Everything is Ours as the Children of God—Everything

Hebrews 3:13:

But exhort one another daily, while it is called To day; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

This passage, speaking of salvation, mercy, and grace, pens this curious grouping of words:  “…while it is called To day;” What does this mean?  This may offend the smiley-face God bumper-sticker crowd, but there are four places in a man’s life where the offer of salvation, mercy, and grace is rescinded and eternal damnation in the Lake of Fire is the final option.

These four places of doom should cause concern in the heart of any man or woman:

1. Blaspheming the Holy Ghost where the works of the Spirit of God are attributed to the devil (Matthew 12:31-32).  (Note: If you are afraid that you have committed this sin, it is not likely that you have.) 
2. Proverbs 29:1: He, that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.
3. After the great taking-up of the church to meet Jesus Christ in the clouds, those who are left behind who had rejected the Cross of Christ will be lost forever (II Thessalonians 2:8-12).   This group will include the vast majority of mankind.  Jesus Christ will return without warning, and the blood-bought expect Him very soon.
4. Sudden, and in many instances unexpected, death while still in one’s unwashed state. 

At these four places, salvation, mercy, and grace are gone forever. 

Have you been born again?  Have you repented of your sins and believed upon the Lord Jesus Christ as your only Lord and Saviour?  Your time has come.  Make your decision “while it is called To day.”  Click onto “Further with Jesus” for childlike instructions and immediate entry into the Kingdom of God.  Today is your day of salvation.  NOW FOR TODAY’S SUBJECT. 

GOD SAID, Isaiah 45:18:

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

GOD SAID, Psalm 115:16:

The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 4:15:

For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

GOD SAID, I Corinthians 3:21-23:

21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

23 And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

MAN SAID: It’s the Copernican principle of mediocrity.  God did not make all things in the universe to benefit man.  We are a product of the “Big Bang,” and the “Big Bang” is centerless.  The earth is not central to the universe. 

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If the earth was created by God to be inhabited; if the earth was given to man and the heavens are the Lord’s; if all things are for our sake; if all things are ours, then proof of such should be abundant—and it is.  Science knows this phenomenon as the anthropic principle. 

In his book titled Creation, Dr. Grant Jeffrey has a chapter titled “Anthropic Principle: The Evidence of God’s Fine-Tuning.”  Several excerpts have been recorded for your perusal:

A respected astrophysicist from Cambridge University, Dr. Brandon Carter, delivered a paper called “Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology.”  Dr. Carter coined the phrase “anthropic principle,” derived from the Greek word Anthropos, which means “man.”  Dr. Carter proposed an extraordinary theory: that the only rational way to explain the fact that the universe existed as it does, with an incredibly precise balance between all of the multitude of forces including gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong nuclear force that made our universe possible, can only be explained if they were fine-tuned in such a precise manner to allow human life to exist on earth. 

Professor Robert Jastrow, although he is an agnostic, admits that:

The universe was constructed within very narrow limits, in such a way that man could dwell in it.  This result is called the anthropic principle.  It is the most theistic result ever to come out of science, in my view. 

The theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking acknowledged that the fact that the proton in the atom is precisely 1,836 times heavier than the electron is essential to the formation of molecules that are the building blocks of all life.  The precise ratio between the proton and the electron is a fundamental number governing our universe.  Hawking stated, “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”  [End of quotes]

The anthropic principle pervades all life and the universe itself.  Dr. Jeffries continues:

If our earth was located much farther away from our sun, we would experience temperatures such as the minus 70° F measured on the planet Mars, and we would freeze.  If the earth were much closer to the sun, then we would have temperatures like the extremely hot surface of Mercury, or the 860° temperature on Venus, and we would burn up. 

The astrophysicist Sir Fred Hoyle admitted that, when he considered how totally unlikely it was that the element carbon could have been formed by accident, his atheism was shaken to the core.  He wrote:

A common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.  The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. 

Significantly, the most respected physicist in the world, Stephen Hawking, summarized the implications of his remarkable discoveries about the universe’s first moments:

The odds against a universe like ours emerging out of something like the Big Bang are enormous.  …I think clearly there are religious implications whenever you start to discuss the origins of the universe.  There must be religious overtones.  But I think most scientists prefer to shy away from the religious side of it. 

Dr. Chandra Wickramasinghe, one of the most eminent scientists in Britain, has stated that the anthropic principle strongly supports the theory of God’s special creation, as opposed to evolution.  When he was asked if his scientific research proved that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was fatally flawed, he agreed. When asked how he would evaluate the scientific arguments of the Creationists, who suggest that only God could have created the universe and life itself, Professor Wickramasinghe responded, “You mean the arguments that are justifications of their position?  I think they have a very good case, by and large.” 

The astronomer Professor Alan Sandage acknowledged the powerful evidence of design that scientists discovered in our universe:

I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos.  There has to be some organizing principle.  God, to me, is a mystery, but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing.

A NASA astronomer and scientist, Professor John O’Keefe, has acknowledged the utter impossibility that the universe would ever have developed in a manner that would have allowed humanity to exist by random chance.  Dr. O’Keefe wrote:

We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.  …If the universe had not been made with the most exacting precision, we could never have come into existence.  It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in.  [End of quotes]

The following excerpts are from the September 2016 issue of Scientific American, under the feature titled “Many Planets, Not Much Life.”  The subtitle reads, “We still have no idea how easy it is for life to arise—and it may be incredibly difficult.”  The feature was penned by Paul Davies, the director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University. 

