Why
I Know There Is a God
by
B.R. Lakin (1901-1984)
Edited
by Doktor Riktor Von Zhades
“Wherefore
remember, that ye being In time past Gentiles In the flesh, who are
called Uncircumcision by that which Is called the Circumcision in the
flesh made by hands; that at that time ye were without Christ, being
aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the
convenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world.
But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh
by the blood of Christ."
Ephesians
2:11-13
In
these words to the Ephesian Christians are two of the most dreaded
words-"no hope." A doctor stands beside the bed of a sick
man. Anxiously the family awaits the verdict but he says, "There
is no hope." Those are sad words when speaking of human
circumstances. But they are darker still as they are used in this
scriptural text. Far better for man to be without anything else in
this world than to be without hope for a future life. Without hope,
prosperity amounts to very little. Struggle has no meaning or
purpose.
We
ordinarily use the word "hope" in a very careless way. God
always uses it with the greatest of care. No matter how strong,
desire is not hope. Mere expectation is not hope. Hope in the Bible
is a well-founded expectation for the future. There are three types
of people mentioned in the Bible who are without hope. First those
who doubt or deny the existence of God stand without hope. Then those
who deny the Bible as the Word of God stand without hope. And
finally, those who reject Christ as the Son of God stand without any
hope.*
The
first one, the man who doubts or denies the existence of God, stands
without any hope. Hope for a future life rests upon the existence of
a beneficent, omnipotent God ruling in nature and in the affairs of
men. Take that God out of the universe and man stands absolutely
helpless and hopeless. There are not many who do not believe in the
existence of God. Fifty years ago I met Charles Evan Smith, the
president of the League of Atheism from New York City. When I asked
him if he believed in theistic evolution, he said he didn't believe
in God at all. I asked him how he accounted for everything that is,
and he said everything that is just happened to be. He believed the
sun, moon, stars, and all the rest of God's wonderful creation just
fell in place. That would be as likely to happen as taking the
intricate mechanisms of a watch, throwing them up in the air, and
getting them to fall together in perfect working order. Without a
watchmaker, the watch falling together in perfect order is as
impossible as the universe falling together without a creator.
Then
I asked him if he believed that an evolutionist could also be a
Christian. He said it was absolutely impossible. That any man who is
an evolutionist and stops short of Atheism is simply a dishonest
thinker. I asked why he could not be a Christian. He answered that
the Christian says man fell and needs a Saviour. The evolutionist
says that he climbed down out of the trees and started to walk. He
said if man did not fall, man does not need a Saviour. Did the monkey
sin? Of course not. He reasoned, eliminate the Garden of Eden and
there is no need for the cross of Christ.
So
how do I know there is a God? Notice, I did not say I think. You see
I'm not an educated man. Therefore I can say why I know. An educated
man is not supposed to know anything. He's supposed to say "perhaps"
or "it could have been." Somebody asked me if I could read
Greek. I said, "Man, I can hardly read English let alone Greek."
A fellow was trying to teach me some Greek about baptism. He said
it's baptidzo and rantidzo. I said, "Yeah and its gravo,
graveis and gravel, but it was just sop when I was a kid."
Maybe we're not supposed to be dogmatic, but I'm going to say
dogmatically that I know there is a God. I'm positive there is a God.
First
of all I know it from the argument of creation. Look at all that you
see now. From whence did it come? Life has never been generated from
dead matter. From nothing, nothing can come. Suppose I take a bottle
and pour out all the air and the water and the germs. I'd cork it up
so nothing could get in it. From nothing, nothing could come. How
would anything ever be in it? Since life has never been generated
from dead matter we must explain from whence it all came.
All
of man's rational thinking and philosophy will never give him a
foundation on which he can stand and provide a reason for having any
hope. I believe in the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth. The Bible does not say, "In the beginning God." The
Bible says, "In the beginning God created." Why? Because
God didn't have any beginning. He was the beginning of beginnings.
