The esteemed pharisee Gamaliel once warned, “You might even be found opposing God (Acts 5:39)!” Jesus’ apostles were on trial for teaching in the name of Jesus. The Jewish Sanhedrin was on the brink of sentencing them to death when Gamaliel made this bold assertion.
Many today do not give much thought about the implications of the existence of God. Undirected, evolution, while a widely fanciful idea, has convinced many that the world we live in no longer requires the intelligence of a designer for its existence. Meanwhile, the latest science shows us, with every discovery, how narrow the margin of error for life’s existence is.
Human intelligence, which far surpasses that of any other known creature, can scarcely be explained simply as neurological function. Doubtfully the human mind will ever be able to be reduced to mere biology. The logical outcome would be a closed universe, in which everything is predetermined by some first cause, presumably a big bang, and nothing outside the system could ever intervene to change the course of anything. In such a world, human freewill would be no more than an illusion to the senses, and the big bang itself would need to be caused by an endless series of infinite causes going backwards in time.
Despite all the logical lunacy, we now have no few number of ideologies or whims to cling to for excusing ourselves from the likes of an Almighty Creator of Heaven and Earth. Yet, what if we have pushed the enveloped to far? What if God does exist? Worse yet, what if we are found to be opposing God? What a fearful day it will be for those who under the guise of false pre-tenses find themselves in the throws of the Judge of the Universe on the day of reckoning.
Some might accuse me of provoking fear for the sake of proselytizing. Hardly! If such a God does exist – as I believe he does – my plea to take him seriously would be even greater than that of a doctor trying to persuade his patient that she has curable cancer, if she would only accept the treatment. How tragic would it be for the doctor to make no attempt to convince when the stakes are so high? The stakes are higher still when it comes to God.
Forsake God, and you lose the joy and satisfaction of knowing him. If the chief purpose of life is to love, serve, and enjoy him, we would destine ourselves to a nonsense life on earth by practicing such ignorance.
Gamaliel worried his contemporaries, in their earnestness not to believe, might be found opposing God. They were. Are you?