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Body: - Faith of our fathers, living still, In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword; Oh, how our hearts beat high with joy Whene’er we hear that glorious Word! - *Refrain:* Faith of our fathers, holy faith! We will be true to thee till death. - Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, Were still in heart and conscience free; How sweet would be their children’s fate, If they, like them, could die for thee! - Faith of our fathers, we will strive To win all nations unto thee; And through the truth that comes from God, We all shall then be truly free. - Faith of our fathers, we will love Both friend and foe in all our strife; And preach thee, too, as love knows how By kindly words and virtuous life. Many of the American heros who went before us had great faith in Almighty God. Some of them paid inordinate, personal prices as they would cling to and preserve their Christian heritage and traditions. Keep in mind, also, that the foundational stronghold to which our forefathers would cling was founded in the Bible, and it was to them as dear as life itself. Much more could be told about our ancestors and the persecutions they endured during their quest for a "new land" where they could enjoy religious freedom. The faith of our fathers, referred to in this hymn, is their abundant trust in a loving, Heavenly Father whom they had learned about in the scriptures - lessons that presently guide our feet each day and make it easier to fall asleep at night. Fredrick W. Faber made it his life's work and mission to write hymns that he thought would be helpful to his fellow Christians. He wrote approximately 150 such hymns before his death. In the opinion of this writer, his crowning achievement was "Faith of Our Fathers." By: Lindsay Terry As we pass through these days of remembering our fathers - those who have gone on before us - and the price that many of them paid for our freedom, may we remember that it is sometimes difficult to "do right" and to stand for truth and justice. You and I should be able to muster up the tenacity required to meet our just obligations and to refrain from those things that destroy and divide - even if the stars fall. The musical setting for "Faith of Our Fathers" was written by Henri Hemy, an esteemed organist and composer, born in England Nov. 12, 1818. The composition was originally written in honor of Catherine of Alexander, a fourth-century lady who was put to death because of her faith. Among the great examples of the fathers of our nation, who stood for right in this country, are: George Washington, who said, "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible” John Hancock informed us that, "We recognize no sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus!" Then there was Frances Scott Key, the composer of our national anthem, who assured us that, "The patriot who feels himself in the service of God, and who acknowledges Him in all his ways, has the promise of Almighty direction..." Abraham Lincoln reminded us that, "My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side. For God is always right." "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord." - Psalm 33:12 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. – Hebrews 11:1 Hebrews 11 gives a definition of faith and illustrations of faith in the lives of those who lived by faith. Earlier in this epistle, the author quoted God’s words from Habakkuk 3: “My righteous one will live by faith” (Heb. 10:38). Then he exhorted, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who believe and are saved” (v. 39). Now in Hebrews 11 the author says, “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (v. 6). To be saved, we must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says he who *believes* has eternal life. The author previously said the Israelites perished in the wilderness because they did not believe the gospel. Because they did not mix the word of God with faith (Heb. 4:2) and were unbelieving (Heb. 3:12, 19) and disobedient (Heb. 3:18), they did not enter into God’s rest. Even today we see people who are restless because of their unbelief in the gospel. According to Scripture, faith is not faith in ourselves or faith in faith itself. Biblical faith has an object- we must believe in God and in his Son, Jesus Christ. This type of faith first requires knowledge of the object of faith, who is God. Faith comes by hearing the gospel preached clearly. We must know that Christ Jesus, the only Son of God, died on the cross for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, that he appeared to many, that he is seated on the right hand of the Father, that Christ alone is the King of kings and Lord of lords, that he is the head of the church, his body, the fullness of him that fills all and all, and that he is coming again to judge the living and the dead, and save his people with the fullness of salvation. Peter preached this gospel on the day of Pentecost, and three thousand believed and were saved. Paul preached it to a group of women in Philippi, and God opened the heart of Lydia so that she believed. The Philippian jailer heard the gospel, believed, and was saved in the middle of the night. True faith requires information. That is why every Christian must proclaim the gospel by life and word. The purpose of our lives in this world is to point others to the Savior. Second, we need agreement. Those who hear the