All right, good evening, everyone. Welcome to our service tonight. Good to see you all here. Trust the Lord. We'll bless our time together. As we open our time in prayer, just a couple of quick reminders. Wednesday evening, we do have a business meeting. and the agenda items center on our general church budget and then our missions budget. So those will be the two big items we'll talk about. There'll be a couple of other things as well. One of which is a roof on the gym. So I'll just kind of plant that thought in your mind because it's that time where we need to replace another roof. It's the last roof that we have to replace until Brother Rick and I are no longer on the scene. And then you younger folks can deal with it. But we'll talk about that Wednesday night. And then next Sunday is our Independence Day service. 11 o'clock is our start time. That's an aberration from norm. But again, that's so you can invite folks to come out. It's late in the morning. They can't use the excuse, I like to sleep in on Sunday. And it is outdoors, under the tent. So pray for good weather. The purpose of it is as we are expressing our gratitude for God's grace and allowing us to live with the freedoms and liberties that we have here in America, that we eventually get to the cross and the real liberty that all men need. So they will hear the gospel. Anyone you bring will have an opportunity to hear the gospel. So I hope you have been. I hope you will invite someone if you haven't. And we'll pray the Lord will give us an opportunity to build some bridges with folks next Sunday as well. Let's ask the Lord's blessing on our time together tonight. Father, we thank you for the opportunity we have to gather together in your house on this Sunday evening. Trust, Lord, your blessing to be upon us. Lord, thanking you for your care and provision that we enjoy every day, individually, as families, and as a church. Lord, you have been very gracious and very good to us, and we truly want to express our gratitude to you. Father, we do pray that you would direct us tonight in this service, that you would be with us Wednesday evening for our normal Wednesday evening fair, but also, Lord, that you would bless our time in our business meeting, that we would do things decently and in order and honor you as we conduct your business. And Father, we pray that you would be with our service next Sunday. Help us, Lord, to have a good day weather-wise, but we pray that we will have visitors. We pray, Lord, that we might have an opportunity to use that as an outreach and that, Lord, you would bring those to us whom you would have to come and that we would be able to share the gospel. And, Lord, how wonderful it would be if we had the opportunity to rejoice with those who rejoice in the presence of the angels in heaven because of one sinner that repents. Lord, we would look forward to that. We will rejoice in how you use that service. So thank you. Bless our time here this evening. We'll give you the glory as we pray in Christ's name and for His sake. Amen. All right, you may be seated. I'm going to do something a little bit different tonight. And for some of you who have good memories, you may say, wow, this sounds familiar. And I would say, good. You remember. Do you remember now what the points are? because that's why I'm repeating it. Now you're saying, okay, what are you going to repeat? It's all repetitive. There's nothing new under the sun anyway, right? I want to talk to you tonight about five reasons that atheists cannot know that God does not exist. Now, does that sound familiar? Well, I see nobody saying, I remember that. So maybe it's not as familiar as I thought it might be. It's been a little while since we talked about this. And it's not new to me. It's not something that I had the brainpower to put together myself. So I'm borrowing what others have said. But I think it's good from the standpoint of the world in which you and I live. those who claim to be atheists in the world around us. I think it's good for us to have an apologetic kind of message, and really that's what this would be, more of an apologetic defense of our faith, but it's doing so by attacking the atheists. So I hope in our sharing this with you it might give you some ammunition. You may have a family member, a co-worker, maybe a friend even, who claims to be an atheist, who claims that they do not believe in God, and I hope that this will be helpful for you. So five reasons that atheists cannot know that God does not exist. So we'll see how long this takes, right? Number one, They don't know what is in their neighbor's garage without looking inside. Now does it sound familiar? Dr. Brea is saying, yeah, kind of. If I'm not mistaken, in my mind, it was like three years ago we did this. But according to my notes, it was 2017. So you kind of got an excuse there. Seven years ago, I guess maybe, I'm expecting a lot. But that first point is one that I hoped would kind of touch a little bit. Let me share it with you again. They don't know what is in their neighbor's garage without looking inside. That's the first point about why an atheist cannot know that God does not exist. What do we mean by that? Well, we're talking about human limitations. Atheists have human limitations. That's not a surprise, right? Let me read for you in Job chapter 38. Job chapter 38. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2. I'm going to read down through verse 4. Of course, we're familiar with this passage, but I think it speaks to this particular point. So, the Scripture reads, Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me." Here's what the Lord is saying. Job, answer this question. Where was thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding. So here, God is asking Job a question. Job, were you there when I created the world? Now what's Job's answer going to be? No. So the Lord is, in essence, giving a rhetorical question here. Obviously it's going to be no, the answer. But the point of the question is, Job, you do not know what you do not know. Or to use this point, Job, you do not know what is in your neighbor's garage unless you go and look into the garage. You cannot make a definitive statement about what is in your neighbor's garage if you've never looked into the garage. You might make some guesses. And you may be right. You may not be right. Some people use their garages to park their cars. Some people use their garages to store stuff. Some people's stuff is organized. Some people's stuff is just sort of scattered. What is in there? Some people don't even know themselves what is in their garage. So how could a neighbor know unless the neighbor actually looks into the garage and maybe has to begin taking notes and doing an inventory of what is in that garage? Now, the right answer then to the Lord's question here is humble silence. One must have knowledge and experience of ultimate realities to speak with authority about ultimate realities. Does that make sense? An honest atheist would have to claim to be an agnostic. Because an agnostic at least is honest enough to say, I don't know. But an atheist is making a definitive statement about an ultimate reality without the ability to know ultimate reality. There is no God. How can they say that? How can they make that statement? For instance, what atheist has ever been beyond this universe? The dimensions of the life in which you and I live. We are well equipped because God has given us senses We are well-equipped to use these senses to experience the universe in which you and I live. We are woefully ill-equipped to know anything beyond. So we would ask the question, what happens after a person dies? Can anyone know? Can we experience that? Well, we all will likely experience it, but then we're not going to be able to come back and report. Now, someone did, and someone did come back and report, and that was the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven, and is our high priest ever living to make intercession for us today. So, an atheist can claim knowledge without revelation, without divine revelation, and in reality what he is doing is being fanciful. What atheist has ever been on the other side of the universe? Have you ever read what these scientists say? I have read recently that the experts... What makes you an expert in an infinite reality? if you are not able to know infinite reality. But the experts I've read where some say that if we could transfer ourselves back to that point, that singularity, that grand event called the Big Bang, that from that point forward, time is flowing the way you and I are familiar with it. But on the other side of the Big Bang, time flows backwards. Not sure quite how that works. Does that mean you're old and then you get young? I'm not sure. But, how do they know? How can an expert make that kind of statement? I'm sure you have heard that there are an infinite number of universes. The multiverse. And that they found evidence Something else I've read recently. They found evidence of other universes. And what were those evidences? Fanciful, made-up stuff. Because there is no evidence of something they can't prove, because it's all fantasy. It's science fiction. But they're the experts. And so when they make these statements, people grab hold of it and they say, well, they're scientists. They're so much smarter than we are. Are they? When they make statements about infinite realities that they cannot test, they cannot prove, their expertise is simply made up in the fact that they have a good imagination. and therefore they can make statements and who can question them. With all of our advances in scientific knowledge, we still can't measure the universe. We still don't know what is beyond. Let me ask you a question. Is it possible for us to go to the edge of the universe? And if we got to the edge of the universe, what would we find? I mean, if you believe in the Big Bang, you have to believe there was nothing. What is nothing? And then everything exploded out of that. And now it's been expanding through all of these billions of years. Expanding into what? If there was nothing, then we're expanding into nothing. They cannot answer these questions because they can't go to the other side of the universe and find it. Even the question I read recently, where is the center of the universe? And when you read through it, and granted, they're a lot smarter than I am, my takeaway from it was, well, we