The Reality of God
The alternative to the evolutionary concept of spontaneous generation of life, evolving life forms mutating into the survival of the fittest, is the existence of thought and intent behind the design of all things universal and their deliberate, planned creation.
The problem is, proponents of both concepts tend to accept their chosen method of explaining why things exist based upon blind faith!
Evolution cannot be proven by scientific method. That is a fact. The existence of a supreme, life-inherent, life-giving Creator God, on the other hand, is provable beyond doubt to the open, unbiased mind. Trouble is, too few engage in the deliberate effort to prove it! Too many religionists are guilty of the same circular and subjective reasoning as evolutionists. Too many in both schools haven’t proven their beliefs.
Can you prove God exists? If you can, do you know what His plan is for mankind? Can you prove what His will is for you and the way that you live your life?
Your answers to these questions carry an eternal consequence—they impinge on your eternal future! In this article we can but skim the surface to stimulate you to prove further the most vital of all truths.
The Science of Creation
Never in the entirety of man’s history since the fall of Babylon has science treated the existence of God with such impunity. Yet, paradoxically, never has science produced, through its own efforts, such a plethora of proof of the existence of God as it has in its past, most-godless century.
At this time, the ultimate human realist, the believer in God, may look back and recall, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1).
A few such realists have always existed at the heart of scientific development and been humbled in the knowledge that all that exists in the physical world emanated from an intelligence far, far superior to theirs—indeed from a supreme intelligence that created their own far inferior human intelligence. Isaac Newton was such a one. Toward the end of his life he proclaimed, “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me” (L.T. Moore, Isaac Newton, 1934).
Albert Einstein was another. He saw all of his efforts as a quest—a quest to find God’s thoughts within the creation of the physical universe. It was Einstein who declared, “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” His reaction to those who challenged the quantum theory was, “God does not play dice.” He apparently believed in a God of immutable law.
Proof Established
There was a man who came onto the world scene at the same time that science was replacing man’s concept of God as the idol of the age. Herbert Armstrong traveled the globe teaching the gospel of the coming Kingdom of God to multiple world leaders, and to millions via radio, TV and the printed word. Early in his ministry, he saw the observations of science as a great proof of God’s existence.
Challenged by the arguments of the evolutionists, Mr. Armstrong realized, “I had always assumed the existence of God because I had been taught it from childhood. … I simply took it for granted” (Autobiography, vol. i). Herbert Armstrong met the challenge. He was a realist; he sought to prove ultimate reality—to answer the questions, what is the source of all things, what sustains all things and why?
“Now, suddenly, I realized I had never proved whether there is a God. Since the existence of God is the very first basis for religious belief and authority—and since the inspiration of the Bible by such a God as His revelation to mankind is the secondary and companion basis for faith and practice, I realized that the place to start was to prove whether God exists and whether the Holy Bible is His revelation of knowledge and information for mankind” (ibid.).
He dug into the science textbooks in his local library. He learned the facts about time, space and matter. “I delved into science. I learned the facts about radioactive elements. I learned how radioactivity proves there has been no past eternity of matter. There was a time when matter did not exist. Then there came a time when matter came into existence. This was creation, one of several proofs of God” (ibid.).
He learned the facts about the reproduction of life and the living laws governing such reproduction. “By the laws of science, including the law of biogenesis, that only life can beget life—that dead matter cannot produce life—that the living cannot come from the non-living, by these laws came proof that God exists” (ibid.).
Mr. Armstrong learned that scientists ply their trade subject to and absolutely dependent upon the predictability of underlying law. His keen mind quickly grasped, by comparing the inspired words of the Bible with the secular writings of science, that the two differed on one fundamental and foundational issue. The scientists always had to start with something. Either it was a big bang, or primordial ooze, a spark of life—something that was dependent upon underpinning laws that controlled its perpetuation or destruction.
The Bible account of creation, however, started before matter—before the physical universe, came into being! Its account of reality started with a supreme, overarching Intelligence!