gospel must understand the gospel intellectually and agree with it, not only that it is true, but that it is applicable to them. They must say, “We need Jesus to save us.” Yet even that is not true saving faith. Conviction should, in turn, lead to commitment. “Roman Catholics have taught that faith is mentally agreeing to the gospel, and many of today’s evangelicals would heartily agree with that position. They would say that we do not have to commit our lives to Jesus or live the gospel life; mental agreement to the facts of the gospel is sufficient.” Mere mental assent, however, is not true faith but the faith of demons. Demons believe that God exists and tremble (Jas. 2:19). Demons are quite orthodox in their faith. But lets be assured, demons will never repent and commit themselves to serve the true and living God. Those who hear the gospel must move from awareness to conviction, and then to commitment to Christ. They must commit to live for him forever. The Reformers had the saying, *Fides est fiducia*, faith is trust. Biblical faith is the entrustment of all that we are and have to Jesus Christ now and forevermore. Faith means that we move our center from ourselves to Jesus Christ. Faith declares Jesus Christ as Lord of our life. Faith in its essence is committing ourselves to Christ that we may be saved. John Murray says that we rest not in what is done by us, but upon the almighty Savior. Jesus Christ saves us through faith. Saving faith includes awareness, conviction, and commitment. True saving faith, unlike the devil’s faith, will always be in good works of obedience. James declares, “Faith without works is dead” (Jas. 2:20, KJV). Faith without works only simulates the spiritual grace of faith. It is plastic and artificial. Paul says faith expresses itself in love (Gal. 5:6). Jesus said, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). Believers devote themselves to doing what is good. Faith works and perseveres to the end. Such faith, the Scripture teaches, is a supernatural gift. It cannot be produced by humans but is a consequence of the miracle of rebirth. It is a life style and perseverance that pleases God. It is the faith of our fathers-Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Peter, Paul, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Spurgeon, and others. It is a faith that expects and endures trials gladly. Such faith is faith in God, and it is through this faith we inherit what has been promised (Heb. 6:1, 12). By this faith and in the full assurance of it we can draw near to God in worship (Heb. 10:22). It is a faith that knows we have better and abiding possessions, so that we can gladly suffer the loss of all things, even our lives (Heb. 10:34). This faith is not a one-time occurrence; it is living and continuing trust in Jesus. Faith and repentance are two things by which a Christian lives all the days of his life. This gift of supernatural faith is the foundation of things hoped for. It is speaking about a rock-solid, sure foundation. Hebrews 11:1 can be translated, “Faith is the *title deed* to things hoped for.” Faith provides a firm ground we can stand on while we await the fulfillment of God’s promises. By faith we can be sure all God’s promises to us will be fulfilled. Faith is assurance in the present. It gives the object hoped for a present power in the soul as if it were already possessed. Faith gives us a vision of future things. It is like a telescope that enables us to see distant objects and be energized by that sight to live our lives in the present. Paul says, “We live by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). By faith we see spiritual realities now and deal with the present in the light of that reality. Matthew Henry says, “Faith demonstrates to the eye of the mind the reality of those things which cannot be discerned by the eye of the body.” Again, Paul declares, “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen” (2 Cor. 4:18). Such statements may seem contradictory, but they are true of faith. Hebrews 11:1 tells us we can see by faith what is unseen by our eyes. Faith sees and hopes in the unseen, which, in turn, energizes us in the present to deal with our problems. Faith is the proof of unseen things God has promised and the evidence of things future. Faith demonstrates to us things unseen, and therefore we have conviction of things unseen. We are certain and assured of unseen things that we shall see in the future. Although faith leads us to know realities beyond the ability of reason to discover, faith also has reason. The Greeks thought faith was the characteristic of the uneducated and unsophisticated. But biblical faith is not blind. It does not require a leap in the dark or the sacrifice of our intellect. Biblical faith is reasonable because it rests on the greatest possible reason-the infinite, personal God and his word. Therefore, we as believers in Jesus Christ declare, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” We place our trust in God, who cannot lie or die. Concerning Abraham, the author says that God promised and confirmed his promise with an oath “so that, by two unchangeable things in which is impossible for God to lie, we . . . may be greatly encouraged” (Heb. 6:17-18). Noah had never seen any rain, let alone a flood. Yet when God said he was going to destroy the world by a flood and told Noah to build an ark, he did so, believing what God said is true: “By faith Noah, when warned about things not seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family” (Heb. 11:7). The writer says, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised. They only saw them and welcomed them from a distance” (Heb. 11:13). Faith sees the invisible, and the believer is certain that God will do what he has promised. God told Abraham to go and sacrifice his son. Abraham obeyed God, and the Hebrews author explains why he did it: “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead” (Heb. 11:19). Abraham believed that as soon as the sacrifice was done, God would raise his son from the ashes because God had promised a nation and a messiah through Isaac, the son of promise. By faith he reasoned that God cannot lie and so can be trusted. Paul speaks more about the faith of Abraham: “As it is written: ‘I have made you a father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed-the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were . . . without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead-since he was about a hundred years old-and that Sarah’s womb was also dead” (Rom. 4:17, 19). Abraham looked upon these things that were visible and interpreted them in the light of God’s promise of a son. What, then, was his response? “Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (v. 20). Look at how Moses exercised his faith: “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger.” Moses left Egypt, with all its glories, power, and position. “He persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (Heb. 11:27). Faith is substance, proof, demonstration, evidence. Faith sees the invisible and is energized by that sight to obey God. Faith sees the might of God in the fulfillment of his promises. Jesus said to Martha, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” (John 11:40). Paul wrote concerning his impending death, “For I am already being poured out like a drink offering and the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (2 Tim. 4:6-8). This is the substance of faith. It is not shifting sand, but a solid rock that we can stand upon. It is the conviction and certainty that God will do what he has promised. Hebrews 11:2 says this faith “is what the ancients were commended for.” The author is saying the faith of the Hebrew church is like that of “the ancients.” The word means “elders”; it has the same meaning as “forefathers” (Heb. 1:1). The people of God are one, and they are all characterized by this constant-they all possess saving faith that is living, persevering, sacrificing, and death-defying. Notice that God himself commended the elders for their faith. Our testimonies about ourselves do not matter. These ancients were certified by God, which is the greatest testimony we can have. The one thing characterizing all believers throughout history is the faith without which it is impossible to please God. The author illustrates such faith through the examples of Abel, Enoch, Noah, and others who all lived by faith in the promises of God. They were sure of things future and convinced of things they did not yet see with their physical eyes. They trusted completely in God’s promises. By their lives of faith, they bore witness to God’s goodness; therefore, God *commended* them and bore witness to them by recording their names in the holy Scriptures: “By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well of his offerings . . . By faith Enoch was taken from this life so that he did not experience death; he could not be found because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God . . . These were all *commended* for their faith” (vv. 4, 5, 39, italics added). Do you live by faith? Do you witness to God’s goodness by living according to the word? If you live for God’s glory, he will testify concerning you on the last day: “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter . . . into the joy of thy Lord” (Matt. 25:21, 23, KJV). Also concerning his own Son, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased; hear ye him” (Matt. 17:5, KJV). Jesus lived by faith, always pleasing his Father. When tempted, he said, “It is written,” and obeyed God, not the devil (cf. Matt. 4:1-11). I urge you to live such a life that God may commend you and invite you into his eternal kingdom. Philippians chapter 2, verse 15: “That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world” [Philippians 2:15]. The Christian witness began in a civilization, a culture, an empire that was antagonistic and hostile. The author of this passage I’ve just read, the apostle Paul, died a martyr in 68 AD, taken out of the Mamertine dungeon and beheaded for the faith. In about 100 AD, Ignatius was pastor of the great church in Antioch. He was a contemporary, at the same time that the apostle John was pastor of the church in Ephesus. Ignatius was taken before the emperor Trajan, condemned to die by exposure to the wild beasts in the Roman Coliseum. And standing there in that Coliseum, when the cage was lifted and those lions burst forth, he reached forth his arm to the leading lion and said, “Today I begin to be a Christian.” The persecution continued and under Diocletian, the Roman emperor in 303 [AD], Diocletian raised a monument, and on that stone monument he carved the words, “*Extincto est nomini Christianorum*”: *Extincto*, “extinct,” *est*, “is,” *nomini*, “the name,” *Christianorum*, “of the Christians.” In the fierce persecution that slew the Christians, he thought he had dissolved the