Allen Webster

Topic(s): Bible Authority, Bible Influence, Bible Study

It starts out subtly. The religious characters in the TV shows are always a little weird. News reports focus on aberrations in the “Christian community”—people who either live in the past or are strange, simple, offbeat people, or hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach. In college it becomes more blatant. A biology professor or a psychology teacher comes right out and makes fun of anyone who still believes the Bible is anything more than a mistake-filled collection of ancient Jewish sayings.

You won’t get through your freshman year without being told that belief in God is for the back-woodsy, uneducated—though perhaps well-meaning—folks back home. It belongs to those who still use typewriters, think CDs are something you put in a bank, and think IPODs must be some kind plant or something NASA invented. It is not for a person who is educated and intelligent. Only the uninformed, ignorant, or unbalanced believe the Bible. No one takes anyone seriously who takes the Bible seriously.

So what about that?

Let’s start at the beginning: Do you believe in God? “My parents do, I think. My grandmother does for sure. Everybody at church does, so I guess I do. I mean, everybody believes in God, don’t they?”

No, you will find some who positively don’t. And unless you absolutely do, then you may end up on their side.

You must examine the evidence and decide what you believe. You can’t get by on your parents’ faith or go to heaven on your preacher’s coattails. You’ve got to make up your mind if you really believe in God and His Son Jesus, or if you believe in evolution and its “son” Humanism.

Don’t be intimidated by unbelieving philosophers, professors, or scientists. An intelligent, educated person can—and should—believe in God and in the Bible as His Word. Some of the world’s greatest men, whose intelligence is indisputable, were believers.

Have you ever heard of any of these?

SIR ISAAC NEWTON: This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God . . . I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.¹

RALPH WALDO EMERSON: Jesus is the most perfect of all men that have yet appeared.²

CHARLES DICKENS (in his will): I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and exhort my dear children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teachings of the New Testament.³

SHAKESPEARE (in his will): I commend my soul into the hands of God, my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Saviour, to be made partaker of life everlasting.⁴

GEORGE WASHINGTON: It is impossible [for a man] to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible . . . The Hand of providence has been so conspicuous in all this, that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations.”⁵

JOHN ADAMS: The Bible is the best Book in the world.⁶

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: Young man, my advice to you is that you cultivate an acquaintance with and firm belief in the Holy Scriptures, for this is your certain interest. I think Christ’s system of morals and religion, as He left them with us, is the best the world ever saw or is likely to see.⁷

THOMAS JEFFERSON: I have said and always will say, that the studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands . . . The Bible makes the best people in the world.⁸

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS: My custom, is to read four or five chapters [of the Bible] every morning immediately after rising . . . It . . . seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day . . . It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.⁹

ABRAHAM LINCOLN: I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this Book that you can by reason and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man.¹⁰

WOODROW WILSON: I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask every man and woman in this audience that from this day on they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book.¹¹

WILLIAM PENN: We believe the Scriptures to contain a declaration of the mind and will of God. . . . They ought also to be read, believed, and fulfilled in our day. . . . We accept them as the words of God himself.¹²

DANIEL WEBSTER: From the time that, at my mother’s feet or on my father’s knee, I first learned to lisp verses from the sacred writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation.¹³

DOUGLAS MACARTHUR: Believe me, Sir, never a night goes by, be I ever so tired, but I read the Word of God before I go to bed.¹⁴

WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE: I have known ninety-five great men of the world in my time, and of these, eighty-seven were all followers of the Bible.¹⁵

Pretty impressive company, wouldn’t you say? So what do you believe in if you don’t believe in God? Yourself—and evolution. To believe that man evolved from lower life forms requires belief in spontaneous generation—that life came from non-life—which was long ago disproved by science. From nothing comes . . . nothing. We have something; therefore, something has always existed. There are but two possibilities: mind or matter. Which is more plausible: that dead, lifeless, inanimate matter brought this complicated world into existence, or that there was an eternal, intelligent, powerful mind behind the creation of the universe? Surely the latter. As Isaac Bashevis Singer said,

A number of materialistic thinkers have ascribed to blind evolution more miracles, more improbable coincidences and wonders, than all the teleologists could ever devise.

For one to say, “There is no God,” he must be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent—all-powerful, all-knowing, and everywhere at the same time. Otherwise, the power he does not have may be the power of God; the place where he is not may be the place where God is; and the knowledge that he does not have may be the knowledge of God.

Some doubt God’s existence since He is not perceptible to our sensory system. According to this reasoning, we would also have to repudiate the human conscience, as well as molecular adhesion and gravity. Just because I have never seen Katmandu doesn’t mean it is not at the base of Everest.

Howard Hendricks observed, “There is no such thing as a correspondence course for swimming.” If you want to swim you must get into the pool. It is the same in the world of ideas. You cannot remain neutral on the question of the existence of God and the Bible as His Word. Test the water.

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

Endnotes:

¹ http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/history/virtual/reading/core4-04r06.htm.

² http://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/volume3/chapter26/tributes.php.

³ http://www.xmission.com/~fidelis/volume3/chapter26/tributes.php.

⁴ http://shakespeare.about.com/library/weekly/aa101000a.htm.

⁵ http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/founding.html#gw. Washington's letter of August 20, 1778 to Brig. General Thomas Nelson.

⁶ http://www.eadshome.com/JohnAdams.htm.

⁷ http://bostonreview.net/BR30.2/nash.html

⁸ http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=12817

⁹ http://quotes.zaadz.com/John_Quincy_Adams

¹⁰ http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/biblequotes.htm.

¹¹ http://www.errantskeptics.org/Quotes_by_Presidents.htm

¹² http://jcsm.org/AmericasFounders/WilliamPenn.htm.

¹³ http://preceptaustin.org/2_timothy_314-15.htm

¹⁴ http://www.thescriptures.org/quotes/index.html

¹⁵ http://www.thescriptures.org/quotes/index.html.