190 Sermon Illustrations on God

C.S. Lewis, in A GRIEF OBSERVED, writes after the death of his wife to cancer: "When you're happy, so happy that you don't have any sense of needing God, if you turn to him with praise you'll be welcomed with open arms. But go to him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, a sound of bolting and double-bolting on the inside and after that, silence. You may as well turn away."

A passenger jet was suffering through a severe thunderstorm. As the passengers were being bounced around by the turbulence a young woman turned to a minister sitting next to her and with a nervous laugh asks, "Reverend, you're a man of God, can't you do something about this storm?"

To which he replies, "Lady, I'm in sales, not management."

HUGH ROSS’ EXTRA-DIMENSIONAL DEITY

William L. Craig

Marietta, GA

wlcraig@compuserve. com

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Hugh Ross is evangelicalism’s most important scientific apologist. An astronomer by training, Dr. Ross is the founder and president of "Reasons to Believe," an organization devoted both to evangelism within the broader context of scientific apologetics and to the task of healing the cultural rift among Christians between science and religion. He has vigorously defended scientifically the cosmological and teleological arguments for a Creator and Designer of the universe and has championed progressive creationism over against naturalistic accounts of biological evolution on the one hand and so-called "young earth" creationism on the other. Though a tireless promoter of "Reasons to Believe," one measure of Dr. Ross’s humility is his unsolicited promotion of the materials of other authors, including this reviewer, in the organization’s catalogue. It has been my privilege to share the platform with Dr. Ross in a number of university and church outreaches, and I enthusiastically support his work.

I offer these accolades lest this review of Ross’s most recent book "Beyond the Cosmos" strike some as excessively critical. But I am convinced that Ross’s attempts to invest the (possible) extra-dimensionality of the universe with profound theological significance is misguided and that a corrective is in order. In his book Ross advises that "careful scholarship, meticulously reviewed, offers a vital safeguard" against heresy (p. 58). I wholeheartedly concur, and I have been mystified by evangelicals’ apparently uncritical acquiescence to some of the positions advocated by Ross in this book. For I believe that the errors in "Beyond the Cosmos" are many and that some of them, at least, are serious.

Ross’s basic tenet in "Beyond the Cosmos" is that certain physicists’ suggestion that in addition to the four familiar spatio-temporal dimensions there exist six (compacted) spatial dimensions carries with it enormous theological freight, shedding dramatic new light on doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, predestination, perseverance, the problem of evil, and so forth. Such extra-dimensional theories, in Ross’s view, suggest that God also exists extra-dimensionally, which affords Him access to our four-dimensional realm in ways unanticipated by human beings.

Now in one sense it is a commonplace of traditional theology that God exists extra-dimensionally in that He transcends both time and space, and theology had neither to await nor to thank modem science for that insight. A charitable reading of Beyond the Cosmos might be that Ross simply means to affirm God’s transcendence -- His timelessness and spacelessness -- , inspired by the analogy of spatial dimensions beyond the three we experience. In his final chapter, he says, "Extra dimensions are simply new terms to describe truths that have been known for as long as God has been known by any human" (p. 207). In several places Ross adds qualifying expressions which might be interpreted to indicate that God’s extra-dimensionality is metaphorical. For example, he speaks of "the existence of extra dimensions or the functional equivalent of extra dimensions "(p. 20, my emphasis). He explains, "... the cause (Causer) of the universe operates in a dimension of time or its equivalent (that is, maintains some attribute, capacity, super-dimensionality, or supra-dimensionality that permits the equivalent of cause and effect operations) completely independent of ours" (p. 23). This is the clearest statement of what it is for something to be the functional equivalent of an extra dimension, and it suggests that divine extra-dimensionality need not be taken literally, but may simply be a metaphor for God’s ability to act immanently in creation while transcending it or for His timelessness and spacelessness (supra-dimensionality). If this charitable interpretation is correct, talk of the modem discovery of God’s extra-dimension-ality may be written down to a combination of theological naivete and scientific over-exuberance, and the only corrective in order is that Ross needs to explain the metaphorical nature of his language clearly in his lectures to popular audiences, in which the crucial qualifications are typically neither made nor explained. Otherwise he does his audience a serious disservice when he asserts that traditional Christian doctrines are logically inconsistent unless formulated in more than four dimensions -- a terribly misleading way of affirming that Christian doctrines entail the transcendence of God.

