God, Is He Really Ot There
Welcome to Christianity 101 …
Here are some of the Scripture that provide the basis for this series;
My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. – Hosea 4:6
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. – Matthew 7:7,8
To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." John 8:31,32
Always be ready to make a defense to everyone who asks to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence.” - 1 Peter 3:15
• People have questions and are seeking answers
• There are answers for those who seek them
• Knowing and holding onto the truth sets people free
• Lack of knowledge is a bad and destructive thing
• There is a reason for the hope that we have
• People will ask us about that hope, when they do we need to be ready
• Being ready is not about winning arguments but to have genuine dialogue with
seekers.
Topics For This study;
• God: Is He Really Out There?
• The Bible: Is It Just Another Book?
• Jesus: Who Was He Really?
• Jesus: Why Did He Have To Die and Did He Really Rise Up From The Dead?
• Religions: Aren’t They All The Same?
• God: If He Is Good Why is There So Much Bad In The World?
Christianity is, reasonable, rationale and true. YOU KNOW - I have always been a proponent of believers having an intelligent faith… AND – I have always rejected the stereotype that when you become a Christian that somehow you checked your brains in at the door…
IN FACT – I believe that the opposite is the case, I believe that back in December of 1979 when I came to Christ – that I actually picked up my brains back up. BECAUSE – as the word of God declares, Jesus is the way, THE TRUTH and the life…
My hope is that this study accomplishes all God intends… And that it is just a start.
God: Is He Really Out There
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God." - Psalm 14:1
Romans 1:18-23
• The Psalmist is not calling the man a fool for thinking there is no God but for telling himself there is no God though deep in his mind he knows better. Unbelievers do not disbelieve they reject.
• Paul is not criticizing nonbelievers because they do not know about God but ought to know. Instead, he criticizes them because they do know about God but pretend to themselves that they don’t. They are not ignorant of the truth, but rather they suppress the truth and hold it down.
In this discussion I want to share with you four separate pieces of evidence for the existence of God.
Exhibit A – Creation (cosmological argument)
AND – to explain this defense for the existence of God, I’m going to need this Twinkie and some help from this table right here…. Just a couple of golden sponge cakes wafers and a little audience participation and we’ll nail down, this first defense of God’s existence.
QUESTION – Does this Twinkie Exist? (it’s not a trick question)
OKAY – let me ask you another question…
If this Twinkie did not exist, in fact, if nothing at all existed in this world, would nothingness require an explanation? {of course not….} AND – if you did offer an explanation of nothingness there would be no one there to here it.. Kind of like that tree falling in the forest thing…
BUT LISTEN - "The minute something exists, anything, even this Twinkie, would you not agree that there must be a sufficient reason or explanation for its existence?"
[YES - Whenever something exists, there must be an explanation behind its existence.]
OKAY let’s look at this Twinkie a little closer.
Does it depend on anything else for its existence? Are these sponge cakes contingent, meaning that it could not exist like it does without the help of a whole string of other items that also exist such as; (READ – ingredients)
Is this nutty bar contingent? or is this nutty bar non-contingent?
(Non-contingent means that it is both capable of creating itself and of sustaining itself forever).
SO - which is it, contingent or non-contingent?"
You’re right. These Twinkies needed help to be made… AND – these Twinkies will not always stay in this state. In fact, if we laid these Twinkies out in the elements for a few weeks, they would begin to decay and deteriorate as do all contingent commodities in this world, including, human beings.
HEY - When you get back home, take a look at some photo’s of your parents when they were your age…and you’ll see how ‘quickly’ things deteriorate over time.
Let’s summarize.
• We have Twinkies that indeed exist.
• It’s mere existence requires an explanation of some kind
• These Twinkies are a contingent substance.
NOW - here’s the big question: Who or what is the explanation for these Twinkies?
For that matter - who or what is the explanation for every other contingent thing that exists in this world? rocks, rivers, trees, mountains, stars, birds, oceans, bees, people?"
OKAY - to help you answer this question – (pick up a globe) I want you to IMAGINE a hula-hoop around this globe. UNDERSTAND - everything inside the hula-hoop, you know, everything inside the universe is a lot like a Twinkie. It’s contingent. It was brought into existence by some other force. It depends on something else for its ongoing existence, and it is slowly heading toward non-existence.
