Friday, 29 November 2013
Fear the creator not the creature.
THE young man was pleasantly surprised. What had just happened was totally unexpected. His discussion with two of Jehovah’s Witnesses had been an eye-opener. The question of why God permits suffering had bothered him for years, but now it had been clearly answered from the Bible. He had no idea that the Bible contains so much valuable and heartwarming information.
A few minutes after the visitors left, his landlady stormed into his room and asked angrily, “Who were those people?”
Taken by surprise, the young man could offer no answer.
“I know who they are,” she yelled, “and if you receive them again, you can move out and look for a room elsewhere!”
She slammed the door and left.
Christ’s True Followers Expect Opposition
What this young man experienced is not unusual. God’s Word, the Bible, explains: “All those desiring to live with godly devotion in association with Christ Jesus will also be persecuted.” (2 Timothy 3:12) True Christians generally are not popular and never have been. Why not? The apostle John told his fellow Christians: “We know we originate with God, but the whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” Satan the Devil is also portrayed as “a roaring lion, seeking to devour someone.” (1 John 5:19; 1 Peter 5:8) Fear of man is one of Satan’s most effective weapons.
Even Jesus Christ, who did so much good and committed no sin, was ridiculed and persecuted. He observed: “They hated me without cause.” (John 15:25) On the night before his death, he prepared his followers with these words: “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you. Bear in mind the word I said to you, A slave is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also.”—John 15:18, 20.
On this account, many hesitated to take a stand for true worship. Of those who were looking for Jesus on one occasion, the Bible says: “No one, of course, would speak about him publicly because of the fear of the Jews.” (John 7:13; 12:42) The religious leaders of the day threatened to ostracize any who put faith in Christ. Thus, fear of man prevented many from becoming Christians.—Acts 5:13.
Later, after Christianity had been established, we read of “great persecution” against the congregation in Jerusalem. (Acts 8:1) In fact, throughout the Roman Empire, the Christians faced adversity. Prominent men in Rome told the apostle Paul: “As regards this sect it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken against.” (Acts 28:22) Yes, genuine Christians were widely opposed.
Even today, Satan still uses the fear of man as a weapon to hinder many from becoming Christ’s genuine followers. Sincere people who are studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses face opposition or ridicule in school, at work, in the neighborhood, or in social circles. They may fear losing respect, friends, or material support. In some rural areas, farmers fear that neighbors might refuse to help with the harvest or to protect their livestock. Despite such fears, however, millions have resolved to trust in God and to live according to God’s Word, in imitation of Jesus Christ. Jehovah has blessed them for doing so.
Why Fear God, Not Man
The Bible urges us to fear God, not man. It says: “The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10) This fear is, not a morbid dread, but a healthy concern over displeasing our Life-Giver. It is a term that is closely related to love. Why, though, should we fear God and not man? Let us consider five reasons.
1 Jehovah is the Supreme One. Jehovah is far more powerful than any human. By fearing God, we take a stand on the side of the Almighty, to whom “the nations are as a drop from a bucket.” (Isaiah 40:15) Because God is almighty, he has the power to defeat “any weapon whatever that will be formed against” those who are loyal to him. (Isaiah 54:17) And since he will determine who is worthy to receive everlasting life, we are wise to let nothing stop us from learning about him and doing his will.—Revelation 14:6, 7.
2 God will help and protect us. “Trembling at men is what lays a snare, but he that is trusting in Jehovah will be protected,” says the Bible at Proverbs 29:25. The fear of man is a snare because it can cause us to shrink back from professing faith in God. God assures us of his saving power: “Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Do not gaze about, for I am your God. I will fortify you. I will really help you. I will really keep fast hold of you with my right hand of righteousness.”—Isaiah 41:10.
3 God loves those who draw close to him. The apostle Paul wrote these touching words: “I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor governments nor things now here nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other creation will be able to separate us from God’s love that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39) If we learn to trust in and obey God, we can enjoy the unbreakable love of the Universal Sovereign. What a privilege!
4 We appreciate all that God has done for us. Jehovah is our Creator, the one who has made life possible. In addition, he has provided not just the necessities of life but also the things that make life enjoyable and interesting. Indeed, he is the Source of every good gift. (James 1:17) David, a faithful man who appreciated God’s loving-kindness, wrote: “Many things you yourself have done, O Jehovah my God, even your wonderful works and your thoughts toward us . . . They have become more numerous than I can recount.”—Psalm 40:5.
5 Some who oppose us may change. You can help those who oppose you by not compromising but holding fast to your fear of God and love for him. Consider Jesus’ relatives. At first, they did not put faith in him, but they said: “He has gone out of his mind.” (Mark 3:21; John 7:5) Later, after Jesus’ death and resurrection, many of them became believers. Jesus’ half brothers James and Jude even shared in the writing of the Scriptures. There was also the fanatic persecutor Saul, who became the apostle Paul. Some who now cause us trouble may come to see that we have the truth from the Bible because of our courageous stand.—1 Timothy 1:13.
