The Simple Book of Profound Truths: A Spiritual Guide for Skeptic and Believer Alike

By Matthew L. Williams M.A. Ph.D.

This book is a revolutionary text for revolutionary spiritual times. Facing imminent global financial collapse and great adversity for the foreseeable future, people will need a powerful faith in God just to survive. But who can have great faith if they dont know anything about God and how he works in our livesor if he even exists?

God reveals spiritual knowledge to mankind not in an even, continuous flow, but in rare bursts or quantum leaps forward. The last such spiritual burst in Christianity occurred almost 2000 years ago, with the teachings of the New Testament. Since then, virtually no progress has been made in terms of spiritual insight into the Bible. Even worse, scholars today dont understand very well Gods lessons from the last burst. Thats why youll find even prominent Christian teachers still debating such basic spiritual concepts as the following:

Can non-Christians be saved?
What is the role of scienceand especially evolutionin relation to the Bible?
What roles do free will and predestination play in our lives and salvation?

Unfortunately, while Christian spirituality has remained stuck in the past, mankind has pushed ahead into the twenty-first century. With the explosive growth of knowledge, science, and global communications, Christianity must improve the way it addresses peoples spiritual concerns or face irrelevance and eventual extinction.

This book represents a revolution in spiritual understanding that takes Christianity into the twenty-first century and beyond. It is the latest burst of spiritual insight2000 years in coming. Mankinds oldest and most vexing spiritual questions are answered here in full accord with logic, science, and reason. In addition, the reader will find new insights into understanding the Bible, living a spiritual life, andfor the first time evera new vision of Bible prophecy and the end of the world. There is no book like this.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449720483

Matthew L. Williams M.A. Ph.D.

Matthew Williams has a BA in classics from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and an MA and PhD (ABD) from UCLA. He has taught Greek, Latin, and Greco-Roman civilization at UCLA. He currently teaches Latin at Mountain Lakes High School in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.

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Contents

Topic #1

Does God Exist?

Topic #2

Why Doesn’t God Just Reveal Himself?

Topic #3

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

Topic #4

Is Life Fair?

Topic #5

What Happens to Us When We Die?

Topic #6

What Will the End of the World Be Like?

Prayer for Salvation

Advance Warning to Readers About This Book

This book contains numerous scientific references. Many people find science unappealing. If this applies to you, feel free to skip over these parts. They are not typically essential but tend just to back up or support the ideas that I present. Quite the opposite of what most people think, science is frequently necessary to help prove the existence of God and support many Biblical teachings.

The idea that I attempt to convince the reader of throughout the course of this book is that God designed our material world as a parallel to his eternal spiritual world. Seen in this perspective, science cannot contradict the Bible, but only reinforce it. My belief is that the persistent parallels we find between our scientific and spiritual laws suggest a common creator of both—a higher power that closely matches the God described in the Bible.

The Creator reveals himself to us directly through the Bible, but also indirectly through his creation. Through science, the systematic study of the natural world (= creation), we can duplicate the spiritual principles of the Bible. This lends them greater credibility with those who may not otherwise accept the Bible’s authority.

This book also frequently strays from the main question assigned to each chapter in order to cover important spiritual issues that ‘branch out’ from it. Though it is possible to also skip over these digressions, it makes for a more coherent and informative read if you do not. You will get the most out of this book if you read it from beginning to end without skipping any sections.

Topic #1

Does God Exist?

Yes—almost certainly. But before we give evidence for God’s existence, we must first understand the difficulties of proving anything. We live in a world where no true absolutes exist—including absolute certainty. The result is that no one can prove conclusively—that is, in a way that is 100% compelling and accepted by all—that God either exists or does not exist. We can only speak in terms of probability: God probably exists or God probably does not exist. No greater certainty than this is possible. (For the theological reasons why God doesn’t openly reveal himself to mankind, see chapter 2: Why Doesn’t God Just Reveal Himself?)

We All Live in a World of Faith—

Even Scientists, Atheists and Skeptics

It is not just people who believe in God who rely on faith, but every single person on earth. Our own limited knowledge—as well as certain (God-imposed) limits placed on what information can be known—combine to ensure that people never possess certain knowledge of anything. And without certain knowledge, we can only trust that certain things are probably true or probably not true. As a result, the basis for all our beliefs is faith.