faith. Yet only three years later, in 306 AD, Constantine placed on the shield of his Roman legionnaires the cross of Christ, and underneath wrote this caption on each one: *In hoc signo vinces,* “In this sign, conquer.” And the Christian religion became the faith of the cultured and civilized world. In [325 AD], the pastors who had suffered so greatly in the Diocletian persecution gathered in Nicea, and there proclaimed the orthodox Christian faith. Our nation was born in a persecution of the Christian religion. The Pilgrims in England openly opposed the godlessness, and the immorality, and the secularism, and the worldliness of the state church of England. They were persecuted and hounded out of the country, fled to Holland, and from Holland came to America, landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620. At that time, in those early 1600s, the Puritans were in the Church of England. They sought to reform it from within; called Puritans because they sought to purify, purify the godlessness and secularism of the state church of England. Five years after the Pilgrims had landed in the New World, a new king, Charles I, came to the throne in England, and it was bred in him to be bitter against the Puritans and hounded them out of the nation, and they also came to America. Among those Pilgrims who were thrust out of the land and landed for a while in the Netherlands, there was a man, a godly Christian follower of the Lord, named Thomas Helwys. In the Netherlands, among the Christians, reading the Bible, he became a Baptist, and was baptized; and another little group with him. And out of conviction that they ought to stand for their faith in England, they returned back from the Netherlands to their native country, and in 1612, Thomas Helwys wrote a letter to King James, the King of England, and these are his words: Hear, O King, and despise not ye counsel of ye poor, and let their complaints come before thee. The king is a mortal man, and not God. Therefore he hath no power over ye immortal souls of his subjects to make laws and ordinances for them, and to set spiritual lords over them. If the king have authority to make spiritual lords and laws, then he is an immortal god and not a mortal man. But the lord, our king, is but dust and ashes, as well as we are. O king, be not seduced by deceivers thus to sin against God, whom thou oughtest to obey, nor against thy poor subjects. God save the king—Thomas Helwys. That was the first time that any English king ever heard words like that. And Thomas Helwys, the Baptist forefather, was imprisoned in New Gate prison, and stayed there condemned until he died. Our fathers, chained in prisons dark, Were still in heart and conscience free; How sweet would be their children’s fate, If we, like them could die for Thee. [“Faith of Our Fathers, Living Still,” Frederick W. Faber] Thus died Thomas Helwys. But he had a young disciple, a young convert, and his name was Roger Williams, who came to America in 1631 and founded the Baptist state of Rhode Island, and created a free church in a free state. As the days and the years passed, the thirteen colonies came together to form a nation. And in that Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin, who was not known for his faith in the Lord, Benjamin Franklin acknowledged God’s role in the writing of the Constitution, and at a critical moment of disagreement, he made the following speech: In the beginning of the contest with Britain— our Revolutionary War— when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. Have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? or do we manage no longer to need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time— he was an old man when he said this— and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? Thus America began on religious foundations laid by our forefathers. And from those 1600s, for three hundred following years, our schools were instruments under God of teaching our children, in prayer, in Bible reading, in chapel services, the presence and power of the Almighty who reigns in heaven and in earth. And now we have come to a turn in the life and fortune of our nation that is hard to imagine. We can hardly recognize modern America against the background of its religious foundation. A philosophy has breached our people in an unbelievable and unimaginable secularism. Tom Paine, a famous unbeliever, faced the full implications of his atheistic worldview, and as he died, he said, “I would give worlds if I had them,” that his *Age of Reason*, his book, “had not been published. O God, what have I done to suffer so much? But there is no God. But if there should be, what will become of me hereafter? Sir, stay with me. For God’s sake, send even a child to stay with me. For it is hell to be alone. If ever the devil had an agent, I have been that one,” end quote. Tom Paine’s words reveal the futility of a worldview that leaves God out; yet his philosophy is the current prevailing worldview in our society. It is called humanism, and that godless humanism is the philosophy that lies back of the educational system of our entire nation. I am amazed and full of wonder at our modern educational presentation of the supposed truth to our children. They are strange, these new and modern pedagogues. Chickens were dying in East Texas, and the universities sent their finest to see what it was killing the chickens in East Texas. So after their study, they made their official