Evidence of God - Part 2

In my last post I discussed the idea that if there is evidence of God, or evidence of anything for that matter, it is always interpreted and understood according to the knowledge and beliefs you currently hold. When the Christian and the atheist both look at something like the fossil record and see it as consistent with their belief that God does or doesn’t exist, it’s not the case that one of the two is being dishonest with themselves or stubbornly ignoring the evidence. Both really do see the same thing as consistent with their existing beliefs. But today I want to address what I have heard most atheists actually say in one context or another… “What about undeniable evidence?” When we qualify the word “evidence” with “undeniable”, we essentially acknowledge the fact that evidence can be interpreted one way or another, but that some evidence simply cannot be interpreted any other way than in support of one view to the exclusion of the other. And of course, just because we use this qualification doesn’t mean that the evidence in question cannot, in fact, be interpreted to fit either one’s view, but we’re expressing that at least to us we cannot see how it can be interpreted to support the other’s view. And we think that any attempt to interpret it that way will be dishonestly twisting it in some way that makes no logical sense.

So when an atheist asks for evidence of God, they usually mean “undeniable evidence”, and for them, as has been my experience, this would be in the form of a miracle. They want to see something that can only be explained as an act of God. And it was literally just yesterday that I saw one atheist on Tik Tok say these exact words; “I want evidence. Just a simple matter of God opening up the sky and saying ‘Hello, I’m here.’” So I wonder to myself… What if God created the universe and the world we live in out of nothing, and that world were still here for us to observe, as evidence that this had happened? Wouldn’t that be evidence? Or what if God appeared in a burning bush that was not consumed by the flames, and then freed the slaves in a land called Egypt by tormenting their owners with plagues, and then parting an entire sea so they could flee from their slave owners, and this were all written down as evidence that it had occurred? Or what if a man who claimed to be the Son of God proved that He was indeed by healing the sick by just speaking a command, and he raised the dead, and he walked on water? And what if God opened up the skies and called down “This is my Son”? And what if that man raised himself from the dead, and all these things were written down as evidence that they had occurred? Well, we have these things. And not only do we have the written record, but the existence of the church itself, which would not have become a body of believers at all if they were unable to verify that these things regarding Jesus had happened. What the atheists ask for, namely a miracle, has already happened. But they need to witness one first hand in order to believe. Why? Because they think they can trust their own senses, while at the same time accusing those who claim to have seen miracles unable to trust their own senses. Again, alluding to something I said in my previous post, neither atheist nor Christian can simply ignore someone else’s claim to have witnessed a miracle, whether the claim is made by those who wrote the Bible, or by someone living today in some church somewhere. We both need to decide what we believe about this claim; whether this miracle is evidence of God or of some delusion or whatever else. And for those who don’t know much about Christianity, it’s simply not the case that all Christians will simply believe any and every claim of a miracle. We, too, are suspicious of any such claim - or at least we should be (1 John 4:1). So in this way, even a miracle of God is not going to be “undeniable” to all. Jesus did miracles precisely to prove that He was who He said He was. He was providing evidence. Even so there were those at that time who would interpret these things some other way. Some, for example, claimed that Jesus did these things by the power of demonic forces. (Luke 11:15). Or we hear modern day critics claim that the stories of Jesus’ miracles are essentially figures of speech.

I have relayed this story before, but now I’ll tell it in this different context. One morning I was late for work because my alarm didn’t go off. A few days later it was Saturday, and on Saturday I get to sleep in. But instead I was awoken by birds chirping at my window. And I remember thinking, jokingly, “God, you could have sent these birds the other day when my alarm didn’t go off! Why today?” It was an offhand remark, but then I started to think about it a little… my wife would have woken me, seeing my alarm hadn’t gone off for work, so why didn’t God when He saw me still lying there at 7:30am? But imagine it… you forget to set your alarm one day and are woken by birds at your window. A week later you forget again and you’re woken by birds at your window. The next night you think “I’m not going to bother setting my alarm, God will just wake me with the birds tomorrow…” And what kind of person are we becoming now? We’re like a spoiled child. I envisaged stepping outside at 6:30am and seeing flocks of birds all flying down to sit in front of the windows of all the Christians in the street! None of the Christians bothered with alarm clocks anymore. And what else didn’t they bother with? Perhaps they didn’t bother putting fuel in their cars because “God loves them so much that He lets their cars run on air”. Perhaps you can see my point now? You can’t decide what God should or shouldn’t do based on some idea that being lazy is something God should let us be. Consider how food simply grows on trees. The degree to which we have to labour for it is good for us. But you can imagine a world where food might not be so easy to come by and the analogy, instead of being about birds waking us at the right time each morning, might be “If God loved us He would simply make food grow on the trees so we could just go out and pick it.” If a miracle were to become commonplace, like the birds, it would no longer be a miracle, would it? We don’t see fruit growing on trees as a miracle or as evidence of God. But if birds flocked outside windows people would eventually say “Well, birds just seem to like gathering outside of windows after around 6:30am. Biologists suggest that it has to do with the reflection warming their bodies.” Or some such “natural” explanation. But the world we live in already testifies to the miracle of Creation. At the end of the day, it still remains that all evidence can potentially be explained away.

