Monday, June 29, 2015

What Was God Doing Before He Made The World?


WHAT WAS GOD DOING BEFORE HE MADE THE WORLD?

The first verse of Scripture tells us that God created the heavens and the earth.

But what God was doing before He brought the universe into existence.

The famous atheist of the 19th century, Robert Ingersoll wrote:

"If God created the universe, there was a time when he commenced to create. Back of that commencement there must have been an eternity. In that eternity what was this God doing? He certainly did not think. There was nothing to think about. He did not remember. Nothing had ever happened. What did he do? Can you imagine anything more absurd that an infinite intelligence in infinite nothing wasting an eternity?" 
Robert Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses


The famous fifth-century A.D. Christian teacher Augustine had two answers to this question.

One of them humorous and the other one serious.

The humorous answer was that God was spending His time preparing hell for people who ask question like this.

14. Behold, I answer to him who asks, “What was God doing before He made heaven and earth?” I answer not, as a certain person is reported to have done facetiously (avoiding the pressure of the question), “He was preparing hell,” saith he, “for those who pry into mysteries.” It is one thing to perceive, another to laugh,—these things I answer not.
Chapter XII.—What God Did Before the Creation of the World , The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine, with a Sketch of his Life and Work


The serious answer was that God didn't have any time on His hands, since there was no time before time was created.

Time begun with creation.

Before creation, there was no time.

And there was no time for God to have on His hands.

The world did not begin by a creation in time but by a creation of time.

15. But if the roving thought of any one should wander through the images of bygone time, and wonder that Thou, the God Almighty, and All-creating, and All-sustaining, the Architect of heaven and earth, didst for innumerable ages refrain from so great a work before Thou wouldst make it, let him awake and consider that he wonders at false things. For whence could innumerable ages pass by which Thou didst not make, since Thou art the Author and Creator of all ages? Or what times should those be which were not made by Thee? Or how should they pass by if they had not been? Since, therefore, Thou art the Creator of all times, if any time was before Thou madest heaven and earth, why is it said that Thou didst refrain from working? For that very time Thou madest, nor could times pass by before Thou madest times. But if before heaven and earth there was no time, why is it asked, What didst Thou then? For there was no “then” when time was not.
Chapter XIII.—Before the Times Created by God, Times Were Not, The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine, with a Sketch of his Life and Work


This brings us another question:

If there was no time before time begun, what was there?

Eternity.

God is eternal, and the only thing prior to time was eternity.

The question also implies that an infinitely perfect being like God could get bored.

Boredom is a sign of imperfection and dissatisfaction.

God is perfect and perfectly satisfied.

There is no way God could be bored, even if He had long time periods in His hands.


An infinitely creative mind can always find something interesting to do.

Only finite minds run out of interesting thing and get bored.

Christian God also has three persons who are in perfect fellowship.

There is no way such being could get bored or lonely.

There is always someone to talk to, someone of perfect understanding, love, and companionship.

Boredom is impossible for someone like this.

But we can know something of what God did before He created the Universe and the world from the Bible:


Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.
John 17:24

He definitely loved, even before He made the world.

Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
Ephesians 1:4

He thought about us, even before He made the world.

In hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began.
Titus 1:2


And He promised us the eternal life, even before the time begun.



This is Good God Questions Monday. A series dedicated to those good, and difficult, questions about God, universe, life, sin, Christ, love, and everything related.

Why is it so important to answer questions about God?

“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect”
1 Peter 3:15

Even little children can ask tough question, but there are good answers for all of them. The Bible exhorts us to find them and give them.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Colossians 4:6

This post is based on the book “How Made God? And Answer To Over 100 Other Tough Questions Of Faith” by Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler.


The First Monday we wondered:



The Second Monday we wondered:


The Third Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING?


The Fourth Monday we wondered:

WHAT WAS GOD DOING BEFORE HE MADE THE WORLD?


The Fifth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN THERE BE THREE PERSONS IN ONE GOD?


The sixth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN A GOOD GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?


The seventh Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD BE BOTH LOVING AND JUST?

