amaze me. It struck me that most of us rarely see the awesome beauty of the sunrise. Most of those who see it don’t make the connection between the beauty of the sunrise and the God who created it. Most of us see the mechanics of a spinning globe circling a ball of burning gas………and miss the heart of the being that created it. It struck me that our perception of the sunrise is a microcosm of the conflict between secular humanism and Creationism.

The humanist sees a moving ball of burning gas……the result of a giant accidental explosion 14 billion years ago. The Creationist sees the handiwork of an intelligent being who called it all into being for his own purposes. I can only speculate as to God’s motivation. I suspect that he did it all because he wants a relationship with us…….a relationship with me……based on reciprocal love…….a conversation. That conversation is how my day begins.

The central tenet of secular humanism is the complete removal of the Creator from the creation. Many of us embrace secular humanism because we want control of our lives. We chafe at the idea…..the presence……of a creator who has plans for us…….who has expectations of us. In order for the humanist to achieve control, he must accept a creation story that is built on theories and assumptions…….a series of trillions of sequential events, billions of years ago……..events that cannot be documented. You cannot collect data, then analyse that data by applying assumptions and theories, and say that your conclusion is a fact. But, scientists do just that……all day……every day.

This is the core of secular humanism. And, if you close your eyes and hold your nose, if you ignore the gaps, missing links, theories, and assumptions, if you ignore dark matter and dark energy, if you ignore the probability of a human genome consisting of several hundred billion chemical bonds…..each one a random accident……if you can commit those logical atrocities…….you can almost convince yourself that an intelligent creator, God, is not necessary. This is the price that you pay for control.

But, as I sit in my chair this morning, having a conversation with a creator who loves me more than life itself, I have to ask two questions:

What is the secular humanist giving up when he sacrifices that conversation, that relationship……….in order to gain a little temporary control of his life?

What is the secular humanist depriving God of…….in terms of the lost relationship……the lost conversation? This morning, it was about a spectacular sunrise. In a few hours, that conversation will be about things far more important.

Both God and the humanist lose out on the single most important thing in the universe…….relationship.

And that saddens me.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8, ESV

First, let me say that I am a committed creationist. I believe that an intelligent being created everthing………everything. I live in Kentucky, just a few miles from the Creation Museum. I will add that I am grateful for Ken Hamm and his staff for standing up for their convictions. The creation museum teaches creation in 7 twenty four hour “earth days”. That causes me to pause. I am not sure that they are right. I certainly am not sure that they are wrong either. There is no question about the existence of an intelligent creator. But, I think that there is some room for doubt about the equivalence of 7 biblical creation days and 7 modern “earth days”.

I see my calling as a marketer for Christianity. My job is to draw people to God/Jesus/Holy Spirit. My job is to depopulate hell and improve believers.

There are two ideas that are my biggest obstacles:

Darwinian evolution and creation in 7 “earth days”. Darwinian evolution is an idea created by man. Darwinian evolution is the most dangerous idea that man has ever conceived. It is deadly because it eliminates the need for God. It gives man an excuse for assuming sovereignty. I will attack it without a qualm. Creation was an act of God. But, the tension between creation in seven 24 hour days and modern science is widely used by secular humanists to ridicule the concept of creation……the concept of intelligent design. Even worse, that tension is used to ridicule the creator……..God. I cannot reject the idea of creation in 7 modern earth days…….but I think that there is room to explore it. If a biblical creation day is a metaphor describing an era, possibly lasting billions of years, then the gap between the Bible and scientific observation narrows dramatically. This eliminates one of the most powerful weapons of the secular humanists.

It all comes down to this:

What is the definition of a biblical creation day?

The secular humanists and the scientists tell us that the evolution of the universe took billions of modern earth years.

But, what does the Bible say?

Day one

He separated light and dark

Day two

He separated the water below the air from the water above

Day three

He separated earth from water and created plants

Day four

He separated the light into stars and the moon and planets

Day five

He created and separated fish and birds

Day six

He created land animals, man, and work. He separated man and woman

Day seven

He separated work from rest

So far so good.

