There is greater rest and solace to be found in the presence of God for one hour, than in an eternity in the presence of man.

 

Science and the Bible / a famous scientist admits the theologians have been right all along 

 

Robert Jastrow, an astrophysicist, former Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard   Institute, in his book God and the Astronomers, writes,

“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Here Are 26 Quotes By Albert Einstein On Spirituality

1. I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are details.
2. Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind.
3. My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
4. The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
5. Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.
6. The scientists’ religious feeling takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.
7. There is no logical way to the discovery of elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.
8. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
9. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious; It is the source of all true art and science.
10. We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.
11. Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods.
12. When the solution is simple, God is answering.
13. God does not play dice with the universe.
14. God is subtle but he is not malicious.
15. A human being is a part of the whole, called by us Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest-a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty.
16. Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.
17. The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
18. Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.
19. Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
20. The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.
21. The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
22. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
23. The finest emotion of which we are capable is the mystic emotion. Herein lies the germ of all art and all true science. Anyone to whom this feeling is alien, who is no longer capable of wonderment and lives in a state of fear is a dead man. To know that what is impenetrable for us really exists and manifests itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, whose gross forms alone are intelligible to our poor faculties – this knowledge, this feeling … that is the core of the true religious sentiment. In this sense, and in this sense alone, I rank myself among profoundly religious men.
24. The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denature the evil spirit of man.
25. True religion is real living; living with all one’s soul, with all one’s goodness and righteousness.
26. Intelligence makes clear to us the interrelationship of means and ends. But mere thinking cannot give us a sense of the ultimate and fundamental ends. To make clear these fundamental ends and valuations and to set them fast in the emotional life of the individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to form in the social life of man.

 

A well known Christian evangelist entering a Muslim country had this conversation with the customs official.

“For what purpose are you entering my country? “I am a Christian evangelist and have been invited by here by your government for a debate at one of your universities.” “Tell me sir. What do you think of Mohammed?”  “May I ask you a question?” “Yes.” “Can a prophet lie?” The man thought for a moment and said, “No. A prophet cannot lie.”  “Mohammed was a prophet?” “Yes.” Mohammed said Jesus was a prophet?” “Yes.”  “Jesus said He was God. If Jesus was right than Mohammed was wrong. And if Jesus was wrong, Mohammed was still wrong because Mohammed said Jesus was right!” The man stamped his passport and said, “Get out of here!”

How can Hell be forever?

“The primary reason hell must be eternal is that what matters most to man is his present condition. For example, suppose you live in a frigid area of the world. Suppose you had heat for the last ten years. But suppose this year catastrophe has struck your area and left you without any heat at all in the dead of winter. You are freezing and shivering. Will the fact that you had heat for the last ten years make you happy while you are freezing this winter? No. It won’t help you at all. What matters most is that you don’t have heat this winter. It’s true to say that what matters most to you is your present condition. Likewise, supposed that you lived without heat for the last ten years but you finally got it this year. Will the fact that you lived without heat for the last ten years make you unhappy while you sit comfortable and warm now? No. What matters now is your present condition. The same truth applies to all of the passing desires of worldly people. It must be pointed out that none of these temporal pleasures bring true and lasting happiness. Man was created for God and can only be fulfilled in Him. But the point holds true when we consider these issues as well. For instance, those who glory in their great fame, or great wealth, or great success, or great beauty, are not troubled by the fact that they did not possess this 10 or 20 years ago. What matters most to them is that they are great, or famous, or successful or wealthy, or beautiful, now. What matters most to the unspiritual man is his present condition. Therefore if the pains of hell did end at some point then at that very point the condition of the person would be free from punishment. He would suffer no pain at all since the present condition is all that matters. The end result for that man would be that he would not be punished at all. Thus when it is considered deeply, it is true to say that a punishment that is not eternal is in the end actually, no real punishment at all. For if it ends at any point, then, the final condition of man which is all that will matter to him then is that he is free of punishment.” “Those who die in their sin, who refused to accept the free gift of forgiveness for the sins they committed against an infinitely Holy God must be punished in a real and vindictive way. As Duet. 32:35 says, “Revenge is Mine and I will repay them in due time.” Such a punishment can only be real if the end result equals punishment, not a state of no punishment. The only way that the vindictive punishment can have an end result which equals punishment rather than no punishment, is by an ongoing present condition of unhappiness. That is why hell must be and is eternal.”