Perhaps Matt Dillahunty, a well known atheist apologist, acknowledges this? Someone else has told me that he has said “But God would know what it would take to convince me.” Emphasis on “me”. I haven’t seen Matt Dillahunty’s original words and I don’t know how they were said in context, but this person was saying that God would know what each individual person will respond to, so why doesn’t He prove Himself to each of us in “our way”? Well, there’s a lot to be said in response to this, but I think the important thing to recognize is that God values faith. I find that as soon as I say this, atheists tend to block their ears and kind of say “Ok, conversation over!” Any mention of “believing by faith” is immediately rejected by them. But how can it be any other way? Let’s consider this. Growing up in the church I learned a lot about what God was like. But when, as a 28 year old man, I actually read my Bible for the first time in my life, I started in the book of Job. There I read about a God who made Job, who was basically an innocent man, suffer. And I thought “Wow… this is not the God I thought I knew!” And I’m not saying the pastor of the church deliberately deceived me or anything. But I remember thinking, at that point, “It looks like there’s a lot I have to learn about who God is, so I’d better get reading!” This is faith. I decided not to trust anything I thought I knew about God and to learn “from scratch” who He truly was. What I did know about God was that if He exists, knowledge of Him would be found in the Bible, and that faith is all the faith God needed. Faith is then put to the test. Your faith is tested and proved. If I had carried on and found that God wasn’t to be found in the Bible, I would be an atheist today. But how can you know God any other way? Can you learn everything there is to know about God before deciding, “Ok, now I believe in you.”? No, your story will be the same as mine if you try to do that - you’ll have started with no knowledge and along the way you’ll have come to know with certainty that He exists.

Many will say “But I was once a Christian. I read my Bible to learn of God and I didn’t find proof of him there.” It’s true that many who once professed to be Christians later reject what they once believed and profess instead to be atheists. So to be clear, I did not mean to say that if you read your Bible you will find proof of God there. The fact that many people read their Bible and don’t find God there is evidence of that. I hear many former Christians say that the reason they left Christianity is because the Bible appeared, to them, to be inconsistent or contradictory. But the fact that many people read their Bible and do find God there is likewise evidence that God can be found in the Bible. For me, for example, I am quite amazed at how people can see any inconsistency at all in the Scriptures. And so we’re left with the fact that Christian and atheist will both see the same world and the same Scriptures but come to different conclusions. And while I’ve thought a lot about why this happens, each of us are individuals and no one answer will apply to all. But God does deal with each person individually, and each person deals with God in their own way too. What is certain is that there is no one who does not deal with God at all, because all are faced with evidence of God. How we reconcile that evidence in our own minds will be part of each person’s unique story.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

Evidence of God - Part 1

 “Show me evidence that your God exists”, is what I hear most atheists ask me. But what will they consider to be evidence? It is clear to me that all evidence is interpreted by those who perceive it. To me the entire world around me is overwhelming evidence of God. I interpret the world as being the work of God the Creator. To the atheist this same evidence is perceived but interpreted differently. They see the world around us as the result of a process of evolution. So asking for evidence and then being able to explain the evidence provided according to your own worldview isn’t really proof that Christians are wrong.

Consider now that the existence of Christianity itself is evidence of something. That’s all we can say about it… that it’s evidence of something. And this precisely drives home my point. The Christian claims that it’s evidence of God, but they can’t call that proof. The atheist claims that it’s evidence of “mass delusion”, or however they might explain it, but they can’t then call that proof. It’s evidence of something, and what it’s evidence of is up to each one’s interpretation of that evidence. When we come to a conclusion about it, it will be through our own logical reasoning, and our own logical reasoning is entirely under the influence of the worldview we already have. In trying to interpret any piece of evidence we pose hypotheses to ourselves and we accept or reject these hypotheses based on what agrees or disagrees with what we already know and believe. When we struggle to make something agree with what we know and believe, that’s when we start to consider making changes to what we have known and believed for so many years. But this is done only when we’re at our wits end trying to understand and accommodate some new piece of evidence.

Let me illustrate this further. I’ve used the existence of Christianity itself as an example. It is evidence of something. But so is the existence of the Muslim religion. Or the Hindu religion. Or even apart from religion, there are many people who claim to have been abducted by aliens, or to have seen ghosts. All of these bodies of people are making claims about what they believe to be true. They are evidence that the claims they make may, in fact, be true. And for each of these claims, the primary one is that their god exists, (or aliens, or whatever). If that claim is false then the rest of their claims are also false. So atheists ask things like “Why do you believe in Jesus and not any of the other 3000 gods that people claim exist?” Again, we as Christians interpret this evidence based on the world view we currently hold. Since our God has said that there is no other God apart from Him, we don’t even bother to investigate the claims made by other religions because we already reject their primary claim that there is a god that exists apart from our god. But this is no different to atheists. They don’t bother to even investigate the claims made by any of the religions because, according to their existing world view, they can immediately reject the possibility of any god’s existence. And if you ask anyone why they don’t believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, they should probably answer in that case that there is no evidence for such a thing; namely that there is no body of believers which make the claim that it truly exists.