Unfortunately, I fear that the above interpretation may be too charitable, that Ross does, in fact, conceive of God as literally existing in extra spatio-temporal dimensions. Ross could not be more explicit in his rejection of divine timelessness:

My choice of the word timeful to describe God’s time-related

capacities deliberately contradicts a notion that much of the

church has held and taught for many centuries, the notion of a

‘timeless’ eternity as the realm where God lives and where we

will live someday also (p. 65).2

Singling out Augustine and Aquinas as proponents of this doctrine, Ross exclaims, "... rare indeed is the student or professor who dares to challenge the doctrine of God’s dwelling in a timeless eternity" (p. 66), as Ross evidently means to do. In his view, God "must possess at least one more time dimension (or some attribute, capacity, super-dimension or supra-dimension that encompasses all the properties of time.... The Creator’s capacities include at least two, perhaps more, time dimensions" (pp. 23-24). God is thus a temporal being which exists in at least one additional dimension of time to the one we experience. Less explicit, but strongly implied is the view that God also exists spatially. Ross frequently speaks of God’s "operating" in ten dimensions of space, which a defender of divine spacelessness might reasonably construe to mean that God, though transcending space, produces effects in space. But this is evidently not Ross’s meaning. For he thinks of God accessing our four-dimensional realm from higher dimensions, just as a three-dimensional being can access a two-dimensional realm from the third dimension (pp. 74-79, 89-95). Thus, he says that God "exists and operates in several spatial dimensions beyond our three" (p. 24); "God.., lives and operates in the equivalent of at least eleven dimensions of space and time" (p. 33); "... His space or other dimensions give Him a complete view of us, inside and out" (p. 132); by contrast, "... we lack God’s extra-dimensional perspective to look directly upon ‘the thoughts and intents of the heart"' (p. 158). It is difficult to avoid the interpretation that God literally exists in higher spatial dimensions which afford Him access to our three-dimensional space.

Consider then Ross's account of divine eternity and its relationship to time. While I agree that God ought to be thought of as temporal since the moment of creation, Ross's account of God's temporality strikes me as multiply flawed and inadequately motivated. To deal with the second point first, Ross rejects divine timelessness because such a doctrine would imply that God "exists where causes and effects do not happen, and this idea contradicts biblical teachings" (p. 66). In what has to be the most whopping understatement in the whole book, Ross muses, "To be fair, Augustine and Aquinas probably did not see the connection between time and cause and effect to the degree that people in contemporary society do" (p. 66)! That no doubt has something to do with the fact that Augustine and Aquinas were not positivistic reductionists, as twentieth century physicists and philosophers of space and time have tended to be. Ross himself subscribes to some sort of causal theory of time: "Time is defined by the operation of cause-and-effect phenomena" (p. 66). He gives no justification for this controversial view.3 Indeed, I think that such a definition is obviously incorrect. We can imagine a world in which occasionalism is true: God recreates the world anew at each successive instant so that there are no cause-effect relations between phenomena in the world. Such a world seems obviously possible; in fact some Christians (like Malebranche) believed occasionalism is true. So causation is not a necessary condition of time. Neither is it obviously a sufficient condition. On Ross's conception of time, why could God not timelessly cause the whole space-time manifold with all the events in it to exist? Ross gives no answer. Moreover, even if God is temporal subsequent to His creation of the world, what about God existing sans the world? Could He not be timeless in such a state?

As for the first point, Ross's account of God's temporality is problematic.4 His answer to the problem of God and the beginning of time is to postulate a second time dimension, a sort of hypertime, in which God exists and created the world. Now we need to be very clear as to what a hyper-time would be. It would be a succession of hypermoments at each of which our entire time dimension exists.

[Figure 1 At successive moments of hyper-time T, our entire time series t exists]

But Dr. Ross misconstrues the nature of hyper-time, representing God's time on his diagram by a line parallel, rather than perpendicular, to our time dimension (p. 62).

[Figure 2 An Uncreated God in Two Time Dimensions]

What this implies is that God's temporal dimension is really the same as ours, only that He pre-exists for infinite time prior to the creation of the universe. It is, in effect, a Newtonian view of God and time. Now I certainly agree that God could have existed in absolute time prior to the inception of physical time at the Big Bang. But the proper distinction to be drawn here is not between two dimensions of time (since they are not perpendicular, but linear), but between metaphysical time and our empirical measures thereof. God can be temporal without anything spatial or physical existing if we are talking about metaphysical time. But postulating an infinite metaphysical time prior to the creation of the world fails to win any of the advantages Ross perceives, for it raises new, difficult questions of its own: How could God traverse an actually infinite number of equal, non-zero, past temporal intervals to arrive at the moment of creation? What reason could God have for delaying for infinite time His creation of the world?

Even postulating a hyper-tirne fails to avoid such questions, for we may ask the same questions all over again about whether hypertime has a beginning or not. In two places Ross suggests that the two dimensions of time may have the geometry of the surface of a hemisphere.

[Figure 3 God's Operations in a Sphere of Time]

In such a representation our time is the latitudinal line and God's time is the longitudinal lines. (A curious feature of this model is that it is our time which is the hyper-time in which God's time is embedded, not vice versa. For there is one line of our time, but many timelines for God. Since these are timelines which endure through moments of our hypertime, they cannot also represent lines of divine causal influence, as Ross suggests. Moreover, it is incorrect to situate God only at the pole, for this would treat His time as the embedding hyper-time; in fact He would exist at all points along His longitudinal time lines.) This conception avoids both the infinitude of our past as well as a beginning of our time only at the expense of making time circular, a conception contradictory to the JudaeoChristian conception of the linearity of time. In any case, the postulation of a hyper-time of any sort appears to preclude the reality of tense and temporal becoming, since at each hyper-instant our whole time line exists. Time is, in effect, "spatialized," and the distinction between past, present, and future becomes a subjective illusion of human consciousness. This is a high price to pay for so problematic and extravagant a hypothesis, which is not implied by any of the extra-dimensional theories surveyed by Ross.

