Eyewitness Accounts to God’s Glory

Presentation

Tim Moore: We exist to proclaim the soon return of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. And obviously, our message harkens toward the book of Revelation, the end of time, whereas Genesis looks back on the beginning of time, the creation itself. But one of the theme verses as we were envisioning this particular conference comes from the book of Psalm, chapter 90, “Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.” And Randy and I affirm that today. We are here to proclaim the true and living God who was the Alpha and the Omega, who still lives, who is coming again, and He is the creator God. Jesus testified to this same fact in Revelation 22, He said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”

A few months prior to this conference, I was subpoenaed to testify in court about a young lady who was injured in an accident. My knowledge of her accident was very limited and my recent interaction with her was also very limited. But her lawyer said that I would make a compelling witness because of my background and my titles. Whatever I did say could be trusted.

With that in mind, I began to explore the value of eyewitness testimony. You all have seen enough television shows and movies to know that when you go to a courtroom as a witness, you are asked to lay your hand on a Bible. At least, that’s the tradition, to raise your right hand and you’re asked this question, “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” And the goal is to impart upon a witness an expectation that they will be truthful and that they’re beholden not just to that court, although the judge will hold them in contempt if he or she finds that there has been some kind of fallacy, but really they’re beholden to God.

Now if you go online and search for a modern day oath that is administered in a court of law, they are beginning to remove the phrase, “So help you God.” And they don’t even ask people to swear, they just say, will you affirm? Are you going to be mostly truthful? We’ve kind of lost some of the significance even of the oath that was given. And yet we know One who is perfect in giving testimony. Which is why the writer of Hebrews also said that when God made a promise to Abraham, the promise as it says, “Since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself and said, ‘I will surely bless you and I will multiply you surely.'”

So what was Abram’s response, Abraham, as we know him? Why was Abraham credited with righteousness? What did Abraham do that imputed righteousness on himself? He merely believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. I love the way this is phrased in Romans 4:3, because I think Paul gets it exactly right, “Abraham believed God.”

If you go back to the Genesis version, at least in my New American Standard, it inserts the word in God. But I would submit to you all that Satan believes in God. As a matter of fact, he knows Him personally. He’s been in His presence. He’s been in the throne room of heaven. And so Satan knows the power of God. But does he believe God? Does he put trust in Him? Does he put His faith in God? Does he obey Him in a relationship of belief? No, but Abraham did. And because of that, Abraham was credited with righteousness.

We can go to Jesus’ own testimony about Himself in Revelation. I promise you I’ll get to Revelation more even in the second hour that I speak. But in Revelation 3:14, Jesus describing Himself in one of His dictated letters to the churches it says, “The Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God says this.” Yes, our God is a credible and a faithful witness. And yet our modern society wants to undermine even our faith in our credible God. And this goes all the way back to the beginning when Satan posed this question to Eve. “Did God really say?”

How many times today, and Dr. Guliuzza already shared the discrediting of God’s Word by those who would even claim to be faithful followers, evangelical Christians. Did God really say, did He really mean what He said?

But Job says this, “Behold, even these understandings are just the fringes of his way.” Job understood that we with our limited minds, I like to say I’ve only got a three pound brain and it’s smaller than the average brain, we cannot possibly comprehend the awesome glories of God’s knowledge. But He has allowed us to see and witness enough that we should give Him praise, honor and glory. And Job said, “Who can understand?” Well without Revelation, quite frankly no one could.

But Paul records this, he says that, “For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes,” all the aspects of God’s nature are evident, so that even those who see the same things we do and come up with another explanation, “they are without excuse.” It’s my underlining, without excuse. Those very people that Dr. G talked about who are trying to diminish the relevance of the Word of God and trying to give themselves over to a secular, pagan mindset are also without excuse. “Because even though they claim to know God, they are not honoring Him or giving thanks, but they are becoming futile in their speculations.” And their what? “Their foolish hearts are becoming darkened.” And as Randy again said, “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” Romans 1, just to read a powerful text that is so relevant in our modern day, chapter one, verse 23, “They exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-legged creatures and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over.” In other words, they exchanged the testimony of a credible witness for that of an image.

Well, I think God, not to make light of this, would respond this way, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” How many of you trust what you see? Anybody seen an illusionist do acts where it’s amazing, you think, “Well, there’s some magic involved?” No, it’s just that our eyes can deceive us. Our minds, fallen as they are and imperfect yet can deceive us. So who are we going to believe? Are we going to believe God? Not Groucho Marx. Or are we going to believe our own lying eyes?