When Christians are confronted with the evidence of other gods ("evidence" as I’m calling it - namely that there are bodies of believers in other gods), we are like anyone else. We must interpret that evidence. Some interpret it as those gods in fact having a true existence, but that they are demonic in nature. Others interpret it perhaps as many atheists would, and say that they are simply mythologies made by man, and that believing those mythologies as fact has filled some psychological need that exists in all people. Again it illustrates my point. We all interpret evidence according to our own worldview. And the same will go for claims about aliens or ghosts or whatever else. Neither Christian nor atheist can simply ignore these things. One way or the other we must all decide what we believe about them. So where does this leave us? Hopefully it leaves us seeing each other as equals. But also it helps us realize that the atheist can’t simply say “I’m not making any claims about god.” They are; namely that god does not exist. They are forced to make a claim about god because they are faced with evidence for god (the existence of religion itself) which they must interpret one way or the other.

And so the more correct question to ask a Christian, instead of “Show me evidence of God”, is “Give me good reason to believe in God.” This, then, allows us to show our interpretation of the evidence we see, and show our reasoning for interpreting it the way we do. The same can be afforded to the atheist; they can show us evidence of evolution, for example, but what they are really showing us is their interpretation of such evidence (the fossil record, for example). And Christians don’t simply ignore these evidences. Indeed, we cannot. What we reject, rather, is the interpretation of these evidences, and we have a different interpretation according to our own worldview. Christians, likewise, are better to ask “give me good reason to believe in evolution”, and not simply “show me evidence of evolution.” A request for “good reason to believe” will involve not only the evidence but the interpretation of the evidence. But it’s important to remember that there is always that element of interpretation according to one’s existing worldview.

At this point we haven’t said anything about which worldview is right or wrong, but that’s not what this post is about. There are atheists and Christians who are so sure of their worldview that they may never change. And there are atheists and Christians who have doubts about their own worldview and may be swayed to the other side. Most of the time people are simply content and function well with their current worldview and have no motivation to uproot all of their beliefs to see if another is actually true. I often find from both atheists and Christians alike this appeal to “just do more research” or to “think more critically”... and the thought there, really, is that the other person simply hasn’t thought their worldview through hard enough, because if they did they would surely come to the same conclusions as me! This is an error for anyone, on either side of the debate. One’s own thoughts will always be led by first interpreting information to agree with what they already believe. To ask someone to “do more research” is to first ask the person to gather more information, as the more information they have the more chance they have of finding something which they cannot accommodate into their own worldview. This is certainly good for anyone to do, and when information cannot be accommodated into one’s existing worldview, they may begin to change their worldview. But firstly any new information will be understood as it aligns with what we already believe. So then we ask them to “think critically”, which is to ask them to play the hypothetical of “if I didn’t believe what I currently believe, and instead believed what atheists believe, would this information make more sense?” This doesn’t really work, however, because that hypothetical is “just a game”. Thinking critically is a great idea; it perhaps helps us understand the other side’s perspective. But it won’t change our own view because when we “played the hypothetical” we were pretending to believe what the other believes. And this is different, incidentally, to an example where a seminary lecturer was teaching one doctrine and in my mind I’m thinking “No, I don’t think that’s right, because I don’t think it agrees with this or that Bible verse.” Thinking critically isn’t simply disagreeing with what you’re being taught. Again, the taught doctrine was being accepted or rejected by what I already knew and believed.

So what’s the point of all this, then? I think what really prompted me to write this is that it answers a whole range of objections I’ve seen made by atheists. I’ve alluded to some of these already; the question of why we should believe in the god we do and not one of the many others - it is, in fact, the very same reason the atheist believes in none. Then there's the demand for evidence as opposed to good reason. This fails to recognize that evidence will only count if it cannot be interpreted in a way that agrees with your worldview. And the appeal to thinking critically instead of “believing blindly”. This fails to understand that critical thinking is not an escape from one’s own biases. Anyone who says “I just want to believe what’s true” fails to realize that so much of what we conclude is true is based on what we have conformed to our existing worldview. And even the idea that atheism is logical and reasonable as opposed to faith… Faith is not believing something despite a lack of evidence. We all have evidence and we all have our logic and reasons for our interpretation of that evidence. Faith isn’t apart from that. Faith is trusting and relying on what you believe to be true. If you believe there is one god then by faith you trust that all other claims about another god are somehow false, even if you haven’t figured out yet in exactly what way each of them are false. And the atheist is no different - they, like us, have their worldview which creates certain expectations of what counts as evidence for god, and it’s essentially by faith in that belief that they are convinced that whatever claims are made by all of these 3000 odd religions will be false (however many there actually are in the world), and won’t produce the evidence they’re expecting to find of god. They don’t need to investigate each and every one of these religions because they are already convinced that they will be false. Faith in God may be a little more than that; we’re talking not only about faith in our own beliefs, but in relation to God we’re talking about faith in a person; faith in the character of God - that God will deal with us in the manner that the person He has revealed Himself to be would deal with us. When we experience that He does, it confirms our beliefs and strengthens our faith in those beliefs. This is what I meant when I once explained to an atheist that “faith becomes knowledge”. At that point I completely lost them precisely because they didn’t understand this fundamental idea. Knowing God starts with information about God (the words of the Bible) and our interpretation of that information (or evidence) as we build our theology and worldview around it. We have faith that what we believe is true, and when through experience we see that it is true, faith becomes knowledge.


Simon Peter replied, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven." Matthew 16:16-17

Atheism vs Theism and the Burden of Proof

Something I hear atheists say a lot is along the lines of "I don't have to prove that God doesn't exist. The burden of proof is on the theist to prove that God does exist." This phrase "burden of proof" is a technical one from the field of philosophy. According to Wikipedia:

When two parties are in a discussion and one makes a claim that the other disputes, the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.