Scientists have long recognized that absolute certainty in their field does not exist. They cautiously describe even very well-supported scientific beliefs only as ‘theories’ remembering how too many times in the past new discoveries overturned or qualified earlier supposed scientific ‘certainties’.

In addition, scientists routinely make certain assumptions—dare one say ‘leaps of faith’?—in the course of their work that cannot be conclusively proven true. Evolutionists, for example, assume that species that share large amounts of DNA are more closely related than species that share very little DNA. Otherwise, how would they have acquired so much similar DNA?

Almost certainly their assumption is correct. But one cannot be 100% certain of this. It is theoretically possible—if quite improbable—that great similarities of DNA could be due, for example, simply to random mutation in the same direction.

Even ‘mathematical certainty’—probably the highest level of certainty we have—falls short of absolute certainty. The math that describes very large objects in the universe (such as galaxies or stars) fails to accurately describe very small objects (on a subatomic level). We must await some future math that will be able to synthesize the two.

Mathematicians themselves have pointed out ‘there is not one single universally accepted concept in mathematics’ and that ‘there are many conflicting ones’ (see the flap on Mathematics: The Loss of Certainty by Morris Kline (Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1980). Because of examples like this, all math—even the humble 2 + 2 = 4—must be recognized as tentative in nature and always subject to future revision. As a result, we can never be fully certain about even math.

If uncertainty exists in the hard sciences, engineering and mathematics, it goes without saying that it reigns supreme in the notoriously subjective and speculative fields of the humanities and social sciences. And in society in general, people do not win arguments with others by offering up absolute proofs that everyone then unquestionably accepts.

People merely accept one person’s arguments as more likely to be true—in their opinion—than someone else’s ideas. There will be always be debate, doubt and divided opinions about politics, religion, sports, entertainment—and even whether the world around us actually exists and is not some great delusion of our senses.

Everything we think we know is merely things we accept on faith from our parents, teachers or society. We cannot fully verify it. Documents that we might use to try to ‘verify’ things might be forged, filled with mistakes or subject to multiple interpretations. What we think of as ‘proof’ of things is very flimsy in reality.

Everything we do each day is an act of faith. We go indoors each day on faith that roofs won’t collapse on us. We sit on chairs assuming they won’t collapse under us. We fly in planes, drive on the highway, go over bridges, accept food prepared by others, work a period of time before getting our first paycheck (and so forth)—all as acts of faith. There is nothing we do or know that is not an act of faith.

Besides our own human limitations when it comes to ever acquiring full knowledge, God has built uncertainty into the very fabric of the material world. Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle from quantum physics reveals that we cannot avoid uncertainty in the subatomic particles that make up our own bodies and everything else in the universe made of visible matter. If we seek to know the location of an electron swirling around the nucleus of an atom, we cannot also know its speed and direction. If we instead seek to know its speed and direction, we cannot also observe its location. We can have one piece of information or the other—but not both. Our knowledge is forever limited. Uncertainty will always exist.

SMALL IRONY: While we seek absolute proof that God exists somewhere in heaven, we cannot even fully locate and understand the properties of the particles that make up our own bodies here on earth.

Reinforcing this, mathematician Kurt Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem dealt mathematicians a blow by seeming to rule out the ability of mathematics to explain the complete scientific workings of the universe. Mathematics is a very useful tool—but has inherent limitations.

Just because uncertainty exists in the world doesn’t mean that we can never make accurate assumptions or that all our beliefs are unlikely to be true. It is just that we can never conclusively prove anything. But absolute certainty and absolute proof of things isn’t necessary for us to get by in life. All the amazing technology mankind has created from spaceships to computers to skyscrapers to automobiles, etc. is all based on information and ideas that we are ‘uncertain’ about.

The same is true when it comes to God. No one today will ever be able to demonstrate with absolute certainty that God exists. This is actually how God wants it to be. But just because you can’t be 100% certain God exists, doesn’t mean that there isn’t very good reason for believing that he does in fact exist. You aren’t actually 100% certain about any of the things in this world that you nevertheless personally feel quite sure are true.

The arguments that scientists make to prove the validity of their assertions are no higher or more credible than those which believers can make to prove the existence of God. The same high standard of argument which can prove any scientific, mathematical or logical principle can also be used to prove the existence of God. You don’t have to resort to just faith-based appeals that God exists. The evidence I am about to present for God’s existence is not faith-based: that is, it is not simply things I read in the Bible or heard from some fellow believer—though great truth can be found in both these sources.