really don't know because there probably isn't a center of the universe because everything just sort of like ping pong balls just sort of exploded and bounced into each other. So what you're saying is you don't know. They don't know infinite reality because it is impossible. So how can anyone know that God does not exist beyond the universe as we know it? How can they know that? How can they make that definitive dogmatic statement? In fact, atheists would need knowledge of everything in the universe and beyond to legitimately know that God does not exist. They would have to be able to see everything and know everything to be able to make that definitive statement that God does not exist. They can't do that. But they can't acknowledge that. One thing that we have to understand about the science that is practiced today, where do scientists get their money? I mean, do they do what they do gratis? I mean, are they just so enamored with doing science that they do it and they starve? Where do they get paid? They get grants. They get grants from corporations and from the government, and that's how they get paid. And what is the purpose of a grant? Well, I would like to do a study about X. And here's why I want to do that study, and here's what I think I'm going to be able to prove in this study. What's going to happen if they keep having studies and disproving what they think? They're not going to get any more grants. Human nature being what it is, You can fudge statistics, right? I mean, I've shared with you 78% of all statistics are made up. How do I know that? Because I just made that up. Because that's the character of statistics. You can pull statistics to prove whatever you want to prove. And that's what they have to do. I'm not saying all scientists are liars, so don't mistake what I'm saying. But I'm saying that human nature being what it is, there is a definite pressure on them to live up to whatever the prevailing thought is at the moment. Because they've learned, if you go against the prevailing thought, you're not going to get the grants. You're not going to get the money. You're not going to be able to do the science. So that's a reality. They don't know what they don't know. They don't know what is in their neighbor's garage unless they go and look. And they don't have the ability to look, if you will, in God's garage. Number two. There are five of these. This is number two. God is infinite spirit. 1 Timothy. In the book of 1 Timothy 1, verse 17, Paul writes now, unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. So he tells us he is the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God. And then chapter 6, verse 16, Paul continues and writes, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. He is immortal. He is everlasting. He is the light that no man can approach. To deny God's existence because we haven't seen Him says nothing about the actual existence of God. Is that true? I have never seen Abraham Lincoln. I have seen his statue in D.C., but I've not seen him, so how do I know he exists? Well, he's in the history books. So is Jesus Christ, but you'll read a lot of authors who say, well, he didn't really exist. And what you read about him, well, those were written by people who wanted to purvey the myth that he existed, and so they wrote history that really isn't history. But we can't really say he existed. But Abraham Lincoln did, because he's in the history books. You see the reasoning? And by the way, there are famous Greek writings that we only have one copy of, but because we have that one copy, That is reality. We have one copy from 600 B.C. But that's true. That wasn't made up. Because we have one copy. But if you have a Bible, the Old Testament, that was written a thousand years before that, Well, that's been made up through the years. That wasn't written until after the captives came back. That's all make-believe. There was no David. There was no Solomon. Don't you guys know that? Even though we can look in history and find proof. Dr. Brea has been doing a job of that over the last year and a half or so in his Sunday school class, demonstrating the archaeology and all of that that prove these things. The point is simple. People believe what they want to believe. They haven't seen God, therefore God must not exist. There was a famous historical event. This was back in the 60s. A Soviet cosmonaut, this was back in the old Soviet Union, looked out the window of a space capsule and he declared that he did not see God And since he didn't see God, there is no God. I'm looking, I don't see God out here anywhere. Now, is that the scientific method to test the existence of God? Just because you look out a window and say, well, I don't see God anywhere, orbiting around the earth. Someone noted, by the way, if he had opened the window of his capsule, he would have seen God. Maybe not the way he would have expected. The fact that the universe is designed and ordered with uniform and universal physical laws allowed him to be in space in the first place, contrary to random chance. Without God, there would be no space capsule. There would have been no cosmonaut. It would not have been possible. It is because of God that we can do science, that we