Youth parents and students have a unique opportunity this week—and maybe this week only. There is a movie in theaters that I highly encourage you to attend. It’s recommended for ages 12 and up. It’s called “God’s Not Dead.” You can read all about it at their website. But one of the many reasons I encourage you to see it, in the theaters, is because you will see a college freshman use apologetics, what we’ve been studying in D Groups, in his defense of God’s existence before his atheist philosophy professor and the entire class. He will use many of the arguments we have been, and will be, studying this semester. You will be encouraged and emboldened. Please see this movie.

 The character “Josh” explores the cosmological argument (the beginning of the universe), objective truth, logical fallacies and the moral law which we discussed this week.

 We are now entering our fourth key evidence for the existence of the theistic God. We’ve explored the beginning of the universe (from which we learned that God is self-existent, timeless, non-spatial, immaterial, infinite, powerful and personal), the design of the universe and life (from which we learned that God is supremely intelligent and purposeful) and now we are exploring the moral law (from which we will learn that he is absolutely morally pure and unchangeable).

 This is how the Moral Law is stated:

1.      Every law has a law-giver.

2.      There is an objective Moral Law.

3.      Therefore, there is a Moral Law-giver.

The Moral law is self-evident and universal.

We explored how without an objective moral standard that life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is a matter of opinion/personal preference. We discussed how without the moral law there’s no difference between the behavior of Mother Teresa and Hitler. Atheists get themselves in a bind when they claim certain rights and causes. Without the Moral Law there is no moral ground from which they can argue. There’s nothing objective grounding right and wrong, for and against. People suppress the moral law in order to justify what they want to do. “…while (atheists) may believe in an objective right and wrong, they have no way to justify such a belief (unless they admit a Moral Law Giver, at which point they cease being atheists).”

 The type of God which we’ve shown to exist is what is called a theistic God and that God is consistent with the God of the Bible. We’ve used natural or general revelation to discover him—not the Bible. Of the major world religions only theistic religions can be true and only one of those can be true. It makes sense that the God we’ve described would choose to communicate further with us, in addition to creation and conscience. How? That turns us to examining the books of the theistic religions and deciding whose is really God’s message which he alone can authenticate. One way he could do that is through miracles.

 A miracle is defined in our text as a special act of God that interrupts the normal course of events. A miracle is an act of God to confirm the word of God through a messenger of God. We defined six different kinds of unusual events--only one of which is a miracle (anomalies, magic, psychosomatic, satanic signs, providence and miracles). Criteria for miracles are instantaneous power, intelligent design and morality. There are 250 occasions of miracles in the Bible most of which occur during three distinct time periods (lifetimes of Moses, Elijah and Elisha and Jesus and the apostles). These are the times God was confirming new truth (revelation) and new messengers with that truth.

Next we will begin exploring if God has used miracles to confirm one of the three major theistic religions.

Don’t forget to see the movie. If you want more resources other than on the movie’s website, you can also see www.ratiochristi.org/gnd.

(All this information is taken from “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist” by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek.)