Jerry F. Bassett
“But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Heb. 11:6). There is no statement more profound than that of the fact that God is, for it declares God’s eternal existence. Nor is there a more profound thought than the fact that without faith it is impossible to please him, for it declares God’s authority over man and man’s consequent responsibility to his creator.
God’s eternal existence is demonstrated by the existence of matter. The psalmist wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork” (Psa. 19:1). If matter was not created then it is either eternal itself, or it came into existence from nothing. As to the former, matter is by nature temporal and not eternal. As for the latter, from nothing, nothing comes. Something has always been or nothing could be, and that “something” which has always been is the divine being of God.
Further, God’s eternal existence is demonstrated by the fact that man lives. The apostle Paul wrote,
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device (Acts 17:28-29).
Man can reproduce life after his own kind by the natural process of procreation, but neither man, nor any other natural force, can create life. Consequently, the fact that man possesses life demands the existence of an eternal being with power to give life, else there could be no life now. The eternal being with such power is God (Psalms 41:13, Job 33:4). This is also the point at which evolution falls flat on its face. Even in its clown-like gyrations to explain the existence of the many organically, functionally complete species it does not even touch on an explanation of the origin of life. Even the one cell with which the evolutionist begins either had to spring from a lifeless form into that having life (which, as any scientist knows, is impossible since life begets life) or it was created by a power able to give it life, and if power to give life, then power to create all species in complete form. If the evolutionist accepts the former he must deny the Bible as well as his “god” of science, if the latter he must deny evolution. Science and the Bible agree, but neither of them is compatible with the imaginative guesses of the theory of evolution.
God is. He is the creator and the provider. He is the savior, and thereby the giver of eternal life to those who believe that “he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him,” and who exercise that faith through obedience to His will. Jesus said. “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven” (Matt. 7:21).
