v 3. And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.
One of the great Evangelists of the 20th century was Billy Graham. His preaching was clear, and his ministry brought crowds of people to faith in Jesus. But many others mocked his message! They ridiculed the notion that it was possible to know God. The headline ‘Billy Graham says he knows God.’ was the butt of many cartoons and comic jokes. And to tell the truth, it is a very dramatic claim and does seem to be a little eccentric. How can an aging and finite creature claim to know – at a personal level – the infinite creator of the universe? The whole idea of knowing God is loaded with all kinds of baggage. Do you really believe God exists in the first place? And if He does, how do you know He created the universe? Isn’t God just a figment of human imagination; a good person scaled up to the nth degree?
And how on earth can anyone believe in eternal life? When I die, I die and am gone and my ashes are collected from the Crematorium. So what is all this nonsense about resurrection and eternal life? Claiming to know God, and have eternal life, is so much wishful thinking isn’t it? It can’t be real!
How often you might have come across that attitude, even if not expressed in such a direct or confrontational fashion. What can you say in response?
It is always good to go back to the person Jesus was. It is not just that we believe what He said, we trust the Man He was. The views of Him as a mad and deluded visionary, or a bad and extraordinarily manipulative teacher simply do not fit in with the picture we get of Him in the Bible stories. His words and actions match, and if He says we can know both Him and our Heavenly Father and so find eternal life, I for one am prepared to gamble everything on that! You may have done the same – so keep going!
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