Good News for the Darkness of Atheism, Agnosticism, and Evolutionism

Atheism, Agnosticism, and Evolutionism, are all expressions of Jesus’ words, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.” 

Atheists demand the removal of “religion” from everything public because anything about Jesus reminds them that they are sinners in need of a Savior, and that means that the Creator expects them to turn from evil. However, they don’t want their sins brought into the light because that would mean facing the guilt, shame, and fear of what is inside them, and so they try to stay in the dark by keeping everyone in the dark about who we are, where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going when we die. 

Agnostics are the same, but their darkness is that of ignorance, claiming that it is impossible to know if there is a divine being who is responsible for space, time, matter, and energy. And, even if there was a Creator, how would anyone know who he is or how to be sure we have picked the right one? This parade of ignorance also keeps people in the dark so that sin and its guilt, shame, and fear, is not brought into the light, and people are never led to know the love, the grace, and the forgiveness of God. 

Evolutionists aim to keep people in the dark about their sin by claiming that the existence of our universe, and the reality of life as human beings, could have happened by the miracles of random processes that required no divine involvement whatsoever. By denying the creative genius evident in creation and in all living things, and by demanding the miraculous impossibility of the human body coming together by chance and unguided processes, they convince people that there is no Creator to whom we will all give account. And that would also mean that there is no God who has the right to judge us for the evils of our sin, and our rebellious idolatry of ourselves as his judge. 

Atheism, Agnosticism, and Evolutionism are all the faith-positions of people who do not want to face their sin. Their unwillingness to confess their sin holds them in bondage to their mad defiance of truth because they love their rebellion. They fear (more than anything) facing what is wrong with humanity because, without knowing the Creator, they do not know that he has provided for sin’s condemnation. They can’t let themselves see that God has provided a Savior who frees us from the guilt, shame, and fear of sin, a Savior who has so dealt with sin for those who will trust in him that all our sins can be forgiven, and we can inherit the full rights of adoption to be the children of God both now and forever. 

Yes, I know that atheists, agnostics, and evolutionists mock the idea that faith in God is real. They lie and say that their beliefs are based on science while trusting in Jesus Christ is based on fairy tales of faith. However, the fact is that all of them have faith as strong as mine, but their faith is in themselves. They believe that the random firing of neurons in their brains is accurately telling them whole systems of information that are not only cohesive within themselves but are also the true and only story of the whole universe with universal application to every human being. 

And this is while their godless and evolutionary beliefs claim that our brains are not guided by any intelligence at all, but by the magic of random and chance processes that leave them totally unsure if what they think about atheism, agnosticism, or evolutionism is actually a brand-new thought that literally came out of nowhere, or a long-held faith position that accurately reflects truth. In their faith about mindless evolution, they cannot say with any certainty what the random firing of their brains has come up with, and how it compares to what anyone else thinks or believes about anything. 

My purpose in exposing the darkness of sin in every way it is expressed is to share the “good news of great joy” that God himself, our one and only Creator, had in mind from before creation to provide a means of salvation for us because he knew how ignorant we would become in our love of sin. And so, he established his salvation in a time in history when prophecies about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ had already detailed what would happen hundreds of years earlier, when death by crucifixion had already been established by the Romans as a means of capital punishment, and when the whole world was in the darkness of sin with no remedy anywhere in sight. He then sent his one and only Son into the world, God becoming flesh in order to live among us as a man, and when Jesus Christ laid down his life for his people, the curse of sin and death was broken, the justice of God was satisfied in the death of his Son for sinners, and now everyone who believes in Jesus Christ is made alive into the realities of eternal life. 

As it is written, “the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” The light of God has come into the world, and the very people who are living in the darkness of sin can have their eyes opened to the light of life in Jesus Christ our Lord. 

This is what is true of all who trust and obey our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” 

And so, while so many preach the religion of darkness, calling people to trust the random and chance and unpredictable firing of their brains (and the psychological triggers of their self-protection) instead of the revealed word of God our Creator, I share with everyone the excellencies of my God and Savior who proclaims “good news to the poor… liberty to the captives… recovering of sight to the blind,” setting “at liberty those who are oppressed,” and “the year of the Lord’s favor” today for all who will attach to him and receive this new life in repentance and faith. 

The amazing thing is, when we come to Jesus, and we have our eyes opened, and we confess our sins to God because we see how he has provided for our salvation in Jesus Christ, we discover that not only do we have a Creator, but it is the Creator himself who has made himself known to us, rescuing us from the deadness of our sin, and we can’t believe that people can believe that he doesn’t exist. 

I conclude with this glorious expression of praise to God our Creator: 

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” 

And that is what will be true for anyone who will “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

A Man Without A Mentor

OKAY… SO… I was going to begin by addressing why it was so important to my mentor (Nehemiah) to remind God that he was part of a group called “your people”.[1] It is easy to relate this to the new war that has broken out between two groups who both claim to be the real people of God tracing their ancestry back to the same father, Abraham. And it is very personal to consider how real it is in us to long to be part of a people, or, as my wife calls it, “my tribe”. Even in our daycare, the children are always lovin’ on each other with what good “friends” they are, or trying to wound each other by declaring, “You’re not my friend!!!” 

