Science and the Christian Faith
“Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind.”
“There is neither need nor excuse for postulation of nonmaterial intervention in the origin of life, the rise of man, or any other part of the long history of the material cosmos.” (G.G.Simpson in ‘The Meaning of Evolution’)
Are statements such as these reasoned argument or blind faith. The aim of this article is to show that Christians believe in thinking. As we look at the evidence it will be abundantly clear that to acknowledge that there is a rational, communicating creator of the universe is the only reasonable position to hold.
Two Views
Today there are two world views. In practice everyone holds to either one or the other. The majority holds that there is no God that matters and that ‘we are on our own’. The minority acknowledges that there is a real God who made this world and controls it and to whom we are each responsible.
‘We are on our own’ is a concept that is being powerfully argued for from many quarters today. Professor Richard Dawkins has said,
“Science has completely eliminated the need for God. And Darwin has pulled the rug from under God’s feet.”
“Man is supreme – and God is nothing.”
This is not just an abstract philosophical debate. The stakes are very high indeed. On the one hand the God of the Bible insists that we acknowledge God’s supremacy and the status of his only Son, Jesus Christ.
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3 v. 18)
On the other hand Professor Dawkins regards such thinking to be a dangerous evil, even though on his philosophy the idea of evil is difficult to understand.
“Faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.”
I was struck very early on in my Christian life that the reason Jesus Christ expects me to follow him is because the Christian story is true, really true. Jesus was a real human being who lived in Israel two thousand years ago who claimed to be God. He satisfied the 331 prophesies in the ancient Jewish Scriptures that gave very specific details about God’s Messiah who was to come. He amazed people with the miracles he did and eventually rose from the dead 3 days after being crucified. His disciples and even his family were completely convinced by the evidence they saw. If this story is true then everyone must commit himself or herself to Jesus Christ, to have him as the controlling influence in their lives. If it is not true then we should actively reject Him as a fraud and liar. He simply cannot be treated, in passing, as just interesting as the consequences are so great.
Perhaps this is why there is so much vehement opposition to the concept of a God who has made this world! Such a God should be sought and obeyed but instinctively we do like our independence. We want to be Gods.
The Evidence
The evidence that there is a God who is involved in his creation is very powerful. The apostle Paul wrote about this evidence at the beginning of his letter to the Romans where he argues that the Christian faith is for the whole world.
“What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” (Romans 1 v. 29)
The evidence is plain to our minds and plain to our consciences.
Modern science points strongly to God, the days have gone when secular humanists can claim science as an ally. There are now more Christians in our university science faculties than in any other. For this brief look at a sample of the evidence we will look at three areas of science.
The universe and its origins
Biology
Psychology
One of the problems that we have is that the ‘scientific method’ excludes the concept of God from the process being investigated. In the formula for a chemical reaction there is no space for God but this does not mean that God is not involved in setting up the system or in enabling the process to occur. When Isaac Newton, himself a convinced Christian, worked out how planets kept to their orbits, he defined the force of gravity. He did clearly recognise however that what he had discovered must have been both designed, made and set in motion by an omnipotent God. Isaac Newton said,
“He must be blind who, from the most wise and excellent contrivances of things, cannot see the infinite wisdom and goodness of their almighty creator, and he must be mad and senseless who refuses to acknowledge them.”
In a letter to a friend, Isaac Newton wrote,
“The rotations of the planets could not be derived from gravity, but required a divine arm to impress them.”
He actually wrote his major book, “Principia Mathematica”, partly with a view to sharing his Christian faith with others, with the aim that he might persuade them “for the belief of a Deity”.
Newton once built a model of the solar system to help him in his studies. One day an atheist friend came to visit him. Being impressed by the model he asked who had made it. “Nobody”, replied Newton.
When the scientist accused him of being ridiculous, Newton replied,
“If nobody has a problem in realising that a model needs a creator, why is it such a problem when confronted with the real universe?”
