Many people want to walk by sight and will not walk before and with God except by sight, being ignorant of the dynamics involved. We have to do with a God who hides Himself. Obviously He could show Himself (as He has done in the past and will one day do so in the future), but He doesn’t presently and thus we can correctly say that He is a God who hides Himself. Why is this? Since God created the universe He must be able to exist without it and outside of it. To insist that God must be seen is as unreasonable as suggesting that the Maker of any object before us must be visible to us and within the object he made.
God is hidden because of sin. Sin separates man from a holy God, and the only way man can bridge that gap is through an intercessor or mediator, which is Christ. But that is something that takes place in Heaven, hidden from our eyes. No man can see God and live (Ex. 33:20). We live separated from God and so we walk by faith and not by sight. But this faith is not a blind faith. Thomas wanted evidence and Christ gave it. What evidence is there for God’s existence and the Bible’s truthfulness? There must be some because of:
The nature of faith, which involves evidence for things not seen (Heb. 11:1). Biblical faith is not faith without knowledge (I know whom I have believed – 2 Tim. 1:12) but it is a belief without sight (2 Cor. 5:7). Faith is not belief of the irrational or the unbelievable as some think. It is being able to rationally believe in things not seen with the naked eyes. It is being able to provide substance for what is believed. If faith in God is irrational, then to believe in Leprechauns at the bottom of the garden is just as justified. Also the need for faith is essential (Heb. 11:6) – how can God require of man what is not possible for man? It may seem that some places of the world have been disadvantaged with respect to the gospel. The influence of the gospel in certain countries today does not mean that it has always been that way. For example, Palestine was the first area to receive the gospel, but one could be excused for thinking that such a violent and hate-ridden place has ever seen the gospel of peace. Ethiopia heard the gospel early on (Acts 8). India, officially Hindu today, heard the gospel early on through Thomas (a.k.a. Doubting Thomas) and you can visit his memorial outside of Chennai today. It might seem that God particularly disadvantaged countries and peoples that were geographically far from Palestine; that there is an inherent flaw in the plan to save men by the foolishness of preaching, because of the limitations of time and geography. We must remember a man is not lost because of the gospel – man is lost because of his sin. The gospel is not preached to make men lost by their rejection of it, but because men are already lost and in desperate need of the gospel (John 3:16,17). God has always wanted man to seek after Him and man has always been free to seek after God. We have examples of the Ethiopian who became a proselyte to the Jewish faith. What drove him and other proselytes to the Judaism? A “mixed multitude” went up with Israel out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, no doubt impressed by the plagues! Rahab the harlot was impressed by God’s manifestation in Israel. We have the example of the Roman centurion in Acts 10, who sought after God and practiced righteousness. These examples prove that man has always been able to seek after God. There is no excuse for anyone in any land. These examples also prove that God is able to enable those who seek Him to find Him (Matt.7:7). The tragedy is that few seek after Him (Rom. 3:11).
We might well ask about the people in those countries that were geographically so distant from Palestine that it would take years for the gospel to be preached in them. Is is possible that none of the members of a certain race of people sought after the Lord? More than possible, quite probable in fact, given, first, the history of the Jewish nation (Rom. 3:11-18) which was blessed above other nations by a revelation from God through a long succession of persecuted prophets, and second, the power of traditional culture (1 Pet. 1:18) in our sheep-like nature. But even so, as Paul mentions in Acts 14:7-17, though man had wandered off in the vanity of his mind and had become consumed by polytheistic idolatry, God never left Himself without witness to the peoples of the world.
All nations have the witness of creation. As Ps. 19:1-4 puts it, the fact of the universe is such that there is no language where their voice is not heard (cf. Rom. 1:20,21). Some suggest the text means “there is no language” (meaning they make no sound or language), but in the end it is the same thought – the creation speaks by its existence and design to all people all around the world. Every nation is able to look up into the starry heavens at night and contemplate. But don’t let people kid you that this is primitive thinking and that it all happened from a big bang. Explosions do not produce order and design and function, and neither do they produce life. At the beginning God said the stars and planets were for signs and seasons, which implies order, not chaos.