report, and it said, “We cannot find out what it is, the virus that is killing these chickens, but this we have ascertained: that the chickens that catch the virus and continue, they have a better opportunity to survive than those that die immediately”—a profound educational premise. And by law you cannot teach creation; by law you cannot teach God made this universe, and by law you have to teach evolution, by law. This is the law of the land: teaching our children evolution. Once I was a tadpole, beginning to begin. Then I was a frog, with my tail tucked in. Then I was a monkey in a banyan tree; And now I’m a professor with a Ph.D.! [author and work unknown] By law in the public school system of America, these children are taught that we came from a green scum, from an amoeba, from a paramecium, from a marsupial, from an ape, from a monkey. “Like many Americans,” a man writes, . . . while I knew Christianity had something to do with our history, I couldn’t make the connection. My high school history teachers could explain the influences of Buddhism and Islam on third world cultures, but discussing the influence of Christianity on American history was out of the question. It was a violation of the separation of church and state. In one history textbook, Joan of Arc is discussed without any mention of God. In another, the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving Day is described without any reference to their thanking God for their survival in the new land. In Lake Worth, Florida, high school administrators took razor blades to the Lake Worth High yearbook and cut out the page that carried a Scripture verse and a picture of the school’s Bible Club. That Bible Club had been meeting in the school for twenty-five years. Dartmouth College is the number four college established by Christians in America: after Harvard, Yale, Brown—once a Baptist university, which is an atheistic university now—Dartmouth, founded by Christian people; in fact, founded by a Christian minister. I quote from a news article: Students arriving at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire this winter received something more than course books and dormitory keys. Every student received free of charge at registration what Dartmouth is pleased to call the, quote, “safe sex kit.” Similar kits, sex kits, are available at many colleges and high schools around the nation. Now, imagine, just imagine that instead of the safe sex kit, how to have sex without catching AIDS or herpes, or any of those other terrible diseases, just imagine, instead of being given the safe sex kit, Dartmouth, or Yale, or Stanford, or Ohio, or Texas University were passing out copies of the Bible. Picture it: immediately there would be faculty resolutions and headlines in the newspapers, and lawsuits, and protests, and the gnashing of teeth. The tragedy of our great universities is that it is nearly impossible to conceive of such an event as handing out Bibles, yet the safe sex kit is not only imaginable, and not only possible, but it is factual. That is modern America! It has been convenient and expedient for the secular humanists, the materialists, the liberals, the feminists, the genetic engineers, the bureaucrats, the Supreme Court justices, to use, as an excuse for what they do—the separation of church and state. It’s only been in recent years, in your lifetime, that that phrase has been used to put down the conscience of God’s people. In these days past, it was not considered a violation of separation and church and state for the Quakers to be in the forefront for the abolition of slavery. It was not a violation of the separation of church and state for representatives of the National Council of Churches, like [William] Sloane Coffin, to lead opposition to the Vietnam War. It was not a violation of the separation of church and state for Martin Luther King to march in the Civil Rights program. It was not a violation of the separation of church and state for Jesse Jackson to seek the office of president of the United States, and to use the pulpits of the black churches for his campaign. It was not a violation of the separation of church and state for our forefathers to pass laws drawn from the Bible against murder, rape, child abuse, incest, theft. But today, if a teacher attempts to pray in a public school, he is told this violates the separation of church and state. The constitutional guarantees of religious freedom, rather than imposing an absolute separation, meant in the First Amendment to protect the faith from the state, and I doubt that they could have conceived of how some people today have twisted their words actually to take away our religious birthright before God. My heart goes out to the leaders in our public schools. It is not their fault. I thank God for our wonderful church: for you, and for all God intends for us; not only thanking Him for the days that are past, but believing in the glorious future under His hand for a tomorrow. Paul spoke about Christ’s role in the creation of all things: “For by him all things were created, things in heaven and things on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers, rulers or authorities-all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16; cf. John 1:3). God intended for all people to understand that God created all things by his powerful word: “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” (Rom. 1:20). It is not that the unbelievers do not know, but that they