Faith

Well, good afternoon, everyone, on this very beautiful Sabbath day. I'm just very, very happy to be here with my wife, Beverly. And it's been a long time since we were here last in Dayton. In fact, the last time was when Dale Shurter was here. And we were visiting here from Indianapolis. I was a regional pastor at that time. And we were here on the visit about 97 or 98. It was a long, long time ago. And that's the last time that we were here. And we have really appreciated the invitation from Mr. McRady to come here today. Also, it's been very, very good to see Mr.

De Vilbas, who we haven't seen in a long time, to chat with him before services, Mr. Helmsley, the Barkers, and so many other names that I know and see on the Internet or see on Facebook, and some of you who come down regularly to the ABC Continuing Education. So it's just been very, very wonderful to be here, while I haven't been here in a long time, to see familiar faces and be able to talk to you. Mr. McRady, I've known him for many years, but actually had known his father quite well, who was the neighboring pastor when I was in Paducah, Kentucky.

He was a neighboring pastor in Mount Vernon, Illinois. And actually, he lived in Belleville, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis. But I used to enjoy him very, very much. He was just quite a colorful individual, let's put it that way.

And I'll just leave it at that, too. But as neighboring pastors, we got along so well. In fact, once a year, we traded church circuits, or traded services, where I would go up and speak in the St. Louis area, and he came down to the Paducah area. Also, he would flew different people down. He was an airplane pilot, and we had a little airstrip by our home in Metropolis, Illinois, and he brought different people by. But he was just a very, very, let's say, person with a lot of different talents, and again, a very colorful individual.

About Mr. McCready, he would talk about Ministerial Member Services. We have made some adjustments, and they have been necessitated by the fact that we have had a number of events occur in the ministry. Probably the most noted is the fact that Mr. Roy Holiday, on October 10th, had a stroke. He was the operation manager of Ministerial Member Services, probably the closest person that I worked with at the home office.

We worked together for 25 years, going back to previously before the United Church of God, and we worked very closely. We worked each other's office three, four times a day. We talked a lot, and we were very, very close. Then, all of a sudden, on October 10th, he had a stroke, a stroke from which he will not be able to come back to work. He has wanted to be very brave.

In fact, about three weeks ago, he came in. He came into the office once just to visit with people. Then I think that he just really wanted to come and put in a full day's work, which I did not advise. It was his. We keep his office open. He came in, and I was throughout the day saying, Royal, let me take you home.

I think you should go home. I think that this is enough. Oh, no! He said, I want to do this. He was looking on the computer. He really can't see, even out of his left side, very well. Then finally, at 4.30, he said, well, don't stay till 7 o'clock in the evening. He said, no, no, I won't.

I'll take you home any time you want to. I did take him home at 4.30. His wife was waiting in the driveway, and she wasn't very happy. But I really feel badly for that, and he hasn't been able to really come by since. They pretty much, I think, have the process of moving now, maybe in the next six weeks or so. They have a home in Chattanooga, and they had this one here. So I think they've got this one sold here right now, and they'll be moving to Chattanooga, Tennessee, which is his old, old home there, and he will be retiring.

We've not been able to find a replacement for Ministerial Member Services. It's not a job that's just, you know, you can kind of look around and find just... It has to be somebody who really knows and understands the depths of our history in the ministry. It is somebody who really has been very, very close to the ministry, and also we need every single minister that we have in the field ministry.

We just really don't have extra people just floating around. On top of that, this was exacerbated by the fact that within a period of three months, we had five deaths, and one, of course, Mr. Holiday being... with a stroke. We had four ministers, two pastors, two elders die, and a Dolly Hargrove, who died here in the month of January. It was just not too long ago, December, in Columbus.

So I think that that has startled us to think in terms of the future and the continuation of our ministry. I think the Council of Elders themselves have taken on probably a more sober approach towards the future of our ministry, because we don't know how much time we have left, but we can't just go one by one and not leave anyone behind. And we do have a lot of wonderful people, leaders, those who speak, those who attend church, those with young families, that are becoming the new leaders of the church. So we have also readjusted our regional pastor structure.

In the meantime, before we have someone for Operation Manager, right now, Chris Roland, who is the administrator for Ministerial Member Services, does that job, which he does very, very well. I've known him for many, many years from Indianapolis, and he's carrying on that work, and probably will for some time. But we also have chosen, expanded our regional pastors from three to six, and our regions are in the southwest, basically based from Los Angeles and southern California, to the northwest, to the south central, to the Midwest, the southeast, and the northeast. We had seven regions, including Cincinnati, but we decided to combine those into one.

And the regional pastor for that region will be Mr. Frank McCready, who we talked to, Mr. Roland and I talked to him a little over a week ago, and he chose to accept that. We need these people who have been in the ministry for many, many years to be counselors, to be guides, to be those who talk with pastors. Some of the things that we do from the home office are more administrative, but we do need to have somebody that has been in the ministry for many, many years to take on the role of visiting some of the pastors, to talk to them, and in a sense be a minister or a pastor to the pastors.

So we felt like Mr. McCready would be able to do a fine job, and that was a role that he has taken on right away.