EVERYTHING in life makes a big deal of us being “a people”. Every one of us when we were born increased our “family” (our first people) by one. We discovered that family meant more people than the ones we lived with every day. We found that as we moved through life there were some people who became friends, and we had seasons where we could not bear the thought of losing them. Strange as it may seem, this is because we were made by God to be his people, and all the damage done by Satan and sin to steal, kill, and destroy only proves that being “your people” to God is a central aspect of being human. It also explains why being “a people” can be so dysfunctional, self-focused, and hateful towards outsiders when we try to be a people apart from God our Creator and Father. 

HOWEVER, I was not able to dwell on this very long before I noticed something else that was far more piercing (I smile to write this because I suspect that I am entering another sequence of the Mandelbrot Fractal that will end up leading me back to how I fit in to “your people”![2]): My mentor’s connection to God’s people was as a man who was not… (drum roll please)… MENTORED! 

THAT’S RIGHT, Nehemiah suddenly appears on the scene of God’s work in restoring his people to their home without any list of mentors who trained him and passed on their wisdom, knowledge, and maturity. 

AND SUDDENLY it made so much sense why it had to be that way. God had promised decades prior, “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.’”[3] David had been one of these shepherds much earlier, a man after God’s own heart, and he also did not have mentors who taught him how to love God and trust in him. He learned to know God in solitary places while watching his father’s sheep. In other words, David also had no mentors. The way he knew God was from personally getting to know God! 

THIS REMINDED ME that just before addressing God with the identity of “your people”, Nehemiah had first confessed the sins of the people (including him and his family) as the reason they were in such trouble. It was because they had forsaken their family relationship with God, broken faith with their covenant, and delighted in adulterous idolatry with the gods of the nations. They continued acting like “a people” in their fellowship in sin, but they had forsaken their first love, to be “your people” to Yahweh, the only true God. 

IT SUDDENLY became clear that my years of complaining to God about not giving me godly mentors was sinful. The Bible is full of examples of unmentored men who served God in the right time and place as men after God’s own heart. This is not because it is wrong to be mentored. And it is not because being mentored produces an inferior relationship with God to not being mentored (Timothy is a prime example of a man with a vibrant relationship with God under the fatherly mentoring of the apostle Paul). 

IN FACT, it is quite clear that the healthy pattern of discipling leaders in the church is to involve an unbroken chain of mentoring. Paul said to Timothy, “and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”[4] Paul mentored Timothy, Timothy was to “entrust” the same teaching “to faithful men” (which would require spending time with them as their mentor), these “faithful men” would need to be “able to teach” others, meaning that Timothy would mentor them not only to live for Christ, but to mentor others in how to do so, and there were “others” that included both the full number of disciples in each location, but also some men among those believers who would also be mentored to be mentors. Yes, that is the way it SHOULD be! 

THE PROBLEM is that the chain keeps being broken by weak links, mostly men who do not want to be personally responsible for having a faith in God that others can lean on (yes, that is such a thing). Because of this, we keep coming back to scenarios in real life where men have not been mentored. And, today, I needed to acknowledge that God expecting me to be a man after his own heart without mentors to disciple me is completely consistent with how he has so often worked with others. He has every right to do the same with me. 

I NOW have a double aim in getting to know Nehemiah. One side is to fully embrace and receive everything God is giving me through his word in the life of this shining example of a man after God’s own heart. Or, to say it another way, I must let Nehemiah mentor me in how to serve God and his people without any mentors! 

THE OTHER aim is to “Consider him (Jesus) who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted,”[5] so I never forget that I AM being mentored by my heavenly Father as I am “looking to Jesus” through the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit. 

WHAT GOD has done to clear up my complaining, and to guide me through confession, is to settle that I have my place in his kingdom to live and learn as a man after his own heart because it is HIS heart, and he is sharing it with me! And that means going into this day prepared to love and care for everyone he brings my way with the expectation that my love will be after the heart of his love. And knowing I have loved others as Jesus has loved me will be the thing that puts a smile on my face for the way the Triune God helps me to do so.

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.) 

 

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[1] Nehemiah 1

[2] 

[3] Jeremiah 3:15

[4] II Timothy 2:2

[5] Hebrews 12:3

Science Calls Scoffers to Surrender to the Creator

After watching a creation-science video explaining how the worldwide flood explains fossils on the continents, and even high on mountains, I wrote the following post to share it with others.[1] Perhaps you will find it helpful. 

SCIENCE affirms the global flood described in God's history book, the Bible. Skeptics who claim this flood did not happen have ZERO scientific evidence to support their claim.

This fulfills EXACTLY what God wrote in his word: 

First, “knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires.” Yes, this is what it is about, that “people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil”, just as God’s word says. The issue is the love of sin, NOT the love of science. 