If God is good why is there evil?

“The fact that humans used God-given free choice to disobey God did not take God by surprise. C. S. Lewis suggests that God in his omniscience 11 saw that from a world of free creatures, even though they fell, he could work out … a deeper happiness and a fuller splendor than any world of automata would admit.”” Or, as Geisler has put it so well, the theist does not have to claim that our present world is the best of all possible worlds, but it is the best way to the best possible world:

If God is to both preserve freedom and defeat evil, then this is the best way to do it, Freedom is preserved in that each person makes his own free choice to determine his destiny. Evil is overcome in that, once those who reject God are separated from the others, the decisions of all are made permanent. Those who choose God will be confirmed in it, and sin will cease. Those who reject God are in eternal quarantine and cannot upset the perfect world that has come about. The ultimate goal of a perfect world with free creatures will have been achieved, but the way to get there requires that those who abuse their freedom be cast out.”

A critically important factor involved in the suggestion that this may not be the best possible world but it is the best way to the best possible world is that God is not finished yet. Too often people fall into the trap of thinking that because God hasn’t dealt with evil yet, he is not dealing with it at all. My old colleague Walter Martin used to say, “I’ve read the last chapter in the book, and we win!” Evil will one day be done away with. just because evil is not destroyed right now does not mean it never will be.

In view of the above facts, the existence of evil in the world is seen to be compatible with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful God we can summarize the facts this way:

1. If God is all-good, he will defeat evil.

2. If God is all-powerful, he can defeat evil.

3. Evil is not yet defeated.

4. Therefore, God can and will one day defeat evil.”

One day in the future, Christ will return, strip away power from the wicked, and hold all men and women accountable for the things they did during their time on earth (see Matthew 25:31-46; Revelation 20:11-15). justice will ultimately prevail. Those who enter eternity without having trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation will understand just how effectively God has dealt with the problem of evil.”

 

Sharing Christ is a win / win situation

“When we share our faith, it is a win/win situation. If people accept what we say, we win. If we plant the seed of God’s Word, we win; and even if we are rejected, we win. The Bible says when that happens, the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us (see 1 Peter 4 14). When we contend for the faith and are rejected, we are to rejoice and leap for joy, for great is our reward in heaven (see Luke 6:22, 23). It is a winning situation every single time that we share our faith!”

Courage to stand up for truth

 

I was in a hotel watching the Discovery Channel. I rarely watch TV but sometimes I get great illustrations from it. Here’s a case in point. They were filming in a classroom of school children that appeared to be in 6th or 7th grade.

The teacher told the class they were preparing an experiment. She said, “I’m going to hold up two cards. One has a long line and the other has a short line. When I hold them up I’m going to ask you ‘How many think this is the shorter of the two lines when I’m actually holding up the long line. I want you to purposely answer incorrectly. We are going to bring in another student who is unaware of our test to see how he responds.” Everybody agreed and here is what happened.

They brought in the student who was unaware of the experiment. The teacher held up the two cards and said to the students, “Class, here are two cards. One has a short line and one has a long line. How many of you think this is the shorter of the two lines (while she is emphasizing the longer line).

Without hesitation, everyone raised their hands. So what does the other child do? Knowing he was answering incorrectly, he raised his hand too! They brought in another child, then another and another and each time the child rose his or her hand knowing it was wrong!

When I arrived home I had a little family discussion with my children. I told them this story and I also said, “I would like to think if you were one of the children in that class you would have politely disagreed and asked if anyone had a ruler!”

WE NEED TO GET REAL

The fact is many if not most people live their lives just like those school children who knowingly answered incorrectly. They’re afraid to stand up for truth when they know what’s right and most everyone else is wrong.

In Matthew 7:13 Jesus said, “Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. 14 Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”

Which road are you on?

—Philip DelRe

 

Quotes from Einstein on life

Albert Einstein on Jesus

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know his thoughts. The rest are details.” (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p.202)

“In the view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind, am able to recognise, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support for such views.”. (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, p. 214)

 

“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.” –Albert Einstein

“If one purges the Judaism of the Prophets and Christianity as Jesus Christ taught it of all subsequent additions, especially those of the priests, one is left with a teaching which is capable of curing all the social ills of humanity. It is the duty of every man of good will to strive steadfastly in his own little world to make this teaching of pure humanity a living force, so far as he can. If he makes an honest attempt in this direction without being crushed and trampled under foot by his contemporaries, he may consider himself and the community to which he belongs lucky.” -The World as I See It (1935) – Albert Einstein

“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source . . . They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.” (The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press, 2000 p. 214)

“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things.” – As quoted in Glimpses of the Great

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.

Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it.

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

 Abraham Lincoln on Gratitude to God

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven…but we have forgotten God……and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

“Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become… too proud to pray to the God that made us.

“The only assurance of our national safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion. To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men”

Evidence for the resurrection

“When you look at all the evidence of the resurrection “But, if not withstanding every appearance of truth, you suppose their testimony (the testimony of the Apostles) to be false, then, inexplicable circumstances of glaring absurdity crowd in upon you. You must suppose that 12 men of mean birth, of no education, living in that humble station which placed ambitious views out of their reach and far from their thoughts without any aid from the state, that they formed the noblest scheme which has ever entered into the mind of man, adopted a most daring means of executing that scheme  and conducted it with such address as to conceal the imposture under the semblance of simplicity and virtue.

“You must further suppose that men guilty of blasphemy and falsehood united in an attempt the best contrived and which proved the most successful for making the world virtuous and that they formed this singular enterprise without seeking any advantage to themselves with an avowed contempt for loss and prophet and with the certain expectation of scorn and persecution and that although of one another’s villainy,  none of them ever thought of providing for his own security  by disclosing the fraud.  But, that amidst sufferings the most grievous  to flesh and blood to conceal their conspiracy they continued on until all of them had been killed  with no one ever-changing his story. Those that can swallow such suppositions have no title to complain about miracles. No one  ever yet gave his life for what he knew to be a lie.”

As the French skeptic Ernest Renan admitted, “It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus, and if it is true that what we have in the Bible is a giant forgery, then let us worship the individual who was so brilliant as to think up a picture of a person like Jesus of Nazareth and the story of the Word of God.

The world is passing away but Jesus lives forever!

 

“We look back upon history and what do we see? Empires rising and falling, revolutions and counter-revolutions, wealth accumulating and wealth dispersed, one nation dominant and then another. Shakespeare speaks of ‘the rise and fall of great ones that ebb and flow with the moon.’

“I look back on my own fellow countrymen ruling over a quarter of the world, the great majority of them convinced, in the words of what is still a favorite song, that, ‘God who’s made the mighty would make them mightier yet.’ I’ve heard a crazed, cracked Austrian announce to the world the establishment of a German Reich that would last a thousand years; an Italian clown announce that he would restart the calendar to begin his own ascension to power. I’ve heard a murderous Georgian brigand in the Kremlin acclaimed by the intellectual elite of the world as a wiser than Solomon,more humane than Marcus Aurelius, more enlightened than Ashoka.

“I’ve seen America wealthier and in terms of weaponry, more powerful than the rest of the world put together, so that had the American people desired, could have outdone an Alexander or a Julius Caesar in the range and scale of their conquests.

“All in one lifetime.All in one lifetime. All gone with the wind. England part of a tiny island off the coast of Europe, threatened with dismemberment and even bankruptcy. Hitler and Mussolini dead, remembered only in infamy.

“Stalin a forbidden name in the regime he helped found and dominate for some three decades. America haunted by fears of running out of those precious fluids that keep her motorways roaring, and the smog settling, with troubled memories of a disastrous campaign in Vietnam, and the victories of the Don Quixotes of the media as they charged the windmills of Watergate.

“All in one lifetime, all gone. Gone with the wind.

“Behind the debris of these self-styled, sullen supermen and imperial diplomatists, there stands the gigantic figure of one person, because of whom, by whom, in whom, and through whom alone mankind might still have hope. The person of Jesus Christ.”

 

 

There are some bright young philosophy students who think they have these arguments against God. I challenge them to find an argument in any of the great agnostics,  Bertrand Russell, Voltaire, Dave Hume, that is not already included in the Bible.

In Ecclesiastes, Habakkuk, Lamentations, Job, Psalms. God is so respecting of human freedom, that He actually gives us the arguments that people will one day turn against Him in His sacred scripture!

You may reject that kind of God but I respect that kind of God, He is not a puppet master, He does not force Himself down your throat He simply says, “This is the way it is, and now it is your choice, you can either choose Me, or choose against Me, but I respect that choice, and I will live with that choice and you will live with that choice.”

