Evidence for God in the Bible Archives

October 9, 2024October 8, 2024

Unhealthy Foods and God

Skeptics challenge that the Christian system allowed unhealthy foods that would not be condoned or promoted by an all-wise God. The Bible passage referred to is Acts 10:9-15 where Peter has a vision and is told to eat any meat, including animals that had been forbidden to the Jews. When Peter objects, a voice says, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

We must take the Bible literally. We must look at who said what is in the passage, to whom it was said, why it was said, and how the people who heard it would have understood it. In this case, God’s message for Peter is clear if you read the rest of the chapter and on into chapter 11. This event was not about eating unhealthy foods but about taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to all people, not just the Jews.

Another method of understanding the meaning of a passage is to compare it to the rest of the Bible. You don’t have to be a scholar to know that the Bible cannot contradict itself. The New Testament has many statements that show it is not a book about eating. For example, in Matthew 15:17-20, Jesus says that what you eat doesn’t defile you, but rather what you think. In 1 Corinthians 10:27-32, Paul tells the Christians not to worry about what foods they can eat but rather be concerned about offending others and driving them away from Christ. In Romans 14, Paul tells Christians that the Church is “not about meat and drink” and then talks about not offending others.

This does not mean the Bible doesn’t care about unhealthy foods and practices. In Acts 15:19-20 the Church was told to avoid drinking blood or meat secured by strangling. However, even in that passage, the message was not about food. In Jesus’ time, having meat to eat was rare, and grains, fruit, and fish were the primary food sources. Also, life expectancy was short due to a lack of hygiene, the spreading of disease by immoral choices, and the lack of modern medicine.

God is not the cause of the often unhealthy foods we place in our diets today. Christian morality and attention to our health and the needs of others testify to the validity of the Christian system as taught in the New Testament.

October 7, 2024October 6, 2024

Hostility Toward Christianity

We recently received a very hostile phone call from a person who went so far as to threaten us. This has happened many times in the past, and the hostility toward Christianity is excellent evidence for its validity. “So you think you are the only people going to heaven?” is a misguided challenge we get in response to the messages we post on this site.

Skeptics frequently refer to the Crusades and the horrible violence that people who called themselves Christians have done against those who were not Christians. Their actions violate what Jesus taught and contradict what those who follow the Bible do in relationship to others. Please do not confuse the misguided teachings of the past with what the Bible tells Christians to do. The Crusades violated everything Jesus taught, as did the inquisitions.

Jesus told His followers in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” This concept is repeated over and over in the New Testament. Judging is up to God, and the New Testament commands Christians to be peacemakers. Acts 2:47 tells us that the first-century Christians “had favor with ALL the people.” At the same time, it is essential to understand that Jesus told His followers they could recognize false religions and their teachings by their results. (See Matthew 7:16-20 and John 15:2-16).

It’s a fact of life that we have to make judgments every day. As we look at world religions, we see the results of their teaching. We must ask, “What are the results of following the teachings of those religious systems?” We can read the historical results and see them in the news today. The hostility toward Christianity and the very fact that our ministry is attacked is an indication of the violence and destructive nature of most world religions. Over the history of humanity, religion has caused a considerable number of wars, and it continues to do so today. Biblical Christianity (not human creeds) teaches the opposite of all this, but other religions and religious leaders reject the Bible’s teachings.

As we analyze each religious system, we must question the hostility toward Christianity. How many hospitals, nursing homes, orphanages, educational institutions, etc., have resulted from the beliefs of each religious system? You can kill me, but you cannot destroy the good that Christianity has brought to the world. If men and women study the evidence, they will see that religious systems are not all the same. This ministry is dedicated to providing evidence, but if someone rejects it, that is their prerogative. They will have to answer, as will we, to the perfect judge who created the cosmos and us.

October 4, 2024October 1, 2024

To Understand the Godhead

Both believers and skeptics ask the question, “What is the godhead?” While I don’t pretend to understand the Godhead, I have spent years trying to explain it.

Passages like John 14:26 bother a lot of folks. That passage has Jesus saying, “But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, who the Father will send in my name, He shall teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” The word “godhead” is found three times in the King James version of the New Testament, each time translating a different Greek word. In Acts 17:29 (theios), Paul was talking to the philosophers in Athens. Romans 1:20 (theiotes) deals with evidence for God’s existence. Colossians 2:9 (theotes) was dealing with philosophy and human deceit.

An analogy that may help us understand the Godhead is that humans have three parts that makeup one individual. We all have intellect, which allows us to be creative and have ideas of a spiritual nature. God’s intellect is seen in the creation and design we see all around us.