But, notice that the stars, including our sun, did not exist until biblical day four. Our modern earth day is defined by the relationship between the earth and the sun. This relationship did not exist until Biblical day four. The day described on creation days one to three could be defined differently from a modern earth day. I think that it is entirely possible that a biblical creation day is a metaphor representing an era, possibly billions of modern earth days.

And I will leave the seven days of creation at that.

But what about the 8th day?

To be clear, day 8 is my invention. It could very well be a metaphor for an era also.

The Bible teaches that the heavens and the earth were completed in 6 days. On the 7th day God rested. But the story goes on. God was clearly not finished with his work. The rest of the Bible deals with the triumphs and failures of man. It introduces us to our rescue by Jesus. Then, it culminates with the destruction of the physical world and the creation of the New Jerusalem”. This is an eternal spiritual world. This is God’s final act of creation. Could this be day 8 of creation? Could day 8 be the end of the temporal/physical world and its conversion into God’s eternal/spiritual world?

Back to the acts of separation:

The Bible clearly teaches that there will be a final act of separation. This final separation will be catastrophic for many of us. God will separate the people, the souls, that he has created into two groups. He will take the people who have chosen to have a relationship with him, based on his sovereignty, and draw them to him for eternity. This is the “New Jerusalem”………Heaven. Those people who have rejected the sovereignty of God…….. those who have embraced the sovereignty of secular humanism…..will be sent elsewhere. We can quibble about the details…….but hell will not be nice.

Like it or not, Christians will spend eternity with God. Secular Humanists will spend eternity elsewhere. The horror of this is that there are a lot of good people, kind people, nice people who will be on the wrong side of this final sorting. As Christians, we are required to reach out to them.

“The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”Jesus, describing the final judgement, Matthew 13: 24-30, ESV

I just watched a movie……Greenland. It was pretty good entertainment……..lots of action, talented actors, and a fast moving plot. The condensed version is that a comet slams into earth and kills almost everything. This is referred to as “a planetary extinction event”. Science tells us that this has happened before……..at least 5 times, maybe more, depending on how you define the term.

The best known of these was the Yucatan asteroid. This caused the death of about 80% of the living things on earth……..including the dinosaurs. It doesn’t take a lot of foresight to accept that anything that has happened 5 times already can happen again. It is not so much a question of IF there will be a planetary extinction event. It is more a question of when. Every few years, scientists detect a giant space rock that passes close to earth. They assure us that it will miss……..that we will literally dodge the bullet one more time. There are likely plans to try to blow up or deflect such an asteroid should it threaten us.

Curiously, mass extinction is an area where science and the Bible agree. The flood of Noah’s time, described in Genesis, was just such an event. Revelation is a detailed, though likely metaphorical account of a future mass extinction event. In the Bible, as with science, the only question………is when.

Science and the Bible agree.

We are headed for a mass extinction event. It’s just a matter of time.

What to do?

If the secular humanists are right, the only defense is to die from something else before the comet hits. As “best possible case scenarios” go…….this is daunting.

The Bible offers something else……..a spiritual dimension…….a cosmic “escape pod”. We go to another dimension that is safe. Even better……it is eternal. Pretty cool.

But there is a catch.

In the movie, there is a sanctuary. In order to get into the sanctuary, you have to have a bar code on your phone and a little blue plastic band on your wrist.

The Bible is different. The Bible teaches that there is an eternal spiritual dimension……..that both the physical world and the spiritual world were created by an intelligent being…….and that this intelligent being, God, has expectations……….conditions. Instead of a blue wrist band and a bar code. God requires you to accept his existence. This means that you accept his rules…….love him and love those around you. Do that, and you will survive the final mass extinction event.

The burning question is this:

Who is right? The secular humanists or the Christians. Which explanation of the final mass extinction event is true.

It is not an academic or philosophical question. It is literally a choice between life and death.

Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.

Jesus describing the escape pod, John 14: 1-3, ESV

There is a war going on. This war is far bigger and more important than the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. It is the war between secular humanism and Creationism…….Christianity. This war is a spiritual war. It is not fought on a battlefield. It is fought on terrain that is both physical and spiritual. It is fought in a realm that is both temporal and spiritual. It is fought in the hearts of mankind. More importantly, it is a war for the hearts of mankind. It is a war for my heart…… and for yours.