I really did appreciate the sermonette about peace and faith. I think that will follow a little bit with what I say here today. I mentioned Alfred Nobel. My wife and I would travel, had the Scandinavian area where we visited. On the main highway between Stockholm and Oslo is a town where Alfred Nobel is from. That happened to be a place where one of our members had a summer cabin. It's no big deal. You come into town, it's the home of Alfred Nobel. Local people are just like something very, very common. I said, I can't believe it. This is a place where Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize, all those things. They had a museum there, and I went to the museum. This was about five or six years ago. That was one of the most fascinating visits to a museum. They had actually a character there playing Alfred Nobel. You could ask him questions. I asked him the same questions about the dynamite. They said, what in the world were you thinking? He gave me a kind of circuitous answer, but it sounded like an answer that had been given many times. That was the one question I had. I said, why did you invent that? What in the world were you thinking? That was just most interesting.

Today, I'd like to talk about the subject of faith. I'll just tell you right up front what I'll be talking about. Faith and faithfulness, which is the practicing of faith. I'd like to discuss some of the components that make up this virtue, this gift, and this fruit of the Holy Spirit that is called faith. Faith is one of the most common words associated with religion, and thereby it has lost some of its real base meaning because it's applied in so many different ways. It's synonymous with a religion, with a denomination. What's your faith? You're not asking somebody exactly what they believe or what's in their heart. You're just saying, are you Methodist? Are you Catholic? What are you? What's your faith? It's also a reference to an organization, whether it's a religious organization or is it a secular organization, or is it a faith-based organization? It has very little to do with even religion or belief or Jesus Christ or God the Father or anything, but just it's an identity for your organization. Faith also means belief and trust. It's also a label, and it's a way of life. It's a way that a person lives, which we will be focusing on in the discussion here this afternoon. But it's a blanket word, just like the word grace, that loses its meaning because it's so overused and so watered down. But it is a word that is used most often to identify religion, and one is used many, many times in the Bible. Why is it that someone can have faith? Why is it that somebody has faith? Why are you driving here half an hour, hour, hour and a quarter, being part of this group for years and years, for decades, and truly believing in the return of Jesus Christ, in eternal life, and keeping the Passover while somebody else has absolute no interest in it, no matter how you explain it, how you reveal it from the Word of God to them, they just don't get it? I have been of this faith since I was in high school. There was something that happened in my study that wasn't because of me, but something that switched on in my mind that made this very, very clear. While I had a lot to learn, I knew that this was the path that I would go on. Others in my family had other experiences, too, that came into contact with the same things that I did, but the extreme is from me being one who believes this, who believes it with all his heart and being, and believes in the return of Jesus Christ, believes in this as the way of life, to someone else who is an atheist, who sees the same evidence, who reads the same words, who has the same Bible, who can see creation and does not believe, does not even believe in a God who is behind it. I'm amazed as to scientists that can see so much of the design and the handiwork of a great designer planner and someone who keeps all this together and the creativity. And another scientist with the credentials just as good, who says it all came to be on its own. It all just kind of happened by itself.

What is faith? How can it be defined? And can it be taught? Can it be just a matter of, let's have a faith class, and we're going to get some people together here, and we were going to put faith into their lives. Just like teaching them and then having them a certificate, now you are a faithful person. And how can you get it? Well, faith is made up, and I'll just be up front here, of three components, and I will cover these components. One is, the three components, I'll start with the letter P, the three Ps of faith. One is perception, that means your vision and what you see.

The people from Hebrews 11, Moses, Noah, all those people who are listed in the faith chapter had a very special perception. They could see things that other people could not see. They were willing to sacrifice, they were willing to be martyred, they were willing to go without. As some of you have also had to be persecuted for your beliefs, perhaps losing a job or having convulsions in family relationships because of your faith, because of what you saw, and that's what you cling to. But you were able to see things, and still do, things that most people don't see.

I marvel about the things that we really take for granted. We understand the kingdom of God. Just when we say kingdom of God, I think that all of us are on the same page. We see the return of Jesus Christ, we see Him as King of Kings, Lord of Lords, we see us being resurrected, we see all these things that the world does not know. They just don't get it. And you do get it. And that is faith. That's the perception and vision of being able to see those things. The other P of faith is patience, of waiting and waiting. This is a church that is elderly. Many of you were here a long time. My wife said today, the church ought to have a sign. Why would they call themselves Senior Citizen Center? I said, well, that is a sign.

We are getting older, we are getting older and older, and we're waiting for the return of Jesus Christ and waiting for Him to come to this earth. But that wait is a long one. That wait is fraught with trials. And as we take a look back as to our journey from where we started, I never thought the journey would take this particular route. From when I began at age 14 or 15 in reading and then going on to Ambassador College and thinking that we would have probably half a million members by now and blanket the world with a very powerful message, we still haven't.

But you know something? We still believe that we have a very definite purpose for being here, to do very, very specific things and things that God is doing personally in our lives. We still have that patience. We haven't given up. We haven't just quit. As Christ said, will He find faith on the earth when He returns? Will He even find faith among those who were a big church at one time? So many people have quit. Some people say, ah, He's not coming back. Or the things that He said aren't true. Or they get talked into something else.

When you have been patient, you have been waiting, and you have been waiting for the promises that God is going to perform for His church, but mostly important in your life. I know as we get older and older, we're getting a day closer every day to having all the information revealed to us about the Kingdom, about Jesus Christ, having the same vision that the Apostle Paul had when he was taken up into the Third Heaven to see what it will be all about.