Second, “They will say, ‘Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.’” Yes, this was foretold that, just because God’s timetable for the return of his Son is different than man’s, the scoffers will make fun of the idea that it will happen as promised, on target, and on time. 

Third, the reason for such ignorance is, “For they DELIBERATELY overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.” This “deliberate” ignorance is being fulfilled in such blatant ways as famous and infamous skeptics and scoffers ridicule all the scientific evidence for creation and the flood simply because they refuse to acknowledge that we have a Creator to whom all people will one day give account. 

And fourth, how we relate to God’s word about the future will be consistent with how we relate to God’s word about the past. So, it says to us and these scoffers, “But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” As surely as the earth is covered with evidence of creation and the flood, our planet is heading towards the worst catastrophe imaginable, the coming “judgment and destruction of the ungodly”. 

However!!! Those who believe in and receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior look at all these realities of both the spiritual and the scientific worlds and have this certain hope: “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” 

I love going out into God’s creation and delighting in what he has made, what has adapted from what he has made, what gives evidence of the worldwide flood, and what shows the glory of creation in recovering from the worldwide flood. But one thing always happens!!! We always need to leave, go home, be apart from the people we loved sharing such experiences with, and carry on with the mundane duties of living in a foreign land (the world) when our Forever Home is constantly calling to our souls! 

The new heavens and earth will be unimaginably glorious (what will it look like to have a “new” planet with no signs of a global flood?!), but there is something even more appealing, and that is the unending attachment of love-relationships with God and his people. We will constantly enjoy the glories of the new creation in the perfection of our salvation where we will always be with the Triune God in whose “presence there is fullness of joy”, and at whose “right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

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[1] The Answers in Genesis video can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=3533962263519458&ref=sharing

Morning Sharing: God Keeps Loving Those who Love Keeping

     I think that part of my place in the body of Christ is to share my delight in the words of God’s word. I clearly love words. I love learning the meanings of the words used in the original languages of the Bible. It truly blesses me to know that the Hebrew mind (which comes through in both the Old and New Testaments) hears and sees rhyming thoughts in the same way as our western mind delights in a songwriter’s rhyming of words.

     Plus, I am a testimony to the truth that, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”,[1] and so I want to know the word of Christ as if I was sitting at Jesus’ feet like Mary and hanging on his every word.[2]

     This morning, I have been captivated by Nehemiah’s expression about God that he “keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments”.[3] I have been learning from Nehemiah as my Mentor since he is one of the men that fulfilled God’s promise to his people, “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.’”[4] My ongoing journey is not simply in the words I have already looked at, but in their impact on me in building my faith as I meditate on their meanings.

     Here are the definitions of the key words, “keep” and “love”.   

     First, on God’s side: 

Keeps (God) (somer): to keep (maintain) v. — to keep in a certain state, position, or activity.

Love (God’s) (hesed): loyal love n. — an unfailing kind of love, kindness, or goodness; often used of God’s love that is related to faithfulness to his covenant.

     On the people’s side: 

Love (those who love him) (ohabay): to love (care) v. — to have a great affection or care for or loyalty towards.

 

Keep (humans) (somre): to observe (conform) v. — to conform one’s action or practice to.

     The focus for me is on the way the words “keep” and “love” rhyme in thought even though what they mean from God’s side is somewhat different from their meaning on our side.

     On God’s side, he keeps covenant with his people from his supremacy as the one who initiates and maintains the covenant. It reminded me of Jesus as “the founder and perfecter of our faith”.[5] He keeps the covenant as the King and Lord in the relationship.

     On the other hand, God’s people keep the covenant by observing and putting into practice what is required of us. This is just as true under the New Covenant as it was under the Old Covenant, it’s just that the details of the covenants are different. In our case it is summarized as “the obedience of faith”.[6] We keep obeying God’s word in faith and keep nurturing the faith that walks with God as obedient children.

     There will be so much more in this, but that is the main thing. Because God keeps covenant with his people in hesed-love,[7] his people respond to his Fatherly love with our childlike love and seek to walk with him wherever he is going, and join him in whatever work he is doing.

     Now, doesn’t that makes sense of Paul saying, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God”?[8] We are keeping the same covenant as the Triune God, but how different are the two sides! And we are loving God and others with the same love with which we are loved, but how different is what was required of God’s love from what is required of ours!

     And what a wonder that God has done all the keeping and loving from his side that makes it possible for us to love him and keep our side of the covenant by grace through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord!

 

© 2023 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

Definitions are from the Bible Sense Lexicon in Logos Bible Systems.

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[1] Romans 10:17

[2] Luke 10:39 (in context of Luke 10:38-42)

[3] Nehemiah 1:5

[4] Jeremiah 3:15

[5] Hebrews 12:2

[6] Romans 1:5; 16:26

[7] “Hesed” (חֶ֔סֶד) is the Hebrew word in the OT for God’s steadfast, loyal, faithful love that corresponds with the Greek agapè-love (αγάπη) that fills the NT.

[8] Ephesians 5:1-2