In one place Dr. Ross suggests that the postulation of a hypertime helps to answer a third-grader's question about how God can listen to a billion prayers at once. Not only does Ross seem to get his answer backwards (he, in effect, turns our time into a hypertime above time instead of saying God has infinitely many hyper-instants at which to listen to each prayer in succession), but his answer dreadfully depreciates divine omniscience. Rather than cast God anthropomorphically as a cognitively limited, hyper-dimensional telephone operator, Ross should have explained to his third-grade friend that just as a super-computer can do millions of operations at once, God is infinitely more intelligent than a super-computer and so His lines can never get jammed!

Issues concerning divine eternity are difficult and perhaps not too close to the heart of orthodoxy. When it comes to divine spatiality, however, the problems become more serious. The unwelcome implication of Ross's view is that God is a spatial entity; more than that, He is (at least) a three-dirnensionally existing entity as we are. This conclusion follows from the fact that if an entity exists in any dimension of a multidimensional space-time manifold, then it exists in all of them. Consider a point existing in a three-dimensional manifold. The point exists in all three dimensions of the manifold: it has height, length, and depth coordinates which specify its location. One of Ross's most fundamental and surprising errors is his apparent assumption that God can exist only in higher dimensional realms without also existing in our space-time dimensions. He asserts, "Each of the four space-time dimensions of the physical universe is independent of the others" (p. 15). This sentence is jarring because the central insight behind Minkowski's notion of space-time is that space and time are not independent of each other but together comprise a single four-dimensional geometry called "space-time." Admittedly Ross has an idiosyncratic definition of independence: "This independence means that each dimension always must be exactly perpendicular ... to all the other dimensions ..." (p. 15). But even on this peculiar understanding of what it means to be independent, Ross's own diagram illustrates that an entity which exists in one dimension of a manifold exists in all of them.

[Figure 4 Dependent versus Independent Dimensions]

Object E, though not intersecting the axis C, is nevertheless clearly located in the dimension represented by C, for it has a location with respect to C, namely, the point where B and C intersect. Thus, E exists in both the B and C dimensions. This entails that God exists somewhere in our universe. But that occasions very troubling questions. Is He located at some point in distant space where we could reach Him via space travel? Is God spatially extended? Is He spread out everywhere like the invisible ether of nineteenth century physics? It is not enough merely to answer "No," to these questions; Ross owes us some account of how the biblical God can be a spatio-temporal entity, as his view entails.

Ross thinks that by positing God's existence in higher spatial dimensions, he can make sense of God's invisibility and proximity.5 He claims that "God is hidden from us in the sense that we cannot make contact with Him through our five senses" (p. 72). But this is a clearly deficient conception of God's spirituality and incorporeality, for it leaves open the view that God is a spatial object which is simply undetectable by our senses. As for God's proximity to us, Ross seems to interpret biblical passages like "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted," in terms of literal contiguity, when the sense of nearness at issue here is clearly relational, having to do with intimacy, not contiguity! In any case, any advantages in terms of God's proximity to us thought to accrue from divine extradimensionality can also be had via divine spacelessness, without the added problem of threatening to make God a spatial entity.

Now, Ross thinks that postulating divine extra-dimensionality serves to shed new light on traditional theological problems. Take, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity. Ross claims that the doctrine of the Trinity preserved in the Christian creeds is a paradox -- that is, an "apparent contradiction" (p. 89, cf. p. 53). But Ross believes that extra-dimensionality can help to resolve seemingly contradictory statements. He considers the following conjunction of two statements: "Triangles cannot be circles, and triangles can be circles." Ross does not seem to appreciate the fact that not only are these statements contradictories, but the second conjunct alone is broadly logically impossible. Ross asserts that in three dimensions the second conjunct is true because a triangle can be rotated about an axis to form a cone, which may be analyzed as a stack of circles. But surely the correct response to this thought experiment is that a triangle is not a cone (not to mention that a cone is not a circle)! Moreover, even if we admitted the second conjunct were true, that would do nothing to resolve the original problem, for then the first conjunct would be false. When Ross says, "... the truth of both statements ... can be recognized" (p. 56), what he leaves us with is not a resolution, but an antimony.