Well, the writer of Hebrews said that, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets,” in other words, through the prophets, “in many portions and ways, in these last days has spoken to us through His Son.” Whom He appointed what? “Heir of all things, and through whom He also made the world.” There again, reaffirmation that Jesus Christ is the creator. “For this reason, we must pay closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it.”

You know, it’s said if a ship doesn’t take proactive measures, I can say the same thing for an airplane, if I don’t take proactive measures to tackle the wind, to counteract the effects of wind or waves, I will simply drift along on a course that will take me away from my destination. If we as Christians just kind of drift along in our increasingly pagan and secularized culture, we are not going to end up at the destination that we wanted to. Yes, I’m not denying that we are once saved, always saved. In other words, the Lord has us in His hands. But our minds will drift away from holding fast to the doctrine of faith, once for all handed down by the saints.

When it comes to Jesus giving testimony to and affirming even the Old Testament accounts, what am I talking about? Well, He affirms the history of the Old Testament. We could talk about Him affirming man and woman having been created by God, the outpouring of God’s judgment in a global flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, these were real places. He affirms that Moses was given Ten Commandments. These are not myths. Jesus referred to them as historical facts. He also talked about David being a king in waiting, and yes, eating consecrated bread. About the Queen of Sheba coming and visiting Solomon. About Daniel’s prophecy of the abomination of desolation. And about Jonah in the belly of a great fish.

You know there are scoffers even today who say, “Oh, I can’t believe that a great fish could swallow Jonah.” Well, there’s been documented cases of sailors being swallowed by great fish, even in modern era and coming out many hours later with their skin virtually bleached. That’s a scientific and historical fact in recent times. So, I absolutely believe that Jonah indeed went down the gullet of a great fish and three days and three nights later was vomited up, when he finally came to the end of himself and was willing to obey the call of God.

We know that Jesus also has affirmed many people from the Old Testament, including Abel, Abraham, Lot’s wife, Isaac and Jacob, David, Solomon, Elijah and Elisha, and again Jonah as a messianic prophecy of what He would endure Himself following His crucifixion.

Now Bible prophecy demonstrates that God has the knowledge to predict the future and to know what happened in the ancient past. He has the audacity to proclaim the future and He has the power to see to it that what He proclaims comes to pass.

Back to Job, even as God finally answered Job, who had a few questions. I got some things to ask God when I get my chance. How many of you have heard people say, “When I get to heaven, I got some things I want to ask God.” Who do we think we are? And God said, silencing Job and his questions, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” Putting Job in his place and silencing him before heaven.

So, let’s just take a step back for a moment and consider how we perceive things versus how the Lord God perceives things. Now you’ve always heard, hindsight is 20-20. Yes, we can only see clearly in hindsight. But I daresay I can only see clearly very short distances in hindsight because as my father would say, I’m blessed with a real good forgetter. If you told me something a long, long time ago, like yesterday, I might’ve forgotten. And looking forward, I don’t even have the ability to anticipate what’s coming ahead. It’s sort of like driving down the road. Have you ever been driving down a road that is it wide open, it’s a beautiful day, and you have no idea that around the next bend there’s an accident that’s going to snarl you in traffic for the next two or three hours. Because we can only see what’s right in front of our faces. And using the analogy of the rearview mirror, I can’t even see very far behind me. But being an airplane pilot, I can tell you that if you climb up in the air to 10, 20, 30,000 feet, I’ve looked down at people driving and said, “Wow, those folks have no idea that about an hour later they’re going to hit a big traffic jam out in the middle of nowhere. And well, look what they just missed behind them There’s another big snarl that they must have come through or didn’t capture them.” I can look down and see much farther than the person trekking along that road.

With that in mind, how far can Jesus Christ, how far can our God see in human history? Brothers and sisters, He can look down on the beginning and the end with equal clarity, and everything in between. We call it in the flying world a God’s Eye View, and that’s not meant to be undermining or sacrilegious. It really is respecting that only God has perfect vision, as Randy said, perspicuity. There’s a fancy word for a Kentucky boy. That God not only sees with absolute clarity, but He can reveal what He has chosen to reveal so that we can have greater understanding and clarity ourselves.