AND LISTEN - as we seek to identify the reason or the explanation for this Twinkie AND for all the other contingent stuff in our universe, should we expect to find the explanation - inside or outside the hoop?"
Now, be reasonable.
Should we expect to find the explanation for all this contingent stuff inside or outside the circle?"
That’s exactly right, it would have to be outside of the circle…And using our current set of definitions, whatever is outside the circle would be non-contingent, uncaused by anything else, totally self-reliant, powerful, eternal.
AND LISTEN - when you use terms like we just did, non-contingent, uncaused by anything else, self-sufficient, self-reliant, powerful and eternal, those descriptors are usually reserved for the power of God, a God-like power, or God himself.
THEREFORE - I think reasonable people should be proponents of the position that there is at least a God-like power out here. LISTEN – if people would only think for a minute they would have to conclude that a non-contingent force must exist, a force, that brought all the contingent stuff into being. And these Twinkies prove it.
{Give it to somebody – tell them not to eat it - to take away from them when you start exhibit c}
OKAY – let’s summarize this argument for God’s existence….
1. The Universe is contingent
2. Anything that is contingent must have been caused by something else
3. Therefore the universe was caused by something else, and this cause was God
NOW - this line of reasoning has generally been referred to as the cosmological argument (cosmos – world or creation) for the existence of God, and it’s a good one. YOU SEE - it forces people to come to the logical conclusion that there is someone or something outside the circle of contingent items that serves as an explanation for everything inside the circle.
When you list the necessary attributes of such a force or power, you wind up with a non-contingent being that seems a lot like what a God would or should be like. Now admittedly, this argument only goes so far. And it needs to be supported by other evidences for the existence of God. So let’s keep going.
Exhibit B – Design (teleological argument)
(teleos – means end of purpose)
NOW – the next line of reasoning I want to talk about, begins with a very powerful quote, an unexpected quote, as well, from none other than Charles Darwin himself, kingpin of evolutionary theory, and one of the leading proponents in his day of a world without a Creator -- a world that mysteriously exploded into being and then evolved slowly over an era of billions of years with no plan, no force behind it, no guiding hand.
I’m going to give you that very powerful quote in just a moment but before I do, I want you to look up here. Question what did you use to look up here?
Now by anybody’s standards, the human eye is a marvel. It’s made up of a hundred million cells. There are seven million special vision cones that fire up information to the brain whenever any degree of light comes their way.
And here’s a little trivia… Share your answer with those at your table. On average, how many shades of color can the normal human eye distinguish between?
Take a guess.
• How many of you said about a hundred?
• How many of you said like a number between hundred to five hundred?
• How many of you are chicken?
• You know what the right answer is?
A thousand. The average human eye can differentiate between a thousand different shades of color.
AND - Beyond that, our eyes have the most sophisticated auto focusing capability ever designed. Think about it - we can be sitting in a restaurant and in the space of a mere millisecond, read a menu on the far wall, then focus on the subtle smile forming on the face of our dinner companion, and then spot a hair in our salad.
We can do that in just about that (snap fingers) amount of time. No man-made device can or will ever be able to match the complexity, sophistication, and effectiveness of the human eye, which obviously is just one component of our marvelously designed bodies.
Well, one day after studying the human eye, Charles Darwin in a moment of unusual candor wrote these words. (This is a direct quote from his Origin of Species, a chapter called ‘Difficulties with the Theory’)
"To suppose that the human eye with so many parts all working together could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."
NOW - that’s from the ‘evolution’ man himself after studying the human eye.
CONSIDER - your heart--it’s not an accidental organ by chance evolution. It has been perfectly designed to pump 2,000 gallons of blood a day. Look at the kidneys and lungs. Your lungs are more than air sacs--they’re designed to filter oxygen out of the air you breathe. These organs contain 300 billion tiny blood vessels called capillaries. Your entire blood supply washes through your lungs once every minute.
An adult human brain contains over a hundred thousand billion electrical connections – more than all the electrical connections in all the electrical appliances in the world.
Your tongue has 8,000 taste buds. Eating is boring without it.