are enemies of God. They suppress the truth and exchange it for a lie so that they do not have to bow down and serve this great God. The reason that all people do not come to this understanding is sin. Unbelievers are dead in trespasses and sins. Untouched by the Spirit of the living God, their minds are not quickened. God has revealed these things to us by his Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10). Paul writes, “We have not received the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us . . . The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned” (2 Cor. 2:12, 14). In 2 Corinthians 4:4 he says the god of this world blinds the eyes of the unbelieving. Unbelievers are blind, dead, and hostile with God. They know the truth, yet they suppress it. They refuse to surrender and worship God: “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness . . . For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men-birds and animals and reptiles” (Rom. 1:18, 21-23). From Scripture we whose eyes have been opened by the mighty works of the Holy Spirit understand that the universe was created and maintained by the word of God. The visible universe was not made out of what is visible; what is seen is not made out of what is seen. The author is declaring that the universe was not made out of pre-existing matter. When Plato spoke of cosmogony (the branch of science that deals with the origin of the universe, especially the solar system), he said the creator fashioned the world by pre-existing, formless matter. Philo the Jew also believed this view. But here our author is deliberately denying Platonic and Philonic cosmogonies. He denies the eternity of matter. He also denies all present day explanations of the universe including the evolutionary hypothesis and the big bang theory, which requires pre-existing matter. The author affirms that God alone created the universe out of nothing by his creative powerful command. The universe is not a self-existent reality but the work product of the self-existing, self-sufficient, infinite, personal triune God of the holy Scriptures. Only believers in Jesus Christ know the true origin of the universe. Those who say in their hearts there is no God may call us fools, but the Scripture calls them fools. An unbeliever cannot affirm the true origin of the universe. He knows the truth, but he suppresses it. He exchanges it for a lie because he refuses to bow down before the almighty God. Not only did God create the universe by his powerful word, but he also recreates us by his powerful word, making us new creations in Christ. Paul writes, “For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). To us who were dead in our sins he said, “Let there be light,” and light flooded into our souls. Our eyes were opened, we saw the reality that we are sinners and God is God, and we cried out, “O God, have mercy upon us.” James writes, “He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits for all he created” (Jas. 1:18). In 1 Peter 1:23 we read, “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God.” Jesus himself spoke about this re-creative activity of God: “I tell you the truth, the time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live . . . Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. Those who have done good will rise to live” (John 5:25, 28-29). Everyone who is in Christ Jesus is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come (2 Cor. 5:17). Have you experienced the miracle of new creation? Have you been given the gift of godly repentance and saving faith? Then you will understand all miracles of the Scriptures. You will not question the biblical account of the origin of the universe or the resurrection of Christ. The mighty, infinite personal God is the reason behind them. When we exercise faith in God, we will understand the divine revelation. Then we will be sure of things hoped for and certain of things yet unseen. Then we will know that nothing can separate us from the love of God, that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ is with us always, that he is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that we are going to heaven to be with him forever. In his presence there is fullness of joy and on his right hand, pleasures forevermore. This Savior is coming again, and he will make a new heaven and a new earth by his powerful word for us to dwell in with him, and he will give us a body like unto his glorious body. By faith we also know that there is going to be a final judgment. Every unbeliever will be cast into hell, the lake of fire, irrevocably entering eternal punishment. By faith we see and understand these things. By faith we understand from Scripture not only the origin of the first creation, but also the new creation. May God, therefore, help us to be his new creations that we may show love by faithful obedience to God’s word and give witness to God’s goodness in this world. Only God can perform miracles. He has already performed the miracles of creation and exodus, and, more than that, the perfect miracle of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now he is performing the miracle of raising dead people from the dead to life. May God grant repentance and faith to those people of his eternal election, that they may repent and believe in Jesus Christ today and be saved. May we have the FAITH of our Fathers. Top of Form Bottom of Form
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