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1-3). Here is an account of pre-creation which starts with the Word and God—two individuals. That same Word was God—the two were separate, but indivisible in their degree of unity. Not only this, but within those two supreme Beings was the ability to create life!
In his search, Herbert Armstrong continually built proof upon proof that living laws regulated all things. Even the circular, inductive process of reasoning employed by the evolutionists assumed the existence of certain laws. Gerald L. Schroeder, an mit-trained scientist, explains it this way: “Essentially all of scientific inquiry is based on fundamental ‘givens,’ values that just are what they are for no discernible reason, such as the electromagnetic charge. These facets of nature are observed as being intrinsic to the workings of nature, but arbitrarily set by the laws of our universe” (The Hidden Face of God).
But what established those “values” in the beginning? How did these “facets of nature”—laws—become “intrinsic to the workings of nature”? What is it that “arbitrarily set” these “values”? Where did “the laws of our universe” come from? Even evolutionary scientists believe in cause and effect. What caused the universe to come into effect?
It was the Catholic thinker Thomas Aquinas who wrote, “It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is moved is moved by another …. But this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover, and consequently, no other mover …. Therefore, it is necessary to arrive at the first mover, moved by no other; and this everyone understands to be God” (Roy Masters, Finding God in Physics).
Such considerations inevitably led Herbert Armstrong to a study of intelligence. “But most important,” he wrote, “I knew that I, with my mind, am superior to anything my mind can devise, and that I can make. Likewise, it became axiomatic that nothing less than the intelligence of my mind could have produced something superior to itself—my mind! Of necessity, the very presence of human intellect necessitates a superior and greater Intellect to have designed, devised and produced the human mind!” (op. cit.).
The Universal Clock
King David, the Psalmist, looked out with wonder at the universe and penned the following words: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge” (Ps. 19:1-2).
Herbert Armstrong looked up into the heavens and thought on their design and on the statistical probability of life coming into being on the veritable speck of sand we call Earth, with its patterns of times and seasons and the exact proximity to the sun and moon which allows for the perpetuation of life on this tiny, jewel-like planet. As he looked and thought, he mused, “Up there in the heavens is the great master clock that never makes a mistake—is alwayson time—never off a fraction of a second—the heavenly bodies coursing through the skies!” (Does God Exist?).
He thought upon the 19th-century William Paley’s classic treatise against evolution, in which he declared that design implies a designer—that, for example, a watch demands a watchmaker—and he wrote:
“But then you, Mr. Skeptic—you look up into the great vast sky at that master clock of the universe, which never misses a second—the perfect watch by which we must constantly set all our imperfect man-made watches—and you tell me, ‘That all just happened! There was no Great Watchmaker! No Master Mind thought out and planned that vast universe, brought it into being, set each star and planet in its own exact place, and started the myriad heavenly bodies coursing through space, each in its prescribed orbit, in its orderly precision. No, it just fashioned itself, put itself together, wound itself up, and started itself running. There was no Intelligence—no planning—no creation—no God!’” (ibid.).
Time is one of the wonders that physicists and metaphysicists have thought much upon.
Author Roy Masters has written and broadcast often on the phenomena of physics yielding striking proof of the existence of an Eternal God. His fascination with time is obvious in the following statement: “Time can never be still, and the fact that it ‘passes’ reinforces existence. As I said, if time suddenly ceased, nothing would exist; all matter would dematerialize instantly into the nothing from which it came …” (op. cit.).
Whatever controls time controls existence—the fact of being, of reality, of presence! This existence of time is a powerful proof of a master Time Keeper.
Gerald Schroeder’s view is expressed thus: “We drift in a river of time. There’s no possibility of swimming up-stream, of going back in time. Destroy every clock, every item that feels the passage of time. The flow of time continues unabated. Time is an intrinsic, ubiquitous quality of our universe, irrespective of whether or not we measure its passage” (op. cit.).