Your ears—do you think it was an accident they were designed to capture sound. The grooves, bumps, and ridges were created to catch passing sound waves and channel them into the eardrum. Your hands were made to grip and feel; the nose to smell. AND - the nose was put right above our mouth so we could enjoy the flavor of food better. Imagine if you were made differently. IF the ears were inside out, or if the nose was upside down--you’d drown every time it rained. Or if your mouth had 2 tongues?
LISTEN – the human body is visible evidence of a Great designer. A God.
I mean can you imagine a mother looking into the face of her newborn son or daughter and saying, ‘my what a beautiful random collection of gases…”
Scientist Dr Walter Bradley says; “the mathematical odds of assembling a living organism are so astronomical that nobody believes that random chance accounts for the origin of life. Even if you optimized the conditions, it wouldn’t work. If you took all the carbon in the universe and put it on the face of the earth, allowed it to chemically react at the most rapid rate possible for a billion years, the odds of creating just one functional protein molecule would be 1 chance in 10 with 60 zeros after it…
And that’s for just 1 functional protein molecule… When you consider the billions of molecules that make up human life – I think it takes a lot more faith to believe it just happened
[now that number 1 in 10 to the 60th power - is a really big number - and to really appreciate it, LET – me ask you a question, how many inches in diameter is the visible universe? the visible universe is a about 10 to the 28th inches in diameter
Biochemist Michael Behe says that the probability of linking together just 100 amino acids to create one protein molecule by chance would be the same as a blindfolded man finding one marked grain of sand somewhere in the Sahara Desert – and doing it not just once but three times…
The distinguished astronomer Sir Fredrick Hoyle put it colorfully when he said that the chance occurrence of just one protein cell is about as likely as a tornado whirling through a junkyard and accidentally assembling a fully functional Boeing 747.
CHECK THIS OUT - If the 46 segments of DNA in one of your cells were uncoiled, connected and stretched out, it would be about 7 feet long. It would be so thin that its details could not be seen, even under an electron microscope. However if all the DNA in your body were placed end to end, it would stretch from here to the moon over 500,000 times! And if all this very densely coded information of your DNA were placed in type written form, it would completely fill the grand Canyon 50 times!
LISTEN - the Psalmist was right;
”we are fearfully and wonderfully made..” (Ps 139:14)
The human body – speaks to the design of God….
And so does creation… HEY – do you want to know if God exists look up;
The heavens tell of the glory of God. The skies display his marvelous craftsmanship. Day after day they continue to speak; night after night they make him known. They speak without a sound or a word; their voice is silent in the skies; yet their message has gone out to all the earth, and their words to all the world. - Ps 19:1-4
Do you want to know if God exists look up!!!
Earth is a big hunk of rock. (24,000 miles around)… YET – 1 million earths would fit into the Sun (our closet star)…
YEAH - I’d say the sun is pretty big… 93 million miles away and it still can warm this entire planet. It’s huge. Flames leap up thousands of miles at a time. If it were much further away--we’d all freeze to death. If were much closer we’d all die from heat, or the polar ice would melt and the earth would have a huge flood and we’d all drown.
BUT – as big as the sun is there are some stars so large that 500 million suns could fit inside of them.
The nearest star to earth is called ‘Alpha Centauri’ it is 4 ½ light years away… (one light year is 6 trillion miles)… This means if you traveled at the speed of light (186,000 per second)… even though you would reach the moon in 1 ½ seconds and the sun in 8 ½ minutes it would take you 4 ½ years to reach Alpha Centauri… IF – you could travel 24,000 mph it would take you 120,000 years to get there. (sand/marble 3ft sun, 100ft planet , 150 miles nearest star)
The star Betelgeuse is 520 light years away, it is one of the brightest stars on Orion’s belt. It’s diameter is 310 million miles… which means that if it were hollow, the earth could comfortably revolve around the sun inside this star..
Our solar system is part of a galaxy called the Milky Way… IT’S – 100,000 light years in diameter and has somewhere between 750 billion and 1 trillion stars… AND - the Milky Way is just one of 125 billion galaxies according to estimates by the Hubble Space Telescope…
All these planets, stars and galaxies are constantly moving through space. Designed with beauty and symmetry. Even our own earth-travels 66,000 miles an hour. You and I traveled 1 ½ million miles through space every day. I guess you and I have a right to feel a little tired tonight. LISTEN - space is not just randomness. There is awesome design. CHECKOUT – what one famous scientist said;
"Everyone who is seriously interested in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe--a spirit vastly superior to man, and one in the face of which our modest powers must feel humble." Albert Einstein.