People who try to prove God’s existence have always been at a disadvantage because God is invisible and otherwise undetectable to our five senses, while scientists can point to the visible world around them for evidence. In recent years, the jobs of scientist and theologian have grown much more similar. To scientists’ surprise, all the visible world around us makes up less than 5% of the known universe. The remaining 95+ % of the universe is made up of things that are invisible and otherwise undetectable to our five senses.

We can only detect the existence of ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ by the effect they have on visible objects of matter. This is how people in every known culture on earth today and in history have traditionally perceived the existence of God—by the effects he has on people’s lives. Some people feel the fact that the concept of God is a cultural universal (= found everywhere) constitutes some proof of his existence. But many won’t accept this.

Others feel the way he has radically changed people’s lives around for the better or the way he has miraculously healed people—even some who have already died (people allege)—is a form of proof. But none of this is conclusive. Surviving a life threatening medical condition with a million-to-one odds against you could be that rare one-in-a-million case or the odds maker could have been wrong.

The best way to learn about God is to feel his spirit directly within you (see the Prayer of Salvation at the end of the book). But it is hard to conclusively prove his existence to others in this way because they cannot feel what you do. Some skeptics of God are now claiming they can create the feeling of God in a person by simply stimulating a certain part of the brain.

But the high standard of conclusive proof also weighs against the skeptics. God’s existence is based on arguments of reason and probability that do not hinge on any subjective perceptions. It is also very unlikely that the world’s vast and very diverse collective spiritual experiences are all duplicated by the stimulation of part of their (non-spiritual) material bodies. It is certainly possible that in some cases—such as certain out-of-body experiences or near death experiences—a physical explanation can be found. But it is very unlikely this can explain everything.

Science can be corrupted when poorly-conducted due to its being agenda-driven or money-driven in the service of certain governments, corporations or other entities. Scientists are not always pure in their motives. It would mean a lot to people with a certain agenda if some scientist’s claims that he can ‘explain’ God as simply an electrical stimulation in the mind were to be believed by the masses.

It would hardly matter if the study claiming this turned out—upon inspection—to be very poorly conducted or with ambiguous (or even falsified) results. All people will care about is the headline in the paper. The later retraction—if it ever comes—will be in fine print buried in the back of the paper that nobody will ever see. Indeed, these days the corruption of science—with regard to global warming, potential health effects of various products or the attacks on vitamins, etc.—has unfortunately become a bigger news story than much of the scientific research itself. For those to whom the truth doesn’t matter, the ends always justify the means.

True wisdom lies not just in knowing the power of science, but also its limitations.

The classic argument for God’s existence is still the best because there is no credible answer to it. God most probably does exist because it is virtually impossible all the complex life forms we find in the world could have arisen through evolution by natural selection entirely on their own by chance without some guiding higher power involved. As even people who do not believe in God must admit, the odds that God (or at least some higher power) does not exist are one in many trillions. Extremely improbable. Let us restate this for clarity. If the odds that God does not exist are extremely low, this means that it is virtually certain that God does exist.

Actually the odds are much higher than even this that God exists. It is just that people in general are unfamiliar with numbers higher than trillions so that it is easier to stick to these lower numbers that they can better understand.

Actually the odds that God exists are still greater than this. We also have to take into account how improbable it is that planet Earth just happens to be suspiciously capable of sustaining life forms that would just happen to evolve on it to an extremely unlikely complexity all on their own.

Scientists have long noted for example how fortunate it is that Earth is situated just at the right distance from the sun so that water—an essential ingredient for life—neither freezes into ice everywhere nor vaporizes from excess heat as on neighboring planets. Convenient, too, how an ozone layer developed to ward off cosmic radiation that would kill off any life forms trying to develop on the planet’s surface. An atmosphere also developed with oxygen to breathe and that happened to protect life from most incoming meteors and space debris that might destroy life on earth.

If we combine the odds that life could develop entirely on its own—through purely chance mutations over time—from simple, single-cell life forms to such advanced life forms as human beings with the unlikelihood that a planet could coincidentally develop entirely by chance all the right conditions to sustain such life, the evidence is even more compelling.

The odds are one in trillions times trillions that this could have happened on its own. God—according to the odds—almost certainly must exist. Though 100% certainty can never exist in this world, we can be as certain about this issue as any. God does exist.