And for all of us, that's just a short time away. And the third P is one that's from an interesting story that I will tell, is persistence. It's persistence. It may be tied in with patience, but it's just kind of staying with it, asking the same questions, not giving up and being persistent. Faith is a way of life, and faithfulness is the practice of faith. In Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4, Habakkuk, chapter 2, verse 4, is a passage that's been quoted three times in the New Testament.

The just shall live by his faith. And the Apostle Paul and Peter actually translated the just shall live by faith, but the implication is that passage, the just shall live by faith. The context of the book of Habakkuk is this. And we are using the book of Habakkuk, well, it is the book that spurned and started our public appearance campaign program around the country. Because the book begins with the prophet Habakkuk just before the Babylonians invaded Judea, about 610, maybe 10, 15, 20 years before the Babylonians came. He was seeing the corruption of the land.

He was seeing how people were doing so many things that were so ungodly. And he was coming to God and saying, God, can you please fix these people? Come and fix these people. This is a sick nation. A feeling that many of us can have about our nation right now, as we see all the national sins, we see all the godlessness, we see just the corruption, we see the moral values being just about zero.

We see where we are in the world compared to other nations. And we can also have the same prayer. God, do something about it. And God does answer. Habakkuk can say, yeah, I will do something about it, but it's not what you think it is. Because he goes on to say that he will put and send the nation into captivity. And the people who would bring Israel or Judea, that was what was left, into captivity would be the Babylonians. That was the big bad kid in the world at that time. Babylon had taken over Assyria.

That was, of course, the first world-ruling empire of Daniel chapter 2. Habakkuk was very unhappy with this choice because he thought that God would do something different. But no, God was going to teach the people a lesson through that. But then, in the last chapter, it's a very short book. It's a very, very short book. A psalm or a song of praise is sung about the redemption of Israel. But in chapter 2, the middle chapter, I'm just giving you a summary of this book. I'm not talking about the book necessarily. There's that showstopper passage in Habakkuk chapter 2 and verse 4.

That just shall live by his faith. You know what the context of that is? That Babylon is coming. Or we can say whoever else is coming. ISIS, Iran, I mean, who is it going to be and how will it happen? And believe me, things are changing in the world so much that you don't know who's going to be your friend or enemy because the alliances are so mixed up.

But the just shall live by faith. And the word live means survive. We will all survive by faith. And this is quoted in Romans chapter 1 and verse 17. This is quoted in Galatians chapter 3 and verse 11 and in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 38. In three places, in the New Testament, the apostle Paul goes back to this passage in Habakkuk 2 verse 4. The just shall live, the just shall survive by faith. And that's the way we will too. We have nothing to fear. But we live in a very dangerous time. There's so much information out there about what could possibly happen and there's horrible scenarios about how this world could implode.

Everything from economically to nuclear war to environmentally. I mean, this world is so sick, far sicker, than the nation of Judea in Habakkuk's time. And the way that you and I are going to survive is courageously through faith and believing that God will get us through, God is going to protect his own, and God is going to reward us with eternal life. God is going to save us. And that's what keeps us going. But my question to all of us is, is that your daily way of life, of truly believing those things that God says?

Or are we still like the world who either want to ignore it and just say, I just don't want to hear it, I can't stand hearing any more news about Iran, and I don't want to hear about the primaries, and people give up even after Iowa coming into New Hampshire, but they'll be there to look at it, you know, as to the comedy of what's happening and choosing the leader of the greatest nation on the earth and the things that these people say. And kind of give up and become sarcastic, caustic, and unbelieving, and being like the rest of the world. We should hang on to the things that we believe that we've been taught for years, and have that as the anchor of where we are going.

There's a book that I found to be intriguing. It's called The Christian Atheist. It's written by Craig Groeschel, who was a pastor, or still is a pastor, of some denomination, not ours. But he calls it The Christian Atheist. He makes a remarkable admission and confession in this book. He said, I was a pastor for 18 years. I taught all the tenets of faith, of love, of all the Christian attributes that I was to teach. Generosity, humility, and so forth. Until I woke up one morning and said, you know something, I'm not practicing these things myself. They're just by rote. I'm just saying it. Am I living as though I'm teaching all these wonderful truths, or wonderful attributes, qualities, and not really believing that God exists, that He's in my life, and He sees what I'm doing.

He's really intimately connected with Him, and I can, in faith, communicate with Him. He said He went through a kind of catharsis and awakening, and writes this book called The Christian Atheist. He says, I've got to be living what I'm teaching. We've got to be living what we believe and what we have been taught for many, many years. Hebrews 11, verse 3.

Hebrews 11, verse 1. I should say before we get to 3. Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That's the vision, the perception, the assurance of things hoped for. Not just kind of a, oh, I hope that this works out, but maybe not, and have a negative attitude towards it. But an assurance.

Just the way that Abraham had the assurance that God would provide him with the promise that he had made. Oh, he stumbled just like we have stumbled ourselves. But Abraham knew that somehow God was going to come through on His Word. The conviction of things not seen. And the world does not see a lot of things. The world is in darkness. But you have been given a very special sight, a very special ability to see things that most of the world cannot see. And because we've believed it so long, we can become very, very lackadaisical about it. And not realize that most of the world just doesn't get it, doesn't understand. For by it, the people of old receive their commendation. By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God. You know, I am just absolutely, totally convinced when I see the creation. And I have just been a real Hubble nut. I just absolutely find wondrous the photographs and the images and the depths of the universe that's been seen by the Hubble telescope. I'm convinced that there had to be a mind, there had to be a creator, there had to be a lawgiver, there had to be somebody who kept the whole thing together and made it. I believe that. Yet there are others, like Richard Dawkins, who says it just kind of came on its own.

