What May be Known of God

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. (Romans 01:18-19, NKJV).

The gods of most religions wrap themselves in mystery, and are said to be unknowable. The pantheon of gods in ancient Greece, Rome, and Scandinavia, and in modern Hindi, as well as other religions new and old, are not only mysterious, but changeable and unpredictable. New Age deities are likewise mysteries and riddle-ridden. And for those erroneous religious philosophies that preach that we humans are gods, the required quest is one of discovering one's own “inner avatar” through fruitless meditation and aimless (or even dangerous) thought experiments.

The God of the Bible is none of those things. He is knowable and unchanging, and most importantly, He desires us to know Him in the same way that one person knows another. That is why He sent His Son to become one of us, living life among us, and going steadfastly to the Cross to remove the barrier of sin between us and our Creator.

So then, what may be known of God?

Everything needful.

He is living,

He is eternal.

He is transcendent (present everywhere and living beyond time and space).

He is deserving of honor and glory.

He is all-powerful.

He is all-knowing.

He is a Person.

He is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

He loves us.

He is our Judge.

He cannot abide sin or unrighteousness.

He is merciful, gracious, and slow to anger.

He cares for us, and thinks innumerable thoughts about us that are good and not evil.

His ways are above our ways.

He knows everything about us.

He works all things together for good to those who love Him.

He provides for us through His goodness, a future and a hope.

These are just a few of the things He has revealed about Himself in His Word, and the truly beautiful aspect of this is that the more we study the Bible, the more we know God.

Notice that – it is not just the more we know of God.

Reading and studying His revelation to us in Scripture enables us to know Him personally. Like human beings come to know each other.

There can be no greater pursuit of knowledge.

Jesus said this, as recorded by John:

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:3, NKJV).

It is self-evident that there can be no loftier goal than seeking eternal life. This is every heart's innate desire whether admitted or not, for life, by its very nature, seeks to remain alive. This is clear in even the most “primitive” living cells, and is exponentially true in us, who are self-conscious beings made in the image of our Creator.

Ironically, we are made to be immortal, and will live into eternity no matter what, for God has made us so that we cannot be unmade. But where we spend that eternity, in Heaven with God, or in Hell forever separated from God, is the key issue of our existence.

And that key issue is resolved by what we do with our knowledge of God.

Hebrews summarizes it this way:

But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. (Hebrews 11:6, NKJV).

God's purpose in Creation is fellowship with us. He desires our company, and delights in giving us the desires of our hearts – hearts (emotion, intelligence and will) which He Himself designed and made.

It is likely that we may spend the rest of eternity in exploring the why of it all (why He wants to be with us, why He made the earth, the heavens and the Heaven of heavens for us), but that He did so is incontrovertible according to His Word.

He made us for His good pleasure. Attaining knowledge of Him is the most satisfying endeavor we can undertake, and unlike the gods of other religions, He is knowable and wants to be known. He does not change. His words are true. He is faithful.

Everything about us is primed to finding out what may be known of God, and it is that knowledge, and what we do with it, that will either save us, or leave us condemned.

Paul's prayer for the Ephesians (and for us) is...

that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, (Ephesians 1:17-20, NKJV).

Love,

Dad

Suppressing the Truth

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. (Romans 01:18-19, NKJV).

We live in a world filled with lies like the sea is filled with water. There is no escape. Truth is rare and precious and to be valued as a priceless gift from God, sought after and held onto like a rope dangling over the edge of an abyss.

For without truth, there is only darkness.

One of the things I remember most vividly when I first became a Christian was the fury I felt when I realized that my whole life up until that time had been based on deception. The things that I was taught by the world, lived by, and believed, were lies originating from the Father of Lies.

What was most infuriating was that most of these falsehoods were how I defined myself; they were the basis of who I thought I was and for 40 years I had been a willing dupe, an effective and compliant participant and coconspirator in my own blindness.

I believed that humans were accidents of chance over time, that the earth was an ancient piece of luck and nothing more. I believed that unborn babies were parasites, not persons, and that we adults were doing them a favor by allowing them to be born. Or perhaps it was no favor at all.

I believed that God, if He existed, was uninvolved and cruel, whether intentionally or because He lacked the ability to meaningfully control anything or anyone.

I believed that every human was born, lived and died, blinking out of existence at the end like a meaningless blob of incidental life that just happened for no reason, and no purpose.

And above all I believed and lived as if I knew the real truth of things, and all who thought otherwise were either ignorant, insane, or childish.