can have math. that we can do engineering. If it were not for the immutable laws of science, if it were not for the design in creation, then we couldn't have a building like this and you could not be sitting on those comfortable pews. It is precisely because there is a God who created everything not by mere chance. He created it by fiat, by the word of His mouth, and He created it, He designed it, so that you and I could benefit from it, and so that we could have dominion over it because of the brains, the minds that He gave to us. So we owe it all to Him. Number three. Human opinion cannot serve as the ultimate standard of what God can be or what God can do. Let me say that again. Human opinion cannot serve as the ultimate standard of what God can be or what God can do. So they ask questions. How can a good God exist with so much suffering in the world? You've heard that question, right? How can God make the sun stand still in the sky? How can a man live in a fish for three days? How can a man be born of a virgin? There are many other questions, right, that they want to throw out there to confront the believer. The majority of which disappear in the face of a God whose infinite power cannot be limited by the properties of the universe that He created and that He sustains. Now beyond that obvious answer, Many difficult theological mysteries face our finite fallen understanding, right? How could God cause the sun to stand still? Because He is God. Yes, but if He did that, look at all the other catastrophes. He created the sun, He created the earth. Does He have the power to cause the sun to stand still and the earth to not have to stop rotating and fly off into nothingness. God can do what he chooses to do. If we could understand everything about an infinite God in his universe, you know what that would make us? We would have to be God. Because the only way we could understand everything about an infinite God is if we were infinite ourselves. So when we say, well, God does not exist because I can't see Him. I can't prove He exists. I saw a cartoon recently. Maybe you saw this too. It was a bunch of fleas. And they were having a meeting. And clearly, when you look, you thought there were trees around them. It wasn't trees. It was the hair of a dog. And in their meeting, they were making the statement If we can't prove there's a dog, a dog doesn't exist. You get the point? They're living on the back of the dog, but they couldn't prove the dog exists. Well, we live in a universe that God created, and yet man wants to question whether he exists because they're looking for proof that he exists. to deny truths taught by Scripture about God and His work because we do not understand them, or because they go beyond what we know, is to say in effect, what I cannot understand cannot be true. What I don't understand cannot be true. You know, I dare say that there are some students in our high school who would love to make that argument. If I don't understand calculus or trigonometry, that can't be true. If I don't understand chemistry, it can't be true. And what would we say to them? Is their lack of understanding proof positive that there is no chemistry or higher mathematics? We would say no. The problem isn't in whether those exist. They exist. The problem is in the student, right? Well, I would submit that the fact that I may not understand how God could speak and create everything doesn't mean that God cannot speak and create everything. It simply means I do not have the capacity in my finiteness to understand the infinite God of heaven. We cannot make the finite and fallen the ultimate standard of who God is and what God can do. That's what an atheist wants to do. He wants to somehow take the infinite God and judge Him by their own finiteness. In my finiteness, I can't prove God exists, therefore He does not exist. People who do not know the contents of their neighbor's garage or have never been beyond the universe and its existence cannot legitimately make their personal opinion the standard of truth concerning ultimate realities. You know, Satan is so good at what he does. I'm not trying to say Satan is good. He is evil. But he is, in his evilness, pretty intelligent. Lucifer, son of the morning. And one of the things in our generations that he has done so well is to confuse the minds of men. You know this. It is possible, according to our world and our culture, for my truth and your truth to be contradictory. I mean, you have your truth and I have my truth, And what's true for you is true for you, and what's true for me is true for me, and what is true for each of us may not mesh together, but that's okay because you're entitled to your truth and I'm entitled to my truth. Is that reality? Because if that's reality, then what we are actually saying is there is no truth. Right? I mean, if we can have opposing truths that are both true, then we're saying there's a lot of truth out there, but there is no ultimate truth. And if there is no ultimate truth, what is science? Because isn't science based upon the reality that we can, in a lab, duplicate certain things and prove them? I mean, the laws of nature, as we've said in the past. Is gravity a reality? Well, that's true for