Skeptics of God’s existence point out that though the odds are greatly against a God-like power not existing, it is still possible. One in many trillions odds that God doesn’t exist is at least not zero in many trillions. And this is enough for them to declare God does not have to exist. They can explain the origin and development of the universe and life on earth without needing a God involved.

I actually agree with both points above. Though extremely unlikely, it is still theoretically possible that God does not exist. If the odds were really zero that God did not exist, this would mean with 100% certainty that God did exist. This is impossible. There are no true absolutes in the material world—in either a physical or (as we will see) a spiritual sense. The built-in relativity of the material world forbids this—again, both scientifically and spiritually (which will be explained in later chapters).

Also—and importantly—God has deliberately cloaked himself in ‘plausible deniability.’ He insists there be at least a sliver of doubt about the truth of his existence for our own good. This must be maintained at all costs (see topic #2 ‘Why Doesn’t God Just Reveal Himself?’ for a full explanation why).

Recently, atheists have suggested that it really is not so improbable that God does not exist, if you consider that evolution has a geological time scale (= millions and even billions of years) in which to work. Sure it may seem unlikely that chance mutations over a short time period could explain the extreme complexity of life forms that has arisen, but over billions of years this becomes more likely. A one in a million chance mutation could well occur given a million years in which to play out. And so forth. They also point out that we have other examples of smaller systems of life or order that gradually ‘self-aggregate’ into larger and more complex systems over time. In other words, you don’t necessarily have to leap from extremely simple life forms to extremely complex ones with no intermediate bridge or gap forms along the way. This lessens the improbability of things considerably.

This is certainly true. But both points merely go towards showing the possibility that life could have evolved without God directing it. I have already happily conceded this point because it is as essential to my belief system as it is to theirs. But there is a cavernous gap between what is possible and what is probable.

Even if—let’s say—you reduce the odds that God doesn’t exist from one in many ‘gazillions’ to ‘only’ one in a trillion, what have you really accomplished? You have basically just made the argument of your opponents—the people who believe in God—for them. You have taken all your collective education, intelligence and ingenuity—and snarkiness in some cases—and told people that it is virtually 100% certain that God does exist.

SMALL IRONY: If you were a student of one of the recent prolific atheist authors / science professors and handed in a paper whose thesis you demonstrated was theoretically possible— but had trillions-to-one odds against its being true—he would throw it away and give you a failing grade. That professor is doing the same thing as the student—just with the general public as his audience—but ‘everything is different’ because he is the professor and the topic is God. Such is academia these days.

I predict this is the end of the line for the ‘clever atheist’ type of reasoning—more sophistry than actual compelling argument. In over two thousand years of skeptical debate, they have done nothing to knock down the most basic point of believers: if you do away with God, you must supply in his place some power that is equivalent to God that can reasonably explain everything in the universe that requires something ‘like a God’ to account for its existence. If we accept the laws of probability, atheists have failed to do this—even with the help of advanced modern theories such as evolution and complex systems analysis. So what is left at this point?

I also predict that new scientific discoveries will actually support not the cause of the skeptics of God—but rather that of believers. We have already seen this with the Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution by natural selection. Before the Big Bang Theory of the twentieth century, many people just assumed the universe had always existed in a perpetual unchanging ‘steady-state’ form.

It was hard for believers in God to argue that nature itself suggested life was created at a particular point in time—and likely by a Creator God—as the Creation story in Genesis tells us. It was always possible for your opponent to argue—as was done from antiquity—that the universe could always have been there. In such a case, there was no need to assume either a Creator or Creation. You could never really disprove or render implausible the possibility of an eternally existing world and life forms.

Fortunately, new scientific theories did the work for us. The Big Bang proposed that there was a point-in-time creation of the material universe. In fact, time originated with the Big Bang creation—which fully accords with the Bible’s account. The Big Bang theory was later bolstered by the astronomer Hubbell’s discovery that the universe was actually expanding over time. Since this could not have gone on forever—almost certainly—there must have been an original point in time when the universe first began to expand. This was the Creation. Science in one blow had reduced the ancient idea of an eternally-existing universe to the garbage bin of history and simultaneously enhanced the credibility of the Genesis creation story.

Now that we knew we had a Creation, what about a Creator God? A compelling case for God’s existence only really came about with Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. He—and his successors—made an appealing case that seemed to do a good job of explaining the natural world around us. Life arose from very simple forms to more complex ones over very long periods of time based on how well they managed to adapt to their ever-changing environments.