We all have a personality that allows us to express our spiritual nature and to love in a way that is not just survival. Jesus taught His followers to be known by their love (See John 13:34-35) and demonstrated it in His life. He used the Greek word “agape” and referred to caring about all of humanity – even our enemies.

We all have spirit, which is the action that we do, and the Bible consistently uses that word with a verb. (“The Spirit MOVED upon the face of the waters.” “He will TEACH you.” My spirit will not always “STRIVE” with man.) We are all just one individual, but we all have intellect, personality, and spirit.

When the disciples questioned how they could see God, Jesus gave an answer that involved one part of the Godhead while referencing the other parts. (See John 14:9-10.) John 1:1 and 1:14 and 1 Timothy 3:16 show that Jesus was God in the flesh. It is impossible for us to understand the Godhead. St. Augustine wrote, “If you understand God, what you understand isn’t God.” J.B. Phillips wrote a book titled “Your God is Too Small,” in which he pointed out how the human mind limits God.

We humans will never understand everything there is to know about God, creation, or God’s purpose in creating us, but we can understand enough to make our lives meaningful and productive.

September 27, 2024September 24, 2024

Understanding God’s Nature and Dimensions

One of my favorite book titles and quotes is Your God Is Too Small, written by J. B. Phillips in 1953. The book’s theme is that humans are limited in understanding God’s nature. That issue continues today with questions concerning the spiritual realm. God is not a physical being, limited to physical dimensions. What does that mean?

We live in a three-dimensional world, meaning you can move up or down, left or right, straight ahead or behind you. In mathematics, we demonstrate this concept on the cartesian axes of x, y, and z, and we can plot each of those dimensions against time. You can go to the left or right, up or down, forward or backward at a certain speed until you arrive at a particular spot. Notice that each case requires the passage of time. You can’t put time on a cartesian axis because time is 4th dimensional. Just as God created the three dimensions, He also created the 4th dimension. We struggle with that concept because we can’t control the time dimension. It controls us.

The Bible describes God as a being outside of time, not limited by that dimension as we are. Psalms 90:4 (repeated in 2 Peter 3:8) tells us that “with the Lord, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” Revelation 1:8 and 11, 21:6, and 22:13 describe God as “the Alpha and Omega – the beginning and the end.” We realize that has enormous implications for understanding God’s nature. When we pray, God hears our prayer outside of time. Revelation 21:3-4 is easier to comprehend if we realize that without time, all the bad stuff relating to time, including pain, suffering, death, disease, and war, are gone.

If God is outside of time and created time, He exists in a dimension higher than time. There are virtually unlimited dimensions in mathematics, and here we are struggling with one we can’t perceive physically. The Apostle Paul got a glimpse of this and tried to describe it in 2 Corinthians 12:1-5. God’s answer to prayer is frequently not in the time frame we understand. Our concept of heaven and hell is badly distorted by not understanding God’s nature and the spiritual realm outside of time.

The people who heard Paul speak at the Areopagus in Acts 17:22-32 struggled with understanding God’s nature, and Paul challenged them to think. For many of them, and many in today’s world, their God was and is too small.

September 16, 2024September 15, 2024

Why Doesn’t the Bible Mention Dinosaurs?

The fossil evidence for the existence of dinosaurs is undeniable. Thousands of fossil remains exist, and no human remains have ever been found together with dinosaur fossils. You can go to various museums and see these fossils for yourself or go to this article to see how people dig up and assemble them. Then, if they actually existed, why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs?

Remember that the Bible also does not mention bacteria, platypuses, penguins, parasites, or many other living things. It does not attempt to explain the creation of the millions of species of every living thing on Earth, even though people today want to know about them. However, the Bible was not written just for people living today but also for people living thousands of years ago without microscopes or global travel.

The Bible’s message is spiritual, not a physical history of life on Earth. Why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs? Some people try to say that it does. The Hebrew “behemoth” in Job describes an animal known to Job that ate grass, had a tail like a cedar, and lay under shady trees (Job 40:15-24). None of those things apply to dinosaurs. The description of the “leviathan” of Job 41, Psalms 74:14, and 104:26 has nothing in common with what we know about dinosaurs.

What we do know about dinosaurs is that they were part of a very different ecosystem than what we have today. The world of the dinosaurs was hotter and had a different atmosphere. The time of the dinosaurs was perfect for plant growth, resulting in massive amounts of vegetation. We see the remains of that vegetation in coal and peat.