God vs. Science

In the early expansion of the universe there has to be a close balance between the expansive energy (driving things apart) and the force of gravity (pulling things together). If the expansion dominated then matter would fly apart too rapidly for condensation into galaxies and stars to take place. Nothing interesting could happen in so thinly spread a world.

On the other hand, if gravity dominated the world would collapse in on itself again before there was time for the processes of life to get going. For us to be possible requires a balance between the effects of expansion and contraction which at a very early epoch in the universe’s history (the Planck time) has to differ from equality by not more than 1 in 10⁶⁰.

The numerate will marvel at such a degree of accuracy. For the non-numerate I will borrow an illustration from Paul Davis of what that accuracy means: He points out that it is the same as aiming at a target an inch wide on the other side of the observable universe, twenty thousand million light years away, and hitting the mark!

In the face of such chances, isn’t it a fair supposition that something other than this great chance is at force here?

When silence is deadly

We must recognize that this country is close to being lost. Not first of all because of a humanist conspiracy, but because the Bible believing Christians in the last 40 years who have said that they know that the final reality is this infinite personal God, who is the Creator, they said they have known it, and they have done nothing about it. As the consensus has changed, there has been a vast silence.

 

Good definition of Atheism

The Religious Belief in a Spontaneous, Causeless, Sourceless, Purposeless, Meaningless, Existence.

 

The main theme of the Bible vs. the main theme of the Koran

The main theme of the Bible is God’s redeeming love through Jesus Christ. By contrast, the main theme (by actual word-count) of the Koran is the contrast of believers vs. non-believers and former believers. Almost every page either extols the virtue of being a Muslim or condemns non-believers as infidels, destined for eternal punishment. If you were to remove every verse exhorting believers and every verse that threatens unbelievers, there would be little left in the Koran. Ironically, the Koran says, “Let there be no compulsion in religion,” yet, if you refuse to convert or leave the punishment is death. How is that not a blatant contradiction?

My point is not to embarrass another man’s religion but to put the Bible in context.

A convicting quote by an atheist to Christians

Did I firmly believe, as millions say they do, that the knowledge and practice of religion in this life influences destiny in another, religion would mean to me everything. I would cast away earthly enjoyments as dross, earthly cares as follies, and earthly thoughts and feelings as vanity.

Religion would be my first waking thought and my last image before sleep sank me into unconsciousness. I should labor in its cause alone. I would take no thought for the morrow of Eternity alone. I would esteem one soul gained for heaven worth a life of suffering.

Earthly consequences would never stay my hand, nor seal my lips. Earth, its joys and its grief’s, would occupy no moment in my thoughts.

I would strive to look upon Eternity alone, and on the Immortal Souls around me, soon to be everlastingly happy or everlastingly miserable. I would go forth to the world and preach to it in season and out of season, and my text would be, WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT A MAN IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD AND LOSE HIS OWN SOUL?’

Hero’s Among Us Jim Ryun pg. 286-287

It is inevitable that when a nation, or a great empire, or the whole world is undergoing convulsions and facing a great crisis accompanied by fear for what is coming that men should ask themselves what the future holds.

That is the reason why in the last forty years we have had many books by scientists, economists, statesmen and philosophers attempting to foretell what lies ahead more than at any other time in human history there is only one great Book among all the religions of the world that makes any attempt to predict the future in all its ramifications.

That Book is the Bible, which not only contains thousands of words of prophecy, but also stands alone as the only book divinely inspired. It is indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our pathway.

Sir Isaac Newton constructed a small scale model of our solar system. It simulated the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities. It also rotated and orbited when a crank was turned. A scientist friend of Newton’s seeing the model, said,

“Who made it?” Newton answered,

“Nobody.”

“Evidently you did not understand my question” the visitor said. I asked, “who made this?” Newton said,

“Nobody. What you see just happened to assume the form it now has.”

“You must think I am a fool!” the visitor retorted heatedly, “Of course Somebody made it, and he is a genius.” Newton replied:

“This is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?”

The Words of Jesus are the greatest words ever spoken

If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene, if you were to combine them and refine them and cleave out all the excess verbiage, if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summary of the Sermon on the Mount. And it would suffer immeasurably by comparison.”