Wikipedia continues...

Philosophical debate can devolve into arguing about who has the burden of proof about a particular claim.

There is actually nothing intrinsic about a claim that puts the burden of proof on the one who's making it. All in all, this is semantics and rhetoric which are used to avoid the issue. But we don't actually need to worry too much about who, technically, has the burden of proof; or whether it even makes sense to assign a burden of proof to either side in the case of atheism vs theism. Atheists say "the burden of proof is on the theist, so I don't have to do anything," and then they sit back and wait for the theist to try to convince them of something. But let's consider the following analogy...

Imagine you're born on an island in a tribe who has never seen any other land. When they look out to sea, there are no other coastlines to be seen. It's just horizon in every direction. And no one has ever traveled far enough in their canoe to see other land. And so one day you have a philosophical discussion with a friend. You say "I believe that if we could swim far enough we would find other lands." Your friend says "I see no evidence of that. I don't believe there are other lands at all." Of these two claims, who has the burden of proof? I'm going to say, "Who cares?" If we argue about who has the burden of proof and finally decide who, indeed, has the burden of proof, does that change who's right about the question of whether other lands exist?

Now, let's imagine that the answer to this question matters to these people. Let's imagine that some disaster happens on this island... a hurricane which causes so much damage that most of the crops and most of the livestock and most of the people's property are destroyed. Survival on this island is now in peril. So you say to your friend, "I want to get in this canoe and travel further than anyone has before to see if we can find another land where there may be resources to bring back and help our people survive. But I need your help." Because your friend doesn't believe that there are other lands, he says "No, you can't take the canoe; one of the few we have left. There's nothing out there." So you go on your own anyway. And you do find land, and you bring back food and other resources. You're the hero of the people. Now, what value was there to your friend having said "The burden of proof is on you..." All it meant was that he was unwilling to participate in the search for truth, even when it mattered. He was quite sure of himself, but he didn't really know that there were no other lands. Lucky for him, in this tale all that he suffered was a bruised ego. I'm sure he'll get over it.

For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Romans 1:20

Is The Coronavirus Crisis to Introduce The Mark of the Beast?

Social media, in these days of coronavirus lockdown, is full of conspiracy theories about a New World Order and the Mark of the Beast. People see the current coronavirus pandemic as something created by world powers in order to impose upon the world a single government and introduce something which people identify as “The Mark of the Beast”, which is something spoken of in Revelation chapter 13 of the Bible. Now, why would people make this connection? What is this conspiracy theory, and does it hold up to logical analysis?

Let me give a brief overview of what the Mark of the Beast is, for the uninitiated. Here’s the reference to it in the Bible:

Then I saw another beast rising out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon.
...
Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom: let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is 666.
Revelation 13:11,16-18

So, some background information to give this some context. At the start of the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John is told to write down what he sees in a vision. This vision appears to speak of “things to come”. That is, events in John’s future. How far into John’s future is one of those questions that is debated amongst Christians, and it’s possible that some of the events described refer to things that were in John’s future but are in our past. Nevertheless, we get to this part of the vision in chapter 13 which speaks of two beasts. Earlier in the chapter there is a first beast which almost certainly represents a world leader. The reason we think it represents a world leader is because similar imagery is used in the book of Daniel to describe world leaders which have gone before. In Daniel these world leaders are quite identifiable as leaders past; people like Alexander the Great. Sticking to the context of Revelation alone, it is evident that this is a world leader because it says “And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation”. And hence people believe that there will one day be a single leader for the entire world. That is, a “one world government”.

So after the establishment of this one world government the vision suggests that there will be a system put in place where the second beast, having equal authority to the first, causes all “to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark”.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the coronavirus? From what I understand, the conspiracy theory is that the coronavirus was deliberately engineered in a lab and released on the population in order to create a situation in which, once the crisis is over, the powers that be will be able to mandate global tracking of individuals for the purpose of better managing future pandemics, allegedly using a technology which involves a microchip literally injected into the hand.

Now, I believe that all of the panic around this is unfounded. I remember, over 20 years ago, a preacher telling us that credit cards were the mark of the beast. After all, they are directly related to our ability to buy and sell. Actually, more related to our ability to buy… your bank account number is probably more related to your ability to sell, and we’ve had those since the first bank ever opened its doors for business. At just about any time throughout history a government has had the power to limit people’s ability to buy and sell. But microchip technology is no different to the technology which currently exists. All of our banking data and identification is currently in the form of data on servers, accessible from our mobile phones. I, personally, haven't used cash to pay for anything in years. The idea that a microchip can be embedded in the hand is simply something which triggers an association to this mark of the beast, though the technology itself is ultimately no different to owning a bank account and carrying a checkbook and a driver's license.

Let’s also not forget the panic that surrounded 9/11. If ever there was a time to set up global tracking of individuals under some pretext, it was then. So if it didn’t happen under that more ideal condition, why the panic now?