When I was a student in the 1960s, almost all scientists believed we are alone in the universe.  The search for intelligent life beyond earth was ridiculed; one might as well have professed an interest in looking for fairies.  The focus of skepticism concerned the origin of life, which was widely assumed to have been a chemical fluke of such incredibly low probability it would never have happened twice.  “The origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle” was the way Francis Crick described it, “so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going.”  Jacques Monod concurred; in his 1976 book Chance and Necessity, he wrote, “Man knows at last that he is alone in the indifferent immensity of the universe, whence which he has emerged by chance.” 

Today, the pendulum has swung decisively the other way. Many distinguished scientists proclaim that the universe is teeming with life, at least some of it intelligent.  Biologist Christian de Duve went so far as to call life “a cosmic imperative.” Yet the science has hardly changed.  We are almost as much in the dark today about the pathway from nonlife to life as Charles Darwin was when he wrote, “It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.” 

There is no doubt that SETI—the search for extraterrestrial intelligence—has received a huge fillip from the recent discovery of hundreds of extrasolar planets.  Astronomers think there could be billions of earth-like planets in our galaxy alone.  Clearly, there is no lack of habitable real estate out there.  Yet because we do not know the process that transformed a mishmash of chemicals into a living cell, with all its staggering complexity, it is impossible to calculate the probability that life has actually arisen on these planets. 

Another common argument is that the universe is so vast, there just has to be life out there somewhere.  But what does that statement mean?  If we restrict attention to the observable universe, there are probably 10²³ planets.  Yes, that is a big number. But it is dwarfed by the odds against forming even simple organic molecules by random chance alone.  If the pathway from chemistry to biology is long and complicated, it may well be that fewer than one in a trillion trillion planets ever spawns life. 

Affirmations that life is widespread are founded on a tacit assumption that biology is not the upshot of random chemical reactions but the product of some kind of directional self-organization that favors the living state over others—a sort of life principle at work in nature.  There may be such a principle, but if so, we have found no evidence for it yet. [End of quote]

In the same issue of Scientific American, under the heading “Does Humanity Have a Future Beyond Earth,” British cosmologist and astrophysicist Martin Rees has this to say:

I think it’s a dangerous delusion to envisage mass emigration from earth.  There’s nowhere else in the solar system that’s as comfortable as even the top of Everest or the South Pole.  We must address the world’s problems here. 

The earth is unique in the universe because God made it to be inhabited, but evolutionary scientists cannot bring themselves to such an admission—no matter how daunting the facts.

In spite of man’s lack of success, endlessly staring through high-powered telescopes, launching search satellites and probes, building expensive listening outposts, and more, he continues to hope for the cosmic “missing link.”  Carnal man’s misguided mind imagines that if he can find life in outer space, it will support his evolutionary theory. 

I mentioned earlier that God’s Word declares there is life in outer space.  God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and a host of angels, as well as other creations of His dwell in the third heaven, which is located beyond the North Star.  There surely is life in outer space.  Jesus Christ was in heaven before He came to earth via the seed of the Holy Ghost and Mary.  Jesus speaks in John 8:23:

And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. 

Multitudes of angels who are presently on the earth came from outer space as well as the fallen angel Satan and his fallen followers.  There surely is life in outer space. 

After billions of hours of sky-searching, earth’s equivalent is still missing. Man is looking in all the wrong places. 

The following excerpts are from the GodSaidManSaid feature “Anthropic Principle:”

Does the account that “all things are for man’s sake” hold its ground with modern academia?  According to the Bible, God created the earth, the solar system, the universe, and all the earth’s creatures to facilitate the needs and pleasures of man. 

Have you ever heard the term anthropocentrism?  Descriptionary: A Thematic Dictionary defines anthropocentrism: “the belief that human beings are at the center of all meaning and creation.”  [End of quote]

Today’s physicists are preoccupied with what is commonly known as the Anthropic Principle.  To science, it is the intriguing discovery that all things have been designed with man in mind.  In a 1997 issue of Nature magazine, physicists Carr and Reese dealt with this subject in a feature titled, “The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World.” 

Can it be?  Was all of creation designed to facilitate the needs of man, including the universe?  Are men and the earth central to the universe, or are we just an accident that happens on occasion?  The following excerpt is from a feature on this website titled “Ever Learning:” 

In six days, God created all that you see.  The host of heaven was created on the fourth day for the purpose of serving the earth.  The earth is the center of attention. 

Stephen Hawking, in his book A Brief History of Time, seems to be tripping over the truth.  He reports:

Now at first sight, all of this evidence that the universe looks the same whichever direction we look in, might seem  to suggest there is something special about our place in the universe.  In particular, it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe.  There is, however, an alternate explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too.  This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption.  We believe it only on grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe!  [End of quote]

The observable evidence shows the earth as the center of the universe.  [End of quotes]

All that we are and all that pertains to what we do was created by God’s Word—and it was created for the benefit of mankind (the anthropic principle).  Hebrews 1:1-2:

1 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,

2 Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds;

Our job as the children of God is to “trust and obey,” as the old gospel song goes, “for there’s no other way.” 

GOD SAID, Isaiah 45:18:

For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.

GOD SAID, Psalm 115:16:

The heaven, even the heavens, are the Lord's: but the earth hath he given to the children of men.

GOD SAID, II Corinthians 4:15:

For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

GOD SAID, I Corinthians 3:21-23:

21 Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours;

22 Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours;

23 And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's.

MAN SAID: It’s the Copernican principle of mediocrity.  God did not make all things in the universe to benefit man.  We are a product of the “Big Bang,” and the “Big Bang” is centerless.  The earth is not central to the universe. 

Now you have THE RECORD.

 

 

References:

Authorized King James Version

Davis, P., “Many Planets, Not Much Life,” Scientific American, September 2016

Grant, J., Creation: Remarkable Evidence of God’s Design, Waterbrook Press, 2003

Zalasiewicz, J., “What Mark Will We Leave on the Planet,” Scientific American, September 2016

 

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