-James T. Fisher from:  A Few Buttons Missing: The Case Book of a Psychiatrist

“Of course, those who do not believe in God, nor in a revelation from God to man, nor in any superhuman prediction of future events, will reject alike the predictions of Daniel, Jesus, Paul, and John. But for those who call themselves Christians to deny the resurrection, the judgment, the second coming, and other predicted events, is absurd enough to make all the logicians in Hades laugh and all the angels weep … Woe to the so-called Christian who under the pretence of a science falsely so-called denies the reality of revelation. Like Esau, he has sold his birthright of the hope of eternal glory for a mess of pottage, the beggarly elements of worldly wisdom and pride” (Studies in the Book of Daniel, Vol. 2, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972, p. 270).

—Robert D. Wilson

Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks, analyzed the chances of any one man fulfilling the Messianic prophecies by chance. For just eight prophecies to be fulfilled through one man the odds are one chance in 100,000,000,000,000,000. The probability of 17 prophecies being fulfilled by one person is one out of 480 followed by 30 zero’s. The chance of 48 prophecies being fulfilled becomes a staggering¾one out of chance in 10 with 157 zero’s after it. This number is larger than the total number of atoms in the universe! There is only one man in all of history who fits the description of these prophecies. Jesus Christ alone fulfilled more than 300 specific ancient biblical prophecies. 

United States Presidents

George Washington: “It is impossible to rightly govern the world without the bible.”

John Adams was the second president. “The bible is the best book in the world.  It contains more…  Than all the libraries and I have seen.”

John Quincy Adams was the sixth president: “It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.”

Andrew Jackson was the seventh president: “That book, sir, is the rock on which our Republic rests.”

Zachary Taylor was the 12^th president: “Quote it was for the love of the truths of this great book than our father is a abandoned their native shore for the wilderness.”

Abraham Lincoln was the 16^th president: “But for this book we could not know right from wrong.  I believe the bible is the best gift god has ever given to man.”

Ulysses S. Grant was the 18^th president: “The bible is the anchor of our liberties.”

Ruther ford B. Hayes the 19^th president: “The best religion the world has ever known as the religion of the bible.  It builds up all that is good.”

Benjamin Harrison the 23^rd president: “It is out of the word of god that a system has come to make a life suite.”

William Mckinley the 25^th president: “ The more profoundly we study this wonderful book…  The better citizens we will become.”

Theodore Roosevelt the 26^th president: “No educated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.”

Woodrow Wilson 28^th president: “The bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life.”

Herbert Hoover 31^st president:  “The whole of the inspirations of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ …  To read the bible …  Is a necessity of American Life.”

Franklin Roosevelt 32^nd president: “It is a fountain of strength….  I feel that a comprehensive study of the bible is a liberal education for anyone.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower 34^th president: “In the highest sense the bible is to us the unique repository of ete turn all spiritual truths.”

 

Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think to yourself that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews.  For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:13 

 

“Our number one problem is a faulty concept of God.”

“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Where did God come from? 

“Try imagine nothing exists. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, and no galaxies. There are no elements such as carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, or oxygen. There are no such things as time, space, matter or energy. There is no universe, no God, nothing.  

“If there ever was a time when nothing existed, then nothing would exist now. Therefore something must be eternal.  You only have two choices: either God is eternal and uncreated, or matter is eternal and uncreated. There is no third option. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity provided a basis for proof that time; space and matter had a definite beginning. That leaves us with our only other option.”

“A study was done a while back into all the famous atheists of history, Jean Paul Sartre, Camus, Friedrich Nietzche, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and every single one of them had something in common. They either lost their father when they were young, their father abandoned their family, or they had a terrible relationship with their father. That is very interesting because often these doubts aren’t really driven by intellectual questions; they are being driven by an emotional issue that really blocks them from wanting to relate to a heavenly father because they feel so abandoned, or cheated, or hurt by their earthly father.”

The famous atheist Aldous Huxley speaks for all atheists (whether they like it or not) in this priceless quote: “I had motives for not wanting the world to have mean­ing; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption … The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem of pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself as no doubt for most of my con­temporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system, and liberation from a cer­tain system of morality. We objected to the morality be­cause it interfered with our sexual freedom.”

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

“If anything now exists, either something is eternal, or no one, plus nothing equals, everything.” -Dr. Walter Martin

“Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the thought of identifying themselves with Jesus Christ and admitting they are sinners.”

