“For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water. Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished” (2 Peter 3:5, 6).
“Behold, he withholdeth the waters, and they dry up: also he sendeth them out, and they overturn the earth” (Job 12:15).
“There shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning” (2 Peter 3:3, 4). The rest is here!
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
We accept reality to be the physical world around us. Reality is that which we know through our five senses: touch, taste, smelling, hearing, and seeing. Webster says truth is “the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality; conformity with fact,” also “a particular belief or teaching regarded by the speaker as the true one.” This adds the dimension of a spiritual reality.
“The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men” (Daniel 4:17).
I recently visited the “King Tut and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” display at the DallasMuseum of Art in Texas. We then went to the holocaust museum and had the rare privilege of hearing Max Glauben, a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. He described the horrible scenes of extermination that he experienced as a ten- to fifteen-year-old boy.
“The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men” (Daniel 4:17).
“There be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ” (Galatians 1:7)
The latest piece of presumed “superior scholarship” defaming God, His Christ, and the Bible, is a movie released last summer called the Da Vinci Code. The book version has been on the New York Times best-seller list since its release in 2003. The reception of such heresy in our society is revealing—it is also a best-seller in 150 other countries. The book defames Jesus’ character and says Mary Magdalene bore children to Him. It says Jesus never intended to be God and accuses the disciples of cover-up plots to make Jesus look divine. The Bible is accused of having “glaring historical discrepancies and fabrications.” The book is fiction but conveys an aura of factuality. A statement in the beginning of the book says, “Fact: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.”
“God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7).
“Behold now behemoth, . . . he eateth grass as an ox. . . . He moveth his tail like a cedar:. . . he is the chief of the ways of God:. . . the willows of the brook compass him about. . . . He drinketh up a river” (Job 40:15-24).
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
The complexity and order in nature from the billions of bits of precise DNA information on our genomes(Psalm 139:16) to the life cycle dependency of organisms in our ecosystem (Psalm104:14) are proof of God. But beyond that, that we find beauty in creation reveals a personality of emotion, pleasure, and goodwill (Revelation 4:11; 1 Timothy6:17). God’s predominate trait is love. “God is love” (1 John 4:16). This is not a selfish love of self-gratification but is revealed in seeking the welfare and delight of mankind. It reveals itself in nature, in beauty, designs, and miraculous innovations that could not self-organize from random chaos (Ecclesiastes3:11).