Ross asserts that "The charge that 'Trinitarians' accept a mathematical absurdity would seem appropriate ... if the biblical God were confined to the same dimensional realm as humans" (p. 82). This amounts to saying that a denial of God's extradimensionality is a sufficient condition of the doctrine of the Trinity's being a logical absurdity. I take this to be an enormously serious allegation, for it implies that Athanasius, Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and other champions of Trinitarian doctrine, who did not believe in God's extra-dimensionality as Ross understands it, were all advocating a logical incoherence and that anyone accepting the doctrine of the Trinity was believing a logical contradiction. In fact, however, Ross never shows how the traditional formulations of the Trinity are even apparently contradictory. There is not even the appearance of contradiction in affirming that "There is one only and true God, but in the unity of the Godhead there are three eternal and coequal Persons" (p. 88, citing Ryne). If there were a contradiction, positing God's existence in extra spatial dimensions would not solve it. At best, then, Ross appeals to extra-dimensionality only to illustrate how three can be one. But as an illustration of the Trinity, Ross' scenario of a three-dimensional hand intersecting a two-dimensional surface seems no more adequate than the well-known, deficient illustrations he criticizes. When flatlanders see the finger of the hand intersecting their plane in different ways. "They might never discern that the six-plus manifestations were all governed by one entity and one source of operation" (p. 93). But this amounts to an illustration of modalism, not the Trinity. Later Ross imagines the flatlanders seeing the several intersections of the hand's fingers with their plane, commenting, "The twoness, threeness, or moreness of our hand (or one aspect of that plurality) they could imagine, but not the oneness" (p. 95). But the fingers are merely parts of the one hand, and Ross himself earlier quoted from the Augsburg Confession that "... the term 'person' is used, as the ancient Fathers employed it in this connection, to signify not a part or a quality in another but that which subsists of itself." The hand-flatland illustration thus only succeeds in illustrating modalism or one thing's having three parts. It certainly does not make the Trinity more intelligible.

Ross also believes that God's extra-dimensionality serves to illumine Christology. Unfortunately, although Ross clearly affirms that Jesus is both God and man, it may be justifiably doubted whether he affirms the Chalcedonian fonnula of two natures united in one person. For example, he does not describe the incarnation as the second person of the Trinity's taking on a human nature in addition to his divine nature, but as God's literally turning Himself into a human being:

... the second person of the triune God, the Creator of all

angels and of the entire universe, actually became a man.... God

supernaturally entered the womb of a virgin (Mary). How He

interacted with or modified Mary's egg is not made clear in

Scripture, but He became a flesh and blood embryo (p. 104).

This remarkable statement suggests that Ross stands in the Alexandrian tradition of one-nature Christology. Such a conception seems to require God's relinquishing some of His divine attributes in becoming a man, and this is just what Ross affirms:

In coming to Earth as an embryo in the virgin's womb, Christ

'emptied' Himself, leaving behind the extra-dimensional realm and

capacities He shared with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit.

When He had completed the work He set out to do, the work of

redemption, He returned to the place and the powers He had left

behind (p. 49).

This passage constitutes an endorsement of kenotic theology, which interprets Christ's self-emptying as the divestiture of certain divine attributes. Now this sort of non-Chalcedonian, kenotic Christology seems to me a very serious aberration. As the Antiochean theologians realized, if Christ had only a single "theanthropic" nature, then he was in fact neither God nor man, but a sort of hybrid of the two. Kenotic theology faces the severe difficulty of how it is that God can give up His attributes, since any being lacking such attributes as omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, aseity, and so forth, by definition is not God. As is typical chez kenotic theologians, Ross would preserve Christ's deity by means of the continuity of his moral attributes: "Jesus' divine identity as God, His character, wisdom, purity, and motives, remained perfectly intact, but He voluntarily relinquished the independent use of His divine attributes and His extra-dimensional capacities" (pp. 103104). Consistency requires us to say, then, that attributes such as omniscience, omnipresence, and so forth, are not in fact essential to God's nature, that in some possible worlds God is weak, ignorant, spatially confined, and so forth. This seems to me an extraordinarily high price to pay for any supposed benefits thought to accrue from the kenotic approach.

Ross's non-Chalcedonian Christology leads to a bizarre view of the atonement. Traditionally Jesus is understood to have died in his human nature, but his divine nature is, of course, incapable of perishing. But if Christ has only a single nature, then his death is literally the death of God. Thus, in a section entitled "God Both Dead and Alive" Ross seems to affirm precisely what the title states.

Some skeptics and atheists have argued that if Jesus were God, He could not have died; and if He died, He could not have been God. They recognize, of course, the contradiction in saying that Jesus is both really dead and really alive.... The simultaneity of Jesus' death and immortality would only be a contradiction, however, if the time, place, and context of His death were identical to the time, place and dimensional context of His being alive.... Because of Christ's identity as God and His access to all the dimensions or superdimensions God encompasses, He could experience suffering and death in all the human-occupied dimensions and then transition into any of His other dimensions or realms once the atonement price had been paid (pp. 108-109).

Here Ross does seem to affirm that God was both dead and alive, but that that contradiction is avoided by extra-dimensionality. But this escape does not seem to work. For Ross had clearly affirmed that in the incarnation God the Son had left the extra-dimensional realms and capacities he shared with the Father and the Spirit. Thus, if he died in our human realm, God died. How he could then transition back to extra-dimensional realms once he had died seems inexplicable. In any case the logical problem here is not just God's being both dead and alive, but God's being dead, period. By definition, God cannot perish. But without a two natures Christology, we are forced to affirm the absurdity that God died.