“Buddha never claimed to be God. Moses never claimed to be Jehovah. Mohammed never claimed to be Allah. Yet Jesus Christ claimed to be the true and living God. Buddha simply said, “I am a teacher in search of the truth.” Jesus said, “I am the Truth.” Confucius said, “I never claimed to be holy.” Jesus said, “Who convicts me of sin?” Mohammed said, “Unless God throws his cloak of mercy over me, I have no hope.” Jesus said, “Unless you believe that I Am, you will die in your sins.”

The Pharisees tried to trip Jesus up all the time with intellectual mind games. They, however, were more interested in heat than in light. Their primary concern was not truth, but in protecting their love affair with the world. Nothing has changed, people know that to acknowledge Jesus is to renounce the world, and that is too high a price for many, so they look for ways to justify their unbelief. Unbelief is a refusal to believe. God calls it–rebellion!

 

“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene….No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

“God exists whether or not men may choose to believe in Him.  The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces that thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God.”

“Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics. This is why, when pressed, the atheist will often attempt to hide his lack of conviction in his own beliefs behind some poorly formulated utilitarianism, or argue that he acts out of altruistic self-interest. But this is only post-facto rationalization, not reason or rational behavior.”

“The atheist can appeal to nothing absolute, nothing objectively true for all people, it is just mere opinion enforced by might. The Christian appeals to a standard outside himself/herself in which truth and qualitative values can be made sense of.”

“The most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being.” Newton

“According to PhD astrophysicists and qualified American science professors, the odds of the more than 2,500 prophecies found in the Bible being fulfilled by chance are 1 with 2,000 zeros after it. According to the mathematical science of probability, if a number has more than 50 zeros after it, the odds of that happening by chance is virtually impossible. This is irrefutable proof that the Bible is inspired by God!”

“I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen.” -Martin Luther

“The best defense that anyone can have against the wiles of the devil is a humble heart”: “Nothing sets a person so much out of Satan’s reach as humility.” Humility is a great protection against falling headlong into Satan’s trap. Besides, it is hard to fall down when you are already prostrate before God.”

A theological definition of grace:

1. “Grace is the divine influence upon the heart, and its reflection in the life; including gratitude. “Good will, loving-kindness, favor; used of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of Christian virtue.
2. “The spiritual condition of one governed  by the power of divine grace.”

“I was at this time of living, like so many Atheists or Anti-theists, in a whirl of contradictions.  I maintained that God did not exist.  I was also very angry with God for not existing.  I was equally angry with Him for creating a world.”

Speaking of the testimony of the Apostles to the resurrection of Jesus:

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was the famous Royal Professor of Law at Harvard University, and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law in the same university, upon Story’s death in 1846.

H. W, H. Knott says of this great authority in Jurisprudence: “Ib the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States.!

Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A treatise on the Law of Evidence which “is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure.”

In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ. The following are this brilliant jurist’s critical observations:

“The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world.

“The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths.

“Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unblenching courage.

“They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error.

“To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.”

 

“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?… Thus, in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist – in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless – I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality – namely my idea of justice – was full of sense. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning:  just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” – C.S. Lewis

“We must recognize that this country is close to being lost. Not first of all because of a humanist conspiracy, but because the Bible believing Christians in the last 40 years who have said that they know that the final reality is this infinite personal God, who is the Creator, they said they have known it, and they have done nothing about it. As the consensus has changed, there has been a vast silence.”

“We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven…but we have forgotten God……and we have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own”. “Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become… too proud to pray to the God that made us. The only assurance of our national safety is to lay our foundation in morality and religion. To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men”  -A. Lincoln

 

“The chief danger of the Twentieth Century will be religion without the Holy Ghost, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God . . .  and heaven without hell.” -William Booth

“Someone once said that if you sat a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a million years, one of them would eventually type out all of Hamlet by chance. But when we find the text of Hamlet, we don’t wonder whether it came from chance and monkeys. Why then does the atheist use that incredibly improbable explanation for the universe? Clearly, because it is his only chance of remaining an atheist. At this point we need a psychological explanation of the atheist rather than a logical explanation of the universe.”

“A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.”

“The odds of life originating by accident are the same odds as an unabridged dictionary resulting from an  explosion in a printing shop. For life as we know it, to originate by chance would be the same odds as a monkey producing an encyclopedia by randomly pushing the keys on a typewriter!” W. Conklin

“Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.”

“No philosophical theory which I have yet come across is a radical improvement on the words of Genesis, that ‘In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth’.”

