By Robert Jeffress
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.
—Hebrews 11:3
We cannot prove the existence of a supernatural, invisible being. However, there is a difference between proof and evidence. The issue is not about proving whether God exists but about making an informed decision based on the evidence. This week we will examine four powerful evidences for the existence of God.
First, the cosmological argument asks, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Look around you, noting everything you see. Now ask yourself, “Why do I see something rather than nothing?” The naturalist’s explanation for the existence of everything that we see is found in this simple formula: No One x Nothing = Everything.
Yet the existence of a vast universe (not to mention of you and me) strongly suggests that Someone brought something into existence out of nothing.
Consider the immensity of our universe. How did hundreds of billions of stars in hundreds of billions of galaxies come into existence? For years atheists argued that the universe always existed. But scientists now concede that the universe did have a beginning. Sir Frederick Hoyle coined the term “the Big Bang,” which is the most popular explanation for the origin of the universe. Respected astronomers have confirmed that there are many other galaxies beyond our Milky Way and that the universe is expanding; therefore, the universe had a beginning. Obviously, such a theory raises a number of serious questions for the naturalist.
From where did that dense mass of matter come? Scientists used to say that matter always existed. But is it logical to believe that something came out of nothing? To say that the universe is self-created is absurd because such a claim means that the universe had both to exist and not exist at the same time. A closely related question is, “What caused this explosion to occur?” Someone or something had to get the creation process started. To assert that the entire universe came from nothing and because of nothing is nonsensical.
Of course, those of us who believe that God created the universe believe that He did so “ex nihilo” (literally, “out of nothing.”). He did not create the universe out of material that already existed (“ex materia”) or out of Himself (“ex Deo”). God is the eternal cause of everything that exists.
Robert Jeffress is pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas.