And they believe that.

By faith, we understand that the universe was created by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. At one point, God created the universe, expanded out to be what it was. What a great mind! What a great, great creation!

So, faith is a vision, it's the ability to take a look at flowers, at trees, at the beauty of our environment, of the earth, and say, God made that. I know that. I'm not just guessing, I'm not just hoping. I don't have two views on it, but through thick or thin, that's what I understand and believe, because that is my eyesight. It's not mercurial, where it's here today, but gone tomorrow, where we're sunny-day Christians, and God is testing us to see what we will do under different conditions. In good times or bad times. There were times when we were riding high. There are times when we have not been riding high. Faith is both a fruit of the Spirit of God and a spiritual gift. And here's why some have it and some don't. A gift has to be given to you. And also, a fruit of the Holy Spirit has to be a function of the Holy Spirit working in you. So while I am not happy and get angry when I hear Richard Dawkins, or the book that he wrote against God that is blasphemous, I just realize the poor man has never had that gift given to him.

He's never had the Holy Spirit to be able to exhibit a love towards God in a creation. He just doesn't have it. Plus, something whatever happened in his growing up period, he turned his anger towards God and is extremely angry at him to a God that doesn't exist in his mind. How can you be mad at something that doesn't exist? But that's what he is. Galatians 5, verse 22, talking about the fruits of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long suffering. We know all this. Kindness, goodness, and faithfulness. Faithfulness is a function of the Holy Spirit. And when you receive the Holy Spirit, and when you received it inside after you were baptized, faith was placed into your life. You received the earnest, the down payment of eternal life, and part of that is the gift of faith.

Faith is a fruit and a gift. Interesting that hope is not one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but it is a gift. In 1 Corinthians 12, verse 8, 1 Corinthians 12, verse 8, For to one is given the word of wisdom, talking about spiritual gifts, through the Spirit to another the word of knowledge, through the same Spirit to another faith. It shows that it's doled out, and perhaps some may have more of one function than another. There are people that are very, very faithful in how they speak and talk, and there might be some people that are just a little bit on the edge, still have faith, but they're not as confident. By the same Spirit, to another gift of healings by the same Spirit. And just as Christ was confronted by a person who was asking him to heal a member of his family in Mark, chapter 9, verse 24, the man who had a child with a convulsion, Christ said, do you believe? I believe! Help my unbelief! And how many times have we had that to ourselves in the way that we have come to God? You say, I believe. I believe every word that you have spoken. I look at my life, and I look at all the experiences I've had, and I see you're working in my life. I hope that all of us can look at the signs in our life, not necessarily forward ones, but backward ones, of how God was working in our lives, how he called us, how he brought us into this truth, the lessons that were taught through various experiences, the people that we have come into contact with. And ask God to help us continue on with all the signs that he has given, and continue on to the end. He that endures to the end shall be saved.

Some of the illustrations about faith, and the one that is brought out very, very graphically, is the one about the creation of God. We already read one of the passages in Hebrews that we believe that everything that's been created was created by God. From nothing, he brought all the things that we have. How he did it, exactly when, what the process was, how God works, how he manages all the different energies, laws, matter, and so many things that we don't understand, we don't know. But it certainly is very, very awesome. Bertrand Russell, who is quoted by Richard Dawkins, said, If there is a God, why does he go through such great pains to hide himself? And I see. Everything that we see around us, you know, God has created. Why do people like Carl Sagan, the great astronomer, an atheist, in his book, The Pale Blue Dot, cannot come to terms that the universe is great and that we are tiny, that the great God has created it? Interesting, I heard a debate, which somebody, or I may even ordered it, years ago, at Biola University between an atheist and one who believed in the creation. And they talked about the universe. And of course, the one who believed that God is the creator said, You know, look what God has done. Look how vast his power is. Look how he's trying to, and one says, impress human beings about his greatness and wants to share it with us. And the atheist says, well, why would he waste so much space and go overboard? Certainly going, you know, why would he create so much stuff? He could do it with a lot less.

When David wrote, when I consider the heavens and all the stars of heaven, he was awed by that. He saw these twinkling little stars up there. Look, there's so many of them. Look at all those stars. And he says, I ask myself, who am I? What am I? We know that passage very well. You can just turn to it, because to me, it's just one of the creations.

Would I consider your heavens the work of your fingers? David says, you created them. The moon and the stars, which you have ordained. He was impressed by the moon, which already had a calendar associated with it. What is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you visit him? Now, at this time, when David said that, and there's no evidence of any type of telescopes at that time, the most stars that you could see at any one time was 3,000 to 5,000, depends upon where you are in the Earth.

Right now, there are probably 10,000 stars that are visible to the eye. Of course, half of them are in the sunlight. Right now, because half the Earth is... Right now, we can't see any stars, but they're out there. But 10,000 stars is about the maximum that can be viewed by mankind. And so, at David's time, in about 1,000 B.C., they were awed by the fact there could be 1,000 stars in this big moon.