“Karl Marx said man is not responsible for his own behavior because his behavior is economically pre-determined. Sigmund Freud said man is not responsible for his own behavior because his behavior is pre-natally pre-determined. Charles Darwin said man is not responsible for his own behavior because his behavior is genetically pre-determined. John Dewey said man is not responsible for his actions, because they are educationally pre-determined. Jean Dixon said man is not responsible for the way he is because it’s astrologically pre-determined. Sociologists say it’s not your fault, it’s your environment. God says men are without excuse.”.

“The rest of the scriptures are but a commentary on the Ten Commandments, either exciting us to obedience by arguments, alluring us by promises, or restraining us from transgressions by threatenings. Rightly understood, the precepts of the New Testament are but explications, amplifications and applications of the Ten Commandments.”

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how he could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.” A. Lincoln

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

“Everything in Christianity is connected more or less directly with the great facts of Sin and Redemption; and the plan of Redemption. The essence of Christianity cannot be rightly understood until the doctrine of Sin be adequately recognized and established.”

“It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.”

“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.”

“A church which does not exist to do good in the slums of a city is a church that has no reason to justify its longer existence-Not for yourself church do you exist any more than Christ existed for Himself His glory was that He laid aside His glory, and the glory of the church is when she lays down her respectability and her dignity and counts it to be her glory to gather together the out casts, and her highest honor to seek amid the foulest mire the priceless jewels for which Jesus shed His blood.”

“Maybe the atheist cannot find God for the same reason a thief cannot find a policeman.”

An utterly fascinating illustration of this duping of ourselves is the latest arts building opened at Ohio State University, the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts, another one of our commercial exploits in the name of intellectual advance.  Newsweek branded this building “America’s first deconstructionist building.”  It’s white scaffolding, red brick turrets, and Colorado grass pods evoke a double take.  But puzzlement only intensifies when you enter the building, for inside you encounter stairways that go nowhere, pillars that hang from the ceiling without purpose, and angled surfaces configured to create a sense of vertigo.  The architect, we are duly informed, designed this building to reflect life itself-senseless and incoherent-and the “capriciousness of the rules that organize the built world.”  When the rationale was explained to me, I had just one question: Did he do the same with the foundation?

The laughter in  response to my question unmasked the double standard our deconstructionists espouse.  And that is precisely the double standard of atheism!  It is possible to dress up and romanticize our bizarre experiments in social restructuring while disavowing truth or absolutes. But one dares not play such deadly games with the foundations of good thinking.

“God gave you two ears and one mouth so you could listen twice as much as you talk. He could have given you two mouths, one on each side of your head and one ear in the middle of your forehead so you could talk to two people at the same time. Notice also the distinct difference between the mouth and the ear. The ears are always open, always ready to receive instruction. But for the mouth, God provided three lines of defense to keep it shut. The tongue is completely surrounded with a double row of sharp teeth, above and beneath. It also has two powerful jaws, and two lips, capable of being tightly compressed in order to keep that little two ounce piece of flesh from causing any more trouble.”

 

“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

“Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money, but you cannot get more time.”

“…the real discoveries of science — as opposed to the materialist philosophy that has been imposed upon science – point straight towards the reality of intelligent causes in biology. When you realize that fact, then you are ready to recognize that there are two definitions of “science” in our culture. One definition says that scientists follow the evidence regardless of the philosophy; the other says that scientists must follow the (materialist) philosophy regardless of the evidence.”

“The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words ‘true’ or ‘false’.”

“I do not feel obliged to believe that same God who endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect had intended for us to forgo their use.”

“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible”

“What will matter when this life is over? Wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away. It will not matter where you came from, what your skin color or gender. It will not matter what you bought but what you built. Not how much you made but how much you gave. Not how much you learned but how much you taught. It’s not competence but character that will count. What will matter is what you did with what you had. Every act of integrity, compassion, courage, or sacrifice that enriched, empowered, or encouraged others to emulate the example of Jesus Christ, that is what will be rewarded throughout eternity.”

“There is only one great Book among all the religions of the world that makes any attempt to predict the future in all its ramifications. That Book is the Bible, which not only contains thousands of words of prophecy, but also stands alone as the only book divinely inspired. It is indeed a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our pathway.”

“The whole treasury of God will be made over by deed of gift to the soul that is humble enough to be able to receive it without growing proud because of it. God blesses us all up to the full measure of what is safe for Him to do. If you do not get a blessing, it is because it is not safe for you to have one.”