Extra-dimensionality leads Ross into even more bizarre speculations about the atonement in answer to the question of how one man's death could pay for all people's sins. Instead of answering that question in terms of the dignity of Christ's person, he hypothesizes that perpendicular to our time dimension is another dimension composed of billions of separate time lines on each of which Christ suffers death and subsequent isolation from God for infinite time (p. 112):

[Figure 5 Paying the Atonement Price in Multiple Dimensions of Time]

I find this speculation profoundly unacceptable. It requires, in effect, billions of Christs, thus destroying Christ's personal identity. For it is a distinct person who dies on the cross in each of these time lines. Moreover, each of these "Christs" suffers separation from God endlessly with no hope of resurrection and victory at the end. That Christ rises in our temporal dimension is the exception to the rule; the other Christs remain separated from God forever, which makes a mockery of Jesus's triumph over death.

Ross also makes a curious suggestion concerning Jesus's resurrection appearances: in disappearing from view, Jesus "rotated" each of his three spatial dimensions into a fourth, fifth, and sixth spatial dimension respectively (pp. 46-47). Jesus's resurrection body thus literally came apart and became three one-dimensional lines -- not a very robust conception of a body!

Ross also thinks that extra-dimensionality will help to resolve the conflict between divine sovereignty and human freedom, but a reading of the relevant chapters makes clear that most of what he says has little to do with extra-dimensionality, focusing instead on the relative strength of God's influence on us as we draw near to or retreat from Him. When he finally gets down to reconciling sovereignty and freedom, what he winds up with is, in effect, if he is to avoid determinism by our circumstances, a middle knowledge account of providence (pp. 153-154). But such an account owes nothing to extra-dimensionality.

With respect to doctrine of salvation, Ross's diagrams on pp. 161, 162 seem to betray the Reformation doctrine of sola fide, for they show a non-Christian gradually increasing in "Christlikeness" until he irrevocably crosses the "salvation threshold." Even if we interpret this increase to be the result of God's prevenient work, it is still surely false that salvation is achieved by a non-Christian's growing more Christlike until he crosses the line of no return and is saved.

In the remainder of his book, Ross treats such issues as perseverance, the problem of evil, and hell; but his insights on these questions do not involve essential reference to extra-dimensionality.

In short, while appreciative of Ross's work in other areas, I find his attempt to construe God as existing in hyper-dimensions of time and space and to interpret Christian doctrines in that light to be both philosophically and theologically unacceptable. I am sure that Ross did not realize some of the implications of the positions he took in "Beyond the Cosmos." He needs now either to explain why his views do not have such implications or else to modify his views so as to avoid them.

__________________

Endnotes

1. In personal conversation Dr. Ross has told me that he felt that the crucial qualifications were made in the book and that our differences were "just semantic." But even after our conversation it is still unclear to me how literally he takes God's extra-dimensionality. He clearly believes that there are six additional spatial dimensions, and he seems to think that God actually inhabits these. He insisted in conversation that God is not confined to ten dimensions but can exist in as many dimensions as one can imagine. But my critique is not aimed at God's being confined to extra dimensions, but is rather lodged against the claim that God literally exists in spatio-temporal dimensions, and Ross's response only reinforces one's suspicion that Ross believes God literally to exist in such dimensions. Similarly, his insistence to me that God's extra-dimensionality is merely a possible solution to the problems he addresses, rather than the actual fact of the matter, shows that he is taking extra-dimensionality literally, for divine transcendence could not be so characterized. Perhaps the problem here is that Ross does not appreciate that the classical doctrine of omnipresence entails God's transcending space altogether, while being cognizant of and causally effective at every point in space. In any case, I am absolutely confident that lay audiences who hear him do not understand him to be speaking metaphorically, so if that is his intention, he needs to affirm clearly that God does not literally exist and operate in extra dimensions of space and time.

2. It should be noted that the classical doctrine of divine timelessness holds that it is impossible for any creature, even angels, to share in God's timeless eternity.

3. In personal conversation, Dr. Ross told me that he is merely adopting the common scientific understanding of time in order to communicate effectively with the type of person he is trying to reach. Such people think that God's timelessness implies that God is causally inactive. Ross' response is apparently intended to show such persons that God is not timeless in that sense. This strikes me as very odd apologetic strategy: rather than correct the person's misunderstandings, one instead formulates a view of God's eternity which is compatible with the person's misconceptions but which we know to be literally false. Thus our unbelieving friend is led to become a Christian at the expense of his accepting beliefs which we know to be wrong, i.e., believing literally what we understand to be merely metaphorical, viz., that God exists in some sort of hypertime.

4. Notice here that whether literal or metaphorical, Ross's account of God's relationship to time is confused and theologically unacceptable.

5. Again, notice that in what follows Ross's account is problematic theologically, whether we construe it literally or metaphorically. He just has an incorrect understanding of divine proximity, the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, etc.

