W W W W  World Wide Web Witness Inc.  Home Page   Contents Page for Volume  What is New

CHAPTER 1

Our God Cannot be Greater!

Some time ago, someone reported to this author that the posture in our site was not pleasing. It suggested that he, intelligent, equipped with academic degrees, was still not seeing straight. This he found unacceptable. He would in fact, one was advised, proceed to take this author apart.

This seemed to have something to be said for it; for at least it showed an interest. Being taken apart can be helpful, say if you have a cancer, so that you are parted from it! It WAS part of you, and now it is not! This parting is no sweet sorrow!

In reply, one pointed out that his objective was not unfitting. After all, on this site the challenge is made that it is demonstrable that God is, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ is truth. In so doing, one removes various points of view as invalid. Why, then, should not someone seek to reply in kind, and show some logical fault or invalidity, if he could!

That, it is the only condition, besides of course, sticking to the point and not blasting off in irrelevancies, which is the usual and often useful procedure of what detests truth and wishes to avoid the issue.

In the end, the party concerned announced "I give up!"

As one was pointing out to a nurse today, it is easier to defend someone's innocence if he or she IS innocent. It is far easier to prove these things which are true, than it is for people who are trying to show what is NOT true, to demonstrate an error: whose name is legion, and whose legions suffer perennial defeat. Black cannot REALLY become white, and zero can not actually aspire to infinity, when all the brouhaha is over. It is simply not the case.

The truth stood as it always stands, for various reasons. First, it IS true, and so lends itself to such demonstration, and that is what we are about (SMR). Secondly, it has impeccable logical validity, unlike all else (cf. TMR Ch. 5, Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR Ch. 3), and thirdly,  it even presents ever new faces showing, as truth does, ever new intimations of its perfection (cf. News 132, Marvels of Predestination   6, *2, What is the Chaff to the Wheat! Ch.  4,  (A), Three Anzas, One Answer
Ch. 4).

Hence to defend it is like showing that an addition sum is correct: it adds up! To show the error of other options is also, by His grace, not to hard, for they always breach the nature of reason. Reason being part of the creation, you have to breach it to avoid what it is and where it leads. The fact that this is what is found in detail in the philosophic realm as has been shown continually on this site, merely verifies this fact; but it also makes it disproportionately easy to present the truth over all opposition.

These four reasons are part of the nature of the case, when someone attacks the truth; but there is a fifth which is in one sense, the first. It is this. Since the God of creation is alive, He is well able to help His people to answer, and indeed promises precisely that (Luke 21:15), and a little reading in Foxe's Book of Martyrs will show something of this very thing! On the other hand, when you imprison and torture your victims, as Romanism did in the name of the papacy, using the power of man to destroy the testimony of God, in absolute confrontation with the command of Christ (Matthew 23:8-10), it is easier to talk down the underfed, suffering objects of your persecution. For all that, the Lord, as a mighty, awesome One, keeps His people and enables them to stand (cf. Jeremiah 20:11).

Of this one has been vouchsafed experience, at times in highly public manner; and it is as great as tasting cold water in a desert! It is always great when God draws near; and it is great to remember this which He so verifies in life, being faithful: "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you" (James 4:8), and there it is also found that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the lowly" (4:6). With this, one might collate Isaiah 66:1-2!  Put the jug under the tap, and it is filled... Water it from the airy skies in the barren heat of autonomy, and it remains empty. It is not the fault of the jug, but of its disposer, who 'handles' things his or her own way.

But past these practical considerations, there is one more. Some people have a distinct fear of reason, just as others do of large-muscled males in dark alleys. If you have ever been so menaced or treated by some Mafia type, then doubtless your thoughts about alleys, when dark and so inhabited, may be less than reassuring. Similarly, some who have seen the pillorying of reason in many academic situations (cf. TMR Ch. 8, Secular Myths and Sacred Truth), when young, may not feel at home in this realm.