There was deep inside, however, a small part of me that rebelled against these beliefs, that longed for something different, that frantically searched for something that would give me the one thing that my religion of lies could never provide: hope.

Looking back, it is a wonder that I survived as long as I did, for I often behaved as if my life, and the lives of those around me, had no value at all, and I would be better off dead. Or more precisely, that it really didn't matter whether I lived or died.

To emerge from that entrenched darkness into the light of the knowledge of Christ is a miracle. It is a release from prison, a gifting of sight to the willfully blind, and when it happened the scales of deceit fell off and I saw, for the first time as an adult, Truth.

You must not think that I had anything to do with my own transformation. There was nothing special or redeeming about me that enabled my release from the prison I was in, nor did I seek some “better” path. For what I did was exactly what Paul describes above. I “suppressed the truth in unrighteousness”.

Everyone, everywhere, has an innate knowledge of God. It is part of our essential being. He builds it into us. For want of a better word, we call it a “conscience”, and there is no naturalistic explanation that accounts for its existence. It does not aid our physical survival, or the survival of our species. In fact, acts of conscience are very often diametrically opposed to mere survival.

We have it from our beginning, and it is placed there by a merciful and gracious Creator who desires that we come to know Him, and walk with Him so that we may live forever, and not die.

But because we are also born as rebellious sinners, descendants of our sinful forebears, genetically incapable of righteousness and godliness, we practice burying that part of ourselves that knows right from wrong, that speaks to us in the language of God.

And the world helps us do that in every way it can. It promotes deceit, removes God as far away as possible, and aids us in believing the lie that we are accountable only to ourselves.

Its methods are subtle and ingenious. When it cannot completely destroy a person's innate awareness of God, it undermines that awareness by misdirection and illusion, appealing to the one ally that each us carries around like a congenital (from birth) tumor – our self pride.

In and of ourselves, we are no match against this campaign of deception, and as we mature, we become willing traitors, crushing the impulses of our conscience, searing them with the fiery heat of practiced sin and encouraged lusts.

Instead of resisting, as we age, we feed the enemy, allowing it to gain more and more ground in our hearts and minds until we reach the point where we cannot do anything different, when we are confirmed in our evil alliance beyond hope of redemption.

For every man, woman and child, that point of no return is known only to God. We cannot know it in ourselves or in anyone else, and often the person whom we deem to be utterly beyond salvage is the very person that God transforms before us in the miracle of rebirth.

For it is God who opens the eyes of the blind, who gives light in the darkness, who replaces a hardened heart of sin and pride with a new heart that longs to follow after Him. Our part in this transformation is that we come to the end of ourselves and admit that we are beyond help and hope.

It is only then that we begin to cease suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. It is only when we catch a glimpse of who we really are in ourselves that we seek a Savior, and everything we encounter in the world fights against such self-surrender, and rabidly seeks to prevent it from happening.

Understand the three primal forces arrayed against you in this life, seeking to turn you away from God who is your only hope. Each of these enemies has one powerful weapon in common, deception, and is practiced in using it with ruthless effect.

First, and most intimate, is your own “old nature”, the being who you are “naturally” without God in your heart. It is she that haunts your every waking thought and can invade your dreams, and who will be at war with you all the days of your life on this earth. She is what the Bible calls the flesh, and she desires dominion.

Her two allies, the world and Satan, will use every lie at their disposal to embolden your flesh, to strengthen it in the battle, to provide her with ammunition and power to overcome that part of you made new in Christ.

The battle will sometimes seem hopeless. It will often be that you will feel utterly defeated and helpless, but that is also a lie, for you are never alone in the fight. Christ has promised never to leave you nor forsake you. He has promised to be with you even in the darkest night, and is far more powerful than all of your enemies combined.

But it is a war waged every moment. You will be tempted to turn away, but He will provide an escape for every temptation (1Co 10:13).

And remember this above all else, that the only protection against this pervasive deceit is immersion in the truth, and the only source of truth is Christ, who is “the way the truth, and the life.”

So my beloved...

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints-- (Ephesians 6:11-18, NKJV).

Love,

Dad

Revealed from Heaven

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. (Romans 01:18-19, NKJV).

While in this context what is “revealed from Heaven” is God's wrath, the concepts of Heaven and divine revelation are worthy of discussions in and of themselves, and much could be said about both.