*

But design in living things is obvious. Even the single-celled organism is complex beyond the ability of scientists to understand, let alone duplicate. All of life is governed by the marvelously complex genetic code, which contains not only design and order, but what is equivalent to written information. This DNA code must not only be written correctly, the rest of the cell must be able to read it and follow its instructions, if the cell is to metabolize its food, carry out the myraid of enzyme reactions, and, especially, to reproduce.

This code had to be present at the origin of life. How could it have written itself? And how could all the various organelles learn how to read and obey it?

Carl Sagan, the modern-day evolutionary spokesperson had admitted: "The information content of a simple cell has been established as around 10 to 12th power bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica." --Impact January, 1992 Dr. John D. Morris (Inst for Cr Res)

Out of parental concern and a desire to teach Our young son responsibility, we require him to phone home when he arrives at his friend's house a few blocks away. lie began to forget, however, as he grew more confident in his ability to get there without disaster befalling him.

The first time he forgot, I called to be sure he had arrived. We told him the next time it happened, he would have to come home. A few days later, however, the telephone again lay silent, and I knew if he was going to learn, lie would liave to be punished. But I did not want to punish him! I went to the telephone, regretting that his great time would be spoiled by his lack of contact with his father.

As I dialed, I prayed for wisdom. "Treat him like I treat you," the Lord seemed to say. With that, as the telephone rang one time, I hung up. A few seconds later the phone rang, and it was my son. "I'm here, Dad!"

"What took you so long to call?" I asked. "We started playing and I forgot. But Dad, I heard the phone ring

and I remembered." "I'm glad You remembered," I said. "Have fun." How often do we think of God as One who waits to punish us when we step out of line? I wonder how often he rings just once, hoping we will phone home. - Dennis Miller Antioch, Illinois

The body is a masterpiece of exquisite design. Beautifully "engineered," it is governed by several hundred systems of control - each interacting with and affecting the other. His brain has 10 billion nerve cells to record what he sees and hears. His skin has more than 2 million tiny sweat glands - about 3000 per square inch - all part of the intricate system which keeps his body at an even temperature. A "pump" in his chest makes his blood travel 168 million miles a day - equivalent of 6720 times around the world! The lining of his stomach contains 35 million glands secreting juices which aid the process of digestion. And these are but a few of the involved processes and chemical wonders which operate to sustain his life.

A young student had been impressed with the fact that most new products have some "bugs" that must be ironed out before they can operate efficiently. As he stood gazing at a chart showing the organs, nerves, arteries, and glands in the human body, he suddenly exclaimed, "Just think, the first time God put it together, it worked!"

Fear of God is fundamental to life just as fear of gravity is fundamental to one who flys an airplane. It governs everything you do! A pilot doesn't play games with gravity. If there is a contest between a pilot and gravity, gravity wins every time! Living life according to the ways of God works the same way. Flaunt them if you will, but you will lose every time!

On my way to a conference in Colorado, I was driving uphill along a major interstate when I overtook a freight train going the same direction at a slower speed. The train was being pushed uphill by two locomotives that

sounded as if they were straining at full power. I'm a flatlander from the Midwest. Is this how trains move in mountainous terrain? I wondered.

A few minutes later, I gradually came alongside the front of the nearly mile-long string of cars. There I found five more locomotives pulling the train. Seven engines in all! Where I come from, I rarely see more than three.

That train was a lesson for me. I had been under serious strain for some time. I was feeling tired and was wondering whether I could persevere under the pressure. How like God, I thought. When I am pushing a load uphill with all the strength I have and feel like my energy level is depleted, he wants me to know that he is in the lead pulling with power far greater than mine. -Richard Mylander; St. Cloud, Minnesota

Imagine yourself on an old sailing ship in the middle of the ocean. Your ship is no longer moving. The sails hang limp in a hot, breeze-less afternoon. The sun beats mercilessly down on you. All the drinking water is gone. You are thirsty--incredibly thirsty. There's salt water everywhere, but you can't drink it. This is the scene Samuel Taylor Coleridge describes in his epic poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner": "Water, water everywhere and all the boards did shrink; Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

A few years ago the New York Times bestseller list included a number of picture books about a funny guy named Waldo. "Where's Waldo?" was a part of the title. Tall, skinny guy, hat, glasses, blue pants, red-striped shirt on every page. Had to find him. Zachary & Jonathan have a "Where's Waldo" tube. Waldo is in there! Always looks the same! Only problem--lots of metallic confetti-- blue & red. Hard to find. God is like that. Always the same! There in every situation/circumstance. Have to look for him.

Felix of Nola--a Christian of many centuries ago--was running away from persecutors. He crawled into a cave to hide and instinctively began to pray for safety. A spider began to spin a web over the small entrance to the

cave. Enemy troops came to the cave, saw the web, and concluded no one was in there. Felix of Nola later wrote: "Where God is, a web is like a wall. Where God is not, a wall is like a web."