The foundation on which modern science grew is Christian thinking. It is no coincidence that the birth of modern science followed the conception of clear Biblical thinking in the Reformation. They understood that the world was not chaotic, but could be investigated because it is rational and runs according to certain laws, the laws of science. Such design necessitated a designer and lawmaker, a real thinking God.
The Universe and its Origins
There have been great advances in understanding the universe during the last 50 years. Albert Einstein’s work on the acceleration effects seen by different observers, led him to produce his 10 equations of ‘General Relativity’. Subtracting one set of these equations from another produced a further equation whose solution gave the surprising result that the universe is expanding. This strongly suggested that their must have been a beginning with a massive explosion.
This expansion of the universe was confirmed by the observation that the fainter a galaxy is, the redder is the light emitted. In 1929 the American astronomer Hubble pointed out the significance of the Doppler effect as an explanation for this. We all know of this effect when we listen to a car or train coming fast towards us. The pitch of the sound waves changes as the car passes and moves away. Hubble argued that in the same way the pitch of the light waves would change towards the red end of the spectrum if these galaxies were moving fast away from us. This red shift strongly supported the theory that the universe is expanding, with the most distant galaxies moving away fastest. This view has been further supported by studies using the satellites ‘Cosmic Explorer’ (1992) and more recently the ‘Hubble Satellite’.
If everything is moving away it is more than likely that there was not only an early explosion but that there was also a beginning. This would mean that matter, space and even time are finite.
The Bible begins with this very concept,
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . . . .”
Scientists have been hard at work trying to work out what might have happened right at the beginning to produce the world and universe we have today. We know this world is held together by four fundamental forces which are,
Gravity – the weakest of the forces but crosses massive distances
Electromagnetism
Strong nuclear forces – these hold the protons and neutrons tight together in atom’s nucleus. If an atom was magnified to the size of a football pitch the nucleus would be so tightly condensed as to be represented as a grain of sand in the centre.
Weak nuclear forces – these have a very short range and are significant in radioactive decay
If there was a ‘Big Bang’ at the beginning of the universe, then scientists have concluded that there would have to be a minute spot of infinite density from which everything was derived! At the explosion of this ‘infinite mass’, neutrons and protons and billions of photons would spread out into space. This would leave some background irradiation in space and the measured value of this coincides well with calculated theoretical assessments, thus supporting the theory of a ‘Big Bang’. The neutrons and protons combine to form Helium. Again calculations suggest that this should result in 3 protons of Hydrogen to every Helium and interestingly this is the ratio found in stars today.
However something very remarkable must have happened right at the very beginning of time, in that earliest fraction of a second, which scientists call ‘Planck time’, that is the first 10-43 of a second. It must have been at that time that the constants of the universe were set, the constants of science which eventually enabled the world to form and life to happen. The massive question that has to be answered is “Who set those constants?” If any were more than slightly different from what they are, the universe could not exist! Furthermore we are still left with the questions of where the original speck of infinite mass came from.
Let us look briefly at the importance of some of these constants.
It has been calculated that the explosive force of the ‘Big Bang’ would have to be extremely finely balanced by the force of gravity. The exactness of this has been calculated as having to be within 1 part in 1060 as otherwise the universe could not exist! If the explosion was slightly too powerful then the atoms would continue travelling out into space and could not congregate into galaxies. If gravity was slightly too strong, then after a few million years these atoms would be drawn back to the centre, into a ‘black hole’. Who set these?
If the strong nuclear force was 0.3% stronger or 2% weaker, the universe could not support life. Who set this?
Each atomic nucleus has ‘specific energy levels’ that affect the stability of that atom. Carbon is the atom on which all biochemistry, the chemistry of life, depends. In the early atomic explosion, hydrogen protons combine to form Helium. Two Helium atoms fuse to form Beryllium. The carbon atoms form when a Beryllium fuses with another Helium. The remarkable fact is that the specific energy of carbon is such that it can form in this way and is stable. Carbon can combine with another Helium to form oxygen, but if this readily happened life could not exist. The relative energy levels of carbon and oxygen mean that this reaction does not readily occur. If the energy level of the carbon nucleus were 4% lower, or if that of oxygen were only 0.5% higher then there would be virtually no carbon and the carbon based biochemistry of life would not occur. Who set these levels?