Let me begin by identifying the combatants. They are not physical armies. Rather, they are ideologies. Both of these ideologies are religions, though secular humanism camoflages itself with science. A religion is a belief system that explains who we are, how we came to be, why we are here, and where we are going. Science tries to do the same thing. The difference is subtle but critical. In its pure form……which is rare, science confines itself to measurable observations…….facts. The problem arises when science encounters a gap in its observations that cannot be bridged with current knowledge acting on measurable data. Some examples: the first 400 million years after the ” big bang”, the universe before and at the instant of the big bang, dark matter, and dark energy, the phenomenon we call “Hubble tension”. These are phenomena that scientists simply cannot explain based on the laws of science. Science fills in these gaps with theories. A theory is a possible explanation that cannot be proven based on current understanding. When you get down to it, a theory isn’t very much different from a myth. Greek mythology is a collection of theories. The big bang itself is a theory. There are multiple theories that try to deal with dark energy and dark matter. Science is completely befuddled by Hubble tension. Christianity, on the other hand, cannot explain the mechanics of creation, the virgin birth, or the resurrection. Both science and Christianity require us to accept, on faith, explanations that cannot be proved by current knowledge.

Both secular humanism and Christianity answer the really big questions with a combination of fact and faith. As such, both are religions. But, that is where the similarity ends. Christianity, creationism, posits a creator…..an active, intelligent force that operates both outside and inside our physical/temporal world. Christianity posits an eternal spiritual world governed by a sovereign creator, a creator who has expectations. The creator has a plan and he is working his way through that plan. Secular humanism accepts no such creator. Secular humanism rejects the idea that an outside being has expectations of us. Secular humanism rejects the existence of an eternal spiritual realm.

The reason that these two great religions are important, the reason why they are at war, is very basic. Secular humanism and Christianity are mutually exclusive. One is right…….and one is wrong. We must choose. But, the table is tilted. Secular humanism is the default. To not actively choose Christianity is to choose secular humanism by default.

So……how do we choose? I would like to tell you that we study the situation and reach an ordered, logical conclusion. For better or worse, that is just not the case. Both Christians and humanists choose based on a simple diagnostic.

Appetites

We choose between these two great religions based on what we want. We choose based on what they promise us. And what is that?
Secular humanism promises us control. Mankind is in charge of everything. The environment, the rules of social behaviour, our recreation, sex, drugs, even our sexual identity. We butt heads, we even have wars, when we disagree among ourselves as to which appetite to pursue. Christianity is much simpler. Christianity promises us a relationship with the sovereign creator. That relationship is founded on love. It ultimately requires obedience. We are no longer in control. Just as the two religions are mutually exclusive, so are the two appetites.

And there it is.

Mankind divides itself between the two great religions based on appetites.

Either

We take control of the universe in order to satisfy our appetites.

Or

We seek out a relationship with our creator.

It comes down to this:

Which is more important to us.

Control of everything…….or……..relationship with God.

So…….choose.

“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus struggling with the choice between control and relationship, Matthew, 26: 38-39, ESV

There is a war going on. This war is far bigger and more important than the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. It is the war between secular humanism and Creationism…….Christianity. This war is a spiritual war. It is not fought on a battlefield. It is fought on terrain that is both physical and spiritual. It is fought in a realm that is both temporal and spiritual. It is fought in the hearts of mankind. More importantly, it is a war for the hearts of mankind. It is a war for my heart…… and for yours.

Let me begin by identifying the combatants. They are not physical armies. Rather, they are ideologies. Both of these ideologies are religions, though secular humanism camoflages itself with science. A religion is a belief system that explains who we are, how we came to be, why we are here, and where we are going. Science tries to do the same thing. The difference is subtle but critical. In its pure form……which is rare, science confines itself to measurable observations…….facts. The problem arises when science encounters a gap in its observations that cannot be bridged with current knowledge acting on measurable data. For example: the first 400 million years after the ” big bang”, the universe before and at the instant of the big bang, dark matter, and dark energy, the phenomenon we call “Hubble tension”. These are phenomena that scientists simply cannot explain based on the laws of science. Science fills in these gaps with theories. A theory is a possible explanation that cannot be proven based on current understanding. The big bang itself is a theory. There are multiple theories that try to deal with dark energy and dark matter. Science is completely befuddled by Hubble tension. Christianity, on the other hand, cannot explain the mechanics of creation, the virgin birth, or the resurrection. Both science and Christianity ask us to accept, on faith, the explanations that they offer that cannot be proved by current knowledge.

