He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He set forth in Him, regarding His plan of the fullness of the times, to bring all things together in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth. (Ephesians 1:9-10)
Therefore I declared them to you long ago, Before they took place I proclaimed them to you, So that you would not say, ‘My idol has done
them, And my carved image and my cast metal image have commanded them.’ (Isaiah 48:5)
There are people who like to say that if God would “just” appear
to the whole world in thus-and-such a manner (usually silly and so embarrassing
that they would not dress that way, but they want God to) and proclaim Himself
to be God and perform miracles 9472733 and 7651932 that they would believe and
never again doubt that God is God. I have pointed out that their challenge is a
lie. They might believe for a few seconds, but they would eventually decide
that it was some sort of delusion or trick and reject God again.
In fact, I mentioned to one scoffer that the Israelites saw
the ten plagues on Egypt. They saw the pillar of cloud and of fire. They saw
the Red Sea divide. They walked on dry land. They saw the Red Sea collapse on
the Egyptian army. They saw water gush from rocks, manna, quail enough to feed
millions land in easy reach, more plagues, more water dividing, and miraculous
military victories. I asked her if she was better than the Israelites, and she
proclaimed she was.
But the problem is, God appeared before us – historically around
4BC to 33 AD.[1] He performed lots of
miracles, including healing the sick, raising the dead, and rising from the
dead Himself. And that doesn’t include His turning a small group of men from cowards
into spiritual warriors who were willing to go to their deaths for the message
they shared. The miracles that took place, they say, could have had some other
explanation. Of course, and so could miracles 9472733 and 7651932 that they’ve
made a prerequisite to their belief, and that makes their claim about themselves
to be a lie.
But the only difference between their disbelief and ours is
that theirs is open. Ours tends to be quiet. We say we believe, but, well…
But God gave us Scripture, some of which proclaims what
will be, and historically, some of it has come to pass. Other things are
happening. Some haven’t begun, but there’s no reason to doubt they will.
Discovery after discovery is being made that confirms information found in
Scripture. There are so many copies of the Scriptures around that critical comparisons
of them allow us to bring it down to “it either said A or it said B, and there’s
really no significant difference between their meaning.”
And so we can be thankful that, in ways that cannot be done
in any other religion, we can be know at least part of what God is doing, and
participate in it. We can know it, if we choose to. We can investigate and
discover the truth if we choose to. We have the kind of God who is willing to be
known in that way, who is willing to go toe-to-toe (as it were) with the other
gods on our behalf, and willing to prove Himself to us, if we are willing to take
His challenge to be known by us. And for that, we can be grateful.
[1] The
dates are approximate because the dating system that produced the BC/AD system came
about long after the events, and was flawed in its calculation of when Jesus
was born. After 1500 years, to be off by
less than 5 years was amazing, but it was still off.
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