Posted by MD on 4/13/2002, 2:36 pm

“Ohhhh!” I was hearing all around me. It was like the feeling you may get when somebody you love expresses to you how they love you and I is so pleasant to you to hear it from the person you love. And how, maybe you’re in some terrible situation you’re suffering from, and the person you love tells you how they’re going to do something, maybe give you something big that is going to suddenly get you out of all the trouble you’re in, and it is because the person loves you so much. Then there is that feeling of love that just comes to you, that is so overpowering. What if there had been an atheist present there, and even after the service he was still trying to convince himself that there is no God? What would he say? He would say that it was all just a bunch of emotion and hype. Not the presence of any real being, because such a being doesn’t exist, he would say. But no. That’s not what it is. It’s the REAL presence of the REAL God. If it were just a bunch of emotion and hype, it wouldn’t be like that. It would be like some Pentecostal churches, with people just ACTING that way, but without there being any ability to really sense a powerful presence of God himself. And would we be able to prove to this atheist that God was really there? No, it would be a pointless pursuit, because there was nothing physical there that indicated God’s presence, and he would just keep on denying it. As for me personally, if that were the attitude he had, I think I would just give up on trying to convince him. I don’t know what else to tell him. I remember once seeing a movie about an atheist woman (being portrayed by Jodie Foster) who was trying to establish contact with extraterrestrials out in space, and a comment she made in one part. She said, “I just can’t believe there could be a God who could have created this whole world and this whole universe and then left no empirical proof of his existence.” That struck me as so… RIDICULOUS! It made me imagine being with her beside the ruins of some great ancient civilization—maybe the pyramids of Egypt or something—and responding to her, “I just can’t believe there could have been any ancient Egyptians… who could have built all this, and then left no empirical proof of their existence.” I think she would have thought that comment was about as crazy as I thought her comment was. Like the way Socrates argued that a statue inferred the existence of a sculptor (and I’m always careful when dealing with Greek philosophies, but sometimes they’re right, as in this case, that simple logic is just simple logic), his observation that the things humans make with their hands logically entail the existence of humans, and I add that the things only a superior Being can make (planets, suns, galaxies, the universe) logically necessitate the existence of a superior Being. But they whack and contort their minds all around to convince themselves that there is some way it could all come into existence apart from their Creator, whom they refuse to acknowledge. All atheists have to do is look up at the stars in the sky—or look around at the earth—if they really want to know if there is a God who exists or not. But they insist on convincing themselves to the contrary, and God, in his infinite mercy, permits it to be possible for them to convince themselves he doesn’t exist, and there’s a reason why he does. It’s so when they come before him to face their punishment of hell for all eternity, they’ll be able to say, “Well, it was because I couldn’t see you anywhere that I was deceived.” And it’s true that they were deceived. And because they were deceived, they won’t suffer as much pain throughout eternity. If God made his presence known in a physical way that they absolutely couldn’t deny, the fact is, they would still reject him anyway, because they have simply chosen to reject him, and their eternal punishment would be all the worse. What a terrible thing it is, when the only thing Almighty God can do for them is to lessen the pain of their eternal punishment by allowing them to be deceived while they live on this earth. But he doesn’t interfere with the human will. ---------- To Steve [Part 2] Posted by Marvin on 9/28/2001, 2:36 pm , in reply to “To Steve: Replies from Marvin [Part 1]” I remember going out to my car that evening after the service was over, sensing my soul being fused together with the spirit realm, like the throne-room of God. I remember thinking, as I remembered their faces, including Sheila Hanley’s, ‘What a wonderful song that is. It does all this.’ I was wrong about that, though. That was a common mistake I was making. It’s been very common throughout history for us people who inhabit this earth to make that same mistake. The first times experiencing the presence of God in a powerful way, people tend to look around at whatever physical things happen to be there and to think it’s those physical things that are bringing it all about, the glory that has pervaded their souls. No, it wasn’t the song, “We worship and adore thee” that was doing it, it was just the presence of God himself. In Bible college at the time, I remember Mike Sabourin injecting some church history into the Unfolding Rev. course I was taking, and telling about how in the early Protestant Reformation led by Martin Luther, who, he said, was a mighty man of God, the Spirit of God was being manifest to the people in ways like they had never seen before. And I remember thinking precisely about that, that evening after the service. I was thinking this must have been what it was like, what was happening to them, the people back in those days in the late 1400s and early 1500s, in that movement led by Luther. I had been hearing how in the early days of the Lutheran Church it wasn’t like the way it was in Lutheran churches today, because the Spirit of God was there in a full way. And that evening I remember specifically thinking that this must have been the way it was for them back in those days. I used to imagine the first Lutheran church services as being like the way Chapel services were in the mid-seventies. Because, after all, if the Spirit of God was there, that’s the only way it COULD have been, right? I later learned that that was not historically so. It’s written in history, in fact, precisely how the earliest Lutheran church services went. They all consisted of an arranged plan of ritual and liturgy. There was another song Sheila Hanley used to sing: Look to Jesus, your sins are forgiven. Praise the Lord... for all the blessings he has given.... I remember one time in a dorm I was looking through some book that had a drawing of Martin Luther and his wife at Christmastime, while I heard somebody playing that song somewhere in the house. The woodcut depicted him there, with her sitting in a chair by the Christmas tree. I can’t remember if she was holding a stringed instrument. (Maybe if you have a book with that drawing, you could post it.) And as I heard the song, it kind of made me imagine her singing it. And other times when I used to hear Sheila Hanley singing it, it made me think of Martin Luther’s wife, the young woman in the woodcut, the former Catholic nun who had gotten saved (young enough to be his daughter, but in their culture there was nothing wrong with that), and I was trying to imagine what it would have been like back then. Crazy. Not historically accurate, but what we know is that the presence of God WAS there among them in those days, just as we experienced it at Chapel, in spite of things being so different about our lives and situations across the centuries (not to mention the difference between the liturgy they used and our Pentecostal worship today). (Sheila is no longer with us. You see, some of us have suffered from some emotional troubles. She was one who did. But that didn’t make God withhold his glory from her. Sometime in the late seventies or early eighties I remember it being announced that she had died, that she had committed suicide. But I’m sure, being born-again and having her slate wiped, there was nothing God held against her, and I have no doubt she’s with him now, and has been ever since.) Now our atheist friend, even if he had been in both places where the Spirit of God was present, would have to have looked only at the things that were present physically and claimed, “I don’t care what you people think you are sensing, you have no empirical proof of the existence of any God.” In the case of the Pentecostal worship, he would have said, “That’s all just a bunch of people getting all hyper about some emotions they’re feeling.” And what would we be able to say to him? Now, Steve, although you’re not denying the existence of God, in order to deny he was present at Chapel, you’re pulling the same argument as the atheist. “It’s all just a ‘bag of mawkish Pentecostal emotional tricks’....” So how do we think we’re going to prove to you that God was really there? I don’t know. I guess we’re not going to. The same situation applies as to the atheists. I’m not saying you’re headed for hell as an atheist would be, but if after sensing the presence of God, you’re going to work to convince yourself that that’s not what it is, the same situation will apply. God is not going to present to you physical, material proof of his presence. God has decreed that for the sake of fallen man in this fallen age, he is going to be an “invisible God.” But man’s spirit is still supposed to be able to sense his presence when it’s there. When a man chooses to deceive his own spirit and try to convince himself that God isn’t there, then according to the way God has set the parameters for this fallen age, that’s just the way it’s going to stay. But I wish you wouldn’t do that to yourself. (Continued)