[God] is up to something so big, so unimaginably good that your mind cannot contain it . . . What we see God doing is never as good as what we don't see. -Ben Patterson in "Waiting"

John Witherspoon was one of signers of Declaration of Independence. President of College of NJ. Lived a couple of miles away at Rocky Hill. Drove horse & buggy each day to work. One day a neighbor burst into his office shouting, “Dr. Witherspoon, you must join me in giving thanks to God for his extraordinary providence in saving my life, for as I was driving from Rocky Hill the horse ran away and the buggy was smashed on the rocks, but I escaped unharmed!” Witherspoon replied, “Why I can tell you a far more remarkable providence than that. I have driven that road hundreds of times. My horse never ran away, my buggy was never smashed, I was never hurt.”

"You catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall."

--Annie Dillard

(NOTE: "Fill my cup, Lord. . .")

(The Timothy Report, Swan Lake Communications, SwanLC@aol.com, June 21, 1999

—the Marriage Illustration: Sometimes marriage is used to illustrate the Godhead. Just as in marriage two are one so also in the Godhead three are one. Just as the persons in marriage are distinct so also the persons of the Godhead are distinct.

—the Molecule Illustration: The Ozone Molecule is a substance composed of 3 atoms held together by (electron) bonds. Each atom can exist seperately. The molecule has many properties in common with the properties of its constituent parts.

—The Apple Illustration: The basic principle is that there is one apple. But the apple has three parts: the peel, the flesh, the core. All three parts of the apple are apple. The peel is apple (it is not orange or banana); the flesh is apple (not pear or plum); the core is apple (not grapefruit or watermelon). These three, peel, flesh, core are not three apples but just one apple.

—The Egg Illustration: An egg is composed of three parts: the shell, the yoke, and the white. Each is a part of the egg and together they compose a single egg.

—The Mankind Illustration: There is ONE mankind. All of mankind is made up of multiple individuals.

—The Family Illustration: The word FAMILY is singular, but a family is composed of two or more people.

—The Government Illustration: We have one Federal government, but it is composed of multiple people.

—The Relationship Illustration: As a man, I serve three roles: father, son, and husband. I am one man serving in these three roles simultaneously, yet each role has a different purpose. I am in complete harmony with myself in serving in these roles.

—The Individual Divinities Illustration: "My understanding is not that the Godhead is a "composition" of beings. If you study the words used for "Godhead" in their context you will find that they could be translated Divinity - a category of beings. The Father is divine, the Son is divine, and the Spirit is divine. They are supernatural as opposed to being natural and in the flesh. They are beyond supernatural - above angels - they are deity. The Father is deity, the Son is deity, and the Spirit is deity. They, and only they, are eternal in nature. Only they have the attributes of deity. All others are created by them. They are the "uncaused cause." "From everlasting to everlasting." "The beginning and the end." Etc. To say that the three compose the Godhead indicates that one or two of the persons is incomplete without the other. Each is complete deity on His own. Yet

their relationship is perfect in nature and function."

—The Time Illustration: Time is composed of past, present, and future. Each is different, but each is part of time.

—The Role Illustration: The Father formulated the Plan. The Son executed the Plan. The Spirit revealed the Plan. One God playing three roles.

—The Person vs Essence Illustration: God is one "essence" in three persons, not one person in three persons. "Person" and "Essence" are two different categories of being. "Person" refers to personality; the individual exercise of intellect, feelings and will. "Essence" refers to the nature

or substance of God. In human beings personhood and essence are contained in one physical body. One person and one human body are always together, so much so that we use "person" and "human being" interchangeably. But since God is a spiritual being He is not limited to a body as we are. Personhood and essence are not necessarily limited to both being one entity. A simple way to phrase it is that the essence of God is the "what" of God's existence. The Persons of the Godhead are the "how" of that existence. They are a description of how the one essence of God exists. It is

true, though, that we cannot conceive how this all works. This is where the mystery of God's nature enters in. It can be described in a way that doesn't violate reason and is logically consistent, but comprehending how it all works is above human capabilities. It can be described logically, but it cannot be comprehended.

—The Quality of Being illustration: "God" is not a description of the "Who" but of the "What," the quality of being Deity. Therefore, three Beings can possess the quality of Being God without violating the "Who" of the other two Beings.

—The Multiple Personalities Illustration: There is one God, but God is so vast that to describe Him in one personality would not fit Who He Is in entirety. One way to describe Him is as a Father, another way is as a Son, and yet another way is as a Spirit. Three personalities (and three distinct relationships) give us a better picture of His nature than one personality, and that is why God revealed Himself in three ways.

—The GodHOOD Illustration: The three beings [better, "persons"] that compose and comprise the Godhood are beings that co-equally share in the quality or state of being "God." We would use the expressions "childhood," "brotherhood," "boyhood," or "manhood" in much the same way. That is, a boy shares "boyhood" with other boys on the basis that he shares certain distinctive qualities with that class of people. The Father has Godhood, the Son has Godhood, and the Spirit has Godhood.

