THE FINAL PAGE

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By Jon Quinn



    A good friend of mine, Ken Chumbley, in his book
entitled "The Gospel Argument For God", which is published
by the Florida College Bookstore, has a chart on page
56. Now, I do not want to stir anything up, but another
good friend of mine, Mike Schmidt, insisted to me that the
chart was his idea. But that's not important. I cannot
reproduce the chart in this medium, but I can describe it
for you. It is something to think about.

    Ken's (or Mike's) chart begins with a single word at 
the top of it: UNIVERSE. Then, assuming that everyone can
pretty much agree that the UNIVERSE exists, the chart has 
two arrows going from the word UNIVERSE to two possible 
alternatives:

     NO BEGINNING or BEGINNING? Very few scientists 
continue to hold out for NO BEGINNING. Theories of the
"Steady State" and "Oscillating" universe do not jive with 
what we know. That is the reason there is so much talk
about the "Big Bang" in scientific circles; because 
physical laws which we already know prohibit a belief in a
Universe without a BEGINNING. The chart continues the
progression by having two more arrows going from BEGINNING 
to two more alternatives:

     UNCAUSED or CAUSED? Since the UNIVERSE exists, and 
since it must have had a BEGINNING, then we want to know
if it was UNCAUSED or CAUSED. Did the UNIVERSE just 
suddenly exist for no reason? Or was there a reason, or 
CAUSE? Everyone recognizes that effects have causes. To 
suggest otherwise makes scientific investigation a farce. 
And since the UNIVERSE was CAUSED to BEGIN, we need to 
determine something further about that CAUSE. Kenny's
chart has two more arrows leading from CAUSE to two more 
alternatives:

     IMPERSONAL or PERSONAL? You've seen the numbers that
mathematicians have come up with against the liklihood 
that the CAUSE was IMPERSONAL; that random events got us 
to where we are today. But all those numbers assume there 
is something to start with. Even the slightest chance they
afford (Kenny cites one calculation as 1 in 10,000,000,000 
to the 124th power) is taken away when we remember that
the chance of something coming from nothing is 0. However,
belief in a PERSONAL CAUSE outside the physical universe 
and material realm itself presents no such problem. What
are the chances that Bible believers are correct when we 
affirm that the UNIVERSE was CAUSED to BEGIN by a PERSON;
that is, God created it? I do not know; it is probably 
impossible to come up with an accurate number, but
whatever it is, it is a much, much more likely event than 
the 0% chance of the alternative.

Wake up world! "In the beginning God created the heavens 
and the earth."

See you in October, Lord willing.