The word "
God" brings up different thoughts and beliefs in different people. All people have different understandings and beliefs in God, based upon their life time experiences and indoctrination.
Atheist, Agnostic and Theist
An atheist denies the existence of God because the atheist does not believe in a God or gods. I am not an atheist. An agnostic believes that it is impossible to know if there is a God or if there are many gods. I am not an agnostic. Polytheists believe that there are more than one gods. I am not a polytheist. That makes me a monotheist, who believes in the existence of one and only God.
Evolution and Intelligent Design
How did life come about? Evolutionists believe that over a very large period of time, simple inorganic forms evolved into more complex organic forms of life. Can order come out of chaos without any external input? No. Order can come out of chaos only when external intelligent effort is applied. Outside of Planet Earth, there in no physical form of life. Wikipedia talks about
Extraterrestrial Life as being hypothetical. I believe in the intelligent design of life by a Creator God on Planet Earth.
Time, Space and Matter
How did the matter in the world in which we live come about? How did the Universe, with such an infinitely large number of galaxies, come about? How big is the boundary of the Universe? Is there empty space beyond the Universe? If there is empty space, then what is it? Like our Universe, are there multiple universes? What is time? Did the Universe have a beginning? Will there be an end to the Universe? Did time have a beginning and will it have an ending?
If I did not believe in God, despite the advances in scientific knowledge, I would have no satisfactory answers to the above questions. I believe that the Creator God is the creator of Time, Space and Matter and that The Creator God is not subject to the created. God is not bound by Time and does not exist in Time. God is not limited by Space; hence, cannot be bound to the confines of created Space. God is not composed of created matter and cannot be experienced in the material domain.
Attributes of God
Wikipedia enumerates about 26
attributes of God. Some of the most important attributes of God are:
- Omnipresent - Present everywhere
- Omniscience - All knowing
- Omnipotent - All powerful
- Immutable - Cannot change
- Transcendent - Outside space and time
What is The Bible
The
Bible is a collection of books that were written by 40 authors, over a period of 1600 years. According to
the Guinness World Records, The Bible is the best selling and most widely distributed book.
Statistics Brain estimates the number of Bibles printed at around 6 billion. To be able to refer to a particular Bible reference, the Bible is divided into many books, and each book is composed of many chapters and each chapter contains many verses. The Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, Verses 2 to 5 is abbreviated as Genesis 1:2-5.
Creator God of The Bible
The Bible starts with the simple statement, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (
Genesis 1:1)". In
John 1:3, it says "All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being". Hence, based upon my life time experiences and teachings, I believe in the God of The Bible. The Bible does not talk about the origin of God, but simply declares the existing God.
The Authority of The Bible
From where does The Bible get its authority? The Bible declares the existing God, and from this existing God, The Bible derives its authority.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 says, "The whole Bible was given to us by inspiration from God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives; it straightens us out and helps us do what is right. It is God’s way of making us well prepared at every point, fully equipped to do good to everyone". The authors of The Bible were inspired by God and wrote what God revealed to them by inspiration. Even though human authors wrote the various books of The Bible, they did not write down their own thoughts or ideas. They wrote what God inspired them to write. Though The Bible was written over a period of 1600 years, there is no inconsistency within The Bible because all thoughts and ideas there were inspired by the same God.
Man is a Triune Being
1 Thessalonians 5:23 talks about three parts of man: spirit, soul and body. The body of man is his world-conscious self and it interacts with the material world. The soul of man is his self-conscious self and it interacts with his inner nature like mind, will and emotion. The spirit of man is his god-conscious self and it interacts with the deeper non-material spiritual world. An astronaut needs a space suit to go into space, because his natural body cannot sustain him in space. Similarly, your body is the earth suit for you. You are not your body. You need your body to sustain you in the earth. The true you, is your spirit, which survives the loss of your earth suit.
This is an illustration on the Triune Nature of Man taken from
here.
Here is another illustration on the Triune Nature of Man taken from
here.
God is a Triune Being
The God of The Bible is not an inanimate force or power, but a Person.
John 4:24 says "God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth". Every man is a single person. The mystery of the God of The Bible is that He is one God, but with three persons, often referred to as
Trinity. The three persons of the
Godhead of The Bible are, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. It is difficult for the limited mind of man to comprehend the unlimited God. This is reflected in
Isaiah 55:8-9 as
8 “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord.
9 “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways,
And My thoughts than your thoughts."
This is an illustration of the Triune Nature of God taken from
here.
Here is a different illustration showing God and Man taken from
here.
The God I believe in
The God I believe in is this Triune God of The Bible where God the Father is God, God the Son is God and God the Holy Spirit is God. All three persons of this Godhead are persons and The Bible always refer to God in the masculine gender.
It was God the Son who was born in this world as Jesus Christ, a man. The Bible is largely divided into two parts, Old Testament and New Testament. The Old Testament deals with events associated with God the Father. The first four books of the New Testament, called Gospels, deal with the life of Jesus on earth. The remaining books of the New Testament largely deal with activities of God the Holy Spirit in the early Church. According to The Bible, God the Father and God the Son are now in Heaven. God The Holy Spirit came to dwell with believers on earth, after Jesus Christ ascended into heaven after resurrection. When one reads The Bible from the beginning to end, one will notice that The Bible progressively reveals the existing God.
The spirit of man and the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, communicate in the spiritual domain. It is in this domain that man can experience God today.
Indwelling Holy Spirit
God the Holy Spirit has many attributes. One of the attributes of the Holy Spirit is, His indwelling in the spirit of man.
1 Corinthians 3:16 says "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?". The Bible calls us the temple of God and that is where He seeks to dwell.
Our Authority
Man is the supreme of God's creation and is created in the image of God.
Genesis 1:26-28 says
God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”
This is how God created man to have authority over all the Earth that He created and mankind is continuing to exercise this dominion. What ever the world today is what we mankind together have made it. We can listen to our selfish desires and destroy the world or we can listen to the Holy Spirit and make the world a better place. The choice is ours.
Update on 3rd February, 2014
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