It is essential to understand that God used two methods to give us the world with the resources we have today. One method was the production of things by a miraculous act. Time, space, and matter/energy were created out of nothing by this method. Today, quantum mechanics helps us verify that. The Hebrew word “bara” describes this method and is correctly translated as “created” in Genesis 1 only in verses 1, 21, and 27.

The second method is to change what God had previously created. The Bible uses the Hebrew “asah” for that. You will find it in verses 7, 16, 25, and 31 of Genesis 1. Humans can locate resources such as coal and oil because God used this method. At the conclusion of the creation account, Genesis 2:3 tells us that He “rested from all His work which God created (bara) and made (asah).” Then why doesn’t the Bible mention dinosaurs? The Bible contains the story of God’s spiritual relationship to humans, and dinosaurs were part of God’s method of preparing the Earth for humans.

— John N. Clayton © 2024
References: “God’s Revelation In His Rocks and His Word” by John N. Clayton and “How to bring a 75-foot-long dinosaur back to life” in National Geographic

August 23, 2024August 20, 2024

Change the Way You Think

A primary biblical teaching that many people find repulsive is that Jesus Christ brought change to all who would listen to and follow Him. In the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7), Jesus compared what people had said about lust and hatred to a new standard. The message of “repentance” seen throughout the teachings of Christ and His followers was a call to change the way you think, and that threatens many people.

Moses changed from an Egyptian prince to a leader of Israel. Jonah changed from a man trying to run away from God to a preacher to the city of Nineveh. Peter changed from a denier of any association with Christ to the main speaker on the day of Pentecost. Paul changed from a persecutor of Christianity to one of Christianity’s great leaders.

All humans tend to resist change. Political parties and many voters rely on the status quo despite a huge need for change. The call of Christianity for America to change its stance on moral issues is a massive source of conflict. Terrorist groups, from the Ku Klux Klan to Muslim extremists, resist change. The biblical call of Galatians 3:28 is a threat to many people. It says that for Christians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female for we are all one..” That contrasts with the great prejudice and violence against the Christian community.

Repentance is not merely confessing to faults or to a mistake. Repentance is changing the way you think. In Acts 2:38, when Peter said, “repent and be baptized,” he was challenging his listeners to change the way they think and then wash away their sins in baptism. If you don’t change the way you think, then baptism is just getting wet.

Christian teaching seeks to transform our world from one marred by war, hatred, racism, abuse, violence, and prejudice to a world of love, caring, compassion, empathy, and peace. This is a call to change the way you think. That is a change the world desperately needs, perhaps more at this time than ever before in history.

August 19, 2024August 18, 2024

Medication Abortion In Reality

Medication abortion is a two-drug cocktail that ends the life of the developing child during the first trimester of pregnancy. It is essential for women considering medication abortion to know what it does and its side effects.

The first pill is mifepristone/RU-486, which prevents the pre-born baby from receiving hormonal support (progesterone) essential for the baby to develop. The second pill (misoprostol) causes the uterus to contract and expel the baby. The process is painful for the woman.

The Mayo Clinic says the side effects include vomiting, fever, nausea, chills, diarrhea, and headache. Women may need painkillers to manage pain after a medication abortion. The Mayo Clinic also says that a woman undergoing a pill-induced medication abortion needs access to emergency services. Complications include hemorrhaging and infection. A 17-year study showed that of 423,000 abortions, there were 121,283 confirmed emergency room visits within 30 days.

When humans interfere with God’s design, there are always problems, and the miracle of conception and birth is a design that works. Medication abortions are a disaster in too many cases to be a reasonable alternative. The writer of Psalms 139:13-14 said it well: “For you, God, possessed my inmost being, you covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are your works..”

Note: The 2024 Democratic National Convention is this week in Chicago, and one of the features being offered is free chemical abortions from a mobile clinic operated by Planned Parenthood.

August 16, 2024August 14, 2024

Inconsistency of Well-Educated Skeptics

It has become fashionable in the media to bash the Bible, but the inconsistency of well-educated skeptics who denigrate the Bible as a fictitious writing does not stand up. This essay is not about bashing skeptics but about encouraging them to reconsider their views on the credibility of the Bible.

Most skeptics do not question the credibility of Plato’s writings, but how many ancient copies do we have of Plato’s work? The answer is seven. No educated scholar would question the works of Pliny even though, once again, only seven copies exist. Herodotus and Suetonius are required reading in most universities, but we have only eight manuscripts for each. Even Socrates and Aristotle exist in less than 50 ancient copies. It is easy to understand why this is the case because these manuscripts were hand-written and produced hundreds of years after the author lived. We agree that these copies are valid and that their message is clear.