Water which is essential to life is remarkable as, unlike other chemicals, when it solidifies it becomes lighter. This is because of peculiar changes in the alignment of the water molecules as they freeze. This unique happening is vital for live to occur. If ice were heavier than water, then everything in water would die. Who arranged this?
Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the foremost scientists of this century. He was not a Christian but he concluded,
“I do not believe that any scientist who examined the evidence would fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside the stars.”
He also said,
“A super intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology.”
Professor Paul Davies was promoting atheism in 1983. The following year he conceded,
“The laws (of physics) seem themselves to be the product of exceeding ingenious design.”
In 1988 he wrote in his book, ‘The Cosmic Blueprint’,
“It seems as though someone has fine tuned nature’s numbers to make the universe. (There) . . is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming.”
This design feature that enables man to exist on earth is called ‘The Anthropic Principle’, ‘anthropos’ being Greek for ‘man’. For life to be possible on a planet more than 32 criteria need to be right. For example,
The ratio of oxygen to nitrogen in the atmosphere must be about 1 to 4 for the protective ozone layer to form.
The earth must be exactly the right size. If it were slightly larger the toxic gases of ammonia and methane would stay on the surface of the earth. If it were slightly smaller the water vapour would dissipate.
The earth must have the right magnetic field. If it were stronger, electro-magnetic storms would be too severe, and if weaker the ozone layer would give us inadequate protection.
The earth must rotate at the right tilt and speed. Any significant change from what we have would result in extreme surface temperature changes, which would be too great for life to exist.
The earth must be the right distance from its star. Too close and it would bee too hot and too far and it would be too cold. The earth is at the optimum distance.
The presence of the moon keeps the waters of the earth moving. We see the effect of this in our tides. This keeps the temperatures of the seas at even levels and so makes our weather habitable.
The massive question is, “Who arranged all this?”
You do hear some people suggesting that as there are so many stars, isn’t it likely that another planet exists where life could exist? In fact planets around stars are very rare. There is possibly only one planet for every 1000 stars. The universe has less than a trillion galaxies, and each on average has 100 billion stars. If just the 32 listed parameters needed to support life are necessary, and there are probably many more, then 1 trillionth of a trillionth of 1% of all planets would be capable of supporting life. Statistically therefore not even one planet could be expected to be expected to support life. Astrophysicist Hugh Ross has calculated that the approximate chance of a planet existing in the universe with these criteria is about 1 in 1030.
The Nobel Prizewinner who discovered the background irradiation in space, Arno Penzias, summarised his understanding,
“Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the right conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say “supernatural”) plan.”
T Pratchett analysed the evolutionary arguments and concluded, “The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: ‘In the beginning there was nothing and it exploded.’ ”
Biology and Evolution
If modern science fails to explain the cosmos, it fails even more when it comes to biology, particularly in the areas of the origin of life and the development of the different species.
1) The Origin of Life
In the 1920s two Marxist biologists, Alexandre Oparin in the USSR and J.B.S. Haldane in Britain, independently proposed the ‘Primordial Soup Theory’ to explain how amino acids and proteins might have first formed by natural processes. They suggested that collections of water containing methane, ammonia and hydrogen could spontaneously form amino acids with the input of some energy, such as lightning. In the early 1950s Stanley Millar, working in Chicago performed some experiments in which he energised such a fluid in a flask with electric sparks. After some days he found minute quantities of the basic amino acids, glycine and alanine. Subsequent experiments have revealed that the majority of amino acids can be created in this way. As proteins are made from amino acids, this caused great excitement. It was thought that this was the solution to one of the major missing links, until the problems were pointed out. In these experiments oxygen had been carefully excluded from the system to make it a ‘reducing’ environment. However the analysis of ancient rocks reveals that oxygen was present in the atmosphere at the time when life appeared.