And they believe... I believe they also had knowledge of planets, of a solar system at that time. Well, telescopes were invented. And then, it was figured out that there were many, many millions of stars. Not just thousands of stars, but many millions of stars. Also, it was determined that we lived in a galaxy of stars until the late 20s, 1920s. Not even 100 years ago, we thought that the whole universe was the Milky Way galaxy. And everybody was awed by that. Until Hubble, who's after whom the satellite was named, worked in Mount Wilson, just in Pasadena, there, just above, of the city of Pasadena, was a Mount Wilson telescope, found these little fuzzy spots that he thought were just nova, some type of structure within our Milky Way.

But then the Mount Wilson telescope went into it closer and closer and found out that it was an entire galaxy. An entire galaxy like the Milky Way! What an amazing discovery! Defined another galaxy. Well, that led to finding more and more galaxies, billions of galaxies. Can you imagine the awe that we should have compared to David, who could only see maybe 3,000 to 5,000 stars?

The fact that we can see billions of stars? And the Hubble telescope, when it went up, did three projects that were just really amazing. To me, I just actually enjoy watching these documentaries. One was a deep field. This was after the telescope was up just for a short period of time. Of course, time in that telescope for scientists is very valuable. They have to apply for time and they view different things. They said, let's go and see how far out we can see with the Hubble. Of course, the light from these distant objects is very, very faint. And so it takes many revolutions of the satellite to collect that light over and over again.

But they did a deep field study. They went in a part of the sky where there weren't that many stars visible and did a very narrow path, very narrow angle, and did what's called a deep field search. The telescope circulated around the Earth 847 times just to collect enough light. This was equivalent to trying to see a flashlight on the Moon from the Earth. I mean, that's how dim that light was. But what they discovered was astounding.

In fact, scientists at first, before they did the field experiment, said, why are you doing that? There's nothing out there. You're just wasting valuable time that astronomers want to use to see other known objects. But they found quintillions of stars and millions of galaxies. When you take a look at those pictures of the deep field, they are just awesome. They're just out there. In fact, the last day did three deep fields. One was the deep field, one was the ultra-deep field, and one was the extreme deep field. The extreme deep field was not too many years ago, where the scientists discovered 600 septillion missing stars.

I'm sure that nobody's worried about that on the Earth, but many, many, many stars. Just awesome. The number of stars and just the new ones that they found is more than the sand, pebbles of sand on the Earth, grains of sand on the Earth. That's how awesome this universe is. So what else can God do to impress us?

You know, just a guy who wants to impress a girl with a hot rod car, you know, and he just does something to revs it up. Well, God has shown us how wonderful and great he is. And mankind just refuses to see not only that, but also the beauty of that. In Romans chapter 1 and verse 18, the apostle Paul uses this illustration of the universe to prove God to those whose eyes are opened. Verse 18, Romans 1.

But God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful. And the book of Romans is the very first book of Paul's epistles. It wasn't the first one that he wrote, but it's the first one placed because it was to the largest city in the Earth. It was when they represented all kinds of cultures and philosophies. And in the first chapter, as he points out, the sinfulness of the Gentiles and then the sinfulness of the Jews, and talking about how God has no respect of persons that all have sinned and come to condemnation.

Verse 18, God shows his anger from heaven against all sinful, wicked people who suppress the truth by their wickedness. You know, when I see the, whatever, you know, groups around the country who try to suppress anybody who teaches even intelligent design or anything else, it's like they know there must be something there, but they want to stamp it out. They don't want it to come out.

They know the truth. They know the truth. I just wonder how many atheists, really, at 2.30 in the morning when they wake up, just say, well, maybe there is a God.

They know the truth about God because he had made it obvious to them. They spend their life fighting it. And any argument for intelligent design or a real God or a personal God is immediately squashed. It's not that let's take a look at it. Let's have equal time. Let's discuss it. No, we have to suppress it. Put it down. For ever since verse 20, the world was created. People have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. They see his qualities such as creativity, order, beauty. So they have no excuse for not knowing God. And some day when God is going to open this up to Richard Dawkins, he said, Richard, I did it.

And you didn't want to believe it. And you fought against it. Yes, verse 21, they knew God, but they wouldn't worship him as God or even give him thanks. They began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like. We have plenty of that. You know, one thing that I'm just so grateful for, for what God has given us in the church, he revealed himself in a very personal way as a very powerful God. And the greatest thing he's done is to reveal that we're made in his image. That we're to become like him, that we'll be part of his family. That's a wonderful truth. Most of the world doesn't even know that. If anything, we're some type of little pets, we're some type of little beings, we'll be looking at him forever. Very, very vague, very unattractive, for that matter. To me, what makes our truth so beautiful is that it's attractive. We're to be made like God, part of his family, in his image.

To think of foolish ideas of what God was like. As a result, their minds became dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools. That was true in the time that Paul visited Rome. It's true today as well. I found a very, very interesting... article. It's not an article, it's actually an advertisement in National Geographic. National Geographic magazine, which is actually evolutionary, and we discuss natural things, and National Geographic Channel, they always bring in evolution and that type of thing, so it's not God-based. But there was an advertisement here, and I'm not sure exactly what the point was, but I was really drawn to it about a year ago by Francis S. Collins, who is the geneticist behind the Human Genome Project. And the director of the National Institutes of Health is also founder of BioLogos Foundation, which is a group that fosters discussions about the intersection of Christianity and science.

He has a newsletter that I get, it's free for anybody, BioLogos.org, and he's asked a few questions here, which I thought were really quite amazing for a person of science.

