Welcome to answers to the big questions. I'm your host, Allen Sonter, and I'm glad you could join me. The first episode in our series was called Is There a God? And I gave evidence to support my answer yes, there is a God.
Now, our second question is what is God like? There are three sources of information about God. The first is what he has said about Himself in the Bible. The second is what we can discover about the Creator by studying the things he has made.
And the third is by looking at the ways he deals with us personally. The Bible claims to be a record of God's dealing with this world and the people in it. It starts out by saying, in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth and ends by saying that God will make a new heaven and a new earth in which there will be no death or sorrow.
The story of what went wrong with the first heaven and earth that God made, that is the one we live in now. And what God has done to correct the problem and make possible a new heaven and earth is really what the Bible is all about. In telling this story, the Bible gives us a great deal of knowledge about what God is like.
But before we look at what the Bible says about God, we will look briefly at the evidence that confirms that the Bible really is, as many Christians call it, the Word of God. I'll use two lines of evidence here. One is the historical accuracy of the Bible, and the other is that it contains predictions, often called prophecies, about the future.
And many of these have already been fulfilled. The fact that the Bible has been shown by archaeology and history to be a genuine record of the past and not just a fable, is evidence that its claim to be God speaking to us should be taken seriously. Its prophecies or predictions, which have been accurately fulfilled throughout history, are evidence that it is more than just the writings of people depending on their own ideas.
Its writers were given insights that only God could have given them. For these reasons, I believe that we can accept the Bible as being an accurate record of the past and a truthful statement of what God says about himself. The Bible tells us that God created human beings to be in some way like himself.
Exactly which of our characteristics are like God, we can only deduce from what we are told about God. It's possible that our ability to think and our emotions and perhaps even our physical likeness may in some way be a pale reflection of God. God has a personality.
He isn't just an influence or a power source. But we're told that God is infinite in power, knowledge and wisdom and knows everything past, present and future. He has lived from eternity in the past and will continue throughout eternity in the future, or to put it in the way the Bible does, he lives from everlasting to everlasting.
It's beyond our understanding to think of someone who has always existed and always will. Everything, in our experience at least, has a beginning and usually an ending. Human beings have always had a problem trying to understand what someone as complex as God is like.
When Jesus Christ was here on Earth, he called himself the Son of God and said that if we want to know what God is like, we should look at Him Jesus, because when we have seen Him, we have seen His Father. What Jesus Christ, who was really God was doing here on Earth will be explained in a later presentation in this series. But for the present we will just say that he came here as part of God's plan to fix up the problems we have got ourselves into.
In the second part of the Bible, called the New Testament, we are given four accounts of the life of Jesus Christ here on earth. They were written by four men, two of whom were his companions when he lived in Palestine about 2000 years ago. These accounts are important because they present a picture of what God is like, as demonstrated by His Son, Jesus Christ.
The picture we find in these four accounts, often called the four Gospels, is that Christ was a kind and loving person who went about doing good, healing sick people, showing people how to live happy lives and telling them how to become his followers. He said he would take his followers into the new earth that he would establish, and they would live there forever with Him. He taught us to call God our Father in Heaven.
So we understand that God is a loving being, concerned for our welfare, in the same way as a good Father here on Earth is concerned for the good of his children. Jesus said that God is fair and just and is more than willing to give good things to those who ask Him. Jesus was always willing to forgive people who did Him wrong, and he encouraged those who were forgiven or healed to turn away from the wrongdoing that had caused their troubles.
Much more could be said about what the Bible tells us God is like. But what I've said is enough for now. In the limited time we have, you might like to get a Bible and read it for yourself.
The second source of information about God is to be found all around us in the things he has created. As with any object made by someone, by looking at the object, you can get an idea of the skill and creativity of the Maker. What God has made is infinitely more complex than anything people can make.
And there's such a variety in nature that we know God is amazingly creative. Just think of the many kinds of birds with all their different colors and shapes, yet they were all fitted for the way they live or considered the seemingly endless variety of flowers. Yet all have their purpose.
And God is a brilliant engineer. Notice the construction of animals with their freedom of movement, their strength and agility. And God is truly imaginative in solving design problems.
The design of the honeycomb, for example, is an engineering marvel. There is no limit to God's power to think of ways to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Think of the range of ways God has made for various living things to reproduce themselves.
Recent discoveries about cell DNA and the success of Scottish scientists in cloning a sheep from a single mature cell give some idea of the mind boggling complexity of the cell, this microscopic unit of life. And yet God has made these cells so that a whole organism can be built from a single cell. And consider the beauty of nature around us.
God has built into us the ability to appreciate the created things around us. So he must be a good God who enjoys making his creatures happy. The precision and stability of the planetary systems, along with the continually changing cycles of nature, tell us that God has finally bAllenced stability and chains, a feat that demonstrates his infinite power and intelligence.
Of course, not everything we see in nature tells us what God is like because an enemy has attacked this world and introduced cruelty, suffering and death. The Bible tells us about that. And we'll deal with the problem of suffering in a later presentation in this series.
But there is enough that is good in nature to leave us wondering in admiration at the skill of its designer and maker. Finally, we can learn something about God from the way he deals with us. However, we must be careful here, because not all that happens to people is what God wants.
Because our enemy Satan wants to ruin our lives and produce suffering and death, and because God allows him some freedom of action. There are times when terrible things happen, even to good people. But for those who love God and have asked Him to direct their lives, god in Romans 828 in the Bible does give an assurance that he will work out everything for their ultimate good.
For those of us who have experienced the truth of this assurance, god's dealing with us does show that God is truly good and he has an amazing ability to overrule complex situations so that his objectives for our lives can be met. During this presentation, I have alluded to an enemy Satan who's trying to spoil God's work and our lives. The question I will answer next is who is Satan? I believe you will find the answer interesting.
You've been listening to answers to the big questions. I'm Allen Sonter and I hope you can join me next time if you have any questions or comments in relation to today's program. You can call three ABN Australia radio within Australia on 024-973-3456 or from outside of Australia on country code 612-497-3456.
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