So, what gets in the way of us even being able to understand what God has revealed? Why do we see through a glass dimly or opaquely? Well, first of all, sin has dimmed our own eyes. As I said it before, faulty thinking, sometimes faulty vision, biased perception, whatever. Sometimes that sin nature dims our eyes. We know that Satan would like to purposely obscure God or at least distract us. That’s exactly what Peter experienced. He looked around and saw the wind as he was walking on the water. Have you ever seen wind, by the way? Now what did he see? He saw the effects of the wind, the waves and the spray, and it took his eyes off Christ. And Satan would love to take your eyes off of Christ with all the distractions in this life and in this world. Because he knows if he can take your eyes off Christ, then maybe you too will begin to sink into the waves of discouragement and concern and even, “Oh, I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Keep your eyes on Christ, because He does.

And finally, I will candidly confess that there are some things that are secret, that belong only to the Lord. Now I, being a very curious person, would like to know. How many of y’all have inquiring minds and would like to know? Yeah, you’re here at the ICR Discovery Center because you have an inquiring mind. You want to know; you want to understand. But Moses made very clear in Deuteronomy, “The secret things belong to our God.”

As I’ve said with my small, undersized brain, if God tried to reveal all of His knowledge to me, Tim Moore, my head would explode. It’d be very ugly, cleanup on aisle four. Well, God tried to reveal all his knowledge to Tim Moore and it didn’t go very well. He has revealed what He wants me to know and what I’m capable of understanding. The secret things belong to Him. And you know what, I’m actually okay with that. Because the things that are revealed belong to us, to our sons forever.

The most important thing, the most important person who has been revealed is who? Jesus Christ. Do you ever think about, again, the blessing of living when we live, in the year 2024? We can look with hindsight and know the Messiah, our Savior by name. Every prophet who lived and testified and recorded in the Old Testament was anticipating Him. You know His name and you know His finished work, something that even the disciples didn’t quite get, as we’ll talk later, as they walked with Him and He ministered on the earth.

Now we know that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of creation. We know that, “By Him all things were created, both in heaven and on earth. And all things have been created through Him and for Him.” And we also know, again, that all things were created through Him. I’m reaffirming why we’re tying the things to come in the end with the beginning of all history as recorded in Genesis, because God Himself has revealed it.

And on that note, I will just tell you, even as a senior evangelist of a ministry that proclaims Christ’s soon return and focuses much of our teaching on Bible prophecy, here’s the go-to verse. All of God’s prophetic Word points to Christ, “The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” So we don’t chase after prophecy for some esoteric, fantastical curiosity. We dive into the full counsel of God, including His prophetic Word, because it testifies and points to Jesus Christ, our creator God, our Savior, and our soon-coming King.

Part 2

Nathan Jones: Tim, in your presentation you cited Groucho Marx who famously asked, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?” Well, last week you said that we basically have a choice when it comes to Genesis and Revelation. Are we going to believe God or are we going to trust our own senses and understanding? To a large degree, the question is whether we are going to trust God or Satan.

Tim Moore: That is the final choice. Certainly, our eyes lie to us, as do our ears and our other senses. Our own heart deceives us and is more deceitful than most of us would like to admit. But underlying, no pun intended, all those casual deceptions is the father of lies, Satan. In the Garden of Eden he first asked Eve, “Indeed, has God said?” Then when Eve garbled God’s clear instruction, Satan contradicted him outright, declaring, “You surely will not die!” He’s been doing the same ever since, asking seemingly innocuous questions that cause us to doubt God, before ultimately trying to discredit him altogether.

Nathan Jones: We can see that playing out before our eyes are so many young people that have bought into the lie about the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Even when they attend universities that used to be dedicated to pursuit of truth and knowledge, they’ve given themselves over to ignorance and lies.

Tim Moore: That’s a great point. Harvard’s original motto was Truth for Christ and the Church, in Latin. But several years ago, Harvard bowed to pressure from its faculty and students and removed any reference to Christ or the church, leaving only Veritas or truth. Clearly what we have witnessed this year alone from the behavior of its faculty and its students to the despicable equivocating of its president demonstrates that truth is no longer valued either. And that same attitude is prevalent across America’s public colleges and universities. Christians must reject and oppose false teaching wherever it arises. We worship the One who said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through Me.” And that is not our own opinion, that is the life-giving revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. As Peter testified, “Lord, to whom else will we go? You have the words of eternal life, we have believed and know that you are the holy one of God.”

