Here's how you can reach out to your friends and family who are atheists. ( Charisma archives )

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The Apostle's Creed begins by saying, "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." Everything about Christianity begins with belief in God. Without this foundational belief, no other beliefs are possible, especially pertaining to God sending His Son. Without God, there is no Son of God.

This is why being sure of God's existence is the foundation of Christianity. In this article, I will present the clear evidence of God's existence and how logically we can move from this surety to surety about Jesus Christ.

1. The Universe cannot exist without a Creator

The first fact that proves God's existence is the existence of the universe. No rational person doubts that the universe exists, so how and why did it get here? In biblical language, the Scripture starts with, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen 1:1). This statement declares that the universe has a beginning. It started at some point that we call time.

Outside of the Bible, how do we know that the universe has a beginning? Science affirms that the universe began by discovering that the universe is ever expanding. Why is an ever expanding universe important? Because, as you work backwards from expansion, there must be a place and time called the beginning. In scientific terms, the beginning is called the big bang. Scientists can investigate what happened at the first point of time, but there is no explanation outside of an Agent producing the first action within time. In other words, creation was made and you cannot have "nothing" making "something." That means the universe was created! You can call the universe "creation."

The Bible, along with science, affirms an expanding universe, thus logically a Creator: "Thus says God the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread forth the earth and that which comes out of it, who gives breath to the people on it,

and spirit to those who walk in it" (Is. 42:5). The imagery beautifully portrays the expansion of the universe with the language that God "stretched them out." It's a picture of a tent maker who stretches out the tent to be inhabited. The tent, at first, is wrapped tightly with ropes, and then the maker unties the ropes and expands the tent.

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Science affirms that the universe is expanding at the speed of light, and interestingly the first act of creation, according to the Bible, is God making light, "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light" (Gen 1:3). This is not the creation of the sun, for that did not come about until the fourth day of creation.

Prior to the discovery of the expanding universe and the logical conclusion of the big bang, atheists in times past argued that the universe was eternal, and thus no one or no agent or no being needed to make it. If it has always been here, they argued, then no Creator is necessary to explain the universe's existence. But the big bang proved that something had to precede the first action of creation. Otherwise, the conclusion is that "nothing" made the universe. Logic demands that something, even greater than the universe, must exist to cause the universe to exist. And the cause of the universe must be uncreated, outside of time and beyond matter. This is the biblical description of God—uncreated, eternal and invisible.

No wonder the Bible says, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Ps. 53:1). A person has to intentionally fail to use his mind and logic in order to come up with the ludicrous conclusion that God does not exist. If God does not exist, how does one explain the fact that the universe exists, unless a person wants to deny the existence of the universe?

The Apostle Paul puts it this way, "The invisible things about Him—His eternal power and deity—have been clearly seen since the creation of the world and are understood by the things that are made, so that they are without excuse" (Rom 1:20). Paul is saying the fact that the "creation" exists means the "Creator" exists. You cannot have one without the other.

Why do atheists insist on trying to undermine the beginning of the universe? They do so because they know logically that would mean a Creator has to exist. They get it, but instead of accepting the logic of the beginning, they deny there is any beginning or conclude that the universe came from nothing. This of course, makes no sense.

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