This contains entries to Take up Your Cross, Space Blog, Blog City PF and BC of Friends |
"Faith Cont'd" Yesterday I spoke about faith. I am going to continue in that vein today. In today's ultramodern scientific world everybody wants "proof" of everything. One thing I will wait for proof of is the existence of God. I will have my proof of the existence of God when I cross the spiritual Jordan by walking the veil of death or when Christ returns. Either way, if I were to wait until then to become a Christian, I'd be doomed. You see, the Hebrews writer makes it clear that if we have empirical data proving the existence of God, then faith goes to the way side. I don't need faith nor can I have faith in anything if I know for a fact the the object I have faith in is real. Hebrews 11: 1 says "To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see." GNT. Therefore it would be impossible to have faith in something we know beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true. It just wouldn't be possible. 100 years ago a person could have made the statement "I have faith that man will walk on the moon someday." People may have thought the person was crazy, just as many people today think Christians are crazy, but less than 60 years later their statement went from being a statement of faith to a statement of fact. Man did walk on the moon on July 29, 1969. From that moment on it was impossible to say "I believe man will walk on the moon someday." Instead one could only "Man has now walked on the moon." It became a statement of fact and as such eliminated all possibility for faith. Of course there are those who will argue the point and say "Well I know I can have faith in something and it still be a fact. I have faith that my spouse is one hundred percent faithful and I know they are." No, the fact is that you have faith but other than your heartfelt belief that they're remaining monogamous, you have no proof of that fact. If you had proof you would have no need of faith. The significance of all of this is that God demands that we have faith. We read "No one can please God without faith, for whoever comes to God must have faith that God exists and rewards those who seek Him." I have heard people actually make the statement that they'll just wait until all the Christians disappear in the rapture, then they'll have proof that God is real and they'll get their act together then. This simply isn't going to be the case. For one thing there isn't going to be a rapture. What would be the point? If everything that is suppose to happen in the rapture actually happens, is anybody actually silly enough to believe there's going to be anything secret about it? I guarantee you that if graves burst open and millions of people mysteriously vanish somebody's going to take notice of it! I'll also guarantee you that God wouldn't waste farther time after that! At that point he would have revealed himself and faith would be an impossibility. What would be the point in giving people a "second chance" at repentance if nothing they could do was going to save them anyway? Hebrews 11 clearly states that faith is believing in God based on His word and not on any empirical proof of his existence. It goes on to say that without doing this salvation is impossible. So why leave the world here any longer? We read "Instead, in order that none of you be deceived by sin and become stubborn, you must help one another every day, as long as the word "Today" in the scripture applies to us," Hebrew 3: 13. There will be a day when it will no longer be "Today". When that time comes we will know there is a God. However if we have not accepted and embraced Him by then, knowing it then won't save us. It will seal our doom! ** Image ID #507430 Unavailable ** |