you. It doesn't have to be true for me. So I'm going to jump out that window, and I'm just going to float out to Union Road and then float my way home. What's going to happen when I dive out that window? Whether I accept the reality and the truth of gravity or not, The reality of gravity is going to grab me, and I'm going to suffer the consequences. There is absolute truth. Jesus himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He is the Word made flesh. He embodies truth. And He has given us that truth in His revelation so that you and I can study it and know what it is. It is sad to live in a world where Satan has blinded the minds of them who believe not, that they are so illogical as to make the claim, my truth and your truth may not be compatible and may be in opposition to each other, but they're both legitimate. Satan simply says, I got these dumb people right where I want them. Because it is a choice to not accept the reality of truth. Number four, the universe is not built or operating according to random chance. What is the whole point of evolution? I mean, how did we get here? Random chance. And what do you need with that viewpoint. Time. Deep time. What I really wanted to do tonight was to show a video. You remember we used to do that on Sunday nights? And we saw a lot of good videos, didn't we? COVID kind of messed that up a little bit. We might get back to doing some of that this fall, because I think there's great value in that, when we have folks who are scientists, who are Christian scientists, who are able to share with us, from a scientific viewpoint, realities that maybe you and I would not be aware of. And this whole idea that it takes all of these billions and billions of years for sheer chance to somehow have everything fall in place so that through evolution we can be here today. I read this recently. That there is a growing opinion that that viewpoint is really not as strong as it should be. And so there are now some experts who were saying that evolution must have design. Now just think about that for a moment. They want to assign to an impersonal process some idea of design built in, because after all, how can you get through chaos from nothing to us? So there's got to be some design in there. But they can't bring themselves to say there has to be a designer. So it has to be evolution and something in the process of evolution also has design. Okay, you're almost there. They need to take the next step and say, well, if there is design, there must be a designer. And we would say, yes. And that designer is Almighty God. who designed and created everything. So, random chance will not answer the question. To deny God's existence, the atheist leaves time and chance as the principle behind the universe. Yet all material and energy in the universe operate according to fixed universal laws. There could be no language, no truth, no knowledge, no science. If there was no... If it was all by random chance, none of that could exist. for the sake of argument. If you and I could live in a place that was totally governed by chance, what would that be like? Wouldn't that be a difficult place to live? If there were not hard and fast rules baked in, and it was all by chance, See, that's their dilemma. They can't really explain these things. Nothing could be known or said to be true of anything because nothing could have fixed characteristics. We know the meaning of a dog and a tree because dogs and trees don't change. They're the same today as they were 2,000 years ago. The terms would be meaningless if everything randomly changed. Nothing could be said about anything. How can you do science when the scientists and the lab and everything else are constantly changing? Our universe isn't like that. We know that. We have knowledge. We have language. We do science. We build things because the elements we discover And manipulate will have the same properties tomorrow as they do today. No one lives their life according to a universe built and operating according to random chance. Everyone lives assuming an ordered reality that operates according to fixed and universal laws. Let me just try to give an illustration. Have you ever thought about how you can drive down the road in Union Road? 45 miles an hour is the speed limit. That is the speed limit. You're limited to 45. Technically, you can go faster, but that's as fast as you're supposed to go. But that means if you're going south on Union and somebody else is going north on Union, they're doing 45 and you're doing 45. Boy, what happens if you run into each other? Aren't you glad there are some rules baked into Union Road? One of which is, if you're going south, you need to be on this side. And if you're going north, you need to be on this side. We have some lights. Red means stop. My wife would say, that's right, it means stop. That doesn't mean hit the accelerator. Yellow means you hit the accelerator. Red means stop. But the reality is we can drive on highways because we have rules, and those rules are to be followed. What happens when we ignore those rules? What would happen if suddenly the government that is federal or state or local were to say, we are suspending all highway laws. It now simply boils down