“For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.” – Acts 17:23
The missionary journeys of Paul, the Apostle, brought him to Athens, a city known for academics. The city boasted in being a hub for the thinkers of the time. It was the “hangout” of philosophers of the sects of Epicureans and the Stoicks. The Epicureans denied God as Creator and Sustainer of the world and the Stoicks believed in the system of pantheistic monism. It held that Man was an equivalent to Deity and saw no evil in the world. Their doctrine also included that the universe was created by God but in the end, fate ruled. They, like the Pharisees, prided themselves in their own concocted self-righteousness.
The City of Athens Greece at that time suffered from a pestilence of plague, so the historians tell us. The Athenians were steeped in idolatry in many forms and had altars to various gods and they worshipped on the various altars seeking aid from their gods to give them relief from the stress of the plague. They even had an alter to an unknown deity which, perhaps, was an effort to cover all bases in their idolatrous religious system.
Paul would remind the Athenians that the God of creation was the One who really supplied and sustained the needs for life and its threats. “God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;” – Acts 17:24 The God of the universe was unknown to them but Paul declared Him to them. This Sovereign God is the only real and true God and must be known and accepted in order to have real and lasting peace!
Our world today is full of lonely and disillusioned people worshipping on the altars of a multiplicity of gods yet finding nothing but emptiness and despair. The Athenians built an altar to the Unknown God not knowing that this one altar, out of the multitudes of other altars, actually reflected both their dilemma but also their potential deliverance!
The Unknown God can be known and should be known for the evidence is undeniable for His existence and hand in creation and life. The problem is of historic proportion that the “thinkers” of the land have always had a tendency to “go down deep but come up dry” when it comes to the understanding of spiritual matters. Many, like the Athenians, expend their mental resources looking for some new thing while overlooking the old thing of a tried and proven revelation of God through the Scriptures. Mans’s wisdom is sheer foolishness in God’s sight when his wisdom depends more on a science lab rather than common sense and the use of a God given natural inclination to believe in the God of creation.
Paul states the fallacy in the thinking of the so called, “wise” in this world. He also reveals the reason for the educated stance against the Gospel truth. The spiritual realm is a realm of simple childlike faith in what God has said without the prop of a reinforced scientific analysis to prove a point. He wrote to the church of Corinth and stated the basic reason for the inability of those dependent upon a world-based wisdom to grasp the simple truth of the Gospel message. “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” – I Corinthians 1:18-21
God is revealed His Word, the Bible. His redemptive plan is revealed as well. Christ is the Central Figure of the Bible and redemption, through His finished work, is the central theme. The redemptive thread runs throughout Scripture and is noted in prophesies and types, in the Old Testament, and actual fulfillment, as seen in the Gospels account of the Lord’s crucifixion. The Bible is the standard for faith and practice and is, thus, reliable for what It says. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” – II Timothy 3:16
The uniqueness of the Bible is proven by the following:
1. The Bible was written over a period of 1,500 years
2. The Bible was written by over 40 different authors (Among them were kings, military leaders, peasants, philosophers, fishermen, tax collectors, poets, statesmen, musicians, scholars and shepherds.)
3. The Bible was written in many different places, at many different times and by people experiencing many different moods.
4. The Bible was written on three continents: Asia, Africa and Europe.
5. The Bible was written in three different languages: Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic.
6. The Bible is written with many different literary styles: Prose, poetry, historical narrative, romance, law, biography, parable, allegory and prophecy.
7. The Bible addresses hundreds of difficult issues without a single contradiction.
8. The Bible is a book of great diversity, yet, in spite of this, it unfolds a single continuous story, and it does so without ever contradicting itself.
The Unknown God can be known by a simple childlike faith in what the Bible has to say concerning what Christ has done on behalf of sinners. Jesus died a substitutionary death on the cross. “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” – II Corinthians 5:21 Relationship with God is made possible by a personal acceptance of this One who died in our stead on the cross. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” – John 3:16
Chuck Peters
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