Both secular humanism and Christianity answer the really big questions with a combination of fact and faith. As such, both are religions. But, that is where the similarity ends. Christianity, creationism, posits a creator…..an active, intelligent force that operates both outside and inside our physical/temporal world. Christianity posits a spiritual world governed by a sovereign creator, a creator who has expectations. The creator has a plan and he is working his way through that plan. Secular humanism accepts no such creator. Secular humanism rejects the idea that an outside being has expectations of us.

The reason that these two great religions are important…..the reason why they are at war is very basic. Secular humanism and Christianity are mutually exclusive. One is right…….and one is wrong. We must choose. Secular humanism is the default. To not actively choose Christianity is to choose secular humanism.

So……how do we choose? I would like to tell you that we study the situation and reach an ordered, logical conclusion. For better or worse, that is just not the case. Both Christians and humanists choose their religion based on a simple diagnostic.

Appetites

We choose between these two great religions based on what we want. We choose based on what they promise us. And what is that?
Secular humanism promises us control. Mankind is in charge of everything. The environment, the rules of social behaviour, our recreation, sex, drugs, even our sexual identity. We butt heads, we even have wars, when we disagree among ourselves as to which appetite to pursue. Christianity is much simpler. Christianity promises us a relationship with a sovereign creator. That relationship ultimately requires obedience. We are no longer in control. Just as the two religions are mutually exclusive, so are the two appetites.

And there it is.

Mankind divides itself between the two great religions based on appetites.

Either

We take control of the universe in order to satisfy our appetites.

Or

We seek out a relationship with our creator.

It comes down to this:

Which is more important to us.

Control of everything…….or……..relationship with God.

So…….choose.

“My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.” And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus struggling with the choice between control and relationship, Matthew, 26: 38-39, ESV

First off, a few facts, many of these are estimates based on theories:

Distance to the sun. 8 light minutes
Distance to proxima centauri. 4.2 light years
Distance to the north star. 400 light years
Distance to the Andromeda galaxy. 25,000 light years
Distance to the furthest detectable galaxy 34 billion light years
Distance to the edge of the observable universe. 93 billion l.y.
Distance to the edge of the rest of the universe. 7 trillion l.y.

Speed of a commercial airplane. 500 mph
Speed of a satellite. 10,000 to 25,000 mph
Speed of our solar system around the Milky Way 500,000 mph
Speed of the Milky Way, rel. to cosmic background 1.3 million mph

I’ll start with the distances. I spend a lot of time in a dark sky area looking at the night sky. I see a lot of stars, each of them a ball of burning gas. They are so far away that the light that I see tonight is due to gas that burned some time ago. In fact, most of the light from the stars that I see is from gas that burned before I was born. I see the stars as they were hundreds to trillions of years ago. The cold, hard reality is that I don’t even know if they are still there. There is a star in the constellation Orion named Betelgeuse. Astronomers expect it to explode soon. But, Betelgeuse is 600 light years away. It is entirely possible that it exploded before Columbus sailed. We just haven’t seen the explosion……yet.

On a typical night, I’ll see a few airplanes, a dozen satellites, a meteor or two, maybe a planet, and thousands of stars. The planes, satellites, and meteors are visibly in motion. The stars and planets hardly seem to move. And yet, they are all moving at a blistering pace in every imaginable direction. The night sky looks relatively quiet; but the reality is that it is a seething cauldron of activity. The vast majority of what is going on up there is beyond my vision. Worse yet, I can’t even be sure that what I am seeing is still there. And what I can see, if it even still exists, is already billions of miles away from where it appears to be.

There’s a lot going on up there….. I just can’t see it all.
What I can see isn’t where or what I see today.
Even worse, some of what I can see……is no longer real.

Which brings me to the topic this week.

Reality and what I can sense, measure, analyse……..what I can know………..do not always agree.

What I know falls into several categories:

The things that I can see and touch……..the tangible.
The things that I can’t see or touch, but can infer…..the intuitive.
The things that I simply can’t detect using the tools of the physical world……the spiritual.