There was a time when God was alone. There were no trees, no grass,
no water, no foliage, no nothing, just God. Just God. I believe only
He knows what went on back there. He was there and had it put down in
this book[that we now call the Bible]. Now a lot of these Atheists
and so forth who weren't there are like the little boy who caught a
bumblebee on his way to school. He put it in a bottle and stuffed it
in his hip pocket. When he got to school he was wriggling around in
his seat and the cork came out of the bottle. Then he really began to
squirm about in his seat, and his teacher said, "Johnny, what
are you doing?" He said, "There's something going on back
there that you don't know about!" What I'm saying is, something
went on back there that only God knows and only God could tell us.
Now
secondly, I know there is a God because of imparted wisdom. The
unbeliever doesn't call it imparted wisdom. He calls it inherited
instinct. There is no such thing as instinct. In the fall of the year
before the wind roars down over the Rockies and up around the Lakes,
the geese and the ducks get together and form in companies. They fly
south across Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, and drop into the warm waters
of the Gulf to bathe their breasts in warm water until spring. Then
they turn and come back again. Who told those geese to go south in
the winter and come north in the summer? Who told them to do that?
You say that's instinct. Where'd you get that instinct, old goosey?
Those geese had never made that trip before. Yet they take leave from
up yonder in Canada and fly all the way to Florida, never missing a
feeding ground. Now where did they get their navigating ability?
In
California there is a spider about the size of a shoe button. He
builds his nest inside an empty clam shell or oyster shell. Before he
does that he lifts that shell from 6 to 12 inches above the ground.
For that little spider to lift that oyster shell which is many, many
times his own weight requires an engineering feat equal to the
building of the pyramids of Egypt. How does he do it? He goes up and
puts on a thread, comes down and hooks it on the shell, goes up and
hooks another, comes down and hooks it on the other side. That thread
is moist and when it dries it contracts. And he keeps putting them on
until he can finally lift it. Where did he learn how to do that? Some
say that's instinct. He learned it from his mommy and poppy spider.
Where did they learn it? Listen old smarty. The first spider that
ever did that didn't have to sit down and figure it out for himself.
It's imparted wisdom. That's the reason I know that there is a God.
My
niece came home from college one day and said to me, "My
professor said that Jesus couldn't have been born of a human mother
without a human father. That was a biological impossibility." I
said, "Let me tell you what to do. You tell your little
possum-headed professor that your uncle said the first man that ever
got in this world got here without either father or mother. If God
wanted to send His Son born of a human mother without a human father
He could and did do it." The next day she came back to explain
how the first germ came from another planet. I asked, "Where did
the germ come from?" Life has never been generated from dead
matter. Her professor claimed that the first germ came on a meteor. I
said, "Honey, don't you know a meteor is a blazing ball of fire?
How would a germ live in that?" But she said, "The theory
of evolution is the only sane explanation." That's the most
insane thing I've ever heard! To be an evolutionist you'd have to
switch your brain out of reason and throw it into neutral.
Listen
to what they say. Way back yonder sometime, somewhere, somehow,
nobody knows when, how, where, or why, nothing got in nothing and
nothing formed a some thing. A germ got in the water somehow. Then
the water developed it into a tadpole and one day the tadpole swam to
another bank and got stuck in the mud and dried there. Wriggling
around in the mud, he formed warts on his belly that later became
legs. After he developed legs he was climbing through the trees one
day when his foot slipped. As he fell he wrapped his tail around a
limb. The jar of it broke off his tail. He hit the ground, stood up
on his hind feet, walked across the street, bought him a suit of
clothes, went to teaching in the university and said, "Thank God
I'm a man at last!" They can cram that down the neck of some
kids, but let them try the old man once. Everything that is, had to
have a beginning, except God, and He is the beginning of beginnings.
(Read Revelations 1:8, 11; 21:16; 22:13)
The
third reason I know there is a God is because of fulfilled prophecy.
