"Believer in God"

We have Duke "Fans", but religious "Fanatics", "Cameron Crazies", but religious "nuts". But think for a minute, what is so unreasonable about believing in a creator? No one who has ever visited my home and been invited down to the basement train room has ever said to me. "Do you have any idea how that thing happen to appear in the corner of your basement?" No one would seriously consider that my layout just "happened" as a result of a random collection of molecules somehow gathering together in my basement to form a model railroad. (even though it looks pretty random sometimes) Likewise, a person walking along a beach, upon finding a watch, doesn't ever say to himself; "My what an interesting arrangement of silicon and plastic, oh look, there are even some traces of metal in here, I wonder what forces of evolution caused it to happen?"

How is it that we "know" that there was a designer, when we see a human design, but reject the notion of a cosmic design, and designer, even though that design is vastly more complex and wonder filled than anything I can ever conceive of in the corner of my basement? To me, not believing is the more unreasonable option.

Further, there is a book that makes the seemingly outrageous claim that it is the very "Word" of God. It is known as the Bible. Actually it is not really just one book, but a whole collection of books, written over a period of many years by men of different ages and cultural backgrounds. Some have read the amazing predictions made in some of these books, and simply dismissed them as fabrications added in after the fact, because they are so detailed they couldn't possibly have been written before the fact. As historians unearth earlier and earlier copies of manuscripts, however, it is those who claim that the stories were written after the fact that are being proved in error. Just the other day I was reading that there are now located some New Testament manuscript portions (portions of the gospel of John found in Egypt) with verifiable dates within 70-100 years of Christ's death and resurection, and a small piece of the Gospel of Matthew that, based on the script style and the location where it was discovered, has a probable date of within 40 years or so of when Christ walked on this earth. (sometime before 70AD when the Romans laid waste to Jeruselem) These manuscripts are much closer to the original texts than any existing manuscripts that we have from Shakespere for instance, and in fact both of these almost certainly date from a time when people that had known Christ while he walked this earth still lived to deny and/or correct any false statements if they were being made.

From this and other textual evidence it is not rational to deny the very existance of Christ as some have even tried to do. The only other options left are to class him as either a liar, insane, or the actual Son of God himself, because according to the texts, that is who he claimed to be. In fact, this was the very reason that he was crucified, so he must have actually believed it himself. If not, he would have simply explained to the rulers of the day that they had "misunderstood" what he meant. You can not simply call him a "good man", as many have tried to do, and some continue to do to this day, because a "good" man would never have made the outlandish claims that he did. However, if he was indeed who he claimed to be, then we had better take notice of what he said, and that was that if we will believe that he is the Son of God, then we also will have eternal life. (Found in the book of John, Chapter 3, at verse16, and in other places.)

I will let others spend the time to study all the details of semantics and precise interpretations. (After all some of our friends will argue about what color green was used for the trim on 1900's passenger cars, but just because we don't have any of the original paint chips left as evidence, doesn't mean they were not painted green, or that we should disbelieve those who claim that they were.) Apart from all the potential for discussion, (both good and bad) the Bible holds enough good advice and direction to not only let a person live a fulfilled life here on this earth, but to find life eternal as well. Check it out today! More good information to browse may be found at this site.

Dick :)