When this experiment was repeated at Berkeley University, this time in the presence of oxygen, no organic compounds formed. There is also evidence that significant amounts of ammonia, methane and hydrogen could not have been present.
There is a further major problem. Life depends on there being DNA (Deoxy Ribo Nucleic acid) to act as storage material of the genetic material. This would quickly break down if it is not protected by being within a cell. How could it stay intact, even if it could be formed, before the cells developed?
Sir Fred Hoyle wrote an article in the eminent magazine ‘Nature’ in 1981 on the ‘Probability of life forming from inanimate matter’. This chance “is one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it . . . it is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup or any other. If the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”
2) Evolution
‘NeoDarwinism’ is the modern theory that life has evolved as a result of chance genetic mutations which gave survival advantages. It is proposed that over many billions of years this could explain how advanced species developed from more primitive ones and eventually from primitive life forms. Some have clutched desperately to this theory, however unlikely it appears, because the only other option is to acknowledge a creator. There are again several insurmountable problems with this theory.
Nearly all the mutations seen in the animal kingdom are deleterious.
We know of no mechanisms for forming extra chromosomes. In the animal kingdom additional chromosomes produce defects not advantages. Thus an additional chromosome number 21 in humans causes Downs syndrome.
It has been suggested that over the 4.7 billion years that the world has existed, anything could have happened. There is however no fossil evidence that life existed on earth before the Precambrian era, and even in those rocks, which some have dated up to 600 million years ago, there are very few fossils of multicellular organisms. In the next era, the Cambrian rocks contain a profusion of fossilised animals. They seem to have suddenly appeared in what has been described as the ‘Biological Big Bang’. The time available for this explosion in life forms to have appeared in has recently been revised downwards from 50 million years to 10 million years. This is a ridiculously short time geologically.
One aspect of evolutionary biology that has received relatively little attention is the nature of cells. The cellular structure does not differ much between organisms, whether they are very simple or most complex. Even the tiniest of bacteria is a highly complex miniature factory with specialised units undertaking all those functions necessary for life. No machine has ever been built with such complexity, let alone in such miniaturised form!
In 1967 there was a rather tense meeting between some mathematicians and leading Darwinists at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia. The mathematicians argued that there was nothing like enough time for the multitude of small beneficial mutations to have occurred in. Thus it was said that for an eye to develop and become even partially functional would necessitate there being huge numbers of specific mutations which would give no function until they were all present.
Michael Behe is a Professor of Biochemistry who has written an excellent book called ‘Darwin’s Black Box’. He talks about evolution in biochemical terms and powerfully argues that the appearance of biochemical processes by chance is absurd. He describes how cilia, the fine moving hairlike projections on some cells, are made like complex molecular motors which would fail to function if any part was missing. So many specifically shaped proteins with specific properties have to be present for any part to function. He looks are the biochemistry of vision, which relies on a complex cascade of enzymes. If any one enzyme in such a large cascade of a biochemical process is not present then nothing will work. How could these evolve by mutation and natural selection when the whole system is needed to work?
This all shouts,
“This world is designed to the minutest detail”.
Some people have insisted that life appeared by chance. But chance is a mathematical statistic. The chance that all these specific proteins formed by chance is infinitesimal.
Professor H.S.Lipson, a famous physicist, presided at the 1967 conference in Philadelphia. He later wrote in the ‘Physics Bulletin’,
“Very reluctantly, he now took the view that evolution could not be a chance process and that the only alternative is to postulate a creator.”