—The Unity Illustration: The brethren can be one in the same sense that God is One. (Jesus prayed for this type of unity.) There is unity in purpose, love, action, doctrine, and commitment.

—The H2O Illustration: Water can be found in three forms: solid, liquid, and gas. Each is water, and does not cease to be water when it changes forms. God is God, and does not cease to be God even when He reveals Himself in any of the three different forms (Father, Son, Spirit).

Question: There are three things God cannot do. What are they?

He can't Lie

He can't hate the sinner

He can't love sin

- BETTY MCKNIGHT

"In God We Trust" This became our official motto by a joint

resolution of the Congress, on July 20, 1956.

- PULPIT HELPS, July, 1991

In Christianity, there are three R's:

_R_elax in God's peace,

_R_efresh in God's energies,

_R_elinquish to God's wisdom and will.

-- from "Bless Your Heart" daily calendar

published by Samplers from the Heartland

Charles Allen tells how

his dad would come to watch and cheer when he played baseball as a boy. When he got a good hit and was running the bases,

as he would round third base, his dad would shout, "Come home, Charles, come

all the way home!" That is God's continual summons to each of us.

"God is more truly imagined than expressed, and He exists more

truly than He is imagined."

- Augustine

- _Instant Quotation Dictionary_, p. 145.

A little Scottish boy wouldn't eat his prunes, so his mother sent

him off to bed saying, "God is angry at you."

Soon after the boy went to his room a violent storm broke out.

Amidst flashes of lightning and peals of thunder, the mother looked

into the boy's room, worried that he would be terrified. When she

opened the door she found him looking out the window muttering, "My,

such a fuss to make over a few prunes."

A mother was approached by her young son, who asked, "Mommy,

did God make Himself?" Realizing that such questions by children are

very important and must be answered, she dropped what she was doing

and sat down with her youngster for a little talk. Pointing to her

wedding band, she said, "This is a 'love ring,' which your daddy gave

me when we were married. Look at it closely and tell me where it

begins and where it ends."

The youngster examined it carefully and then said, "There's no

starting place and stopping place to a ring." The mother replied,

"That's the way it is with God. He had no beginning and has no end,

yet He encircles our lives with His presence. He is too wonderful, too

great, for our minds to understand. Nobody ever made God -- He always

was!" Somehow the boy realized that for God to be God, He could not

have been created. He had to be without beginning and without end.

Baron Rothschild, a member of the world-famous family of

financiers, stepped from a carriage one evening and gave the driver

what he felt was an adequate tip.

Eyeing the tip disdainfully, the driver said, "Your lordship's son

always gives me a good deal more than this."

"I dare say he does," Baron Rothschild snapped. "But then, you

see, he has a rich father: I haven't."

The Baron made an excellent point. When you have a father with

plentiful resources to depend on, you don't have to worry about giving

too much!

God has a way of turning the tables on evil. The French

philosopher Voltaire predicted that Christianity would be swept from

existence within 100 years. Yet just 50 years after he died in 1779,

the German Bible Society had occupied Voltaire's house and was using

his printing press to produce stacks of Bibles.

During World War II, Adolf Hitler erected a massive stone structure

in Monte Carlo. It was to be a radio station from which to broadcast

Nazi propaganda into North Africa. Today from that very building,

Trans World Radio beams the gospel of Christ's redeeming love all

across Europe and into Russia and Africa.

Could these ironies of history be whispers of the last word Christ

will have at the end of this age?

A church newsletter included this essay by Danny Dutton, age 8.

His third grade Sunday School teacher had asked her students to

explain God.

"One of God's main jobs is making people. He

makes these to put in the place of the ones that die so there will be

enough people to take care of things here on earth. He doesn't make

grownups, just babies. I think because they are smaller and easier to

make. That way he doesn't have to take up his valuable time teaching

the to talk and walk. He can just leave that up to the mothers and

fathers. I think it works out pretty good. "God's second most

important job is listening to prayers. An awful lot of this goes on,

cause some people, like preachers and things, pray other times besides

bedtime, and Grandpa and Grandma Dutton pray every time they eat

(except for snacks). God doesn't have time to listen to the radio or

TV on account of this. Cause God hears everything, not only prayers,

there must be a terrible lot of noise going on in his ears unless he

has thought of a way to turn it off. I think we should all be a little

quieter. God sees everything and hears everything and keeps everything

and is everywhere. Which keeps him pretty busy. So you shouldn't go

wasting his time asking for things that aren't very important or go

over your parents' heads and ask for something they said you couldn't

have."

see \reference{Deuteronomy 6:1-9}{Deuteronomy 6:1-9}; \reference{1

Kings 2:1-4}{1 Kings 2:1-4}; \reference{Matthew 18:2-6}{Matthew

18:2-6}; \reference{Ephesians 6:4}{Ephesians 6:4} Source: Christ

Church (Episcopal), St. Michael's, MD.

see "Fresh Sermon Illustrations"

(http://www.sedona.net/~budman/illustr.html)