How Do We Know God Exists

Ask Cliff – 

       God – prove your existence

Where is the Cosmic billboard???

SPECIFIC BIBLICAL EXAMPLES of SIGNS

Signs- God’s Use of Nature

     God uses dew on a fleece of wool as a sign that Gideon was chosen to save Israel –Judges 6:37-40

Signs- God Sends Others…

      God sends the prophet Nathan to rebuke King David-2 Samuel 12

Signs – God Gives His Word

      Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8:3

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

when being tempted by Satan in Matthew 4:4

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Still – Not everyone sees or thinks alike…

Sensible Logic

        Effects require a cause, and everything we observe in the universe appears to be an effect; therefore, there must be an underlying or primary cause of all things…… According to the kalam, there can be only one itself-uncaused-and-eternal thing that causes all other things, and that first cause is God.  

This can be visualized as a railway train. Each car is being pulled by the car in front of it. The “cause” of movement for any car is the next car ahead. However, if the train were extended forward infinitely, how could it be moving? If the train has an unending succession of cars, then there would be nothing providing force to move the cars. At some point, there must be an engine—something that pulls but is not itself being pulled.

https://www.gotquestions.org/kalam-cosmological-argument.html

So we can look for evidence of the ENGINE that pulls the rest of the train…..

Fingerprint/ sense (NATURE)

           Design snd complexity 

                   Universe – 

                   DNA – l

           Belief nearly universal

BIBLE – 3500 yrs old

     History, 

     Literature, 

     Archaeology, 

Links to Faith – people example, words

USE OF SENSES ?

Kant  – response to theory that “ reason explains all” 

Ex: Personify Tape Recorder, VCR….

           Ex: limits of Tape recorder (1)

            Limits of vcr,  (2)

            Limits of human senses (5)

Show, Obvious…Signs

       HIDDENNESS OF GOD??

  …..

CONCLUSION….

Luke 16….

27 “He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, 28 for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

29 “Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

30 “‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

31 “He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”