The tangible world is pretty straightforward. I’m holding my phone……it’s real.

The intuitive world is a little tougher. It’s 6 am and the sky is getting brighter. I can’t see the sun……but I am confident that it will be up in about an hour. The sun is real.

The spiritual world is where we get into trouble. It is beyond our senses. It is beyond our ability to logically explain. And yet, we sense its reality. Ask 100 Americans if there is life after death. 75 will say yes. There are not many things that 75% of Americans agree on. This, in spite of the fact that there is little hard physical evidence to prove the existence of the spiritual world.

We accept the existence of the spiritual world for three reasons. The first is that, though we hate to admit it, we respect our ignorance. We accept the reality that most of the cosmos is beyond our understanding. What follows from this is that……the fact that we cannot measure, understand, and manipulate something…..does not preclude its existence. The second reason is that we can sense the spiritual realm. It is written on our hearts. We recognize the spiritual for the same reason that we love our children. It is built into our design. It was put there by our creator. It is the very purpose of our existence. We deny or ignore it at our peril. The third reason is miracles. A miracle is an event that defies the rules of the physical world. It is a window into the spiritual world…….a world where science simply does not apply. We encounter these miracles with some regularity. The Bible is full of them. But, they also occur in our everyday life…….if we are tuned in to the spiritual.

The final point is this:

The tangible world will have an end.
The intuitive world will have an end.
The spiritual world, whether you accept it and honor it…..or not, will not end.

The spiritual world is real.

The spiritual world is your destiny.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

John 5: 24, ESV

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

John 17: 3, ESV

We put up a Christmas tree every year in December. It’s a tradition in our house. If you asked me why we do this, I doubt that I could give you a good answer. We begin with a plain tree. Then we start covering it with decorations. Sometimes the decorations follow a theme: a white tree, a gold tree, ornaments that remind us of important moments in our family history. Once we had a tree with the Grinch as a theme. By the time we are finished…….if we do good job…….you can hardly see the tree for the decorations. Then we throw a party and pass out gifts.

Great fun.

It occurs to me that our Christmas tree is a metaphor for our life, our faith, and our relationship with our creator. We begin with something that comes from outside of our experience…….something created by an external entity. The tree. It is natural. It is beautiful. It is real. It is true. It is God’s creation. Then we start adding to it. We add things that we like. We add things that we love, maybe things that we want……things that we hope for. And, in the process, we pretty much bury the tree in ornaments, lights, and tinsel. And we stand back and admire it……..our creation. God’s contribution is pretty much lost beneath the glitter that we have applied. God’s creation is obscured by our embellishments.

I’m sitting in my kitchen this morning, looking out the windows as the day happens. I see grass, trees, a dusting of snow, and the occasional deer. All of this is the work of my creator. It is beautiful. It is true. It is perfect. And I am blessed beyond expression.

But, if I look further, I can see radio towers, a factory, cars, planes, and a water tower. All of these are things the we, mankind, have added…….embellishments. I am blessed that, in my back yard, the added embellishments do not overpower and obscure God’s contribution to the view. It’s not hard to go to a place, perhaps a city, and experience a view where human decoration completely obscures God’s creation. It’s not hard to sit down in my family room and spend the evening watching TV and never see a thing that comes from God……..and never see a thing that brings me closer to God.

More and more, the experience of our world is the experience of the human decoration. More and more, God’s contribution to our world is obscured, lost.

And so, I start my day, sitting in my back yard communing with God’s world. I start my day by returning to that part of my world that is closest to God…….closest to the undecorated tree. The power of that experience in shaping my day is immense.

I’m not kidding myself. I have been blessed beyond comprehension. And I am grateful. You may live in a place that is overwhelmed……..with “human decoration”……..or worse. You may have to work harder to find a place where you can experience God minus all of the decoration. But, you can find it. You can find a corner of your world where you can meditate on God……..a place where you can commune with God……free from all of the decoration.

Begin your day in that place. You’ll spend the rest of your day in a better world.