In Acts 14:14-17, Paul speaks of the provision of our needs as a witness to God and His goodness. Somebody said, an atheist’s most embarrassing moment is when he feels profoundly thankful for something but doesn’t know who to thank! Who do we thank for mercies afforded us through the seasons and the produce of the earth that enables us to live? To reject the feeling of thankfulness is to do damage to our thinking (Rom. 1:20,21 speaks of those who knew God but didn’t glorify Him or thank Him and thus their foolish heart was darkened and their thinking became futile). The German atheistic philosopher Nietchse said God was an invention of people who were weak enough to think they had to thank someone outside of themselves for their blessings. It was he who spent the last eleven years of his life insane. The fact that the earth brings forth its fruits in its seasons that not only sustain us but are enjoyable as well, shows that this world was created to be inhabited (Isa. 45:18). The world is so productive that a half of the food produced is never eaten!
The calendar (right around the world) is the same: it breaks time up into years, months, and a seven day week. Where did this begin? There is nothing in the rotation of the planets or other heavenly bodies that says a week is to have seven days. It is no secret that Gen. 1,2 declares the creation week of seven days. But the calendar contains more than that. Around the world people are aware of such events as Easter and Christmas. I’m not suggesting that these observances are designed and authorised by God, but I am saying they are a universal reminder to people about Jesus Christ. The division of our times into B.C. and A.D. likewise testifies of Christ.
We mentioned earlier that the creation might not speak an audible or written language, but God has left Himself a witness in language. The Chinese language reflects the influence of Biblical history in its formation. When one thinks of China today, one thinks of an officially atheistic regime. But it wasn’t always that way. In Beijing to this day you can visit the temple and Altar of Heavenly Complex, but I suspect that many of the tourists who visit aren’t aware of the great sacrifices that used to be offered to the Supreme Deity in recognition of the blessings of harvests.
Early written language often consisted of picture-form writing, and this was true in China as well as other places. For such diagrammatical forms to be meaningful they have to be based upon commonly understood concepts. However, once these specific characters were invented and adopted, it seems they gradually lost their historical connections (we see this in English expressions used by older people that are not understood by the younger set). Naturally, down through the centuries scribes used characters with stylistic variations, and so modern characters are quite different from the ancient forms. What is found is amazing. In reality, it is not amazing, but rather simply confirms what we know and is perfectly logical that it is so. It is interesting to note that the Chinese Border Sacrifice recitation reads; Of old, in the beginning there was the great chaos…You, O Spiritual Sovereign…made Heaven. You made Earth. You made Man. Sounds very similiar to Gen. 1 doesn’t it? But there is more than similiarities in the history, but also in the form of the text itself:
The Chinese character for ‘boat’ is chuan. This is made up of three characters: zhou (small vessel), ba (eight) and Kou (mouth, representing a person as we do when we say we have “six mouths to feed”). So a boat is a vessel containing 8 persons! Now, how many people were on Noah’s ark? The Chinese character for ‘create’ is composed of tu (dust), kou (mouth or breath), a pich (a stroke used to indicate life), and a series of strokes meaning the ability to move around. So create reflects the original creation of a living man from the dust. The word for ‘six’ depicts a home and we might speculate that this reflects the establishment of the first home on the 6th day, but it is interesting to note that the word to rest in depicts a home with a seven in it, reminding us of God’s rest on the seventh day. The word for suitable or prepare is composed of the character for hand and the character for woman. That reminds us of the Hebrew text that says God’s hand made a help suitable for the man. And so it goes on. I have a book in my library that illustrates the correspondence between the Hebrew Bible and the early Chinese text. What does this mean? Simply that man has a common heritage going all the way back to Noah and then on to Creation just as the Bible declares.