Nathan Jones: Well folks, if you want to learn more about our creator God, ICR’s “Acts and Facts” magazine offers scientific proof of God’s testimony about creation. Our own “Lamplighter” magazine provides insights from God’s prophetic Word, encouraging strength for today and a bright hope for tomorrow, it’s free at our website, or the print edition is only $25 a year. Because we can only share a portion of conference presentations on our weekly “Christ in Prophecy” television program, many of you will merely have your appetites whet and be eager for a deeper dive. For only $15, you can receive a copy of the two-DVD set containing all four presentations from the Everlasting to Everlasting Conference, along with the question and answer session. Just call the number on the screen or visit our online store. Or for only $40, we’ll send you the conference DVDs along with a copy of our new Revelation Study Guide and Jobe Martin’s book, “Evolution of a Creationist.” Just ask for bundle 1002. Tim, one of the things you mentioned in your presentation was having a God’s Eye View. Well, what exactly is a God’s Eye View and how does it play into perspicuity?

Tim Moore: You know, a God’s Eye View merely means that God can see the beginning from the end and everything in between, the same way someone in an airplane can see much farther than someone driving along a road. With his perfect vision and His high and lifted up perspective, God can see the entire expanse of creation throughout time. Indeed, He exists outside of time as we know it. Coupled with His unequaled ability to see and know all, God is also able to communicate clearly and effectively. That is what we mean by perspicuity. His Word is clear and easy to understand.

Nathan Jones: What about the charge many level, that the Bible is not clear and not easy to understand? Well, even for the faithful, committed Christians, there are passages that evade that interpretation.

Tim Moore: That’s a great question. I’ll simply say this, the basic proof of the Gospel is so simple and straightforward that even a child can understand it. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, our sins and our sinful nature have separated us from God. Because He is holy and our natural state is to live in rebellion against Him, His wrath abides on us. But the good news of the Gospel is that God so loved the world, the wicked, sinful, rebellious world, and you and me, that He sent His own son to suffer the punishment we deserved. He died so that we can live. And by simply trusting in Him and His finished work on the Cross of Calvary, we can have everlasting life. So simple and yet so profound. So straightforward, and yet demonstrating love so great as to be unfathomable by mortal man.

Other parts of God’s Word can only be understood through much study and prayer, by complete reliance on the revealing of the Holy Spirit, and by waiting until the time is right for God to give us discernment. Sadly, some people, including many Christians, want to take a shortcut to understanding, skipping the study, ignoring the prayer, relying on their own understanding instead of leaning on the Lord, and exhibiting great impatience with the whole process.

Nathan Jones: Well, I can testify to all of that. And we know that even great prophets like Daniel were frustrated that they could not understand all that was revealed to them. God had to tell Daniel to go his way, promising that understanding would come in due time to those who would follow after Him. I also find that some people allow their doubts, legitimate or otherwise, to cloud their discernment and undermine their faith. The disciple Thomas exemplifies such an attitude. While refusing to believe eyewitness testimony of the other disciples following Jesus’ resurrection, he said, “Until I see in his hands the imprints of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.” When Jesus appeared, he singled out Thomas, and he said, “Reach here with your fingers and see My hands, and reach here your hand and put it in My side. And do not be unbelieving, but believing.” Thomas instantly shifted from disbelief to belief.

Tim Moore: Yes, and Jesus said, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are they who did not see and yet believe.” Our faith is not by sight, but neither is it blind faith. As the writer of Hebrews says, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the convictions of things not seen.” And I’ve come to realize that I am more assured of my faith in Christ than all the things I can perceive with my own natural senses. And more than anything else, I take Him at His Word, His complete Word, including His Prophetic Word.

Nathan Jones: Well, speaking of the time, we’re about to run out of it today. So what can our viewers look forward to next week, Tim?

Tim Moore: Well, next week, Randy Guliuzza will explain why Genesis matters to John 3:16. In other words, unless we understand the perfection of creation and the tragedy of the fall, we cannot understand the necessity or the miraculous provision of the Gospel.

Nathan Jones: Well said. You cannot deny God’s testimony of the beginning and then accept His testimony of salvation.

Tim Moore: Until next week, on behalf of the entire team here at Lamb & Lion Ministries, and in the name of Him who bears eyewitness testimony of the beginning and the end, who was and is and is coming again, Godspeed.

End of Program