He's asked, are science and religion compatible? He's, I am privileged, his answer to be somebody who tries to understand nature using the tools of science. But it's also clear that there are some really important questions that science cannot really answer.

Sometimes when a scientist gets to be really famous, he doesn't care what others of his peers think. But if he's still fighting to get tenure, you'll have to kind of speak the party line, which is godlessness. Such as, why is, here's some questions that science can't answer. One, why is there something instead of nothing? Why are we here? Believe me, that's a big question that we ask in the church. Not only ask it, but we answer it.

In those domains, I have found that faith provides a better path to answers. I find it oddly anachronistic that in today's culture there seems to be a widespread presumption that scientific and spiritual views are incompatible. And he said it partially because we just get the extremes of the science people. We also get the extremes of the people who are believers.

That really don't have a lot of things straight either. When people think question of those views as incompatible, what is lost? In science's answer, science and faith can actually be mutually enriching and complementary once their proper domains are understood and respected. Extreme cartoons representing antagonistic perspectives on either end of the spectrum are often the ones that get attention. But most people live somewhere in the middle. They can reconcile the two.

Question. You've said that a blooming flower is not a miracle since we know how it happens. As a geneticist, you've studied human life at a fundamental level. Is there a miracle woven in there somehow? Answer. Oh, yes. At the most fundamental level, it's a miracle that there's a universe at all. It's a miracle that it has order, fine-tuning that allows the possibility of complexity, and laws that follow precise mathematical formulas. Contemplating this, an open-minded observer is almost forced to conclude there must be, quote, a mind behind all this. To me, that qualifies as a miracle, a profound truth that lies outside scientific explanation. God, he answered it so very well. He gets his Biologos newsletters. He has a lot of interesting things like this. And the greatest aspect of creation is the fact that there's life. How would we even know that there was anything in the creation unless there was some consciousness by somebody? You've heard that expression that if a tree falls in the forest, there's nobody to hear it. Did it make a noise? You know, the type of thing? Or my favorite is, if a man spoke something in the forest and there was no woman around, could he still be wrong?

I like that. Perpetation. Creation, indeed, is an indication of God's existence. Does God hide himself? Well, you know, throughout history, God has been very open with people in different times, in different periods. Now, as I said before in my sermons, God has never spoken to me. He's never said, Victor, I want to talk to you. We went for a walk and he just talked with me, like an angel, like somebody with Abraham. I don't pretend that it's not going to happen unless God somehow makes it happen. I know that I walk around the Cincinnati Nature Center and enjoy all four seasons and all the different things about it. I just rejoice in God. My favorite thing at this time of year when I go there is when it's deathly quiet and cold. There's some woodpecker just banging his head off and just makes a big racket in the forest. I just love that. God has a sense of humor. He's got that boy working hard in the forest just to entertain. But he creates some very, very beautiful things. If God spoke to us as the way he did to the Israelites, and if we had a blimp, you know, this is God, you know, and it just kind of came over Dayton, you know, we'd get used to it. Just the way the Israelites got used to God, the pillar of fire by day, the pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day. And if God spoke to us, we would be saying, look, I wish he would just be quiet. Just give us a break. I'm just tired of hearing his voice. Something that is miraculous and supernatural like that, when it's done over and over again, no longer is supernatural.

I was just talking with Skype to our Sabbatarians two days ago from my office. They finally got Internet, and our Sabbatarian pastor had Skype, and we were just talking, and they were saying, what a miracle! What a miracle! All this technology! This is absolutely the greatest miracle of all, as we see each other. I'm sitting there, ho-hum, you know, yeah, sure. We have Webex, we connect each other around the world. We have conferences with people on all continents talking to each other at the same time. We're used to it! It's no longer a miracle. We've gotten just accustomed to it. Well, the same thing is true if God were to speak to us, and just his voice booming. We would think it would be kind of interesting or neat for a while. Then after a while, we'd get used to it. In fact, we'd probably be annoyed by it. There you are! Come on, stop doing this, you know, whatever God would be talking to us about. God speaks to us in so many other ways, I'm convinced with the proliferation of his word, that God speaks to me about as clearly as he could possibly speak through any other means. I can get on the Internet, I can look up any passage in the Scripture, I can have access to any Bible for free on the Internet, through Bible Hub or through any other services like that. There's so much that is said, so many things that are outlined, there's so many things about nature, that I don't need. We don't need to have visions and dreams and so forth. Now, that will happen, and especially when the Internet goes down. That may be absolutely necessary. But right now, we have access to so much, and with what we have, I believe, I have faith.

I'd like to conclude with a story that really struck my wife Beverly and me. As I've said, faith is the components of perception, of vision, seeing, the component of patience, of sticking with it and enduring, that no matter what or what even other evidence proves, or shows, I should say, that maybe God has abandoned you. I never believed that God has abandoned me. I can be down, and I can get discouraged, but I never give up. But this is the example, the story, of a group of believers in northwest Zambia that my wife and I have come across. My wife and I have been to Zambia many times, both as helping out the people as the fourth poorest, or was the fourth poorest country in the world. It may be a little bit richer now, but still there among the bottom of poverty countries. It's hard to get around. Nothing works. And even at that, gasoline is eight dollars a gallon. You sort of wonder, how bad can things get? Well, Zambia is one of those places on the earth where things get very, very bad. But I'd like to tell you about this group of people that to this very day are worshippers of God. It's a story about one man called Emmanuel Horasi Siono, who is now 76 years old. My wife and I met him for the first time two years ago when we visited in Mofumbuy, which is right there nestled in between the Congo, the DRC, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola. So you hear the French language spoken there, you hear the Portuguese language spoken, and of course, Zambia being British was English.