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Prevenient Grace

How can we find God?

Before a man can seek God, God must first have sought the man.

We are all lost, cut out of the source of love, light and life.

Without the true reason for our being, the reason that made us exist.

We breath, we act, but we do not truly live.

We are hollow and incomplete.




All the time, at every moment, there is something missing, something that we almost remember.

A voice that we almost hear, a sweet taste we almost feel in our mouths.

A memory of a smell like mother’s milk, nourishment beyond everything else.

The touch that made us whole.

The light that made us see.

“As the deer pants for water, so I long for you, O God. I thirst for God, the living God. Where can I find him to come and stand before him?”

Psalm 42:1-2, Living Bible (TLB)


How can we find it when we do not know what it is?

How can we start looking when we don’t even admit that something is missing?

The only reason we pursue God, is because He has first put an urge within us that spurs us to the pursuit.

So it can be said, that before a sinful man can think a right thought of God, there must have been a work of enlightenment done within him.

“The impulse to pursue God originates with God but the outworking of that impulse is our following hard after Him.”

A. W. Tozer – Pursuit of God


And the most wonderful thing, the mystery and miracle of it all is –

All the time we are pursuing God, we are already in His hand.

“Listen to me, all of you in far-off lands: The Lord called me before my birth. From within the womb he called me by my name.”
Isaiah 49:1

We were his before we were even born.

We were with Him before we even started to look.

We were His, before we even started to wonder.

“Never! Can a mother forget her little child and not have love for her own son? Yet even if that should be, I will not forget you.”
Isaiah 49:15

Monday, June 22, 2015

How Can God Make Something Out Of Nothing?


HOW CAN GOD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING?

If God and nothing else existed prior to the creation of the world, the universe came into existence from nothing.

Isn't it absurd to say that something can come from nothing?

It is absurd to say that nothing caused something.

Because nothing doesn't exist and has no power to do anything.

But it is not absurd to say that someone – God – brought the universe into existence from nonexistence.

Nothing cannot make something, but someone – God – can make something out of nothing.

If the universe had a beginning, as demonstrated in WHO MADE GOD? and WHY COULDN'T THE WORLD ALWAYS HAVE EXISTED?


Then there was once no universe.

And then there was.

After God created it.

This is what is meant by creation “out of nothing”.

There was God and nothing else.

Then God brought something else into existence that had not existed before.

God did not create out of something else that already existed.

This is creation out of something preexisting matter outside of God.

Not creation out of nothing.

Neither did God create the world out of Himself.

God did not take part of Himself and make the world out of it.

Orthodox Christian God has no parts.

He is a simple whole that is absolutely one.

There is no way God could have taken part of Himself and made the world.



“God is infinite and the world is finite. And no amount of finite parts can make an infinite, since no matter how many parts or pieces one has, there could always be more. But there cannot be more than an infinite.  Hence, no amount of parts could ever equal an infinite. So God could not have created the world out of part of himself.”
Norman Geisler

The world came from God but is not of God.

He is the cause but not the substance.

We came to existence by Him but we are not made of Him.

But since the world was not created out of God, or out of something else existing alongside God.

It must have been created out of nothing.

There is no other alternative.

God made something that didn't exist before.



This is Good God Questions Monday. A series dedicated to those good, and difficult, questions about God, universe, life, sin, Christ, love, and everything related.

Why is it so important to answer questions about God?

“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect”
1 Peter 3:15

Even little children can ask tough question, but there are good answers for all of them. The Bible exhorts us to find them and give them.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Colossians 4:6

This post is based on the book “How Made God? And Answer To Over 100 Other Tough Questions Of Faith” by Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler.


The First Monday we wondered:



The Second Monday we wondered:


The Third Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING?


The Fourth Monday we wondered:

WHAT WAS GOD DOING BEFORE HE MADE THE WORLD?


The Fifth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN THERE BE THREE PERSONS IN ONE GOD?


The sixth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN A GOOD GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?


The seventh Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD BE BOTH LOVING AND JUST?

