Greetings, friends, family, and partners. This is Joe Watson, and you're listening to the
podcast Choices We Believe. We all make choices every day, and the choices that we make often
times will impact our lives, our eternities, our careers, our families, and these are the
choices that I want to look at. In this podcast, I want to discuss the existence of whether
or not there is God and His Word that He sends to us called the Holy Bible. That's His instruction
manual to us. So let's get started. As you probably know, every choice we make springs
forth from an influence in our lives, whether it be circumstances, people, spirits, something
we read or heard or felt, it all comes down to input into our six senses. Yeah, I'm
saying six. We have our five natural senses, but we also have a spiritual sense. Spirit
influences, introduce thoughts, causes to have questions. As far as God goes, the evidence
is all around us. But sometimes we don't believe it. Some people do. Some people don't. How
interesting, do you find it fascinating that you can have two people observe the same
evidence and come away with different conclusions. One person looks at the evidence says this
proves there's a God. Another person looks at the same evidence and says this proved
there is no God. So what does it mean? It means that we have a paradigm. From the time we
are born, we are influenced and we develop a paradigm, a deep seated belief system about
the existence of where we came from, where we're going, who we are, why we're here.
And so with this paradigm, we seek the evidence that will confirm what we already believe.
It is very seldom that you find somebody who's completely blank and looks at the evidence
strictly to draw conclusion from a neutral perspective. So think of it this way, as long
as God is a scientific debate, he will remain a scientific debate. You see, the thing is
God is a spirit that lives outside of linear time. While we humans exist within time, we
always have a beginning, a middle and an end. Everything in our lives has a start, has a
middle and then comes to an end. Our lives, our marriages, our careers, holidays, you know,
vacation comes and goes, it has the beginning, we enjoy it and then it has an end. We have
to go back to work. My goodness. If we humans continue to believe we are the authority in
the universe, we will not see God. When we realize that there is a higher authority,
who is a person with all power, all presence, omniscient, then we will become believers
of faith in God, not arguments about something, nothing that becomes something. God is the
uncaused cause. We all have choices to make and it will take faith to decide God or no
God. You know, it's called a leap of faith. You ever notice that people accuse those believing in
God, of having blind faith, but then again, they have a blind faith in believing that
something came from nothing. That takes a bigger leap to me. Anyway, I believe in a
person, a spirit called God, who knows everything, that he exists in my life because he changed
it. You know, some people say, is that reasonable? Well, I think so because of the influence
he's had on me. You call it happenstance or circumstance, but my God has changed events
in my life that would have been doom and destruction had he not put his hand in and made changes.
One snowy winter day I was on a hill, snow covered street, I was trying to stop. The car was
skidding. I couldn't make that car stop for anything. We were going downhill headed for
a light pole. Car stopped two feet from the pole. Came to the stop. I had to thank
God for stopping my car because I couldn't do anything to make it quit. Or a forest fire
that threatened the neighborhood I was in. And it was burning hot. We got pictures of
it. It was coming. The fire department had given us a reverse 911 to evacuate. Everybody
was taken out of the neighborhood. They were, for sure, it was going to burn down. And suddenly
the wind changed. The meteorologists couldn't understand it. They tried to explain it using
their science. But I know that God sent angels to change that wind who blew the fire away
from us. Our house didn't even smell like smoke. And the whole neighborhood was saved.
Circumstance, weather, whatever. I still think it was God. So, what does that mean?
It means that I believe in God. And I have seen things change in my life. He's affected
my heart. He's affected my mind, the way I think. And by His word, He continues to enlighten
me. And you say, well, what is His word? Well, we call it the Holy Bible. It's fascinating
that 66 writings by 40 different penmen or writers from three different continents over
a period of 1400 to 1500 years produced this book that has been tested and confirmed more
than any book ever written. Is it God inspired? Is it God preserved? The 39 Old Testament
writings were accepted long before Christ as Scripture. Long many thousands of years
ago, those 39 writings were accepted. Then after Christ, the New Testament was written
by several different men. And it took about 500 years for their debates over it to decide
on which ones to include and which ones to leave out. For those that were left out from
the beginning were settled. I understand that the book of Enoch and Maccabees and other
such writings are very valuable. They're a point towards God. They're very sound and
good writings to listen to and read. But I also believe that God who inspired the first
writings also guided those who were canonizing the final book and that it was His influence
and His calling that caused them to produce the Holy Bible.
Today we have many versions and those versions are good. I don't even know all the ones.
I have King James, the New King James, the New American Standard, a New Living Translation,
a New International Version. I have several of those and then there's the newest ones
called the Message and the Passion Translation. But why do we have all these different ones?
And which ones do you decide to read? Well actually I read multiple in order to get a
better understanding. But regardless of the one you read, I believe that Almighty God
can get His message to you through your reading and your understanding that He helps to reveal
Himself. You get revelation as you sit and you study this Bible. Because I believe it's
true. It's been confirmed. In fact, you know, in 1948 over in Israel there was a kid playing
with a ball that fell in a hole and he decided to go get it. And in doing so, he discovered
a small cave and a large clay jar was inside the cave and it's called the Dead Sea Scrolls
were discovered. And the people, the adults that assisted the young boy, determined that
all of the books of the Old Testament except for Esther were found in caves in that region.
I've been to that region and someone showed to me and pointed out the places where they
discovered these clay jars that had scrolls of the Old Testament in Hebrew, ancient Hebrew.
And as they were discovered, they found that the interpretation of the ancient Hebrew was
very, very close to what we have in our Old Testament today, which tells us that God preserves
His Word and instructs us through it so that we can learn who God is, what kind of a person
He is, His thoughts, His ways, and His desire to have a relationship with us, which is what
it all comes down to the Holy Magnificent Almighty God that gives life to people and
wants a relationship. He cares about us. He loves us. And we will explore this even more
in what choices we believe in future episodes. Thank you for listening. This is Joe Watson
on Choices We Believe.