"Look up at the sky! Who created the stars that you see? The One who leads them out like an army, He knows how many there are and calls them each one by name."
- Is 40:26
AND LISTEN - if God knows the names of 200 billion stars, he hasn’t forgotten your name. What matters to you, matters to him. What concerns you, concerns him. What troubles you, troubles him. The Creator of the Universe is not too big, too removed, too powerful to know your name, to care for you, and to guide your life. The stars shout out "God cares. He’s interested in people. He knows our names."
Sometimes people stumble over this vastness in relation to the apparent insignificance of man. It does seem to make us very small. But the meaning of this magnitude is not mainly about us. It’s about God… the reasons for ‘wasting’ so much space on a universe to house a speck of humanity is to make a point about our maker, not us..”
- John Piper
Just one more thing about the heavens declaring God’s glory… The whirlpool galaxy is 37 million light years away… AND – since it’s discovery in 1773 it has been one of the most popular and most photographed galaxy… NOT – too long ago the Hubble took a picture of it’s core. A core made up of trillions of stars. The image in the core is 1,100 light years (7 trillion miles) in size… DO – you know what the core is shaped like?
A Cross!
Friends, I think it’s high time for thinking people everywhere to simply confess the obvious, that wherever and whenever something manifests all the signs of intelligent design, whether it be;
the workings of the human eye,
a bird in flight,
a spawning salmon soaring upstream,
a Red Wood tree reaching for the sky,
a roaring waterfall
Meerkats working as a team to fend off a cobra
LISTEN - wherever and whenever we witness the wonder of an intelligent design, I think we should all flash the credentials of our intellectual sophistication and announce our suspicion that there just might be an intelligent designer behind that intelligent design. What do you think?
NOW - This has never seemed like a mindless leap of faith to me.
In fact, to me there’s kind of a "duh" factor here. I mean it just seems reasonable to me. I mean when I walk into Best Buy and see a huge LCD TV - I immediately suspected that a very smart person designed that thing. I didn’t not even for a second ever thought it came from a random explosion at an electronics factory. Call me silly – but that never crossed my mind.
When I pick up a book, I assume someone wrote it
when I pick up a model of a globe, a twinkie or a hula hoop – I don’t just assume that they came into being out of chance… I assume, “hey I bet somebody made that…”
AND - whenever I see a high-tech jet soaring along at 550 miles an hour, 39,000 feet, I suspect someone put a little thought and effort into that thing. I never suspect it emerged from a swamp, where it had been forming on its own, cooking and evolving underground for a billion years.
And when people drive up to this building for the first time – I am reasonably confident that they are going to assume that; carpenters, electricians, masons, plumbers, architects, painters, heavy equipment operators and engineers were behind the project… I really don’t think one person will pull into our parking and think that a tornado hit the Home Depot down the road and – presto here is the new building…
How about the changes to this room…. One Sunday John walked in and here it was…
I mean excuse my sarcasm, but to this day, I cannot for the life of me, figure out how thinking people can look at our world and deduce that it all came about as a result of a chance collision of gases somewhere in deep space billions of years ago. When people think like that - I want to say, "Hello? Hello? Anybody home!"
LISTEN - everywhere you look in this world, you see intelligent processes and designs, from;
photosynthesis in plants
to complex migrating patterns in birds,
the human body
to astonishing breathing systems in fish.
And in my way of thinking, intellectual integrity demands that we at least assume that every intelligent design involved an intelligent designer.
AND UNDERSTAND THIS - the greater the design the greater the designer… For example Beavers make log dams, but they have never constructed anything like the Hoover Dam. Man can make a model of the earth and of the human eye – but they can’t come anywhere close to making the real things…
LISTEN - the more complex the design, the greater the intelligence required to produce it… (This world is more complex that we could even imagine).
AND, if we are to be intellectually honest people – THIS IS what we must assume, that is until or unless we are forced into a different position by convincing data.