to whatever you are comfortable doing. How long would it take until most of the cars would no longer be operating? Now, you might try to do the right thing, but how could you control somebody else? What I'm simply trying to describe is, if there were no laws in creation, we would live in that kind of chaos. It wouldn't work. It wouldn't last. Atheists do not live as if their worldview is actually true. I think that's the bottom line. And then finally, life is required to produce life. And the impersonal cannot produce the personal. Life makes life after its kind. Is this a fair statement? Babies come from a man and a woman who were once babies. who came from a man and a woman who were once babies. Right? Every one of us who is a grandparent here tonight, we were once babies. And their parents were once babies. What am I trying to say? Well, chickens come from eggs laid by chickens who were once eggs. Is that true? You say, well, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Well, I think the chicken came first because God created the chicken as an adult chicken, but from that original creation, just like Adam and Eve were created fully formed adults, but they had children who had children who had children, and so on. We can say that plants come from seeds that came from plants that were once seeds. So okay, we get it. The point is, there's a closed loop of life that can only exist because God first created life. The personal cannot come from the impersonal. Energy and non-living stuff simply cannot create a soul or a conscience. Something else that I read recently. You know, one of the problems of science has been, how do you explain conscience? Because if all we are is a machine basically that came about because of random chance mixed with deep time, then why is it that we have a consciousness that we are? I mean, I am. I think, therefore I am. It was that Descartes that said that, I think. One of those guys. Why is it that we have a knowledge that we exist? Here's something I read recently, because they can't really explain where the conscience comes from. So I've read two things about conscience. Experts. The first is, you know, it may very well be that the universe has a conscience. And we're just sort of like, you know, random synapses in our brains. You know, oh, that was Dana that just, you know, that little synapse was Dana. You're a different synapse. But they were in the larger consciousness of the universe. Where did these experts get that? Well, they're trying to explain conscience. And it's much easier to believe that the universe has a conscience than there is to believe there's a God who created the universe. So here's another explanation of the conscience. It really doesn't exist. You really don't have a consciousness of yourself. You just think that you do. How does that work again? So I have a consciousness that I have a consciousness that I exist because I really... Do you see the illogic? But that's another way they want to explain it. They can't accept it because if you accept that there's something that is immaterial about us, then what does that say about an immaterial God who created us? So we have to do away with the whole sense that there's something immaterial. So I can't really have a conscience. I can't really have a consciousness that I exist. Because that means there's a part of me that is not material. You know, I'm glad that I don't have to believe what these experts believe. They can parade themselves around and they can get all this money from the government and they can have all the accolades and they can pat themselves on the back and give themselves all these awards But at the end of the day, the Bible says something about them. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. That's the reality. The simple cell is more sophisticated than anything that the genius of man has ever produced. A simple cell. Trillions of atoms organized to form a cell. Trillions of cells cooperating and communicating to make and reproduce a person, including consciousness of life. A simple cell that just came into being in some primordial pool of some, you know, chemicals that somehow coalesced in a certain place, and somehow the building blocks of life began to build, and somehow they became living cells that could reproduce themselves, and somehow they got together and said, hey, you know, if we join together, we can really become something, and here we are. How did all that happen? The eye, according to the experts, the eye, which is one of the most sophisticated parts of our anatomy, the ability for us to see the world around us, you realize, according to the experts, independently, the eye has evolved, it's either three or four times. Independently. as sophisticated as it is, with parts that only exist because other parts exist, so which part came first? Remember, we saw that some years ago when we had one of our films. So, it's so silly that they want to claim that they know what they cannot know. Atheists are certainly entitled to their opinion, And one day they will learn the truth, but opinions they are, and they're contrary to the nature of reality. In the end, atheists are just as limited as everybody else. They can claim that they