First, our full knowledge of God is dependent upon His revelation of Himself. While it is true that Creation, in all of its immense and microscopic complexity, speaks of His power and intelligence and glory, it says little about His innate character.

Many ancient, so-called primitive cultures recognized that power and glory by observing the world and sky around them, but their conception of the Being (or beings) behind it all was limited by their own feeble imagination. They guessed, but could not know, and in their guessing they devised fantastic and nonsensical tales that attempted to explain everything they observed and experienced.

Interestingly, every culture throughout human history has at least two mythologies in common: Creation; and at least one instance of global destruction. Even naturalists recognize a beginning of things, and call it the Big Bang, and admit to evidence that geological catastrophe occurred in the past on a more or less global scale. Usually, this devastation is attributed to a “natural” event, as in a meteoric collision.

The Bible's explanation of these two events is the only ancient account that is ordered and logical. Creation being explained by four immensely profound words, “In the beginning God...”, and the global devastation by the catastrophic flood which God caused to occur during Noah's time.

Both these explanations have lost favor during our lifetimes, but that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand. The point is that we could not know what happened with any precision without Someone providing an eyewitness report. For us, that eyewitness is God Himself, who inspired His Word to be recorded and preserved for mankind throughout the ages.

Which brings us to a very important subtext (underlying theme) of divine revelation, called Inspiration.

Ask yourself this question, if an all-powerful God exists, could He cause information to be known about Him in any way He chose? The obvious answer is, yes.

Given that, if this same Being ordained that faith is the vehicle by which His fallen creatures could return to Him, then how could that information come about that would both inform, and not invalidate that required faith?

While it is true that God could declare His existence unequivocally by ripping open the fabric of the Universe and stepping into Causality unmistakably at any time, (something He has promised to do in the future - Ro 14:11; Php 2:10), that act would absolutely negate faith. It is impossible to have faith in what is actually seen (Ro 8:24,25).

So then, what method of communication meets the requirements of accuracy without negating the opportunity for belief? The answer is the written word penned by holy men of God empowered (inspired) by the Holy Spirit.

The written word is objective and persistent. It is there for all to see throughout time and not subject to the vagaries (unexpected change) and miscommunication of the spoken word. The fact that these “oracles of God” were men does not in anyway detract from the claim that their writings were of supernatural origin; that they were, in fact, words “revealed from Heaven”.

God inspired these men to record exactly what He desired recorded.

Now this “inspiration” is not at all similar to what occurs in occult practices where a human claims to be “channeling” a non-material entity. When such happens in reality, and it undoubtedly does, what is taking place is not inspiration, but a type of possession.

That is not how God works at all. When the prophets who wrote our Bible operated under God's inspiration, these men were not possessed, but directed. They retained their own consciousness and identity, and wrote as God instructed of their own free will. They in no way became God, nor were they any less themselves, but instead faithfully recorded the words or visions God gave them.

Now can we prove that this happened? No, not in the scientific sense, but we can in an evidentiary sense in that much of what was given was history recorded beforehand (prophecy), so that the authenticity and origin of the information would be confirmed.

In fact, the Bible, by some reckoning, is more than two-thirds prophecy, and all of these that have been so far fulfilled have come to pass literally, just as foretold. The most verifiable among these are those 300 or so directly related to the birth, death and resurrection of Christ, all detailed centuries before taking place in time and space exactly as predicted. No other holy writings come close to such a track record, and no other writing stakes its claim to authenticity and its reputation on such prophecy. And given the accuracy of the events already fulfilled, there is no reason to conclude that the remaining, as yet unfulfilled, prophecies will come about in anything other than an equally literal sense.

One final point to make here is that this inspired revelation, like God's wrath, originates from Heaven.

Heaven is discussed at some length in Scripture, not perhaps as exhaustively as we would like, but with enough details to provide us with the following:

1. It is the abode of God.
2. It is a real location somehow apart from our four-dimensional reality of time and space, at least for the here and now.
3. Between here and there is a separation impossible to cross in a physical sense, and requires either physical death or an explicit translation by God.
4. At some future date, Heaven will emerge into our reality, and what has been separated, likely since the Fall of Man, will once again be reunited.
5. It is a place where evil cannot abide.
6. It is where a believer's true citizenship resides.

Perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind from the above list is this: Heaven is where God is, and is therefore the Source from which our own reality emerges. All that we see and experience in this life is but a pale shadow of what there is in Heaven.