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

Jesus, John 14:6, ESV

I live in a part of Kentucky that is defined by Karst geology. This is large sheets of limestone that have been focally dissolved by acidic water. This phenomenon results in three things that define the bluegrass region of my state:

Thoroughbred horses which thrive on the limestone water and the bluegrass

Bourbon whiskey which requires this special water

Caves which are formed when the water dissolves the limestone

On a tour of one of our caves, I was introduced to a species of fish that lives only in the depths of the caves. This species is completely blind. It simply has no eyes. It has no lungs. It has no nose. It has no ears. It lives out its life in a world without air…..without light. This fish understands its world based on the taste and temperature of the water, based on what it touches, and based on vibrations that pass through the water.

Now, imagine that you are that fish. You swim around seeking water that is the temperature, taste, and chemistry that you prefer. You feed yourself by chasing down the source of vibrations nearby. You swallow what tastes good and spit out what tastes bad.

Life is good in your world.

Then, one day, someone describes to you a warm summer evening. The sky is a deep blue. The setting sun is a rich red. It’s a little muggy. Katydids are singing. You can hear a mourning dove. There is a gentle breeze. There is a campfire and there are steaks on a grate. You are tired from the hike up the mountain to your campsite. Soon, the stars will come out. There is going to be a meteor shower tonight.

Life is good in this other world.

The problem is that you cannot conceive of that world. Your experience of life gives you no understanding of the atmosphere, the weather, the sounds of the woods, the feel of the air, the beauty of the sunset, and the glory of the night sky……..not to mention that steak. The fact is that, even if you were exposed to these things, you don’t have the sensory apparatus to detect the data that you would encounter. The facts and rules of your world simply do not apply to this other world. The experience, the science, of your underground world simply cannot handle the information of the aboveground world.

We live our lives in the physical world. All that we know……all that we can conceive is limited by our experience of our world. All that we can understand is limited by the rules of the science of our physical world. And the science of our physical world is limited to what we can sense and measure.

We are blind cave fish living in our physical world.

There is a spiritual world. It operates on a set of rules and realities that are entirely different from our physical world.

And we just don’t understand. So we do the same thing as the blind cave fish. For the most part, we go about our business. We swim around and eat what we can find. We don’t think about the aboveground world because we can’t. We lack the tools and experience. Maybe we simply deny the possibility of a sunset. After all, it is impossible………in a world without light and air…….in our cave world.

But, the fact that a sunset is not possible in my “blind cave fish” world………does not mean that such a sunset doesn’t exist in that other world. The concept that just because I cannot sense something, measure something, or comprehend something……means that it cannot exist is flawed.

This is a good working definition of hubris:

A blind cave fish………who has it all figured out.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

God, Isaiah 55: 8-9, ESV

“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”

Paul, 1 Corinthians, 2:9,ESV

It is odd, that we go through our lives and never study the most important concepts in our world. We just take them for granted and go along our way. Arguably, the most important reality in my world…….your’s too……..is life itself.

So……here it is:

What is the nature of life? More specifically……..what is the nature of my life?

The answer is, at once, both simple and straightforward…….and dauntingly complex.

First, the simple part:

Life is: breath, movement, thought, and much more. This is our physical life. We can see it, touch it, even understand it. We can manipulate our life and the lives of those around us. Our physical strength and our intellect give us the ability to master the physical world around us. Some of us have more power…….some have less. This is heady stuff. It is very easy for us to become proud of our success at running our world. But, all of us are constrained. Our power and understanding are limited to the physical world. The physical world is the realm that we typically think of when we talk about life.

The problem is this:

There is a duality to life. The physical world that we enjoy is a thin veneer covering a much larger reality. That larger reality is the spiritual world.

We are, for the most part, blind to the spiritual world. In a word, we are almost completely ignorant of the nature of the vast majority of our life. We are given brief glimpses of the spiritual side of life……of our life. These glimpses consist of the life of Jesus and the prophecies of the Bible. Occasionally, something happens that violates every rule and law of our physical world. We get a glimpse of the spiritual world. We call these episodes “miracles”. We tend to minimize these events. We try to explain them away using the rules of science. We deny these facts…….because the rules of our world cannot deal with them. The resurrection of Jesus is one of these events. The resurrection is not a lie. It is not a myth. The resurrection is a brief glimpse into the other side, the spiritual side, of our life. It is just as real as the people who surround us.

