Our Awesome Universe - Church of God - NEO

5But this illustrious thinker came to see thegreat danger of such ideas. He continued by saying"It was the manifestly poisonous nature of thefruits that forced me to RECONSIDER the philosophicaltree on which they had grown" (page 317).There you have it!That is a remarkable fulfillment of BIBLEPROPHECY.The Bible plainly states WHY atheisticthinkers wish to keep consciousness of God outof their minds! There is an underlying MOTIVEthe Bible reveals.Listen. "And even as they did not LIKE toretain God IN THEIR KNOWLEDGE [that is, in theirscience, in their education], God gave them overto a reprobate mind, to do those things which arenot convenient; being filled with all unrighteousness..." (Rom. 1:28-29).The following verses continue with a blisteringindictment!God says it is OBVIOUS HE exists by lookingat HIS HANDIWORK.He said, "... that which may be known ofGod is manifest [EVIDENT] to them; for God hathSHOWN it unto them. For the invisible things ofHim FROM THE CREATION OF THE WORLD are clearlyseen [by looking at the CREATION, the materialUNIVERSE; the marvelous, interdependent life formson this earth!], being understood by the thingswhich are MADE ..." (Rom. 1: 19-20).But the human, carnal mind does not LIKEto acknowledge God. Why? Because man, in hishuge VANITY, will not recognize any supremeAUTHORITY over his life!He RESENTS God as His RULER! He doesn'twant any God telling him what to do - how tolive -laying down codes of conduct, and enforcingpenalties for broken laws!The true MOTIVES in atheism, and a desire tobe "willingly ignorant" (II Peter 3: 5) are themotives of intellectual vanity and human LUST!Too many people have a totally false conceptabout evolutionists!Many seem to assume these men to be completelyOBJECTIVE in their approach. It's assumedevolutionists FIRST TRIED THE BIBLE; that theystudied it, pondered it, read it, wondered aboutit - sincerely LOOKED INTO it - and then found itLACKING!Not so!As a whole, they have simply assumed thatthe Bible is MYTH. Evolutionists have rejected itwithout proving whether it could be true andscientific.And the same holds true for the ancient paganph"ilosophers who helped perpetuate the lie of "noGod." The only difference is their motives wereclear to all!Ancient TheoriesFor example, Diodorus of Sicily writing aboutthe time of Christ tells us:"Now as regards the FIRST ORIGIN of mankindtwo opinions have arisen among the best authoritiesboth on nature and history. One group, whichTAKES THE POSITION that the universe did not comeinto being and will not decay, has declared thatthe race of men also has existed from eternity,there having never been a time when men werefirst begotten; the other group, however, whichholds that the universe came into being and willdecay, has declared that, like it, men had theirfirst origin at a definite time" (Diodorus Siculus,Bk. 1, sec. 6).Did YOU realize that the SAME THEORIES areheld among different scientists, today? One groupbelieves that things have always been as they are- the universe, as such, they say, never reallyhad a beginning! And the other group claims thatthere indeed was a beginning, perhaps severalbillion years ago - when a great "EXPLOSION"occurred in spa,ce!But more about these ideas, later.Diodorus continues his ancient account ofcreation, "When in the beginning ... the universewas being formed, both heaven and earth was indistinguishablein appearance, since their elementswere intermingled: then, when their bodiesseparated from one another, the UNIVERSE took onin all its parts the ordered form in which it is nowseen."How different were the ideas of the ancientworld from scientific theories of the origin of theuniverse, today?The truth is, there is very little difference!You'll see that these two ancient theories correspondEXACTLY to the two theories offered byastronomers today!All By Chance?Notice what Plato asserts:"They [the philosopher-educa tor-scientists ofthe ancient world] say that fire and water, andearth and air, all exist by nature and CHANCE ...and that as to the bodies which come next in order- earth, the sun, and moon, and stars - theyhave been created by means of these absolutelyINANIMATE existences ... after this fashion and inthis manner the whole heaven has been created . ..