Those life forms with particular traits—physical or behavioral—that allowed them to best exploit the resources of their environment, gradually began to out-reproduce less successfully-adapting rival life forms. In some cases, these rival life forms died out, but in nearly all cases you wound up with life forms that were remarkably well-adapted to their environment—until the environment changed unleashing another evolutionary scramble to adapt with potentially different winners and losers each time.

Over great periods of time great physical changes and adaptations were capable of occurring. Creatures that started off on land sometimes evolved to live in water and vice-versa. So whales originated as land creatures that later went aquatic—but still preserve vestigial hind leg bones and a pelvis. Humans, by contrast, through their ancestors made the opposite journey. We still have genes that code for fish gills.

Nature preserves a sort of ‘travelogue’ of a species’ evolutionary history in the residual body parts that are still coded for in their genes—long after they cease to be used. So humans still preserve genes that code for a tail—reflecting our earlier primate history—while birds preserve in their genes certain reptilian traits that reflect their status as the modern-day evolutionary successors of ancient dinosaurs.

The theory of evolution by natural selection proved very successful in showing how life forms almost certainly developed during the course of the earth’s history. But it unwittingly opened the door to people—admittedly, often traditional religious people skeptical of evolution—questioning just how statistically likely it was that everything could have evolved the way it did just from occasional chance mutations.

The more complex the life forms that evolved—especially human beings—the more statistically improbable it is that the process of evolution could have occurred entirely by chance on its own. Complexity presupposes that so many more pieces of the evolutionary puzzle needed to fall together—by chance—in exactly the right way each time to create the advanced life forms of today. Even allowing for simpler forms of life ‘self-aggregating’ into larger ones over billions of years potentially, this is still extremely unlikely.

The fact that the scientific establishment has so whole-heartedly embraced evolution means that it is forced to contemplate the ‘dirty baggage’ that comes with it: the idea that God or some higher power most likely has to be directing the course of evolution in order for it to have some semblance of statistical probability. It may be a bitter pill for some secular types to swallow, but the best argument for God’s existence is not coming from the Bible or some other faith-based religious text that they can sneeringly dismiss, but from the very laws of probability.

If we simply include God into the equation, the huge improbability of evolution then disappears. Now the idea that God created the universe at the Big Bang and brought about— over a geological time scale—the gradual development and evolution of nature and life on earth seems very credible. Even the idea that mankind evolved from lower species of life can comfortably fit into the Biblical world view. All we need to do is accept that some of the details in the Genesis story that believers traditionally assumed were to be taken literally—are actually figurative.

As we will see throughout the course of this book, the Bible itself presents us with many examples of believers who made the mistake of taking certain scriptural passages literally instead of figuratively—especially in regard to Jesus. We should not perpetuate such mistakes today. It is actually easier in many ways to understand the Biblical view of human nature if we understand it from the perspective of human evolution—not the fallen Adamic nature. Although—like everything else—it cannot be proven conclusively, I believe God-directed evolution best accords with the evidence we have (including why humans possess genes that code for gills and a tail) and is almost certainly true.

MUST ALL BELIEVERS ACCEPT EVOLUTION?

No. Believers may follow either the literal Biblical account in Genesis or evolution. It does not matter which because—as we will see—they both point to the same spiritual lessons and do not affect one’s salvation or belief in God in any way.

This is not to say some traditionalists won’t try to argue otherwise. But their arguments can be easily overcome. Believers should not try to force others to accept one view or the other. They should treat this issue the way St. Paul has believers treat the issue of early Christians living by grace versus continuing to live by the Law of Moses. As was the case in New Testament times, we should accept both groups into the fold lovingly and without making any judgments.

Even if science suggests there was a creation to our universe and that some higher power is directing evolution, how do we know that this ‘higher power’ bears any resemblance to the God described in the Bible? To answer this, we must depend on science once again. I will attempt to show throughout this book that the scientific laws that govern our material world have suspiciously frequent parallels or analogues in the spiritual laws found in the Bible and other global spiritual texts.

Though no conclusive proof can be offered, it seems that the ‘higher power’ that is directing human events such as evolution is—based on the spiritual laws that parallel the world’s scientific laws—very similar in description to the God of the Bible. Evidence for the parallels between our material world and God’s spiritual world will be found scattered throughout every chapter of the book as the need organically arises to discuss it. Taken cumulatively, I hope this evidence will prove compelling.

Topic #2

Why Doesn’t God Just Reveal Himself?