The power that becomes evident through the study of laws of the universe has even led one of today’s leading physicists to unwittingly alight upon the source of all things, revealed in the previously quoted scripture (John 1:1-3). “God is what mind becomes when it has passed beyond the scale of our comprehension” (ibid.). In other words, this scientist is implying that there is a superior intelligence which takes up from the boundary where our mind stops.
As Herbert Armstrong so often claimed, that which is created is inferior to its creator. The created is always subject to the control and direction of its superior creator. Thus it is that we read in the inspired word of Scripture of the vast gulf between the supreme intelligence of the Creator God and of the created man.
Drawing Job’s mind to think on the wonder of stellar space, God challenged him, “Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?” (Job 38:31-33).
How puny man appears by comparison with the supreme controller of time, motion and space!
The Greatest Proof
As Mr. Schroeder indicates, we cannot go back in time. We can certainly gain understanding and help from reflection on the past which will help us live and experience the present without repeating the mistakes of the past. But we simply cannot relive the past. What’s done is done.
Yet, it is possible for us to look into the future if we link minds with an all-knowing Creator who has perfect knowledge of the human being and perfect control of the universe, both of which are His creation. That God does exist, and the greatest proof is His power to prophecy events centuries, even millennia, in advance of their coming to pass! Prophecy is the most powerful of all proofs of the existence of God! Not only does it offer supreme evidence of God’s existence, it also proves the veracity of the Bible! (see p. 24).
Fact is, the stories we read and view today in our news media concerning such events as the rise of a united Europe, the rise of the Islamic powers, the increasing alliance of Asia and the Eastern powers, and the great moral decline in Britain and the United States were already written in Bible prophecy!
Did you know that some world and church leaders were prophesied in your Bible ages before they were born?
A case in point is Cyrus, king of Persia. The eternal Creator God communicates with mankind, His creation, by the power of the Holy Spirit, sometimes called “the Comforter” (John 16:7, 13), via men whom He appoints for that purpose as prophets. God inspired the Prophet Isaiah to document the occasion of the reign of Cyrus, in detail, even referring to him by name, well before he was even conceived in the womb of his mother!
We read of this in Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1-5. Note in particular the following: “I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me” (Isa. 45:4). Why did God do this? To prove to His chosen nation Israel and to His Church that He is God (vv. 6-7). This prophecy was documented around 712 b.c. Cyrus the king was born a full 150 years later! That is a historical fact!
Other events prophesied for the rule of Cyrus were penned by the Prophet Jeremiah well in advance of those events happening. A simple chronological comparison of the Bible account with secular history texts, such as that of Herodotus, will prove this to those of an open mind.
Space prevents us from detailing further the multitude of prophecies, foretold millennia ago and documented in your Bible, which have been fulfilled, particularly through the 19th century to the present day. It is a fact that one third of the Bible is devoted to prophecy, and most of that is either happening right now or is destined to happen in the near future. Longtime readers of this magazine have often been startled by recalling an earlier article which predicted a future event, based on biblical prophecy, that came to pass months, even years, after they read of the predicted event in the Trumpet.
It is God’s nature to be merciful to His creation (Exod. 20:6). Thus, He has promised that no cataclysmic event will come upon humankind unless they are first warned by Him, through His prophets. “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7).
The most articulate, internationally aware minds agree, we live in unprecedented times. The whole world structure is changing. As the Western democracies decline and fall, demagogues and terrorists arise. This was all prophesied in your Bible. You need to know what is prophesied for the immediate future so you can do something positive about it for you and your family! You need this powerful proof of God’s existence working in your life so you can attune to the will of your Creator and come into harmony with the laws He created for your welfare! That is the only way you can truly fulfill the incredible human potential for which you were designed and conceived and now live!
Write now for our free booklet The God Family Vision. Catch the God-breathed vision of that marvelous destiny and learn now to live, to the full, the abundant life which you were created by an all-wise, all-loving God to fulfill!