Whatever beauty exists here comes from there. Whatever joy and satisfaction we may encounter here is but an echo of the joy and satisfaction we will experience there, if we believe in Christ.

Remember, Dear One, we are finite creatures who live on the edge of the Infinite. God has provided us from Heaven all that we need to know of Him now so that we can choose to believe in Him and abide with Him eternally.

Is it possible to understand fully what all that means? No, but it is enough to exercise our God-given reason to understand enough of Him to evoke rational faith sufficient to bring us into His presence forever more.

Love,

Dad

The Wrath of God

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. (Romans 01:18-19, NKJV).

God reveals Himself as an emotional Being. He has feelings and expresses them, and because we are made in His image, we are emotional beings, as well.

Yet, it would be a mistake to presume that we fully understand what or how God feels, in much the same way that it would be a mistake for a young child to presume the same about his or her parent. There is a depth of experience and being that the child is simply not equipped to plumb.

Along this line of reasoning then, there is at least one very prominent emotion of God that we barely know - His wrath.

Do not mistake human wrath for divine wrath. Humans tend to have outbursts of wrath. These are impulsive eruptions of anger that are entirely based on circumstance and are always harmful. The Bible unequivocally condemns such explosions and summarizes their effect by denouncing their impact:

So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. (James 1:19, 20, NKJV).

God's wrath, in contrast, is neither impulsive nor circumstantial. It is based entirely on His character and is directed against only one thing, although that thing is huge and has far-ranging consequences. Its target is sin.

God's wrath is His inevitable and settled response to all things that are in antipathy (opposed) to Him. It is His wrath that will, one day, cleanse all of Creation from that which is not of Him, and until that day, it is His love that delays that final act of Judgment.

It is God's righteous wrath that makes His mercy that much more miraculous and astounding. It is His wrath that makes His grace that much more measureless.

In fact, if we understand, at least in part, the vehemence and power and comprehensiveness and righteousness of His wrath, we will that much more appreciate His patience in allowing time for our repentance from sin, and the unimaginable lengths He has gone to in making that repentance possible through faith in the sacrifice of His own Son on the Cross.

It is God's chosen response to His wrath that makes His justice available, for in His wrath against sin He ordained the penalty of sin – eternal death – while, in His mercy, providing His Son as a vessel to contain that wrath.

However incomprehensible it may be to us, God appointed His Son to suffer the consequences of our rebellion. He has made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become His righteousness in Him.

His wrath demands our eternal punishment, since we, in rebelling against Him and His eternal goodness, rejected His gift of eternal life. By His design, the only alternative remaining to us is the torment of eternal death.

As the one is unknowably blessed, its opposite is unthinkably severe. We cannot therefore fully comprehend His kindness until we more fully comprehend what His kindness protects us from – His wrath.

Now the world hates God, partly because it has an instinctive understanding of its accountability to Him, and of the fact that we are rightful targets of His judgment. It alternately dismisses Him as a figment of collective imagination, thinks of Him condescendingly as the sin-excusing “Man upstairs”, or pictures Him as a bloodthirsty God of petulant vengefulness.

Obviously, He is none of those things, but is a holy, righteous, loving and patient Being with all power and knowledge. He is all that is good, and nothing that is bad. Scripture describes Him as someone in whom there is no variation or shadow of darkness.

His purity and goodness annihilates all that is impure and evil. By definition, to be in any state of opposition to Him is to be subject to that judgmental destruction.

And I believe that the most needful component in understanding God's wrath is to place it in the context of His deferring that judgment until the time of His choosing is fulfilled. That deferral, that containment, that temporary refusal to pour out that which would destroy evil forever is what He has described in His Word as His wrath.

In postponing Judgment, He has altered the otherwise instantaneous cause and effect of sin and cleansing, and is storing up the consequences of mankind's rebellion. He has named that trove of judgment, wrath, and will release it onto a Christ-rejecting world when the time is right, because to do otherwise would be to make His goodness and mercy a lie, and to undermine the purity and immutability of His love.

Without choice their could be no love, without Hell no Heaven, and without the judgment of God's wrath, there could be no everlasting life in His presence.

Do not fear His wrath for yourself, daughter, for Jesus has taken it upon Himself in your place, but fear it for the sake of the unbelieving world, and look upon unrepentant sinners as doomed prisoners of their own willful ignorance, destined for the fires of Outer Darkness.

Your job as an ambassador of Christ is to see them as He sees them, and by your love, show them His, so that they might also come to repentance and live.

Love,

Dad