In 1981, Horasi, way out there in the northwest, had an accident. He lost his finger or had a finger injury and was put into the hospital. When he was in the hospital, he saw someone who had a Plain Truth magazine and some other literature. And so he picked it up and looked at it and had to spend the night at the hospital, but he saw that magazine and sent for his own copy all the way to Great Britain to receive the Plain Truth magazine and the booklets. He really believed the things that were spoken of in that literature. He became a subscriber. In 1982, he asked for a visit, and the minister from Zimbabwe came over and visited him, and at another occasion in 1986, he was baptized. He passed his knowledge on to others in his community. Most notably, Joseph Kapatula, who runs an orphanage that we work with to this day, and three brothers, Christopher, Samuel, and Simeon Nduga Yonga. Horasi is considered the father of this group. They kept meeting weekly. No minister had ever gone out to visit them. The closest they got was to have them come in nearly 500 miles to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, where the minister from Zimbabwe then visited him and then even baptized him. But the other group, none of them had any contact with the minister, but they met every Sabbath. And what they did was read the literature that they received, whether it was the magazine or the other literature, and that was their Sabbath service. They did it religiously, Sabbath in and Sabbath out. In 1993, however, the literature abruptly stopped. Of course, this is the time when the church was going in the wrong direction, but they kept meeting weekly. By this time, Horasi moved away from the rest of the group, not too far, but he wasn't there with them. And in 2004, he wrote again to the United States, to any address he could find, where is this church and where are those things, those wonderful truths that we've been receiving? Where are they? And he received a magazine called The Scroll from the new African group that had taken over from the church before. He saw that the doctrines were markedly different, way different from what they said. Way different from what they said. This is not our church. They quickly saw that what they were being fed now, years later, was way departure from what they had. And they said they didn't want to pursue contact with this group. However, they did have a Holy Day calendar, and that basically little Holy Day calendar is what kept them going. They knew which days the Holy Days were to be kept. Understand, there is no internet, there's no other communication. You just have literature that gets to you. And most people's mailing address is a local hospital where they can go once a week to pick up any mail that they might have. I mean, it's not like where we are now. But the Holy Day calendar ran out in 2008. And to them, it was like the end of the world, because when are the Holy Days to be observed after that?

Joseph, though, in 2009, says, I am going to find this church in 2009. He saw one of the telephone numbers there in the piece of literature that was there, was a number in Lusaka to Wilson and Coma, who ultimately became one of our pastors. And so he then said, I am going to find my way down to Lusaka, 500 miles, and I'm going to talk to this individual and find out where the church is. And this is how persistent he was. He had $25, and he had to find a way down to Lusaka. He finally got a ride with someone who said, just buy me a couple drinks, and I will get you down to Lusaka. He got down there to the bus station, Lusaka Bus Station, which I have been at. It's an absolute madhouse. And he was still trying to call Wilson and Coma on the number that he had, and just wasn't getting through. I'm not sure if it was just a bad number or what the problem was, but he was not able to get through. So here he is, sitting 500 miles away from home. He has no way to really find out how he can get in touch with the only human being that could tell him about the church, good or bad or whatever. Give him the history of the church. But as he's sitting there on the bench in the bus station, he took out a booklet to read, and it was one of the old booklets from the World Wide Church of God about salvation. And so he then was talking to somebody who was right next to him, who was kind of curious about what he had. He said, could you excuse me? I need to use the restroom. Can you just watch my things? Well, this man next to him looked at the literature that was there, and it looked very familiar to him. This man was Jonathan Lataba, a United Church of God deacon, who himself was 220 miles away from home, because he's from up in the northwest, towards the northwest part of Zambia. And here is Joseph Capatula from way, way in the northwest. This is northeast and northwest, and they sat next to each other at the bus station. Well, they started talking about the fact that, you know, what's happening here and what's going on. Well, Jonathan said, you go to church services. We have a church service. Here's the address. You go there, and you can talk to the pastor. With that time was...

