Jesus Appears to Thomas John 20:24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus[a]), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” 26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” 28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” …
There are two things not mentioned here in this scene, #1. Thomas must have realised that Jesus had appeared among them even though the door was locked. That alone would have been significant. #2. Jesus said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” But, there is no mention here that Thomas actually did anything, I don’t think he touched Jesus at all he just took in the scene and said “My Lord and my God!” Jesus was standing there in front of him and his wounds were still visible (which is an interesting point).
WE HAVEN’T SEEN HIM, YET WE BELIEVE?
But on a scale of 1 – 10 how strong is your belief. Very easy to say 100% and then sit back proudly but ask yourself this, why do I believe, based on what exactly? There has to be something to hang your belief on otherwise it is groundless.
Hebrews 11 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for. But what had happened to those ‘ancients’ to give them this confidence?
We haven’t actually seen God or Jesus but we believe that in some kind of way they are here with us and with all like us right now all over the world. There are clearly many things we have not seen, only read of but today I am going to write about the things we can see and that should help our faith. It sounds a bit odd to talk about the things we can already see but there is a big difference between seeing and perceiving! Definition of perceive 1a: to attain awareness or understanding of 2: to become aware of through the senses; sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing.
Seeing is one thing, understanding is something else entirely. You may walk through a meadow of wild flowers but what do you actually see, what do you perceive? In that flower meadow there is so much more there to perceive than to just ‘see’. You may walk under a starry sky but what do you actually see/perceive besides points of light? Much nearer to us than the stars is that strange phenomenon the Northern lights… I have seen them over the Lincolnshire Wolds 3 times now. The first time I saw them I simply admired the changing colours, I ‘saw’ them but had not perceived anything more, I had not seen or connected this with God’s incredible cosmic engine that protects all life on earth 24 hours a day every day and has done since life first trod the earth. Even now, this very minute there is a colossal engine, up there, the colours of which you may have seen via those Northern lights but until you perceive it you will not recognise the wonder and the enormity of it and the unmistakeable hand of God the great designer in it.
An academic or a cosmologist may say “there is no God, it is an illusion, how can there be such a thing, it makes no sense, there is no proof such a thing exists, it is illogical, unproven and therefore it cannot be true.”
These people are supposed to be intellectuals so how much weight should we give to such views? Those same academics said 50 years ago that they had got the solar system sorted out, books were written about it but in 1997 when the space probe Voyager was launched and over the next few months passed right by all our planets they had to admit that all those many books would have to be re-written because as Voyager passed by each planet it showed with crystal clarity that none of the planets were as they thought, each one was something totally different.
The Truth was there all the time in 1 Corinthians 15. 41 The sun has one kind of splendour, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendour.
You may have seen on the news that all their theories on the demise of the dinosaur were wrong and that they were dying out long before that famous comet strike. So, what do these academics say today, what did they say last week, last year, 100 years, 500 years ago!! Yet they still assure us today that there cannot be a God. Before I get into this any further let me address the elephant in the room. GOD HAS NO BEGINNING…. Psalm 90 A prayer of Moses the man of God. 1 Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. 2 Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world,
from everlasting to everlasting you are God.
I don’t imagine I am on my own in thinking this is a huge problem, well it is for me. It is like asking me to imagine and describe what is on the other side of the universe, I can’t stretch my mind that far, it is out of my human experience as is the existence of God before anything else came into being. I must accept it and I do accept it simply because of the truth of the scriptures and the things I see around me. That may not be the answer that some folk want but hopefully by the time I have finished things will be a little easier to accept.
Even though all those pictures from space are fascinating I am more than a little revolted that man spends billions looking for life somewhere out there! A couple of hundred miles or more above us is a virtual scrapyard of telescopes, listening and analysing devices finding more and more planets GASSES AND EXPLODING STARS every day, some are possibly like earth but so far away and thus far no life! (We know there is life out there don’t we!)