This is quite unnecessary. To be sure, muscle or mind may be used to perform freakish acts and fouls, and authority can be grossly misused, students even being threatened with failure, or actually failed if they do not 'toe the line' of some pretentious presented piece of invalid arrogance. This however is no reason to despise reason, but rather its misuse!

One other ground for reluctance in this realm is simply that it IS illegitimate to be a RATIONALIST, as if reason could be its own source and the validation of all. It cannot exceed itself to cover all things; but what it can do, is show the logical necessity of the existence of God and of His word, and the identity of the later, so that then what it provides must be received as truth. This then removes another aspect of hiding from the light of reason. Since as shown in SMR, reason leads necessarily to God and to the Bible as His sole authorised, written word to mankind, this gives it its ultimate ground in the One where it originated for man, and verifies likewise its validity. It does not create God; God created it in man, and using it man is enabled to find WHAT GOD HAS SAID which in turn verifies itself. Reason is not the only way to show the reality of God; not by any means: but it is one and a necessary test (cf. I Thessalonians 5:23).

As to that, it is not at all to trust in reason, but to thank God that as a given element in life, supplied by God, it works - as for that matter so magnificently does the eye in seeing the beauty of His creation, and the heart in sensing the wonder of His love, and the spirit in researching discourse and seeking its source. In all these things, there is the relevant pointer; in God is the source, summit and purity for all. Yet some resent ANYTHING which so points to God, the living and verified God!

One party, who had desired to destroy our testimony on the Web, and who later 'gave up' as noted above, added a comment, that one's God was too small. It was pointed out in response that this is not the case, for even if one finds the minimal reason for elephant feet markings, with careful scientific method, this is not to limit the elephant. It can be as large as it wants, and leave marks accordingly. Reason does not limit the giver of evidence, it merely gives grounds for a proper, minimal assessment of what caused it.

The rejection of reason of course instantly removes all validity to any argument, including arguments for its rejection, since what is deemed invalid, can prove nothing.

When it also avoids what is met with verification at the end of the line of reasoning, then of course it simply becomes wilful. And what does the Bible say on the matter other than this (emphasis added):

"He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

"And this is the condemnation,
that the light has come into the world,
and men loved darkness rather than light,
because their deeds were evil.

"For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light,
lest his deeds should be exposed.
But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Let us then proceed. Thus reason provides the Bible as demonstrable truth (SMR), but it does not provide the BIBLE! This is not the product of someone's reasoning; it is as shown in SMR, the gift of God, and necessarily so. Hence there is no slightest minimisation or even diminution of God, to make Him 'too small' or 'too large' which is impossible, since infinity CANNOT be too small, when one follows reason to the Bible. One may perhaps notice in Psalm 145 that His understanding is infinite, or in Colossians 2 that in Him are all that treasures of wisdom and knowledge, or again in Luke 1, that with God NOTHING shall be called impossible, or in I John 4 that God IS love! or in John 3:16 that He SO loved that He gave His only begotten Son, yes as in John 1:29, in sacrifice.

Why and for what then ? For the attainment of riches ? All are His already (cf. Psalm 50). For the provision for His children ? Christ whom He so gave IS His only begotten Son. Why then was He given so such contemptuous treatment by the children of men, whose children continue it in vast mode, as they muddle their world and produce in it precisely those conditions which He so accurately foretold ?

It was so that among the entire race of men, sin-smitten as they are, and hence diminished in value and rebellious, ANY who should believe in Him should have eternal life. You want something larger ? more
just ? more kind ? more giving ? more forgiving ? You perhaps want a God who disappears ? THAT, it is precisely what was the target of some who crucified Him, in their unbelief; but it did not remove Him. God is TOO GREAT for any removal van! It is too small that is the god of mere mind, that fails to find its exhibition program, its attestation experiment or its historical coverage. Our God is so great that it is not even possible for Him to be greater, and that it is not even possible for any to be compared, as indeed is clearly stated in Psalm 89, for who CAN be compared to infinite power, love and mercy!