For example, Aberash, a woman in Africa, had been praying to find the truth. After she began studying the Bible with Jehovah’s Witnesses, she faced fierce opposition from her family members and religious leaders. Some of her relatives, who had also begun studying, gave in to the fear of man. But she implored God for strength and courage and was baptized as one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The result? Eight of her relatives took courage, resumed their Bible studies, and are making good spiritual progress.
You Can Conquer the Fear of Man
To avoid falling prey to the fear of man, do all you can to strengthen your love for God. You can do this by studying the Bible and meditating on such texts as Hebrews 13:6, which says: “Jehovah is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” Do not forget the reasons why fearing God rather than man is the right and wise thing to do.
Keep in mind, too, the many blessings that result from applying what you learn from the Bible. You can find satisfying answers to life’s important questions. You can gain practical wisdom to deal with life’s challenges. You can enjoy a wonderful hope despite today’s perplexing conditions. And you can approach the almighty God at any time in prayer.
The apostle John wrote: “The world is passing away and so is its desire, but he that does the will of God remains forever.” (1 John 2:17) Now is the time to stand firm and walk in the fear of God. Rather than caving in to the fear of man, you can choose to respond to God’s exhortation: “Be wise, my son, and make my heart rejoice, that I may make a reply to him that is taunting me.” (Proverbs 27:11) What a grand privilege that is!
Remember, no human can give you what God will give to those who fear him: “The result of humility and the fear of Jehovah is riches and glory and life.”—Proverbs 22:4.
Irreconcilable differences.
“You are worthy, Jehovah, even our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things, and because of your will they existed and were created.”—REVELATION 4:11.
SHORTLY after Charles Darwin made the theory of evolution popular, many so-called Christian denominations started looking for ways to marry their belief in God to their acceptance of the theory of evolution.
Today, most prominent “Christian” religious groups seem willing to accept that God must have used evolution in some way to create life. Some teach that God preprogrammed the universe to develop in such a way that living things inevitably evolved from lifeless chemicals and eventually produced mankind. Those who subscribe to this teaching, known as theistic evolution, do not feel that God interfered with the process once it started. Others think that, in general, God allowed evolution to produce most families of plants and animals but occasionally stepped in to move the process along.
The Marriage of Teachings—Does It Work?
Is the theory of evolution really compatible with the teachings of the Bible? If evolution were true, then the Bible’s account of the creation of the first man, Adam, would be, at best, a story meant to teach a moral lesson but not intended to be taken literally. (Genesis 1:26, 27; 2:18-24) Is that how Jesus viewed this Bible account? “Did you not read,” said Jesus, “that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick to his wife, and the two will be one flesh’? So that they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has yoked together let no man put apart.”—Matthew 19:4-6.
Jesus was here quoting from the creation account recorded in Genesis chapter 2. If Jesus believed the first marriage to be a fictional story, would he have made reference to it to support his teaching on the sanctity of marriage? No. Jesus pointed to the Genesis account because he knew it to be true history.—John 17:17.
Jesus’ disciples likewise believed the Genesis account of creation. For example, Luke’s Gospel account traces Jesus’ genealogy all the way back to Adam. (Luke 3:23-38) If Adam were a fictional character, at what point would this genealogical list have turned from fact to myth? If the rootstock of this family tree were mythological, how firm would that have made Jesus’ claim that he was the Messiah, born in the line of David? (Matthew 1:1) The Gospel writer Luke said that he had “traced all things from the start with accuracy.” Clearly, he believed the creation account in Genesis.—Luke 1:3.
The apostle Paul’s faith in Jesus was linked to Paul’s trust in the Genesis account. He wrote: “Since death is through a man, resurrection of the dead is also through a man. For just as in Adam all are dying, so also in the Christ all will be made alive.” (1 Corinthians 15:21, 22) If Adam were not literally the forefather of all mankind, the one through whom “sin entered into the world and death through sin,” why would Jesus have needed to die to undo the effects of inherited sin?—Romans 5:12; 6:23.
To undermine belief in the creation account in Genesis is to undermine the very foundations of the Christian faith. Evolutionary theory and the teachings of Christ are incompatible. Any attempt to marry these beliefs can only give birth to a weak faith that is prone to being “tossed about as by waves and carried hither and thither by every wind of teaching.”—Ephesians 4:14.
Faith Based on a Solid Foundation
For centuries the Bible has endured criticism and attack. Time and again the Bible text has been vindicated. When the Bible touches on history, health, and science, its accounts have repeatedly been proved reliable. Its advice regarding human relations is trustworthy and timeless. Human philosophies and theories, like so much green grass, sprout and then wither over time, but the Word of God “will last to time indefinite.”—Isaiah 40:8.