OKAY – let’s summarize this argument…
1. Design imply a designer
2. There is great design in the universe
3. Therefore, there must be a Great Designer
AGAIN - this line of thinking has historically been referred to as the teleological argument for the existence of God. It simply points to the order, the sophistication, the wonder, the design, and the intricacies of our world and asks the question, "Who or what is most likely responsible for a universe as awesome as ours? Meer chance or a supreme creator/designer? Which makes the most sense?"
Philosopher William Paley once wrote, and listen closely: "There simply cannot be design without a designer. There simply cannot be contrivance without a contriver. There simply cannot be order without deliberate choice."
And I am absolutely convinced that the intellectually honest people must choose the option that our world’s awesomeness is better explained by the work of an all-powerful creator/designer than the option of an unexplainable chance explosion of elements somewhere in deep space billions of years ago (elements that came from who knows where).
LISTEN - It would take such a huge leap of faith for me to attribute the wonders of our world to a roll of the dice, to a lottery-like randomness that happened eons ago. Friends, I’m telling you, I can’t muster that much faith. Look at the human eye and tell me it is the result of a lottery-like randomness.
It takes a lot less faith for me to believe that a powerful designer God created this stuff and is responsible for it.
Exhibit C – The Moral Law (and other voices)
{take back the Twinkies – say something insulting like – ‘you obviously don’t need it}
LISTEN – in each of us there is a moral value system that tells us what is right and what is wrong… BUT – where did it come from? HOW – did it get inside of us? WHEN – you say that it is wrong, to take back the Twinkie - AND that is mean to say what I said… ON what grounds do you base that?
On October 2 of this year – 32 year old Charles Roberts, entered an Amish School in Pa. Sent out all the boys… tied up 10 little girls who he planned on raping & murdering... His plans were stopped short by police so he shot them all in the head…
How did this make you feel? I could feel the anger and rage, building inside of me… How could a person do something like that…?
NOW - I have a question for you friends - what makes that happen in us…? I mean how do we know that certain things are just grossly evil – how do we know that?
AND – how do we know that some things that some behavior is just good, wonderful & right?
Dr Bill Craig says, “If there is no God then morality is just a matter of personal taste.” LIKE saying Broccoli tastes good.. WELL – it tastes good to some but it tastes bad to others. AND – if there is no God, then to say that killing and torturing innocent children is wrong is also a matter of personal taste… WELL – I don’t really like it – but you might….
NOW – we know that’s not right don’t we?
JUST LIKE - we know that crashing a plane into a tower full of 1,000’s of innocent people is a evil and just like we know at the same time that to run into that blazing building is a very courageous thing…
BUT AGAIN – how do we know the difference?
Where does everybody get their sense of justice or injustice?
It seems almost as though there is a moral code sewn right into the fabric of human beings. NOW – animals don’t have it… UNDERSTAND - lions don’t feel bad after the kill and eat an antelope, they just feel full…
BUT – people have this innate sense of right and wrong.
NOW - I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but anthropologists have been studying this kind of thing for centuries, and what they have discovered is that there amazing consistency throughout the human race with regard to its ethical values and sense of right and wrong.
LISTEN - in almost every tribe and culture, no matter where it’s located, no matter what their history is;
• loyalty is valued over betrayal,
• kindness over meanness,
• fidelity over infidelity,
• truth-telling over deceitfulness,
• love over hate.
British twentieth century writer, C.S. Lewis, observes this phenomenon and attributes it to the fact that human beings are all created in the image of God and therefore have at their core a sense of moral oughtness.
NOW - obviously human beings, including me, don’t always live up to that moral code, but it’s there nonetheless. And Lewis argues that if human beings merely evolved from primeval gases, it would be highly unlikely that human beings would each manifest something as exquisite and noble as a well-developed moral code.
C. S. Lewis says, "This points to a connection with a supreme moral being who is responsible for stamping that moral code on the life of all people." C. S. Lewis talks about this line of reasoning in his book, "Mere Christianity,"
AND - tens of thousands of people have read that little book about this argument of the moral code and have wound up giving their lives to Jesus Christ as a result of the forcefulness of these arguments.