3) Biological Information
One of the most amazing properties of living organisms is the ability to pass on biological information to subsequent generations. To do this the organism needs energy, a stable storage material and clear information. The storage material usually used is DNA. This is by far the most efficient RAM storage material known. It has been calculated that the total knowledge stored in the world’s libraries is around 1018 ‘bits’. If all this was stored on silicone megachips it would need a pile that was higher than the distance between the earth and the moon. If stored in DNA all this information could be contained in a volume 1% the size of a pin-head. Who thought of this?
If a message in morse code was received from a Pulsar in outer space, everyone would assume that there must be someone intelligent out there. Any language is produced either directly or indirectly by someone’s mind. Now the language of DNA is highly sophisticated. Who wrote that? It had to come from a mind that wanted to communicate.
The God of the Bible is just such a personality. At the beginning of John’s record of the story of Jesus are the words,
“In the beginning was the word (Greek ‘logos’) . . .”
This word ‘logos’ could be translated ‘information’ or even ‘code’. The God of the Bible clearly teaches that the God who designed this world is involved in every detail of life and its continuation throughout the generations.
We are now back at the two world views that we started with. The beginning of the Bible reads,
“In the beginning God . . . ”
This contrasts starkly with the view expressed by one leading secular evolutionist who said,
“In the beginning life assembled itself.”
Psychology
If life did somehow ‘assemble itself ‘ by chance, think of the consequences. We are all simply meaningless accidents, chance conglomerations of atoms. Then life has no meaning, there is no reliable logic or truth and certainly no morality.
No meaning
If there is no God then our existence is meaningless. This would be such an intolerable state of affairs that we would have to invent one! The twentieth century philosopher Albert Camus wrote,
“What is intolerable is to see one’s life drained of meaning. To be told there is no reason for existing. A man cannot live without some reason for living.”
2. No truth or logic
If there is no God truth cannot be a real entity that can be sought and relied on. I was recently discussing with some very intelligent medical consultants ‘What is truth?’ They finally had to suggest that the only possible answer was ‘consensus’. However ‘consensus’ is easy to manipulate as Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Hitler’s Third Reich, or as our political ‘spin doctors’ can tell us. The only definition of truth that can stand is one that relates to an absolute, as Plato recognised. Truth may thus be defined as ‘a concept compatible with God’. If there is no God, there is no truth, only consensus.
Logic also becomes unreliable. Professor Haldane astutely said,
“If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motion of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true, . . . and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be compose of atoms.”
Charles Darwin himself was concerned about this and wrote,
“The horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?”
All of science depends upon the obvious finding that we live in a rational universe. Albert Einstein puzzled over the reason for this, saying,
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is intelligible.”
3) No basis for valid emotions
If we are just chance happenings that randomly appeared against all the odds, we are nothing but biological machines. The atheist Francis Crick, who discovered the double helix structure of DNA, deduced,
“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”
Yet no-one lives on that basis. We cherish our emotions even more than logic. We do value such characteristics as beauty, love, courage and integrity and live our lives relying on their validity even if they cannot be real according to our philosophy.
4. No morality
If there is no creator, no one to whom we are ultimately responsible, if we are just chance happenings, then there can be no right or wrong.
In 1992 an article appeared in ‘She’ magazine entitled ‘How moral are you?’
“Ethics is knowing how much you can get away with. I would like among other things to be known as an ethical man. ‘Ethical’ has a ring to it, a suggestion that not only does your sense of truth, kindness and honour have a spiritual base, but an intellectual one too. But the truth is that there is no such thing as truth. (!!!) And without truth how can there be ethics?”
Yet instinctively we all know that there is a right and wrong. God says that he put that there. The God revealed in the Bible says that he has given us everything in this world both to enjoy and to look after. Thus God invented sex. He doesn’t look down in astonishment from heaven and say,
“Oh my goodness, what will they think of next!”
Pleasure is God’s gift to us, but he has also told us how to enjoy his world to the full by living in tune with him. Thus God says that sex is to be enjoyed only in a lifetime commitment of one man to one woman. Those who disregard God in this regard risk major physical, psychological, marital, and social havoc as our newspapers tell us every day.