Because that would ruin everything. The moment people didn’t just suspect, but knew with 100% certainty that God existed, our relationship toward God would change from ‘state of faith’ to ‘state of knowledge.’ As a result, everyone alive today would immediately be condemned to Hell for eternity. It is the most calamitous scenario possible for mankind—worse even than a nuclear war which would kill the physical body, but not affect the afterlife of one’s soul.

Doesn’t It Say in Several Places in the Bible that People Saw God?

Isn’t this proof of his existence? Didn’t God speak to Moses in the form of a burning bush? Didn’t God appear to the nation of Israel as a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night during the 40 years they wandered in the Sinai Desert? Doesn’t it say that Moses spoke face to face with God at the Tent of Meeting and on Mount Sinai?

The Gospel of John 1:18 says no one has ever seen God. It was an angel of the Lord that appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Smoke and fire here are signs of God’s presence—but they are not God himself. God is spirit. Our human senses cannot detect spirit; only things from our own material world that are made of matter—and only a small range of matter at that. But our soul—being spirit—can detect God. We talk to God on a spiritual ‘bandwidth’ through our souls.

‘Seeing God’ is a Biblical metaphor or expression that means you are holy enough to communicate with God in your spirit on an intimate level. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says in Matthew 5:8,

"Blessed are the pure in heart,

For they will see God."

Exodus 33:11 noting Moses’ unique relationship with God says,

"The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as

A man speaks with his friend."

God would speak to Moses ‘face to face’ on flat ground at the Tent of Meeting and also on Mount Sinai where he delivered the Ten Commandments to him. Speaking face to face with God is a variation of the metaphor of ‘seeing God’. So is talking to God ‘on a mountain.’ When you are on a mountain top, you are physically closer to the sky—where God is supposed to be—than those who are on flat ground. That means you are more intimate with God.

God is of course everywhere at the same time. Strictly speaking, you are no closer or more distant to God in one physical spot as opposed to any other. But God uses expressions like these to teach us about himself and his (very alien to us) spiritual world using familiar images from our own material world. We currently remain in a ‘state of faith’ toward God precisely because no one has actually seen him—though we know the odds are greatly in favor that he does exist (see Topic #1 Does God Exist?).

Two great realms exist—the spiritual world and the material world—with separate laws for each. God—and all spirit beings—inhabit the spiritual world. A harsh and unforgiving law governs this world—God’s law of absolute (= 100%) justice. A single sin will banish you forever from God’s presence (in the spiritual world)—heaven—to the absence of God’s presence (in the spiritual world)—hell.

It does not matter how big the sin was or why you committed it. Accidents are not excused nor does anyone care about the circumstances that led up to the sin or that you were unaware it was a sin. Sin here and you are in hell forever—end of story. Part of the reason justice is so harsh in the spiritual world is that here it is no secret that God exists.

Every spirit being is either in God’s presence right now or once was—in the case of demons and the Devil. Every being there knows for certain that God exists and so they stand in a ‘state of knowledge’ toward God. When God judges people for their actions, he wants to know how much knowledge they had when they acted. This does not mean how much knowledge they have of secular facts like geography or math or French grammar. It means spiritual knowledge of right and wrong. Did a person know an action was wrong when they did it or not?

He also takes into account how much knowledge a person had that God exists. People who sin when they know for certain that God exists—and that he disapproves of your action—are treated extremely harshly. When the Devil and a band of angels sinned by rebelling against God, they were banished forever to hell without any chance of redemption or forgiveness.

This harshness is in keeping with a spiritual law of proportionality—which I will call the Law of Equal and Opposite Force (EOF)—that God applies when he judges people. The Bible describes it in Luke 12:48 as ‘…From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded…’. Its equally true reverse logical corollary would be ‘from everyone who has been given little, little will be demanded’. The more knowledge or understanding of right and wrong you have when you commit an act, the more accountable you are in God’s eyes for any sins you commit.

Jesus speaks to this issue in John 9:41 when he addresses a group of Pharisees who have doubted his words and his claim that they are spiritually blind. He tells them,

If you were blind [= lacking spiritual insight or knowledge], you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains

In other words, as long as the Pharisees did not understand that their statements were sinful, God would not charge them with sin. But as soon as they insist that they know exactly what they are saying and its implications, they then become guilty in God’s sight and will be punished accordingly. Knowledge is key.