As regards the pandemic we’re experiencing; let’s not forget that this isn’t the first pandemic that has ever hit the world. The Spanish Flu and the Black Death to name some famous ones. And more recently, SARS threatened to be a serious problem too. Recently there was an event known as “Event 201” in which major businesses and other organizations discussed what would happen in the event of a global pandemic. They discussed a hypothetical pandemic of, say, a novel coronavirus. Now, conspiracy theorists look at this event and claim that this was clearly preparation for what they knew was coming. But this makes no logical sense. Why would they make this event public if they were plotting something secret? You can, in fact, go to the website and view footage from the event. The fact that they used a novel coronavirus in their hypothetical makes perfect sense as well, being that SARS (also a coronavirus) was quite recent, and would be the most likely type of virus to affect us on a global scale.

What I believe is most likely to be at play with all of this is simply human psychology. People who have already been exposed to these ideas of a one world government and a mark of the beast apply those beliefs to understanding what’s going on in the world. People who hold such beliefs are always looking for any irregularities in the world which may validate their beliefs. There is also another common conspiracy theory that there aren’t, in fact, any sick people at all and that the World Health Organization are making up the figures. This, too, makes no sense since local hospitals and clinics are also releasing their own case figures based on their own testing and the cases that come in. The same principles of human psychology that lead to witch trials and lynch mobs, where all the community are convinced of something irrational, will very much be influencing many of us; and not just weak minded people. The effect of dramatic change to our daily routines is well documented and studied, and we are all susceptible to this kind of thing. I’ve been following the “quarantine project” of a certain psychologist online, who is also an actor. He put together an online production depicting all of the different kinds of psychological responses people have at a time like this, and shows them coping mechanisms from psychology to deal with this situation. Some of his characters became obsessed with germs and cleanliness, some became depressed and despairing, and some make sense of it all through the lens of the conspiracy theories they have been exposed to. He created this production precisely because he's sensitive to how it can affect everyone. According to the news, people's belief in conspiracy theories have taken them as far as burning down 5G cell towers and abusing 5G technicians, as part of their view is that the rollout of 5G has something to do with all of this as well. This, too, is illogical. I've heard some say that the coronavirus symptoms are caused by 5G, and others say the effects of 5G are to weaken the immune system so that you get the virus. But neither of these hypotheses make sense. If 5G gave us coronavirus symptoms, a test designed to detect a virus would not test positive for those who have the symptoms. And if 5G were making our immune system weak, we'd be getting sick for all kinds of reasons, not just coronavirus. I even witnessed a conversation between two people where one explained that their elderly relative had coronavirus but lived nowhere near 5G, and the other insisted; absolutely insisted, that this elderly person must have travelled to a 5G area. From fighting over toilet paper in the aisles to torching 5G towers, people evidently struggle to cope with such an upheaval to their world. But we all know this is true of human nature.

But let’s get back to focusing on the Bible and what it says about the mark of the beast… Why is this mark of concern to people? Firstly, because without it, the Bible says you won’t be able to buy or sell, and that’s a horrible persecution to suffer. But later, in chapter 14, it says:

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.” Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.
Revelation 14:9-12

So the real fear around the mark of the beast relates to the fact that once you have it (and the assumption is that receiving it is permanent and irrevocable), your fate is sealed and you’ll go to hell. Now, I really want to explain this to everyone reading, because this is vitally important... You can’t read this passage and come to conclusions which simply ignore the very fundamentals of the Bible’s teaching. Salvation from hell is through faith in Christ Jesus. This is the only means of salvation that there is. It always has been, even in the days of Abraham. This is precisely the point that the Apostle Paul makes when speaking of salvation by faith… that even Abraham was saved by faith. And it always will be the only way because there is no other way. Therefore, being given an ID number (which is what modern interpreters claim the mark of the beast to be) cannot change your faith. If you have a physical mark on your body which you cannot remove, this does not and cannot change what you believe by faith. This very passage is just as explicit about this. It says “If anyone worships the beast…” as opposed to “those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.” What consigns you to hell is not the mark. It's what you believe; just as it always has been and is the case in this present day. This mark, if it is a literal mark, is something you receive willingly as a sign of worship of "the beast". It is not something you can inadvertently accept so that you inadvertently consign yourself to hell. It is akin to a Nazi getting a tattoo of a swastika because of what he supports and believes in. Ideas of a universal ID system simply do not fit the description of the mark of the beast at all.

The Book of Revelation is full of references to the rest of Scripture. When, for example, we speak of beasts representing world leaders, we know that’s what they represent because we look back to the Book of Daniel where it is unambiguously clear that this is what they represent. Likewise, this idea of a mark or a seal comes from Ezekiel. In the Book of Ezekiel, in a vision, God commands an angel to go out and mark those who are His followers so that they might be spared from the judgment to come upon Israel.

And the Lord said to him, “Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it. … Kill old men outright, young men and maidens, little children and women, but touch no one on whom is the mark.
Ezekiel 9:4,6

The mark is not a literal one. God is telling us that He knows who are His followers and who are not, and He makes a distinction between them and His enemies. Earlier in the Book of Revelation we see this same idea of a mark used to mark those who belong to God…

They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
Revelation 9:4

The mark of the beast, as we saw in Revelation 14, identifies those who worship the beast. That is, those who are not God’s people. Those who are not God’s people persecute God’s people. And it has been that way since the days of the Apostles when Revelation was written. There have been persecutions of Christians at all times throughout the centuries. Jesus doesn’t deny that we will be persecuted. He assures us that we will. The passage in Revelation 14 concludes with “Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.” This is actually the theme of the entire Book of Revelation, for all Christians at all times throughout history. Revelation begins with letters to the churches of the time, each one telling them “To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life.” That is, in Biblical terms, essentially synonymous with “To the one who keeps their faith” or “endures”. Again, we cannot set aside fundamental Biblical teaching. We do not endure or keep our faith through our own ability. It is Christ who enables us to endure, and who keeps us to the end...

Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?
Galatians 3:3

...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith
Hebrews 12:2

The message of Revelation is to all Christians at all times. It was equally relevant to the Christians at the time of John’s writing as it is to us now. They faced the persecutions of the Roman emperors, (and even their ability to buy and sell were affected because of their faith, seeing that conducting business often meant participating in the worship of Roman gods and emperors.) The people of John’s time didn’t know how far into the future the events of Revelation would be, and we don’t know how far into our future they might be. That’s because it doesn’t matter; neither to them nor to us. We understand, as did they, that whatever persecution lays ahead of us, (and in some countries that persecution is very active and real right now), the message of Revelation is not to escape such persecution by renouncing our faith.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.
John 15:19-20

If God Made the Rules About Hell, Isn't It His Fault If We Go There?

An influential apologist for atheism seems to be a man by the name of Matt Dillahunty. I’ve seen him a few times on YouTube, and recently in a short clip on TikTok. In this short clip, Matt gives the following analogy (paraphrased in my own words.) He says that if anyone goes to Hell, God is to blame for that, seeing as He makes all the rules, and needn’t have made the rule that sinners go to Hell. The analogy he then gives is that if a man makes the rule in his home that if his wife raises her voice, he’ll slap her. If, then, the wife raises her voice and he slaps her, is it not the man’s fault for making such a rule? And this argument, based on the reception in the comments section of the video, appears very wise to many people. But actually it’s quite a flawed analogy, and not a very sound argument. Why would Matt choose for his analogy a rule like slapping a wife for raising her voice over a rule like, for example, going to prison for murder? The government makes that a rule, and yet if I commit murder I can hardly say “Well, it’s the government’s fault that I’m now going to prison because they make all the rules.” So even on a human level this analogy is flawed. But when you consider that the one making the rules about Heaven and Hell is God, it really doesn’t hold up at all! The man who makes the rule about slapping his wife for raising her voice… What wisdom did he have in arriving at such a rule? What consideration did he have as to the justice of such a law? Was he right to make such a rule in the first place?

When you consider the laws of God in the Bible, you have to remember who the law-giver is. Perhaps part of the atheist's struggle here is that they take for granted that these laws were really just devised by men who attributed them to a higher authority. But let me give an analogy of my own… Imagine you start a new job and the company director tells you on your first day that there are various company rules that must be complied with. They are, for example… No deliberately turning up to work in pyjamas. No riding motorbikes inside the building. No defecating on the floor… Three examples of what nobody is ever likely to do anyway, right? Well, that’s precisely what God’s laws are like. If we did not have a sinful nature and were perfect as God created us in the beginning, His laws would appear just as absurd and needless to say. That is, they would appear to be a list of things that nobody would even dream of doing anyway. The first of the ten commandments: “You shall have no other gods before me.” If we were not sinners, this would seem just as needless to say as your boss asking you not to work for another company during the hours you work for his company. And even so, most of the other of God's laws do seem needless to say; “You shall not murder”, “You shall not steal”... well, obviously! And yet we do these things. So, going back to the analogy of the workplace, imagine that your new boss tells you that the penalty for breaking any of these rules is death. Would you care? I mean, what risk is there that you might face death? I think I’d accept that job despite the possibility of the death penalty, because I know I’m never going to do any of those things. (Note also that in human terms we may not trust our boss not to falsely accuse us of something in order to put us to death for some reason, but with God we can trust His perfect judgement.)

Now you may wish to interject that even if God is right, from His perspective, to make laws that nobody would bother to break; surely He has to take into consideration that we are not like Him and are unable to keep them? God does indeed know that we are unable to keep them. In fact, the Bible says that anyone who thinks they are without sin deceives themselves (1 John 1:8). We cannot keep God’s laws and God knows it. Who, then, can escape the sentence of Hell? Presumably nobody can. And this is precisely the gospel message. Nobody can escape the sentence of Hell by keeping God’s commandments. But there is another way, and that is what theologians call “the substitutionary atonement of Christ”. The key word, there, is substitutionary. That is because Christ, the Son of God, is a substitution for us. In dying on the cross, Christ suffered the punishment due to us, instead of us. The Bible makes it clear that salvation is by faith. That is, belief that Christ is the Son of God, and that His death and resurrection saves us. We are saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8); believing in Christ is all that God asks. Why? Because this is the only thing, when you break it all down, that makes a difference. Jesus explained that what we believe will affect everything about us (Matthew 15:18-19 for example). There are many things that should characterize a Christian, but they are all the result of that belief in the reality of Christ. Love and good works are some of those characteristics. Believing in Christ… that is, truly believing in Him… one desires to please Him. But our belief remains in His work on the cross. We can believe that our good works please Him, but we cannot believe that our good works save us. He is the only salvation that there is. And knowing that my salvation does not depend on my own efforts, I then have no fear of Hell. If it were up to my own efforts, I would certainly fail. Not one of us would succeed in saving ourselves. So Christ has saved us. More than that, He has given us the Holy Spirit to transform us and keep us in that very faith which saves us.