Through the medium of television, we have been shown incredible images from space and within the cold uninviting blackness we see one single beautiful blue globe which hangs upon nothing just as scripture has said in Job for centuries: Job 26:7. “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space; he suspends the earth over nothing.”
So here we are on our beautiful home, not too far away from our sun that water will freeze and not too near so that our water would boil and turn to gas. What kind of a fine margins are we on? Well look what happens between the summer and winter seasons, just the tilt of the earth, the side that faces the sun during our summer sometimes gets over 25c here in the UK…too hot for my liking but that same face during the winter is what…. Only 500 or 1000 miles further away from the sun (I don’t know) and our water freezes. That’s the fine line we are on.
Look where we are in space, we are precisely the right distance from our sun and all life survives, what a coincidence!
Look what magnets do when we turn them against themselves… one way they are strongly attracted to themselves but the other, well that immense invisible force that tries to stop us pushing them together is really bizarre when you think about it. That has a lot to do with this next subject, God's force-field.
You will know that the sun is a continually exploding hydrogen bomb which continually releases its debris out into space. We certainly do not want that debris to constantly rain down on the earth. However, God’s force-field is about 60 miles above us and here is the beginning of a most amazing engine. You may have seen the effect of it in the colours of the night sky when you see the Northern lights. It is truly vast, it surrounds the earth like a great cloak reaching far out into space so that the earth looks like a mere speck within it and yet, except on very rare occasions here in the UK we do not actually see it.
We survive only because it is there, without it we could not survive. Its effects can only be seen when we get sight of those Northern lights because it is then on full power deflecting the harmful rays that the sun throws out every now and again. Harmful rays really mean charged particles ejected from the sun, these solar flares can destroy satellites and knock out our national grid but there is much more to it than that. Without that great engine above the sky our planet would be as dead as Mars.
Man, or more precisely the military scientists are trying to invent force fields but God designed one long ago and without it his creation would have perished long ago… So, every second of every day we are protected by this immense force field… isn’t that a coincidence? But this engine called the van Allen belt protects us from charged particles it can’t protect us from the sun’s harmful solar radiation which not only burns our skin but affects the temperature of our climate. But wouldn’t you know it, there’s another invisible protective shield around the earth, the Ozone layer! isn’t that a coincidence? We almost destroyed it with our release of harmful gasses from solvents, fridges etc into the atmosphere but we recognised the damage we were doing and stopped and what do you know… the ozone layer seems to have its own repair kit and all is on the mend again… isn’t that a coincidence? Another thing that feeds and strengthens my faith is our own bodies. Psalm 139: 14. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
I can no more understand how a doctor or a surgeon can think that all this came into being through a series of lucky biological mishaps than I can see past the end of the universe! They have to study this design, they have to understand it, open it up, it is beyond my understanding that they think all this happened by accident, it hurts my brain! I cut myself, it bleeds but it doesn’t just keep on bleeding till I run out of blood and expire! It quickly forms a protective shield while the skin and cells beneath go into repair mode. Isn’t that a coincidence?
You will know very well that that doesn’t even begin to describe the complexity of the human body, a complexity that is easily as complex as the universe in which we exist or even that expanse of flower meadow I mentioned at the start. This doesn’t exclude all other life around us that shares our planet and which is also complex but we differ from all other life forms, we have the ability to turn our dreams into reality such as art, literature, cityscapes and so much more. With those thoughts in mind we realise we can bring about changes to the world around us for ourselves and for others. We can dream of being a doctor, an artist or a writer, we can dream and aspire to be so many other things that our fellow life forms here on earth can have no knowledge of. We have the ability to question who and what we are and where we came from and unlike any other life form on earth we can keep written records about ourselves. Of all life here on earth homo sapiens is different, special. All life on earth, plants, trees, mammals fish birds etc could do without homo sapiens but we cannot do without them.