A good illustration of this spiritual principle is the way parents treat their own children. If an infant soils its pants, its parents do not fault it because they realize it does not yet know any better and that it cannot fully control its bodily functions. But if that same child were to soil his pants as a (healthy) 25 year old adult, then the parents—and society in general—would look down on him and fault him for this. What is the difference? In the first case, the infant was not aware it was doing anything wrong. The adult is expected to know better and act accordingly.

God—as the spiritual parent of us all—acts in the same way toward us as we do toward our children. This is a good example of how God plants a spiritual teaching in our midst—in this case through the way we interact with others. He hopes we will take note of all such teachings.

The Gospel According to Nature

God has embedded so many spiritual teachings into the workings of nature and our daily lives in human society—as in the example above—that revealed religious texts like the Bible seem redundant and unnecessary at times. If we just pause and reflect on the world around us, we will realize we are literally surrounded by teachings—spiritual knowledge. Psalm 19:1-4 declares,

"The heavens declare the glory of God,

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language

where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world."

Ominously, Paul in Romans 1:20 says that because God did this, no one on Judgment Day can claim they did not know about God and matters of right and wrong:

"For 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 men are

without excuse"

Spiritual teachings—whether found in the Bible or embedded in nature—can be understood on multiple levels. Apparently simple Bible stories—such as the story of the serpent tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden—can illustrate a spiritual principle on levels that range from an almost childlike simplicity to extreme complexity.

In the early part of the Bible, God frequently ‘dumbs down’ spiritual teachings by conveying them through the vehicle of simple stories to accommodate the very simple level of understanding of earlier ages of mankind. Also, in any given age, some people are more spiritually sophisticated than others. Remember that God gives us only one Bible, but has to make its teachings understandable to people from all different times, cultures and levels of spiritual insight.

Rather than give us many different Bibles, God gives us a single Bible whose stories can be read at many levels—from simple to advanced—depending on the sophistication of each age, culture and individual reader. Paul in the New Testament frequently goes back to Old Testament stories to ferret out complex spiritual principles—often by allegorical interpretation—from apparently simple, narrative stories about ancient Israel.

In general, the earliest stories of the Bible—especially those in Genesis—are the most ‘simple’, while later books such as Romans and Hebrews in the New Testament exhibit far greater complexity. More correctly, the earliest stories of the Bible can be read at multiple levels from simple to advanced, while difficult theology passages in the New Testament are read only at an advanced level.

By the time we get to St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament, there are no more simple stories able to be read at simple levels. It is all hard, abstract and read only at a complex level. Mankind by this time—thanks in great degree to St. Paul—had grown up spiritually and was now consuming spiritual ‘solid food’ for adults—no longer needing the spiritual ‘breast milk’ appropriate for infants immature in the faith (see 1 Corinthians 3:2).

Let us return now to our discussion of spiritual teachings in nature. I would venture to say that God has probably embedded every single spiritual principle found in the Bible somewhere in nature or in our daily interaction with others in human society. Some spiritual teachings were gleaned early on by people everywhere and are found in many religions and spiritual traditions around the world.

That’s why you frequently find that a spiritual teaching that, for example, Christians think Jesus came up with, is actually found in many religions—and often earlier than the time of Christ. People all over the world are tapping into the same spiritual tapestry of the natural world. Christ—as we will see—was the creator of the material world (in both its physical and spiritual aspects) and is responsible for embedding it with spiritual teachings.

By contrast, some spiritual teachings in nature are so complex that mankind has only recently discovered them. A great example of this is the 20th century discoveries of Albert Einstein—famous for his Theory of Relativity and equation E = MC². Einstein discovered that relativity is built into the very fabric of the space-time continuum that makes up our material world. God used Einstein as a vehicle whose discoveries would call attention to the way God has spiritually ‘relativized’ the world. Spiritual and physical relativity will be discussed in detail later in the book.

If you wish to see—as another example of a spiritual teaching found in nature—how the Christian gospel underlies the equation E = MC², then keep reading. If not, feel free to skip ahead to the end of this lengthy sidebar note where we will resume the discussion of why God chooses not to reveal himself to people beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Einstein is well-known for his formula E = MC². This means that the amount of energy (E) an object has is equal to its mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. Light, as we have seen, is the fastest thing in the universe. It consists of 100% energy. Its role as the sole absolute in the material world which everything else depends on, makes it analogous to God.

What is special about light is that nothing else in the universe can ever approach it. Even if you were to travel at the speed of light, light would still be going