Remember your Creator in the days of your youth! |
Hi ,
"Seeing is believing" is a common idiom. We employ it in the same sense as “prove it to me”, or “I’ll believe it when I see it!”. Something we identify as unlikely or incredible needs to be verified by our senses for us to be
able to accept it as true. We all do it. It is the idea behind what the apostle Thomas said when the others claimed to have seen Jesus alive after His death. He wouldn’t believe unless he saw it with his own eyes. Once his senses perceived what he had been told, then he would put his trust in it, and that’s indeed what happened. Jesus Himself even used this concept in John 14:11 when He told the still-unbelieving people to trust Him even based just on the miracles, something that
they had indeed seen.
But, is “seeing” always “believing”? It seems that the opposite is often true. We are familiar with Matt. 13:14, in which Isaiah’s prophecy is quoted: “Indeed, in their case the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled that says: “‘You will indeed hear but never
understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive.” How can both concepts be true?!
It seems that the basic issue is the condition of the heart. How open is a person’s mind and heart to truth? And, upon hearing truth, or at least reason, what is the likelihood that he will change his viewpoint?
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“Seeing is believing” seems only to apply to a person who is actually willing to accept
that he might be wrong and is willing to change. For example, we know of a man who resisted the message of salvation only because he refused to believe that there was any reasonable mechanism that could have produced the global flood. At a Bible study, when the hydroplate theory video was shown, this made total sense to him. In his case, seeing a reasonable, biblical, and scientific model that could have done what he had judged to be impossible, caused him to change
his mind. He not only accepted the theory as plausible, but because of that, also gave his heart to the Lord!
Similarly, how many people might truly believe the whole Bible and even become Christians if Noah’s ark was actually found and proven, through the senses, to exist? Our hope would be, of course, that people would put all of the other pieces together and see their
need of a savior. However, we have an enemy. The devil a) does not want the ark discovered, probably for that very reason, and b) has people so blinded that many would still refuse to believe. On the surface, that seems incredible that they would still not believe!...
(continued next week)
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