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Worshiping, Seeking, Singing Church



“How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls.”
A. W. Tozer

When you come near to the holy men and women of the past, you will soon feel the heat of their desire after God.

They mourned for Him,

They prayed and wrestled and sought for Him.

Day and night,

In season and out,

And when they had found Him,

The finding was all the sweeter for the long seeking.


Moses used the fact that he knew God as an argument for knowing Him better.

David’s life was a torrent of spiritual desire and his psalms ring with the cry of the seeker.

His psalms are also filled with the glad shout of the finder.

Paul confessed the mainspring of his life to be his burning desire after God.

Knowing Him was the goal of his heart.

And to this he sacrificed everything.

Sound Bible exposition is an imperative must in the church of the Living God.

Without it no church can be a New Testament church in any strict meaning of that term.


“… the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject (of seeking Go) is crisply set aside. The experimental heart – theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutheford or a Brainerd.”
A. W. Tozer – Pursuit of God

We need our pastors to give us the Word of God.

We need the sermons.

We are called to be together as a congregation.

We need to taste, to touch, with our hearts, to see with our inner eyes the wonder that is God.


To deliberately seek with mighty longing after God.

Monday, June 15, 2015

Why Couldn't The World Have Always Existed?


WHY COULDN'T THE WORLD HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED?

Christians believe that there must be God because the world had a beginning.

And everything that has a beginning has someone who begins it, a beginner.

But how do we know that the world had a beginning?

Maybe the world always existed…

According to the famous agnostic Bertrand Russell either the world had a beginning, or it did not. If it did not, it did not need a cause (God).

If it did, we can ask, “Who cause God?”.

But if God has a cause, he is not God.

In either case, we do not arrive at a first uncaused cause (God).


The answer to this question is that is meaningless.

It wrongly assumes that everything must have a cause, when what is claimed that everything that has a beginning has a cause.

These two are quite different matters.

Of course, everything that had a beginning had a beginner.

God does not need a cause because He had no beginning.

We need only to show that the universe had a beginning, to show that there must have been a cause of it.

“I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.”
David Hume


According to the second law of thermodynamics, the universe is running out of usable energy.

According to astronomer Robert Jastrow “Once hydrogen has been burned within that star and converted to heavier elements, it can never be restored to its original state.” So “minute by minute and year by year, as hydrogen is used up in stars, the supply of this element grows smaller”.

But if the universe is running down, it cannot be eternal.

Otherwise, it would not run out of energy, you cannot run out of unlimited amount of energy.

But it does not take forever to run out of limited amount of energy.

“If the overall amount of actual energy stays the same but the universe is running out of usable energy, it has never had an infinite amount – for an infinite amount of energy can never run down. This would mean that the universe could not have existed forever in the past. It must have had a beginning.”
Norman Geisler


According to the second law of thermodynamics, since the universe is getting more and more disordered, it cannot be eternal.

Or it would be totally disordered by now, which it is not.

Hence the universe must have had a beginning – one that was highly ordered.

For it to have the initial amount of energy there must have been a moment when it was given that energy.

When the universe begun.

And whatever has a beginning must have a beginner.

So, the universe must have a beginner, or God.

The world has not always existed.


But God has.



This is Good God Questions Monday. A series dedicated to those good, and difficult, questions about God, universe, life, sin, Christ, love, and everything related.

Why is it so important to answer questions about God?

“but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect”
1 Peter 3:15

Even little children can ask tough question, but there are good answers for all of them. The Bible exhorts us to find them and give them.

“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”
Colossians 4:6

This post is based on the book “How Made God? And Answer To Over 100 Other Tough Questions Of Faith” by Ravi Zacharias and Norman Geisler.


The First Monday we wondered:



The Second Monday we wondered:


The Third Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING?


The Fourth Monday we wondered:

WHAT WAS GOD DOING BEFORE HE MADE THE WORLD?


The Fifth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN THERE BE THREE PERSONS IN ONE GOD?


The sixth Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN A GOOD GOD SEND PEOPLE TO HELL?


The seventh Monday we wondered:

HOW CAN GOD BE BOTH LOVING AND JUST?