To bring this back to Matt Dillahunty’s point… his point was this: Isn’t it God’s fault if we go to Hell since He makes the rules? Well, the rule He’s made is that if we believe in Him then we have nothing to fear of Hell. How is that unreasonable of our Creator? This is like one of those silly rules that should be needless to say. Who wouldn’t believe in their own Creator? Who really needs to be told to? The analogy Matt used doesn't even work in human terms. The government sets the law that those who murder go to prison but those who refrain from murder can avoid prison, and nobody thinks this unreasonable, nor do they blame the government if they go to prison for murder. If the analogy fails for imperfect human laws, how much more does it fail for God's laws which are perfect? We are given a means to avoid Hell, and that means is well within our grasp. All God is asking us to do to avoid Hell is that which should be natural for us to do anyway. Believe in Him.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do.
Romans 8:1-3

Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?

Folks, the title of this post deliberately echoes a post I wrote in 2014. It was titled "Is Ebola The End Of The World?" Back then there was an outbreak of Ebola and I find it incredibly interesting that everything that people are saying now about Coronavirus is similar to what I then outlined as the typical response to a crisis like Ebola. I'm not going to re-hash what I said in that post, but if you read it, it's precisely what I would say in response to the question "Is Coronavirus The End Of The World?" In short... I don't know if it's the end of the world. That's up to God. But what difference does it make? There is an end coming at some point, and we need to be ready for it by sorting out the most important thing of all... Do we believe and accept who Christ says He was and have faith in Him for eternal life?

With regard to Coronavirus... mankind has experienced many plagues throughout its history. The most famous, probably, is the bubonic plague. One wonders how much damage the bubonic plague might have done if the people of that day had the technology we have now; the Internet to forewarn one another, and the medical knowledge to organize proper quarantine and testing? And even though we have these things, the Coronavirus is taking a serious toll on the world. You cannot escape the purposes of God. But what is God's purpose?

Let me make it clear, first of all, that I don't presume to know what God's specific purposes might be. What I do want to do is share what the Bible says about plagues and God's purposes behind them. The first would be what people think of when they associate such a plague with the end of the world... to punish the world for their sins. This is in keeping with various Biblical references to plague. For example, when the Philistines stole the Ark of the Lord (that is, the same artifact depicted in the Indiana Jones movie), God sent a plague on their cities. Or when the Israelites built an idol in the desert, a plague broke out amongst them. A plague was one sign that God was punishing people for their sins. So was famine and war. Nobody wants these things, and the response should always be to turn to God. When King Solomon spoke at the opening of the Temple, he said:

If there is famine in the land, if there is pestilence or blight or mildew or locust or caterpillar, if their enemy besieges them in the land at their gates, whatever plague, whatever sickness there is, whatever prayer, whatever plea is made by any man or by all your people Israel, each knowing the affliction of his own heart and stretching out his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive and act and render to each whose heart you know, according to all his ways (for you, you only, know the hearts of all the children of mankind), that they may fear you all the days that they live in the land that you gave to our fathers.
1 Kings 8:37-40

Note especially that it says "hear in heaven your dwelling place and forgive..." In other words, the assumption should be that these things are God's response to sin. This is all the more clear since, in a few places in Moses' writings, God literally says that if the people obey Him they will be prosperous, but that if they disobey Him they will see curses like plagues and famines and so forth. The thing we need to remember here is that mankind is always guilty! Does the world, right now, deserve a plague for their sins? Of course it does. But it has always been deserving of this, and we ought not to forget that God has shown mercy all the years that we haven't had a plague on our doorsteps.

Now, we should recognize that it is a good thing for God to withdraw His mercy a little from time to time. There's a verse which says:

Because the sentence against an evil deed is not executed speedily, the heart of the children of man is fully set to do evil.
Ecclesiastes 8:11

If God never reminded us that there is a punishment for sin, who would turn from their sin? The greater purpose of God in sending the plagues and the famines is to remind us that we are at His mercy, and that He will indeed judge sin. Many turn from their sins because they believe the Word of God when it says that there will be a coming judgment, and they believe the Word of God that speaks of the judgments which God brought upon the Earth in the time of Noah, upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and upon Israel. But it is right and just for God to give us a very real reminder in our own lives from time to time. In fact, any time that a person dies of anything it should be a reminder of "the wages of sin", as the Bible calls it. What difference does it make how and when we die? Let no one say there was a lack of evidence of the consequences of sin; not when God Himself has told us through His Word, if we will believe it, why there exists death and suffering. Coronavirus may not be the end of the world, but it serves the same purpose as the plagues of the Bible, along with the famines and the wars... and it has the same purpose as the bubonic plague, or the Ebola outbreak... all of these things point to God's judgment of sin. That's the most Biblical answer I can find. These things are designed to provoke us to turn to God for salvation.

