Atheist’s Test

When an atheist approached me recently and said, “I have three tests for you,” I knew what the “tests” were before he asked them. The first two were, would I take poison (based on the promise Jesus gave in Mark 16:18) and would I jump off a high cliff? I told my atheist friend that if I were to deliberately take poison or jump off a high cliff, I would be tempting God, something the Bible says not to do (see Matt. 4:7). I’m not into snake handling either. Of course, that answer never satisfies atheists, and so their tests remain powerful proofs (in their minds) that God doesn’t exist.

“The essence of the evolution argument is: Did God make man in His image with moral responsibility, or did man evolve without a Maker and he therefore has no moral accountability? If it’s the former, the atheist is in big trouble.”

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The third test was, can I move mountains? Jesus said that the Christian can move them (see Matt. 17:20), so if we can’t, then God doesn’t exist.

When Jesus talked about swallowing camels, or of Him being the “door,” or the necessity of eating His flesh and drinking His blood to be saved, or moving mountains, these weren’t literal statements. They were symbolic. How do we know the difference between literal and symbolic? Context and common sense.

Other supposed powerful arguments that the Bible isn’t true (and therefore God doesn’t exist) are: bats aren’t birds, there seem to be two accounts of creation, God can’t make a rock that He can’t lift, the Catholic church and their crusades— their terrible Inquisition and their imprisonment of Galileo. Also, Cain married a sister, the way Judas died, and of course the powerful “proof” of the theory of evolution. If evolution is true, then in the mind of the atheist, God doesn’t exist.

The essence of the evolution argument is: Did God make man in His image with moral responsibility, or did man evolve without a Maker and he therefore has no moral accountability? If it’s the former, the atheist is in big trouble. It means that he is a wicked sinner in the eyes of a perfect and holy God, and that hell is a reality. If it’s the latter, then all is well with him, because there is no such thing as sin, no moral accountability, and therefore no hell.

So what is the ultimate solution to this continual standoff? It would be for the atheist to simply seek God for himself. He has creation and his conscience as evidence for starters, but if he came to actually know God, that would forever settle the issue for him. So, here’s a promise from God that is not symbolic but is literal: “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jer. 29:13, emphasis added). I did that on April 25, 1972, and I “found” Him at 1:30 in the morning. Countless millions of others have likewise found God, when they sought Him with genuine sincerity. Why should the atheist seek Him like that? Because God is the essence of life itself, and the atheist’s time is running out…with his every heartbeat.

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