Today I was watching a discussion on teenage pregnancies on television. With me was a doctor from Sri Lanka. He made the pertinent observation,
“You people have made great advances in technology, but you are no longer civilised.”
5) Guilt
This is a problem that we all have to face. None of us live as we know we ought to. We are even more ready to criticise others when they fail to do ‘what is right’. Without a God there can be no moral obligation or right or wrong, yet we all live as if there is. When C.S.Lewis first considered the claims of Jesus Christ seriously, he looked at himself seriously and was not pleased with what he saw.
“For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me, a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.”
I recognise this in myself. Who can forgive us, but God alone?
Marghanita Laski, a humanist, was debating on television with a Christian. She made the following amazing statement,
“What I envy most about you Christians is your forgiveness.”
Then she added rather pathetically,
“I have no one to forgive me.”
Evidence for Jesus being God
Having briefly looked at the evidence that there must be a communicating God who is intimately involved in this world the next question is to know how he has revealed himself to us. This is a major topic which has been reviewed in my book, ‘Cure for Life’. The evidence that Jesus is God comes under several headings,
He clearly claims repeatedly that he is God and his enemies condemned him for this claim,
“. . . because you, a mere man, claim to be God.” (John 10 v. 33)
Jesus said,
“I and the Father are one” (John 10 v. 30)
“How can you say ‘Show us the Father?’ Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me?” (John 14 v. 9,10)
At his trial before Caiaphas, the High Priest, Jesus was asked,
“I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the son of God.”
“Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied, “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the mighty one and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matthew 26 v. 63,64)
2. The evidence from his remarkable life and teaching
3. The evidence for the miracles that he did, and in particular his resurrection three days after his crucifixion.
4. The evidence that those who knew him best, his family and disciples were so convinced about the claims of Jesus. 11 of the 12 apostles were martyred for spreading this story, refusing to deny that Jesus was God.
5. There are many other ancient manuscripts about Jesus
6. He still has the unique ability to radically change his followers lives for the better today.
Why isn’t everyone a Christian?
It is nearly always because we want to remain independent of God. We do not want there to be God that we are responsible to, so we turn a blind eye to the evidence. It is this stubborn rejection of God that so angers him, even if it is done ever so politely!
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about god is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” (Romans 1 v. 18)
The writer Aldous Huxley admitted this bias in making this decision in ‘Ends and Means’. He was an older man when he wrote this!
“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning, consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. . . . For myself the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”
Conclusion
Though some limited truths about how things happen can be discovered by the scientific method, it cannot solve the real problems that face all of us. Professor Stephen Hawking acknowledged this saying,
“Although science may solve the problem of how the universe began, it cannot answer the question ‘Why does the universe bother to exist?’ I don’t know the answer to that.”
Science is limited to answering questions about how things work. It has nothing to say about right or wrong, the purpose of life, God or eternity. Why we are here is not a question that science can answer. The question ‘Why?’ can only be answered by God himself. The English Nobel prizewinning physicist, William Bragg (1862 –1945), giving a lecture at the Royal Institution in London in 1919, said these words,
“From religion comes a man’s purpose, from science his power to achieve it. Some people ask if religion and science are opposed to each other. They are, in the same way that the thumb and fingers are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped.”
There is abundant evidence from nature that there must be an incredibly intelligent mind behind the creation of this universe and the life we know on earth. The God of the Bible insists that we should all recognise this authority he has over us and place our lives under the authority of his one and only Son. When Paul was speaking about this demand of God to the intelligentsia in Athens, he spoke out plainly. He stressed that all need to recognise who Jesus is, that there is adequate evidence to support that claim, and that rejection of God will not go unnoticed.
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all men everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17 v. 30-33)
We are each responsible for our own destiny. It depends on the decision we make about Jesus the Christ. Is He to have authority over how we live our lives or are we determined to remain independent of Him?
BVP April 2001