Infinity is NOT THE STUFF OF COMPARISON!

Another reason why people tend to tremble, sometimes, when reason shows the way to God, by showing the Bible to be His word, even: it is this. They feel that man is too much in evidence, and that God must be God!

The desire is excellent, but its application here is amiss! Let us review it. While it is for God to provide truth, if it is to be known, which is the marvel of the verified and validated faith of Christ, it is for man to use WHATEVER God has provided, in seeking Him. Reason is one of the things provided and relevant, so if man is sincere, he must use it. WHEN you find God in finding the Bible and His provisions, then of course it is found that He is not only infinite, but loving to an infinite degree, illimitable in power and omniscient in all things. Where now is this 'too small', and since when is infinity too little!

Reason knows nothing of such things; and the words of febrile criticism we have just considered, these become meaningless, a gabble nothing to do with God!

Yet again, some like to think of giving a reason for the faith as arrogance, indeed of the faith itself in that category. However, what is arrogance in the face of the Almighty ?  and what is assured when the very source of revealed truth is denied by disfaith, in the very face of that very reason^*1 which is used to make the denial! Reason as so often shown, requires God and the Bible, and without the availability of personal absolute truth, there is no way of asserting it! As Peter and John told the priestly persecutors, with the blood of Christ on their proto-ecclesiastical hands, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than God, judge for yourselves!" (Acts 4:19). 

Arrogance is to affirm oneself when one is not God, to do so when neither the construction of the universe nor the creation of man is your affair, acting as if it were and as if you, a veritable god, can opine away happily, dismissing deity or His word, and rendering him in your own mind some kind of fiddling nitwit, if you admit Him at all. If that were He what would you, His product be! The better the product, the better the Producer; and if it were feckless, how much more its inventions... such as man! But the very summit has its source, outside fairy tales (cf. Causes, SMR Ch. 3, Ch. 5), and its source is sufficient to CREATE the human summits, and sees over them in totality of comprehensive knowledge, like the sun seeing over the hills far below.

In the denial of the self-revealing God, it is there that arrogance has its very heart and subsistence; but where is humility found outside recognising Him who has abundantly verified His word in the Bible and in His Son as sent, Jesus Christ; and where in all creation, outside fearing Him with wholesome and godly respect and yes, indeed awe, delighting in His humbling Himself to satisfy the reason He has made, even inviting people to come and reason together with Him (Isaiah 1:18, I Peter 3:15), yes, and in His providing remedy with reason and reason for that matter with remedy, giving it too its goal in Himself from which it came, and man His place likewise, man of which it is but one function from the One who made him in His image.

When God says that the fool has said in his heart that there is no God (Psalm 57), He is not slating in vain, but exhibiting a very unhappy fact! It is not a provocation but the obverse of an invitation such as you see so passionately expressed in Proverbs 1:20-33,  and so kindly in Proverbs 8:32-36. Anyone caught in this facile denial may be brilliant and moral in his or her own eyes; but these eyes, they see, they are not the judge. No firm or body can hope for acceptance of auditing which it does on itself! Here in this failure to find, this aversion to actuality, here is the ULTIMATE SOURCE of the anguish of man, and here is the ground for the evanescent lure of all ecstasy, for without its source,  fleeting it is and must be!

It is only when one comes to the source, activator and inventor, creator and functionality supplier for man and his created spirit, that judgment has scope for truth; and that, the judgment of God, it is this which is most cordially invited by those who would thrust Him away, or cram His word back into His divine mouth, which is very near to what was done in the crucifixion, which now can be attained again, but not in the flesh, merely in spirit.

And what is that ? is it to be deemed some kind of humility! (Psalm 50:19-22).

NOTE

*1 

See Repent or Perish Ch.  7.

See also Aviary of Idolatry, Highway to Hell,

News 69, 97, 98,

Tender Times.. Ch. 8,

SMR Chs. 1, 3, 10.