Scientists talk about a concept called a singularity. A singularity is an event where the entire nature of a system is completely charged. The nature of time, matter, and energy are completely re-arranged. The rules that we call science on this side of the singularity simply do not apply to the new order. The classic example of a singularity is the “big bang”. This is the event that science uses to explain the creation of the universe…….out of nothing……no mass……no energy…….no intelligence……no creator. The rules, time, and structure of the universe prior to the “big bang” are beyond our comprehension. This is because they are completely different from the “science” that governs our physical world. We will never understand what is on the other side of this singularity. We just do not have the tools. The simple fact is that we cannot even measure the “big bang” itself. So, we make something up as best as we can using the rules and structure of our physical life. But, our explanation is doomed to fail……because the rules on this side of the singularity simply do not apply to the other side of the singularity.

And then we die…….and everything changes.

Because death is a singularity too.

No matter what you believe. No matter what you want. No matter your politics. No matter if you lived a good life…….or not. You simply cannot know what is waiting for you on the other side of the singularity that we call death:

Paradise
Hell
Dead black nothing

At our death, we transition from the physical world into the spiritual world. The old rules simply no longer apply. Time, mass, energy, and space as we know it no longer apply. The Bible deals with this using language that is largely symbolic. We call it apocalyptic literature. Try applying the rules of our physical world to the book of Revelation……or Daniel…….or to Biblical prophecy. We just lack the tools to understand it all. We are forced to rely on faith.

So….what do we really know about the spiritual world?

Not much.

What do we understand about the spiritual world?

Even less.

Here is the best I can do:

There is a sovereign creator……..God.

God’s primary characteristic……..is love.

God has expectations……..love him…….love everybody else.

Welcome to the spiritual world. You might as well start getting used to it. It’s going to be around…….forever.

So are you.

“Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

Revelation 21:3-4, ESV

Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end.

Psalm 102: 25-27, ESV

I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality

Paul explaining the “singularity” of death, 1 Corinthians 15: 50-53, ESV

The most important questions you will ever ask……..and answer…..come down to a simple binary decision:

Is Jesus divine…….supernatural…….God?

Or

Is he the greatest con-man who ever lived?

This question has a corollary:

Is the Bible true?

Or

Is it a myth?

Because Jesus endorsed the Torah. He also endorsed heaven, eternity, and a literal burning hell.

The answers to these questions will set you on one of two paths. The importance of these questions arises from the destination at the end of each of those paths:

Heaven, Hell, Eternity, something you made up, or dead black nothing.

There cannot possibly be any choice that you will make in your life that is more important. And here is the rub……..not deciding……..ignoring the question……..is, by default, choosing the con-man path.

So what is the evidence?

Jesus clearly and unmistakably said that he was supernatural……devine……..God. And he was crucified for it. This is a historical fact, documented in multiple contemporaneous sources, not to mention the Bible. If this is untrue, then Jesus was a con-man……..or perhaps a lunatic.

Peter saw Jesus transfigured into a supernatural being. Mary and Martha met him a few days after the crucifixion. Paul spoke with Jesus on the road to Damascus years later. If this is untrue, then the divinity of Jesus is not only the rant of a con-man, it is a conspiracy.

Jesus appeared to hundreds of followers on Pentecost. Now, it is a vast conspiracy.

All of the disciples, save John, were brutally killed for their faith. Not one of them ever denied the divinity of Jesus.

Somewhere between 25 million and 100 million Christians have been martyred since then. They died rather than deny the divinity of Jesus. If Jesus is not divine, this is now a vast, lethal conspiracy. Some have called it a delusion.

My first question is this:

Can you name any other belief system that is supported by hundreds of eye witnesses………..any other belief system that tens of millions of followers have endorsed at the cost of their very lives?

My second question is this:

Search your heart. Do you really believe in dead black nothing as your destiny?

Or

Do you really believe that you get to decide the nature of your eternity? Because, if you get to dictate the terms of eternity, then people should be building churches…….to worship you.

“I and the Father are one.”

Jesus, claiming his divinity, John 10: 30, ESV

Jesus took with him Peter and James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He was still speaking when, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

The transfiguration, Matthew 16:1-5, ESV