That’s a sobering thought when we get a bit above ourselves. The Genesis account of creation in Chap 1 was not written recently but during a time when we did not understand so well how nature works. It is undeniable that plants and animals bearing seed ACCORDING TO THEIR KIND have continued to grow and produce seeds after their own kind now for longer than we have written records and still the poplar, almond and plane trees mentioned in Genesis 30:37 are just the same, the cypress wood that Noah made the ark from is unchanged as is the acacia wood used for the ark and also used in the building of the tabernacle, the cedar mentioned in Leviticus, and of course the olive, all unchanged. Isn’t that a coincidence?
Ecclesiastes 1: 9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. We may not have lavishly illustrated reference books going back to the dawn of time but inside the Egyptian pyramids built around 3500 BC there are hundreds of paintings and even I can clearly recognise the Cheetah, Lion, Ostrich, the hoopoe, the scarab beetle, baboon, the sacred ibis etc etc, all exactly the same as they are today. Isn’t that a coincidence? If these very accurate Egyptian works of reference interest you how about going even further back? Cave paintings are supposed to go back 40.000 years! Take a look at the paintings. Those cave painters were as aware as you and I of the world around them and like us, some were good at art and some not. The cave paintings of European bison are almost as good as a photograph they are that accurate, the Rhino is easily recognised as is the elephant, the giraffe, the horse, the bear and of course their own hand, where they have placed a hand on the cave wall and sprayed paint around it. All easily recognised after thousands of years.. Isn’t that a coincidence?
Want to check even further back in time? Fossils, the ACTUAL animal imprint… you must have seen sea urchin fossils, there are many species of those but take a look at them, many are easily identified along with many creatures still alive today. However, the text that goes with them often needs careful reading. Here’s one about a miniature horseshoe crab… Officially known as the tadpole shrimp it is a freshwater crustacean that resembles a miniature horseshoe crab. It is considered a living fossil because its basic prehistoric morphology has changed little (indicating that there has been changes of some kind) in the last 70 million years, and finishes with the words…” exactly matching the bodies of their ancient ancestors that inhabited Earth as early as some 220 million years ago!” They just cannot quite bring themselves to admit that there is nothing new under the sun.10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.
Some actual animals such as scorpions, frogs, flies and even small lizards can be seen in amber as if they are still alive, looking the same as today’s generation. Isn’t that a coincidence? So, in summary I suppose I should say my faith is one step removed from seeing because I have seen the results of a higher power, results that are seen all around us and I cannot see any other answer but that there is design and planning here from a great designer.
I wasn’t here when you laid the earth’s foundation, I wasn’t here when you pushed the sea back to expose the land but it is clear to me that this has not all come about by some freakish series of cosmic accidents, to believe such a thing tells me that Like Nelson with a hand over his good eye you are believing without perceiving.
Where did the van Allen belt come from, how did it get there, why did it choose to protect earth? Where did our planet come from and why is it so very different from all other known or observed bodies up there, why is ours the only one that emits this wonderful blue colour which is our atmosphere? If we are here because freakish cosmic accidents are normal why can’t we look out into space and see hundreds more blue planets like ours??
We know of only one.
Where did homo sapiens come from and where did all those living cells within it come from and the cells within cells, many different cells that have so many different functions some of which we still do not understand. Where did all the different components come from within this body that sustain and repair it? What are the chances that this homo sapiens machine with all its intricate parts got here by a series of biological mutations?
(Job 37: 14) “Listen to this Job;
stop and consider God’s wonders.
15 Do you know how God controls the clouds
and makes his lightning flash?
16 Do you know how the clouds hang poised,
those wonders of him who has perfect knowledge? (LOOK, LOOK UP AND PERCEIVE) When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?[c] 5 You have made them[d] a little lower than the angels[e]
and crowned them[f] with glory and honour. Psalm 8:3-6… Isn’t that really nice to read. But now I have reached that comfortable position that if all this is not true I will be amazed but then… how will I know! I will finish with Job chapt 42 which reflects my own thoughts exactly 42 Then Job replied to the Lord: 2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know. 4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