Every religion has its bible, but this Bible is the only one that has
a word of prophecy in it. Why? Because the authors of all those other
books knew that if they inserted a word of prophecy and it failed,
their book would be discredited. But God's Word, with daring
boldness, tells us what will happen upon this earth to men, nations,
and individuals, sometimes thousands of years in the future. Who
could write a Book like that? Only God.
I
can take the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ alone and prove to
any thinking man that there must be a God. First of all He said He
shall be born in Bethlehem of Judea. Not just in Bethlehem, not just
in Judea, but Bethlehem of Judea, and thank God He was. He said He
shall be born of a virgin. Thank God He was. He said they would
gamble upon His garments. They did. He said they would pluck out His
beard. They did. He said they would crucify Him and they did. He said
He would make His death with the wicked and His burial with the
rich.(Read Psalm 22) He died between two thieves and He was buried
in Joseph's new tomb. He said you'll put Me to death but I'll rise
again. That's right. You can't kill Me but I'll give up My life
anyway and I'll rise again on the third day. (Read Matthew 17:23;
Acts 3:26) Don't let anybody fool you. This is the Book that will
stand the test.
There's
another reason I know there is a God. That is, He answers prayer.
Have you ever gone into an automaton? That's a restaurant that looks
like a post office. You don't see waitresses or cooks or anything.
One day I went in one in New York. You drop in a quarter-out comes a
cup of coffee, or mashed potatoes and gravy. I didn't see a soul
around, but I had sense enough to know that there was somebody back
there passing that stuff out. For 60 years I've walked up to the open
windows of heaven and I've asked for things and I've had them passed
out to me as real as mashed potatoes and gravy. I know there is a God
because He answers prayer. "The fool has said in his heart,
There is no God" (Read Psalm14:1). I'm asking God to let me live
a few more years because I believe I have a message for the people
who do not believe there is a God.
There
is one final reason I know there is a God. All of man's rational
thinking and philosophy will never give him a foundation on which he
can stand and provide a reason for having any hope. The only
foundation is the revelation God gives of Himself in this Book. It
alone stands against the winds of criticism. The man that does not
confess the Christ that this Bible presents stands without any hope.
A
fellow said, "I don't know whether to believe Christ was God,
because He went to sleep on a boat, like a man would sleep." Was
He merely human because He wept, because He got hungry, because He
died? Listen, if He was just human that night out yonder on that
little boat when He went to sleep, He was God when He stilled the
waves.(Read Mark 4:39) If He was human when He got hungry, He was God
when He took a little boy's lunch and fed 5,000 people (Read Mark
8:16-22) with it. If He was human when He wept, He was God when he
burst the grave of Lazarus open like a chestnut burr and caused him
to come out alive. (Read John 11:35, 43) If He was human when He died
upon a cross, He was declared to be the Son of God (Read Matthew
16:16) with power, by His Resurrection from the dead. You can trust
Him, my friend.
My
dad and mother pillowed their heads upon that hope and passed
peacefully into another world. The man who denies it stands with out
any hope in this world and in the world to come. He has no hope of
meeting with his loved ones who have gone or who may go. Buried out
yonder lies my boy on a little hillside in West Virginia, in a grave,
waiting for the resurrection. One day I believe he will come forth
from the grave and I'll see him again. Don't take that hope away from
me, Mr. Modernist or Mr. Evolutionist. God hangs a rainbow of hope
around the shimmering shoulders of the storm of my bereavement. He is
that hope and without Him there is no hope of pardon in the eternal
world.
Why
do I believe there is a God, my friend? Because only He makes any
sense out of this old world. Only He brings meaning to living, the
hope of pardon, and a place in heaven.
*
It would be most likely that of all these three types, many are
indeed all three rolled into to one. For if one cannot believe that
the that the Bible is God’s word, then it follows that one denies
His existence and therefore would reject the need for Christ, thus
denying Him.