In comparison, roughly 5600 early New Testament copies and fragments are in museums worldwide. Well-known ancient scholars also quoted from the New Testament. Justin Martyr quotes 268 times from the gospels and 43 times from the letters of Paul. Origen quotes 9231 times from the gospels, 349 times from Acts, and over 8,000 times from the letters. If you add up all the Bible quotes known to scholars, there are 19,369 quotes from the gospels, 1,352 from the book of Acts, 14,905 from the letters, and 664 from the book of Revelation. This adds up to 36,289 quotes by ancient writers.

We see the amazing inconsistency of well-educated skeptics accepting writings with only seven or eight ancient copies while rejecting biblical manuscripts of similar ages with over 35,000 quotes. Because of the huge number of manuscripts and quotes available, we can check on the integrity of biblic a l translations. Attempting to justify rejecting Christ because you don’t want to live as He says is one thing, but being dishonest and inconsistent with evidence is something else.

We warmly invite you to take our free correspondence course “Beyond Reasonable Doubt.” Simply send us your USPS address, and we will send you lesson # 1. This is an opportunity for you to delve deeper into the evidence supporting the Bible’s credibility and reconsider any doubts you may have. – John N. Clayton
jncdge@aol.com
Does God Exist?
1555 Echo Valley Drive
Niles MI 49120

August 12, 2024August 11, 2024

Tornadoes Are Not the Wrath of God

Some people try to tell us that tornadoes are God’s retaliation against humans for not obeying Him. Atheists and skeptics often say that disasters disprove the existence of a loving and all-powerful God. Now, we are seeing some preachers and religious periodicals saying that God is spiteful and taking it out on humans. This is not only a denial of scientific fact, but it contradicts the nature of God as revealed in the Bible. Catastrophes such as tornadoes are not the wrath of God.

The science behind tornadoes is well understood. They are a natural response to Earth’s changes and human abuse of what God has given us. A tornado happens when hot air becomes trapped under a layer of cold air. Hot air rises, and the Coriolis Effect of the Earth’s spin causes the rising column of air to spin as well.

How can hot air get under cold air? There are several causes, but the main one is the Sun heating Earth’s surface. Dark surfaces can get very hot. Several years ago in Oklahoma, I saw a weatherperson fry an egg on the hood of her car on a scorching day. Hundreds of square miles of blacktoped parking lots and plowed-up land guarantee rising air masses. Older native Americans who lived in Tornado Alley told me that they had never seen a tornado as a child, and their native language had no word for it, although they did have a word for dust devils.

The Bible clarifies that Jesus does not bring destruction, and tornadoes are not the wrath of God. Peter tells us God “..is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 ). Repentance is simply thinking differently. It does not always mean we must confess some great sin–although that could be the case. “Repent and be baptized” in Acts 2:38 means thinking differently, and Peter spoke those words to a large crowd. Romans 8:28 says, “In all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.” James 1:13 tells us that God tempts no one with evil.

If God zapped us every time we made a mistake, the planet would have no humans in a matter of minutes. Tornadoes are not the wrath of God. They are mainly a product of human abuse and carelessness. Building flimsy structures in areas prone to tornadoes is asking for trouble. Not managing the use of what God has given us has caused catastrophic damage and loss of life. Let us work on using the things God gave us more intelligently as we understand that God is a God of love (1 John 4:16) and forgiveness (John 3:16).

August 7, 2024August 6, 2024

Blaming God for the Problems of Today

People are often blaming God for the problems of today. That shows a misunderstanding of who God is and what He does. In Matthew 24:4-13, Jesus described what we see today. He said, “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things will happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom…” The things Jesus described are happening today, and they are caused by humans.

In the Old Testament, God handled rebellion by removing His protective hand from His people. In New Testament times, the events leading to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. were the result of military actions by humans. In today’s world, God is not causing Putin to attack Ukraine or Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel. God did not cause COVID. It is unreasonable to expect God to step in to stop human greed and selfishness, and He should not be expected to prevent the results of sexual practices He warned humans not to avoid.

God’s promise to Christians is that eventually, He will do away with all of the consequences of human selfishness and greed. That even includes the pain and suffering we all endure in this physical life. Revelation 21:1-7 pictures this beautifully, describing the creation of the New Heaven and New Earth: “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and He will live with them… He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” It’s time to quit blaming God for the problems of today and turn to Christ to receive the joy of life now and hope for the future.