" Brothers and sisters, consider what you were when God called you to be Christians. Not many of you were wise from a human point of view. You were not in powerful positions or in the upper social classes. But God chose what the world considers nonsense to put wise people to shame. God chose what the world considers weak to put what is strong to shame. God chose what the world considers ordinary and what it despises—what it considers to be nothing—in order to destroy what it considers to be something." (1 Corinthians 1:26-28) GWB

Listen to any Christian vs Atheist debate and you will soon hear about how the Bible says some crazy things. A talking snake, man surviving three days in the belly of a big fish, and a story about a man who was crucified to death yet rose bodily from the grave to live again, etc. To the "wise" of the world these things seem more like ancient fables than historical truths. And that is precisely why God did it that way. He knew that only those with child-like faith could believe such impossible stories.

Consider the story of Jonah. Jonah was chosen by God to be a prophet to the wicked pagan city of Nineveh. God commissioned Jonah to warn the people there that God was bringing destruction upon them due to their evil ways. Nineveh was the capital city of the dreaded Assyrian Empire and Jonah hated them - he wanted God to bring ruin upon them. Not wanting to warn Nineveh he tried to flee from God by boarding a ship. When the ship encountered a sudden storm Jonah admitted to the crew that he was the probable cause. As a result the crew cast Jonah into the angry sea. But God had a plan. He had prepared a special fish with the ability to preserve the Prophet. Near of the end of three days and three nights in the belly of the fish Jonah was convicted of his disobedience and prayed a prayer of repentance. God heard his plea and directed the fish to release Jonah on the shore of Nineveh.

A couple of observations should be made here. 1. The three days and three nights was necessary because it would be the only sign that Jesus would give that He was the Messiah, -"Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to Him, ‘Teacher, we want to see a sign from You.’ An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign; and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the Prophet; for just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." (Matthew 12:38-40)

One should ask, "which is easier, -preserve a man in a fish for three days, or being dead in the grave for three days before being resurrected?" Of course both accounts are designed to confound the wise of the world. 2. God had a plan to help get Nineveh’s attention. Since the Assyrian’s worshiped Dagon, a fish god, having Jonah delivered to the city by a great fish was the best way to ensure that the people would listen to the Prophet. Not only did they listen, but they repented and began to fast in hope that God would have mercy. They were not disappointed because God spared them.

Though the "wise" men of today could see a clear reason and necessity for this to happen in this way, they would also reject it as being truthful since both accounts are scientifically impossible. But that’s the elephant in the room. What happened with both Jonah and Jesus were miracles, so of course they were natural impossibilities. And that’s the point of it all, -"With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)

What if God had done it in a more simple way? What if God had arranged Jonah to find a floating log that eventually washed up on the shore of Nineveh? Certainly that would make it easier for the Richard Dawkins - Sam Harris - Atheist crowd to believe. However, if God had done it that way their quick response would be, -"Lots of people have survived the seas floating on a piece of wood! You don’t need a God for that! That’s not a miracle!"Oh, but you see, God did it in such a way as to make it impossible to be anything but a miracle. A miracle that only those with child-like faith would believe, -"Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 18:3) The unbelieving "wise" of this world would believe an account where God wasn’t needed and reject an account that was of necessity a miracle. God has done things in such a way as to give witness to His existence, and that He works in the affairs of men.

Consider if Jesus was not resurrected in bodily form and instead rose as a spirit. People have long believed that the spirits of the living continue to live on in a non-material realm. Virtually all cultures have believed in the lie that man has an immortal soul which cannot die. Jesus’ fleshly body rose from the dead. His body still had the wounds of His scourging and crucifixion -He did not appear to His followers as a ghostly spirit. And one of the reasons this was necessary was to confound the "wise." From ancient times people have claimed to have seen and interacted with departed spirits. Most all cultures have believed in ghosts of the dead. Jesus is a Spirit, but if Jesus had not risen and appeared in bodily form skeptics would assert, "Jesus wasn’t actually resurrected, His body was still in the tomb. His followers claims were nothing more than those who say they have seen a ghost! People "see" what they want to see-it’s not real-just superstition!"

Those of us with child-like faith are very often accused of having blind faith. But this is not true -our eyes have been opened to see what the "wise" of the world cannot. "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God, or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools." (Romans 1:20-22) For those of us who have experienced the Presence of God and have seen the miracle of His creation, it’s easy for us to believe. Everywhere we look we see the handiwork of an awesome Creator. The very DNA in your body, laid end to end would stretch across the Milky Way Galaxy! It is a written code of instructions for what makes you, you. As David observed, "We are wonderfully and fearfully made." As a young shepherd boy who loved the Lord, he would gaze at the expanse of the universe and wonder, "When I consider Your Heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained; What is man that you take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?"

Scientists agree that the universe had a specific beginning and came into existence from "nothing." That’s exactly what the Bible says, -"By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the Word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible." (Hebrews 11:3) God spoke the universe into existence and commanded to be all that there is. Our universe is confined by certain laws of physics - it exists in time, but God simply is the "I AM", the ever-existing One with no beginning nor end.

Atheists often ask, -"If the universe has a Creator then who created the Creator?" This is, in fact a very bad position to take because if the Creator God needed a Creator, then His Creator would also need a Creator and we would enter into infinite regress-which itself, would prove eternity. Of course, an infinite regress is impossible, whereas the existence of an eternal Being is not. Our universe itself is still expanding into the "emptiness" of space which is eternal. For mere man who lives perhaps 60 years as an adult to confidently assert that the universe and the wonders of all living things on the earth to have arisen from nothing is nonsensical.

The earth and all things in it is filled with necessary information. There is no living organism on this planet that is not coded with information in order to live, grow and function. Twenty five years ago the Bible was found to be filled with codes from God. In 1994 Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips and Yoav Rosenberg published a paper, "Equidistant Letter Sequences in the Book of Genesis", in the scientific journal Statistical Science. The paper, which was presented by the journal as a "challenging puzzle", presented strong statistical evidence that biographical information about famous rabbis was encoded in the text of the Book of Genesis, centuries before those rabbis lived.

When the news began to circulate that the Bible contained hidden codes which could be searched many were astonished and excitedly joined in. Soon, computer programs were created which the ordinary person could use to search the Bible for hidden codes. No more need to read and understand Hebrew because the software did it for you. Information is searched by using numerical sequences, such as counting every seven Hebrew letters straight through a book of the Bible which would spell out full sentences. Many major events in history were being found with exact dates and places. Yeshua as the Lamb of God was found many places. At first only single Bible books such as Genesis or Isaiah were searched, but suddenly an even greater discovery was made -a readable and related sequence that stretched through the entire Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. The implications were staggering! This meant that God had so preserved His Word that every book was canonized properly and arranged in perfect order. Exactly as Jesus had promised, -"Heaven and earth will pass away, but My Words will not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)God is still in the business of confounding the "powerful and wise" of this world, -"The wicked plots against the righteous, and gnashes at him with his teeth. The Lord laughs at him for He sees his day is coming." (Psalm 37:12-13)