are the intelligent people and look down on the rest of us because we're just not as intelligent as they are. We're just not able, we're not sophisticated enough to look at the facts. Many years ago, right after I got saved, I, as a young believer, 15 years old, not quite 15, this was probably been a month or so of my becoming a Christian, I had an uncle at the time who was a microbiologist. worked on some major things in the country, worked for Abbott Labs. Some of you know Abbott Labs. He was very successful. I talked to him one day, and he was sad. I said, why do you look down? And he said, well, I just lost $100,000 in the stock market on my AT&T stock. OK. I guess that would make me sad too, but that wasn't all he had. I love my Uncle Paul. He's no longer living. He came to know Christ later in life. But as a young believer, and I think he had designs that I was going to follow in his footsteps. I still have microbiology books that he kind of helped share with me. just never could get rid of them. He did his best to explain to me why there is no God. There can be no God. And he was a scientist, and so he knew more than this 15-year-old boy. Well, I'm so, so thankful that I could say to my uncle, I may not know much, But I know this is truth. And I would not give an inch. Now, I was probably stubborn. And he was probably stubborn. And we had that conversation off and on for a number of years. In fact, one day, when I was in college, and we were having this discussion one summer, he looked at me and said, you know, people who are really convinced about what they believe don't find it necessary to argue about it. I've thought about that through the years and never had the chance to ask him. Was he kind of giving a little ground there, saying, you know, maybe he's starting to learn some things I can't answer? I don't know. But I am grateful that he made a profession of faith in Christ before he died. That he was able to look beyond his expertise as a scientist. You have them in your family. And I'm not just talking about scientists. I'm talking about people who buy into that whole idea, God does not exist. You have them in your family. You probably have neighbors who feel that way. I have a cousin who recently made the statement on Facebook that we are all God. There is no God, but collectively each one of us is our own God. Interesting. There are all kinds of viewpoints in the world, but there's only one viewpoint that matters, and that's this book. Because this book is the true God of heaven, the creator of heaven and earth, who not only created everything and sustains everything, but in his wise providence, He has given us this book, which is an absolute true record of history. When this book touches on history, it is absolutely correct. Sorry to keep saying I read recently. I read something else recently. That they found evidence of the Assyrian army in southern Israel. In the Negev desert. Wow! What is the point? Well, the Bible talks about the Assyrian army encamping in the time of Hezekiah in that desert. Wow! The Bible has some facts that are true. Yeah, all the facts are true. I'm glad that we have this book. I'm glad that you and I do not have to bow to those experts who say there is no God. We know there is a God. And we know that everyone one day is going to stand before Him. You need no other evidence than the human body. Because of the complexity of these bodies and of our minds, there has to be a God. Chance and time will not result in this. There is a God. I am grateful that He loved me. I am grateful that He provided salvation for me through Christ. And I am grateful that I can rest upon His promises and one day I will be with Him in a new heaven and a new earth and the curse will be gone. Wouldn't that be wonderful? That day will come. Until that day comes, don't be cowed by the experts. Don't let them steal your joy. You can rejoice. They can claim to be the intelligentsia if that makes them feel better about themselves. But one day, they're going to stand before the God of heaven. I'm glad my sin was judged at the cross. And I'm glad that I can stand on His promise. I hope you can rejoice in that as well. Let's pray. Father, I thank you tonight that we could have what was really an apologetic, just simply looking at this idea of atheism and what atheists believe, and Lord, how they cannot really make the statements they make and how they are really not as logical as they want to claim to be. I'm grateful, Father, that you are the creator and sustainer of all things. And I'm grateful that you so loved us, that you gave your only begotten son, that he gave his life willingly, sacrificially, substitutionarily for us. I'm grateful, Father, that I today can stand before you, not in my own righteousness, but in the righteousness of Christ. Father, I thank you that I can look forward to the day when I see you face to face. I believe today I believe that you are. And I look forward to the day when I see you with my own eyes. Until that day comes, may I be faithful. May these believers and these families and may our church be faithful. And may you be honored in our midst. Well, thank you and give you the glory as we pray this in Christ's name and for his sake.