“The Pharisees objected, “All we have is your word on this. We need more than this to believe.”
Jesus replied, “You’re right that you only have my word. You decide according to what you can see and touch. I don’t make judgements out of the NARROWNESS OF MY EXPERIENCE but in the largeness of the One who sent Me, the Creator, Father God. You are tied down to the mundane; I’m in touch with what is beyond your horizons. You live in terms of what you see and touch. I’m living on other terms. I told you that you were missing God in all this. If you won’t believe I am who I say I am, you’re at a dead end in terms of learning.” John 8:14-18, 23,24.
The Bible has many, many verses whereby the authors record their dealing with those in their community who were materialists. These authors are trying to explain, both from evidence and from experience that there is much more to life than what meets the eye, or any of the other senses for that matter. For example:
Romans 1:1 . . . since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities - His eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”
Hebrews 11:3 - “By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.”
I find this verse fascinating. Here we have a 1st century author declaring a truth that wasn't confirmed until the first living cells were observed under a microscope in the middle of the 15th century.
2nd Corinthians 5:12 - “We are not trying to commend ourselves to you again . . . so that you can answer those who take pride in what is seen rather than in what is in the heart.”
2nd Corinthians 4:18 - “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”
Rather than constricting life, as so many suppose, a life with Jesus at the centre and with God as the cause opens one’s mind to a storehouse of wisdom and knowledge that is simply unavailable to those who try to live life on their own terms. Humbly accepting that we are not the centre of the universe and opening ourselves to the wisdom of God is the most liberating move that a person can make. It is the most intellectually fulfilling move that a person can make.
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What if the Pharisees had been talking to a false prophet shmuck? Would you have them believe the false prophet at his word?
Sheesh, I'd want more than Jesus' word to believe. I'd actually want to be cautious as to who I trusted - and someone who advised his followers to be cautious who they trusted would understand this, right?
"Here we have a 1st century author declaring a truth that wasn't confirmed until the first living cells were observed under a microscope in the middle of the 15th century."
Really now? In the sentence before, the speaker is talking about God creating the universe out of nothing (unseen, obviously), but in the next sentence, you interpret "the unseen" not as nothingness, but as a cryptic rendition of atomic theory? My question would be, "why reveal this scientific truth at that time, especially when it was not relevant for thousands of years and played no part in leading to the discovery of that scientific truth?"
Seems much more likely to me that the sentence is relevant to the one before it, not an untimely and purposeless revelation (which was already understood by the Greeks centuries before anyways).
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