Finally, I want to draw our attention to how God, even while punishing us, can have a purpose for good. When Italy went into lock down because of the virus, it was widely noted that the canals in Venice and other water ways around the country, began to clear of all their silt. With no one using them, the water became clear and fish could be seen swimming around in them. And it occurred to just about everybody... though they put it in more sort of New Age terms... that "the Earth was healing itself." Or that "mother nature was taking back what was hers." But to my Christian sensibilities, it reminded me of what God did when the Israelites went into exile in Babylon. God had declared in His laws that Israel should keep the Sabbath; that is, that no work be done on the 7th day of the week, and also that the land rest from farming every 7th year (Exodus 23:10-12). But Israel hadn't done that. So when the Israelites went into exile and the land of Israel itself became essentially uninhabited, the Bible explains:

He took into exile in Babylon those who had escaped from the sword, and they became servants to him and to his sons until the establishment of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days that it lay desolate it kept Sabbath, to fulfill seventy years.
2 Chronicles 36:20-21

Not that I'm saying that our sin has been not keeping the Sabbath, but simply to note that it is of a similar vein. The people hadn't let the land rest as they ought to have, and so God's punishment served the secondary purpose of giving the land that rest. We're all so aware these days of how we have exploited the Earth's resources, and industry just marches on and on, never ceasing to consume and pollute. It may well be that God's purpose is very much about giving the Earth the rest it needs as we all hunker down in our homes. The economic ramifications of this may be significant, but we ought to read and understand the Words of Jesus in the Book of Revelation. According to my understanding of the Book, we are to expect famines, wars, plagues such as this Coronavirus... and economic collapses. Consider Revelation chapter 18 about the "Fall of Babylon", (which I think is symbolic of all society)...

As she glorified herself and lived in luxury,
so give her a like measure of torment and mourning,
since in her heart she says,
"I sit as a queen,
I am no widow,
and mourning I shall never see."
For this reason her plagues will come in a single day,
death and mourning and famine,
and she will be burned up with fire;
for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.
...
And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore
Revelation 18:7-8,11

Again, I'm not saying that this passage refers specifically to current events with Coronavirus, but rather that the Book of Revelation speaks of the kinds of things God will do in the world, so that when we see them we might remember His words and turn to Him in repentance for salvation. The end is coming. This may not be it, but this is a reason for people to write posts like these and for people to be thinking about these kinds of questions. And that's really the purpose of God in all this, I think. Seeing the disasters which God brings upon the world for its sins, the sensible thing would be to repent. But sadly there are those who still will not...

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons wand idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.
Revelation 9:20-21

What To Expect From Knowing Christ

I was reading Luke chapter 7 today. Towards the end is a story in which Jesus visits a Pharisee; that is, one of the religious leaders of the time. The story begins this way...

One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, "If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner."

Luke 7:36-39

The story goes on, but this section of the story already establishes something important to recognize. Jesus had been all over the country claiming to be a religious prophet and teacher. The Pharisee, being one of the religious leaders, is very interested in assessing the validity of these claims. And so he's invited Jesus to his home so that he can get a gauge on whether Jesus' claims are legitimate. And clearly, in his mind, he has a few criteria to assess whether Jesus is the real deal or not. What we need to realize is that this is no different to any of us. We all have our ideas on "If God were real, then..." Then there would be no suffering? Then He would speak to us clearly? Then there would be no prejudice or inequality? These are some of the things we decide must be true if God were real, and since they are not, we decide that God is not real. For this Pharisee it was, "If Jesus were a prophet He would not associate with sinners." But that's precisely the opposite of the truth. In fact, it's easy for us to see that since no one is without sin, then the Pharisee himself is a sinner; and yet Jesus is associating with him. The expectation is clearly false. How often are we so sure of our own false assumptions about God that we fail to believe Him?

There are many preconceptions we have about God and Christianity, and many of those are propagated by the Church itself. Some churches make it appear that if you have faith then any and every prayer will be answered. Some churches make it appear that if you have faith you will never get sick or suffer. But what is the truth? What can we expect? What is God actually like and how does He actually interact with us? The answer to this question is found in Scripture alone, and not necessarily in what is preached from the pulpit. The Pharisee was a religious leader, and yet he had come to believe that The Christ would surely not associate with sinners. Our religious leaders can be wrong. What is inerrant, however, is the Word of God itself. As we read it we learn about God and what He is really like. As we read it, we ourselves can also struggle to understand some things and make false conclusions about what we've read. But the error remains our own, and the Word of God itself is not in error. And in time through continued reading we can also correct our own misunderstandings. So knowing what God is like, and what to expect from God, ultimately takes a lifetime of devotion to His Word to grasp fully. But while we cannot fully grasp it all at once, there are, I believe, a few things which we can easily grasp and know to be certain. These are, firstly, that God wants us to be like Him. Secondly, that God loves us. Thirdly, that because He loves us, He hates sin and what it does to us; namely that it separates us from Him. And so, what we can expect from a relationship with God is that we, too, will hate sin and be filled instead with love, as we become more like Him. What this means is that we will be prepared to abandon those sins that we once loved and we will desire to do acts of love instead. Acts of love include reaching out to other sinners, as Jesus did in the story above, because we too will hate what sin is doing to our fellow man. But our love will cause us to care for those who are suffering and provide for those in need. These are the things which are certain. Love increases and sin decreases.

If you are trying to judge whether the claims of Christianity are true, then be careful about how you aim to make that judgement. The "Problem of Evil" is full of false assumptions. The "Prosperity Gospel" is full of false assumptions. And even, based on what I have said, we can choose to see what suits our own hypothesis about Christianity, because there are many who call themselves Christians but don't know Christ, and so don't have that relationship which increases love and decreases sin. But in those who are genuine, this is what one can expect to find. Jesus has even said so Himself...

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:35