In a Pew Research Center survey from 2017 only 56% of Americans said they believed in God as described in the Bible. This percent continues to drop as more and more Americans abandon the traditional Christian faith. As a result we are more often confronted with those in our family or community that fall into the remaining 44%. They must first be open to the existence of God before they will accept any more evidence about Him. So based on that, I have listed six evidences that we can use to point people to God.
1.The Existence of the Universe
The universe had a beginning and something came from nothing! This came from a Washington Post article dated June 3, 1984. They stated that religion and science may be coming together. The universe is not eternal as some scientists in 1940 claimed. Now most all astronomers believe the universe had a beginning and will have an ending. It is winding down. The sun will die in 7 Billion years. So maybe we will not outlive the sun but this place we live in had a beginning and will have an end.
Psalms 19:1 states “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
2. The Complexity and Uniqueness of Creation
Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus’s 1543 book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, moved Earth from being the center of the Universe to just another planet orbiting the Sun. After that astronomers extended the idea and formed the Copernican Principle, which says that our place in the Universe as a whole is completely ordinary.
But scientists today are coming to understand just the opposite. All the many conditions needed to support life are becoming known. The earth’s position, size, movement, moon, and many other factors are necessary. Also the complexity of life itself especially the human body points to a creator. To find in a small molecule all the information to recreate the body is amazing. A DNA strand is only about two nanometers (or two billionths of a meter) in width. That is so thin, that a human hair is about 40,000 times as wide.
Romans 1:20 states “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”
3. Our Conscience
Since the earliest times, humankind has been incurably religious. There is a drive in the human spirit that compels us to seek out a higher power, a source for our existence, and some explanation for who we are and why we are here at all. C.S. Lewis (the great English scholar and Christian philosopher) points out that even though someone’s hunger is not proof that food exists or that a person will get a meal anytime soon, hunger is a powerful indicator that a person has a capacity and basic need to eat, even if they die of starvation. Spiritual hunger is a powerful indicator that there is something beyond ourselves that we can and need to feed on. This desire with in us is one such indicator.
That’s why most people are associated with some religion. From a 2010 survey there were 6.9 Billion people in the world. 2.2B were classified as Christians, 1.6B Muslims, 1.1B Hindus, .5B Buddhists, and .4B Folk Religionists. That is 5.8 Billion out of the 6.9B total.
Ecclesiastes 3:11b “He has put eternity into man’s heart.”
4. The Bible
God has revealed himself to us through his Word, the Bible. Throughout Scripture, the existence of God is treated as a self-evident fact. When someone writes an autobiography they do not waste time in trying to prove their existence. Likewise God does not spend much time proving his existence in His book.
The Bible is the most published book in all of history with over 5 Billion. The closest to that is the Quran with 800 Million. Don Quixote is at 200 million, A Tale of two cities at 200 million and The Book of Mormon at 120 million.
There are 80,000 different versions of the Bible and 2,100 languages have at least one book of the Bible.
2 Timothy 3:16 “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
5. The Life of Jesus
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure. Some of the best non-Biblical evidence comes from Josephus a Jewish historian and Tacitus a Roman historian.
Another non-Biblical evidence is the change in the calendar. BC/AD was changed by a monk Dionysius Exergues in the 6th century. He also established year 1 and thought it was one week after the birth of Jesus. BC was before Christ and he changed the meaning of AD to the Latin (Anno Domini) “In the year of our Lord”. But in order to remove all Christian influences BC/AD was changed to BCE/CE in the early 1700’s which are “Before Common Era” and “Common Era.”
For Biblical evidence, Jesus kept the entire Old Testament law perfectly and fulfilled the prophecies concerning the Messiah. He performed countless acts of compassion and public miracles to authenticate His message and bear witness to His deity. When confronted He said He was God. Then, three days after His crucifixion, He rose from the dead, a fact affirmed by hundreds of eyewitnesses and best proved by the changed lives of the disciples. They went from men who feared for their lives while denying Christ to men who gave their lives for the sake of the gospel.
John 1:1-3 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.
6. Near Death Experiences
A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. When negative, such experiences may include sensations of anguish and distress.
In the U.S., an estimated 9 million people have reported an NDE, according to a 2011 study in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. NDE experiences are reported by 17% of people who nearly die. In his book “Evidence of the Afterlife” and on his web site “Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF)” Jeffrey Long has documented many who have experienced near death phenomenons. As a result he clearly believes that they prove there is life after death.
NDE’s have lucid experiences while unconscious, comatose, or clinically dead. They said they were more alert than normal. Forty-five percent of NDE’s said they had out of body experiences where they could see in 360 degrees, up and down, near and far, at the same time. They have also recorded people who were blind from birth and could see for the first time.
One quote from “Evidence of the Afterlife” is “I could feel my spirit actually leaving my body. I saw and heard the conversations between my husband and my doctors taking place outside my room, about 40 feet away down a hallway. I was later able to verify this conversation to my shocked husband.”
This clearly supports the Bible in that our body has two parts, body and soul/spirit and when we die the two parts separate, our body goes to dust and our spirit to Heaven or Hell.
Matthew 10:28 “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.”
As you point people to God you can use some or all of these six points. Also use your own personal testimony of how God has changed your life.
Soaring Into Heaven 