The teaching of evolution is not limited to the realm of scientific theory. It is a human philosophy that blossomed and then flourished for decades. In recent years, however, the traditional evolutionary teaching of Darwin has itself evolved—in fact, mutated—as efforts have been made to explain away the increasing evidence for design in the natural world. We invite you to examine this topic further. You can do so by reviewing the other articles in this issue. In addition, you may also want to read the publications shown on this page and page 32.
You will likely find that after researching this subject, your trust in what the Bible says about the past will be bolstered. More important, your faith in the Bible’s promises for the future will be strengthened. (Hebrews 11:1) You may also find yourself moved to praise Jehovah, “the Maker of heaven and earth.”—Psalm 146:6.
True science is referee not player.
FOR 50 years, British philosopher Antony Flew was highly respected as an atheist by his peers. “Theology and Falsification,” his 1950 paper, “became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the [20th] century.” In 1986 Flew was called “the most profound of the contemporary critics of theism” (the belief in God or gods). So it came as a great shock to many when, in 2004, Flew announced that he had changed his viewpoint.
What made Flew change his mind? In a word, science. He became convinced that the universe, the laws of nature, and life itself could not have arisen merely by chance. Is that a reasonable conclusion?
How Did the Laws of Nature Arise?
Physicist and author Paul Davies points out that science does a wonderful job of explaining physical phenomena such as rain. But he says: “When it comes to . . . questions such as ‘Why are there laws of nature?’ the situation is less clear. These sorts of questions are not much affected by specific scientific discoveries: many of the really big questions have remained unchanged since the birth of civilization and still vex us today.”
“The important point is not merely that there are regularities in nature,” wrote Flew in 2007, “but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal, and ‘tied together.’ Einstein spoke of them as ‘reason incarnate.’ The question we should ask is how nature came packaged in this fashion. This is certainly the question that scientists from Newton to Einstein to Heisenberg have asked—and answered. Their answer was the Mind of God.”
Indeed, many highly respected scientists do not consider it unscientific to believe in an intelligent First Cause. On the other hand, to say that the universe, its laws, and life just happened is intellectually unsatisfying. Everyday experience tells us that design—especially highly sophisticated design—calls for a designer.
Which Faith Will You Choose?
Although the new atheists like to wave the banner of science over their camp, the fact is that neither atheism nor theism rest purely on science. Both involve faith—atheism in purposeless blind chance; theism in an intelligent First Cause. The new atheists promote the notion that “all religious faith is blind faith,” writes John Lennox, professor of mathematics at the University of Oxford, England. He adds: “We need to emphasize strongly that they are wrong.” The question, therefore, is this: Which faith stands up under test—that of the atheist or that of the religious believer? Consider, for example, the origin of life.
Evolutionists readily acknowledge that the origin of life remains a mystery—although there are many conflicting theories. A leading new atheist, Richard Dawkins, claims that by virtue of the vast number of planets that must exist in the universe, life was bound to appear somewhere. But many reputable scientists are not so sure. Cambridge Professor John Barrow says that the belief in “the evolution of life and mind” hits “dead-ends at every stage. There are just so many ways in which life can fail to evolve in a complex and hostile environment that it would be sheer hubris to suppose that, simply given enough carbon and enough time, anything is possible.”
Keep in mind, too, that life is not just an assortment of chemical elements. Rather, it is based on an extremely sophisticated form of information, which is encoded in DNA. Hence, when we talk about the origin of life, we are also talking about the origin of biological information. What is the only source of information that we know of? In a word, intelligence. Would chance accidents produce complex information, such as a computer program, an algebraic formula, an encyclopedia, or even a recipe for a cake? Of course not. Yet, when it comes to sophistication and efficiency, none of these even begin to compare with the information stored in the genetic code of living organisms.
Luck as the First Cause—Good Science?
According to atheists, “the universe is as it is, mysteriously, and it just happens to permit life,” explains Paul Davies. “Had it been different,” say atheists, “we would not be here to argue about it. The universe may or may not have a deep underlying unity, but there is no design, purpose, or point to it all—at least none that would make sense to us.” “The advantage of this position,” notes Davies, “is that it is easy to hold—easy to the point of being a cop-out,” that is, a convenient way to avoid facing the issue.
In his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, molecular biologist Michael Denton concluded that the theory of evolution “is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious . . . scientific theory.” He also referred to Darwinian evolution as one of the greatest myths of our time.
To be sure, the appeal to luck as the first cause does smack of myth. Imagine this: An archaeologist sees a rough stone that is more or less square. He may attribute that shape to chance, which would be reasonable. But later he finds a stone that is perfectly formed in the shape of a human bust, down to the finest details. Does he attribute this item to chance? No. His logical mind says, ‘Someone made this.’ Using similar reasoning, the Bible states: “Every house is constructed by someone, but he that constructed all things is God.” (Hebrews 3:4) Do you agree with that statement?
“The more we get to know about our universe,” writes Lennox, “the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator God, who designed the universe for a purpose, gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”
Regrettably, among the things that undermine belief in God is evil perpetrated in his name. As a result, some have concluded that mankind would be better off without religion. What do you think?
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