But the witness of God is found everywhere in so many ways. There are the remains of the Wooly Mammoths in Siberia buried in the permafrost still with grass in their mouths showing that the assumptions of uniformitarianism are wrong (cf. 2 Pet. 3:3,4. Note v.5 where he speaks of being “willingly ignorant”). Marine fossils are found all over the world including on Mt. Everest, pointing to the truthfulness of Noah’s flood. And in connection with that Australia has not been left without witness. A member of a Creation Science group was lecturing in Darwin and a person in the audience worked as a guide in a National Park. He said all the aboriginal tribes in the area have stories of a great flood and how a righteous family survived. There is a rock in Kakadu and the aboriginal name translates to something like palm raft rock. The local people use it to tell how there was once a great flood and the raft carried a family safely through the flood and came to rest on top of a mountain. There are similiar stories on every continent showing the common heritage of man and a common origin out of a flood. The chances of the same folk tale arising independently by chance in over 150 ethnic groups is not very large, to say the least.
The witness to God and His word are found everywhere and anywhere in all sorts of ways. Even in language, we find reminders of eternal truth. Take the word Sodomy, for example, preserved in our language is the name of an ancient city near the Dead Sea. For those who think it was but Biblical folklore, it is also mentioned in ancient records outside the Bible. Sodom is not there anymore. Why? Most people, even unbelievers, know the story of Sodom and Gemorrah, and why that civilization was judged by God and bombed out of existence. What is lesser known is the origin of the word Lesbian. Those who have travelled to the Greek isles, though, will be familiar with the isle of Lesbos. Some 700 years before Christ this Isle was home to some renowned female schools, famous for their poetry and their homosexuality. As an historian said, For a short period of history, a whole country was spiritually ruled by female and male poets, changing the course of literature and culture. Then came the darkness and moral decadence, until the Lesbians were mostly known for their widespread corruption. It is interesting and highly instructive that these two words that are a part of our language connect us to cultures thousands of years earlier which God weighed in the balance and found wanting. It’s almost as if God is trying to get our attention to this serious moral challenge.
In genealogies we find witness to the truthfulness of God’s Word. Genesis 10 and 11 records the genealogies after the flood and the dispersion after the tower of Babel. These genealogies are generally know as the Table of Nations. Beginning with Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, numerous names are listed as descendants from those men, and they, in turn, gave their name to the land areas they settled. For example, we are familiar with the land of Canaan, otherwise known as the Promised Land, but perhaps you aren’t familiar with the fact Canaan was a son of Ham who settled what we now call Palestine.
But Moses wasn’t the only one to record genealogical trees. It’s a popular pastime today with many people, and has always been among literate peoples who realised the problems inherent in oral traditions. I have an old book in my library that gives a history of Ireland, and it gives the genealogies of the early kings of Ireland dating back over 3000 years. When one looks at the old manuscripts preserving the genealogies of the ancient Britons, Irish-Celts, Welsh, Danish, Icelandic and Norwegian kings, one finds lists that go back all the wat to Noah. It is claimed by those who are embarrassed by such lists that they were fraudulently put together by early Christian monks, a claim made without evidence. These lists were begun long before the Bible ever reached those lands.
Time would fail us to speak of the witness that God has left to Himself. Perhaps the greatest of all is the Bible. There is no way to dismiss this book. Bad men or demons wouldn’t have written it for it condemns them and their work. Good men or angels couldn’t have invented it for in saying it was from God they would have been liars and thus they would have been bad men and demons, and, as we said, bad men and demons wouldn’t have produced the Bible. The poet said:
When but from Heaven could men unskilled in arts; In several ages, born in several parts; weave such agreeing truths? Or how or why should all conspire to cheat us with a lie? Unasked their pains, ungrateful their advice, starving their gains, and martyrdom there price. Anon.
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