Actually, at that time was the former pastor of the Kumbani Bandha. And so, he had the... This was an early part of the week, and he waited towards the end of the week and went to that address. Now, the location of church services is the military barracks. The reason they're there is because Ardican, who is now the pastor, is a former retired major in the army. So, he was able to get the barracks for either free or virtually nothing at all for our people. Well, Joseph just kind of merrily walks on to the military base and is immediately stopped. What are you doing here? Because I'm here for United Church of God church services. And the guard says, I know nothing about this. And he started quizzing him. He said, what are you doing here? This is military. You shouldn't be here, and so forth. And he was pretty much spurned away. After years and years and years, he got so close to where just the services were and was turned away. So, he went back to his friends, who were Rwandan refugees. I mean, this whole group is just such a ragtag group of people. And that night, the pastor, Wilson and Koma, had already had a number given to Joseph, and the pastor, or the elder, called Joseph. And they had a discussion. He says, come over, let's talk about church. He said he was so happy. Finally, the connection was made. And so, on Sunday, the next day, Joseph went to Wilson and Koma's home, where they met together, and had a wonderful visit. Everything kind of came together. So, what happened with the church? What happened in 1995? What happened in 1993? What happened in 2004? All this came together. But Joseph stuck with it, and told him about his friends, the three brothers. Told him about Harasi, with whom there was no contact all these years. The story's not over yet. He was invited. He was sent back home, and the pastor there, the Rwandan friends, gave him food and money and all kinds of things to go back. I never saw it. I had so much stuff. Even a dress for his wife. He was just so impressed by that. So, he went back to Mufumbu, 500 miles back. And when he told everyone that he'd found the church, he says, the whole group of guys just rose up and cheered. He said, they cheered louder than they cheered when Zambia won the World Cup in soccer. He said, it was such a happy moment that the church is still here. Then they were invited to come to the Feast of Tabernacles in 2010 in Lusaka. And three of them came. And Bev and I were there. And this is the first time that we heard of those people. I was with a certain group of people, and Bev was talking to them, and they were telling them this story. The story about meeting Jonathan Lataba and the bus station, and just how they had come to the truce, and how many years they'd been getting the literature, and their services that they had with no minister for years. Bev said, you've got to hear these people's story. Just an amazing story. I was just kind of getting it for the first time. Well, later in the day, or maybe the next day, they had some baptisms. And those men were hoping to be baptized. They were waiting now for 24 years to be baptized. And the pastor there at that time asked me to, as a guest, and I was not knowledgeable about all the dynamics and all the things that were happening. We were there just as guest speakers, is, we have two women to baptize. I would like you to perform the baptism. And I did that. Later, he found out that somehow these two men were overlooked. These three men were overlooked. In fact, somehow, some way, I don't want to condemn anybody, they were just told to write their story up. After all these years. And so that's when we met them.

Three months later, that minister who was there left United. And Bev and I were, then came back to Zambia for the Passover season in 2011. And those men were there. Three of them were there. And they wanted to be baptized. And it was a great honor to baptize them right there at the hotel pool where we were at. They were so happy. Big grins on their faces. If you want to get all the facts of this story, go to my website, cubic.org. On the left side, I have their whole story, a link to their whole story. They were so happy. Bev asked them, she said, how long did you wait to be baptized? They said, 25 years. This is persistence and this is patience. Sometimes we feel like, you know, I'm not getting an answer. I sent an email yesterday, he hasn't replied to me yet. What's the matter with these people? These are people that just waited and waited, but they knew that the church was there. They never lost the vision and the perception. They were patient. And Bev said, what's the word for persistence in your language? The ukakachira. So we call these the ukakachira people, the persistent people, which we have gone to know and to love. Two years ago, almost, with the elder who's there, and our elder who's there, he's a white man who has a very successful business doing electric fencing. And he has a four-wheel drive, he has an SUV, and he's the only one who could really go out there. He was the first minister to go out there and see them, and now he's their pastor. He goes out there about three times a year, four times a year. But Bev and I were out there, into Mufumbuwe, way to where they are. I could tell you all kinds of stories about our visit, but it was just absolutely wonderful, because these people were true blue, as far as faith was concerned. Nothing was going to deter them. They saw things in a very simple way. They saw what the Bible said. They saw what the truth was. When they were told that this was not the truth, to go to something else, they said, no, no, we don't want that. We know what the truth is. When they were overlooked, and when they were told that we have to wait, or they were told that they can't come to services, we said, we'll just wait until that time is right. Truly an amazing story of faith. We use a passage, we use a scripture in Luke 18 about... I'll just read it to you. Luke chapter 18 in verse 1.

The persistent widow. He spoke a parable to them, Luke 18 verse 1, that men always ought to pray and not to lose heart. This was a prayer from Jesus Christ about, don't give up, don't lose heart. And it's easy to lose heart. Saying, there was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man. Now there was a widow in that city, and she came to him saying, get justice for me, for my adversary. And he would not. For a while. But afterwards he said to himself, though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me, persistent, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. Now it's not that God has to be, you know, he's not the one who is the unjust judge, or just compared in that way. It just talks about the persistence of the widow, of not giving up when you're told no. And I have learned so much from that in my experiences with people, knowing that if I get a no, if I get some kind of an answer that I don't feel is right, I will find the right answer after a while. There are certain things that I am praying for continually right now, which I know are right. I want this church to grow. I want to bring on new ministers. I want to be able to reach the world with a powerful message. I know it's out there. I just have to wait. Wait for the right moment, for the right set of circumstances, for the right opportunity, for the right time. For that. We can't just give up and say, ah, I'm going home. I go fishing, as Peter said. No, we're going to continue doing the work. Sometimes we do get discouraged. We wish we had better results in certain things, but we're doing all we can. We're asking God in faith. And we know that He has a great work to do and that we are going to be part of doing that work. Verse 6, Luke 18. Then the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge said, and shall not God avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them? Won't God hear us? Sure He will. I tell you that He will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth? Well, He won't find a lot of faith, but He will find faith with some. Hopefully we are those with whom He finds faith, with whom He can work and do the great work that He has. So certainly, we can be grateful for all the things that God is doing in our lives. He has given us faith through His Holy Spirit and also as a gift. It's both a fruit of the Holy Spirit and it's both a gift. It's not wrong to ask for the gift. Give me the gift of faith, of belief, a way of life. The just shall survive. The just shall live by faith. Well, it's been wonderful to be here. My wife and I are looking forward to chatting with you after services. It's been wonderful to come here after 18 years or so and to visit with people that may be some a little bit older, but many are brand new people.