TITLE: A Higher Choice (Part 2) 6/19/14 By Richard McCaw 06/19/14 |
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A Higher Choice (Part 2)
I caught the next bus on Half-Way-Tree Road on my way to a different kind of fun with other teenagers. At Parade in downtown Kingston, I hastened down the steps of the bus with great anticipation. Realizing I was already late, I half-ran all the way from the bus stop, hurried across to the sidewalk around Victoria Park. In sight of the tall red brick building of the Coke Methodist Church, I chased across the road, then ran up the stairs to the back of the church hall in time to see the song leader excitedly waving his hand as he directed the final song. By the time I found a seat, the preacher had announced his text.
As people searched their Bibles, you could hear the rustling of pages across the auditorium. George DaCosta was a tall, light-brown, bespectacled man with bushy hair, one half of which was already going white.
“The Bible is true!” he was saying. “The birth and death of Jesus Christ was prophesied by more than one prophet, hundreds of years before it happened! The restoration of the Jews to their homeland in Israel is yet another event prophesied by several prophets before it took place in 1948. World events among the nations today have all been prophesied in the Bible over 19 centuries ago!” (Thank God for George DaCosta! Years later, I became an associate missionary in the Christian Literature bookstore he managed on Church Street in Kingston).
That sealed it for me! The abundance of prophetic fulfillments was strong evidence of a divine mind in the creation of the scriptures. I had no more doubts since then that the Bible was true.
God had saved me from atheism and from agnosticism. I believed more firmly in His Word having faced my doubts. I could have remained at the party and been trapped into worldly relationships and missed the clear teachings of scripture while denying God’s existence. I chose the straight and narrow way, the path to life. I was hungry and thirsty for the Bread and Water of Life. Jesus said, “He who hungers and thirsts after righteousness shall be filled”
A Samaritan woman once came to a well for physical water and met the Lord. Jesus said to her, “Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I give him shall be in him, a well springing up into everlasting life!”
The deepest longing of human hearts is only satisfied by a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I was sure that Christ was the Life, the very center of all human existence. However, an extensive journey still lay ahead, before I discovered the abundant life He promised, “I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.” I had reached step one.
Atheists, agnostics and others, nevertheless, believe that everything in the universe can only be explained through natural causes and laws. W.C. Clifford, a nineteenth century scholar, once declared, “It is wrong always for anyone to believe anything upon inadequate evidence!” Therefore, you might still be asking, “If God does exist, He should make His existence more obviously clear. Surely, if people saw very concrete proof, they would believe in Him. If He always showed continuing miracles, many people everywhere would turn to Him, confident that He exists.”
Nevertheless, the more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that there were many things in this world that are real and reasonable to accept that cannot be scientifically proven. How can love ever be scientifically examined under a microscope or in a test tube? Or beauty, or loyalty? Yet, they are very real, and very reasonable to accept! Especially when it comes to judging certain things, the scientific method of proving some things is quite irrelevant! Obviously, some things cannot be tested by a limited, insufficient methodology, and any wrong methodology will definitely produce wrong conclusions.
One must go deeper in search of truth. Jeremiah, the prophet, once declared to the children of Israel the words of the Lord, “You will seek Me and find Me, when you search for me with all your heart!” Isaiah, the prophet, also declared, “Truly You are God, Who hides Yourself, Oh God of Israel, the Savior!” Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
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