"There must be a God," folks conclude. Who or what else would explain this moral code? What set of molecules would produce a moral sense of oughtness in the lives of people all over the world?
AGAIN - people don’t always live up to God’s moral code. I don’t. You don’t either, but we’re aware of it. AND - we know when we’re living in harmony with it. We know when we’re in violation of it.
LISTEN – if you are talking to someone who doesn’t believe God exists – you need to ask them.. “ OKAY – if human beings are only semi-advanced apes, who themselves evolved from slimy pond creatures that somehow formed out of misty gases a billion years ago, how is it that all human beings everywhere operate with a sense of right & wrong?
ASK THEM - what other than the work of a supreme moral being could account for that.. [Then you need to ask them for their answer…] - and wait for it don’t let them off the hook.
\William Craig in his chapter in the book, “Why I Am A Christian” writes
If God does not exist, do objective moral values?…After all, if there is no God, then what’s so special about human beings? They’re just accidental by-products of nature that have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe that are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time
According to the atheistic view, an action such as rape may not be socially advantageous, and so in the course of human development has become taboo, but such a view does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really wrong. It follows , therefore, that there’s nothing wrong with raping someone. Thus without God there is no absolute right and wrong that imposes itself on our conscience.
BUT the problem is that objective values do exist, and deep down we all know it. There’s no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world.
Actions such as rape and child abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior – they’re moral abominations. Some things are really wrong. Similarly, love, equality and self sacrifice are really good. But if moral values cannot exist without God and moral values do exist, then it follows logically and inescapably that God exists.
1. If God does not exist, objective morals do not exist
2. Objective moral values do exist
3. Therefore God exists
Other Voices…
BEFORE – we move on to exhibit d, let me ask a question – what do these first 3 exhibits (creation, design and moral law) tell us about God…?
That God is powerful
That he has always existed
That he is intelligent
That he is unique
That he is Lord over creation
That is moral & good
AND – that he loves us (QUESTION – what do expectant parent do before their newborn arrives… get the nursery ready… They make it special – why? In the same way God prepared creation for us – it’s our nursery, and every sunrise, sunset, blue sky is you r father in heaven saying “I love you – I made that for you.”)
Exhibit D – Changed Lives
There is one final piece of evidence for the existence of God that I want us to look before we leave today… AND – it’s a piece of evidence that I think more and more people are opening to hearing about today then maybe ever before.
NO – we can’t see God… BUT we can’t see the wind either, can we. HOWEVER - we can see the effects of the wind… I can look out my office window and see the trees blowing, I can walk outside and feel it blow against me… I can go to a lake and watch a boat sail across the smooth waters…
IN LIKE MANNER – though we cannot see God we can see the effects of God – we can see the very visible changes that he makes in the lives of men and women – young and old…
Bill Hybels said recently; “25 years ago when I used to talk to people about the existence of God, it seemed all they wanted was more scientific data, more facts. They wanted to argue more. These days you talk to them a little bit about intelligent design, about creation and about the moral code. AND – then you say, “And can I tell you my story?”
LISTEN – many people in this world (in your world) where you work, where you go to school – are just one story away from accepting Christ. AND – we need to tell our stories, we need to tell what Jesus has done for us, the changes he has made in our lives, the hope we now have, the purpose, the meaning, the joy, the strength, the love… We need to tell them of the things we’ve been able to overcome, the bondages that have been broken, the storms he has helped us weather… The sins he has taken away – the guilt he has removed…the freedom!
UNDERSTAND - changed lives are a power evidence of the existence of God…
Ernest Gordon, former chaplain at Princeton University. In his book “Through the Valley of the River Kwai, tells how the prisoners of the Japanese on the Malay Peninsula during WWII had been reduced almost to animals, stealing food from their buddies, who were also starving. In their desperation, the prisoners decided it would be good to read the NT.
Because Gordon was a university graduate, they asked him to lead. By his own admission he was a skeptic, and those who asked him to lead them were non believers too. He and the others came to trust Christ when they became acquainted with Him in all of His beauty and power through the uncluttered simplicity of the NT. How this group of scrounging, clawing humans was transformed into a community of love is a touching and powerful story that clearly demonstrates the reality of God in Jesus Christ…
