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From Atheist to Ambassador

SERIES: Even These Believed #3 of 5

2007-03-18

PRODUCTION #: 1043

SPEAKER: Shawn Boonstra

Some of the most fascinating dialogues I've ever had have taken place between seats 42A and 42B while our tray tables are in the upright and locked positions. Maybe it's because we are 37,000 feet closer to heaven, but you know, I have had some really amazing discussions on airplanes.

Once people find out that I carry a Bible, or that I hold Christian evangelistic meetings, or that I've pastored a church, they are ready with their own heartfelt observations.

"You Christians think you know everything," they say. "But you can't prove that God exists!"

And you know what? To some degree, they are right. It's a tough thing to prove with pen and paper. And what's unfortunate is the fact that a lot of Christians really do come across as religious know-it-alls. We know how to spout and fume, but it takes more than mere assertions to convince a thinking mind to believe in God.

So what do you say when you meet an atheist? Is the Christian message really a sure thing? Do God's promises really come with ironclad guarantees? Today, we will think about whether or not Christianity is an enormous leap of faith, and we will see what happens when former atheists take that step.

He was a smart kid. His dad traveled a lot, and once, while dad was away for an extended time, he was tutored by his mom. By the time Pastor Judson came home, lo and behold, his three-year-old boy could already read! Well, needless to say, he was a happy man when his son picked up the family Bible and read an entire chapter out loud.

He was a very bright boy. But there's a risk in being mentally brilliant. Geniuses sometimes begin to say, "Prove it!" to everybody about everything. By the time he was 19, Adoniram had already said, "Prove it!" to all of his professors at Brown University.

In his book, "Giants Of The Missionary Trail," historian Eugen Myers Harrison tells us about this clever academic: "He entertained the most extravagant ambitions and his imagination ran wild as he contemplated his future eminence. He pictured himself as an orator, greater than Demosthenes, swaying the multitudes with his eloquence; as a second Homer, writing immortal poems; as a second Alexander the Great, weeping because there were no more worlds to conquer."

You know, it's the ironic nature of God's providence that gifted men and women do get the gift of wisdom, directly from God's hand, and then sometimes turn right around and reject the Giver.

Another academic genius named Paul, who, for a while, used all of his considerable abilities to fight against heaven, later wrote this (1 Corinthians 12:7, 8 NKJV):

"But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit."

Wisdom and knowledge, according to the Bible, are a special gift from God. When intelligent people reject God, they are rejecting the source of their unusual gifts. And that was certainly the case with young Adoniram Judson.

You know, I can't help but notice that in its earlier days, what we now know as Brown University used to be called Providence College! Adoniram Judson received, through God's providence, rare abilities and insights, and yet decided that "providence" had nothing to do with it.

History is full of intellectual giants who came to the same conclusion, people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Voltaire. You recall that Voltaire's staggering abilities, coupled with his doubts and his opposition to organized religion, were precursors to the bloody French Revolution where atheism became an official religion.

Well, his attitude of skepticism blew right across the Atlantic Ocean and infected the United States of America. Yale was almost blown over by the gale forces of godlessness. Almost all of the students at Yale in the early 1800s were atheists. In fact, many of the young men roaming the campus shed the names their mothers gave them and began calling each other instead by the names of their favorite infidels instead, people like Thomas Paine or Voltaire.

Providence College in Rhode Island was not immune from this plague, and unfortunately, Adoniram Judson was badly hurt in the crossfire. By the time he finished school, he was a so-called "Free Thinker," a declared atheist. He was so smart, so mentally gifted, that each time he and his father had a discussion about God, Adoniram usually won.

And you know, there is something I have to admit. I don't always win an argument with an atheist. It's impossible to always "win," because at some point I still have to turn to the Bible and say, "I take this book to be true."

And then the atheist says, "Well, Pastor, you can read and quote from that book all you want to. I don't buy it. I don't see any evidence. If God really wants me to serve Him, then He's got to prove His existence to me. So give me something my eyes can see and my hands can touch."

There are times when I wish I could do it right then and there. I wish I could just dial up heaven and have them speak to God. Have you ever wondered why God doesn't just nail it down and send a bolt of lightning to shut the atheists up forever? Doesn't He want us to believe? Doesn't He want the world to return to Him?

When a Friedrich Nietzsche or a Charles Darwin shakes their fist at heaven and says, "There is no God," why doesn't God zap them with a bit of heavenly reality?

I'm sometimes amazed, when I read the story of Job in the Bible, that he didn't finally become an atheist. "Why don't you curse God and die?" his wife said.

For a lot of people, it would have been an easy thing to do, with all the problems piling up. The winds of disaster had blown his fortune away, and heaven's phone lines seemed to be dead. It would be enough to make anybody doubt, and sure enough, Job began to struggle. Why do evil people seem to have all the luck? And why didn't God show Himself?

Here's what Job actually said, in Job, chapter 21 (Job 21:7-13 NKJV):

"Why do the wicked live and become old, yes, become mighty in power? Their descendants are established with them in their sight, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull breeds without failure; their cow calves without miscarriage. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave."

Another version says they go "Down to the grave in peace." And at the same time, Christians are getting beat up, shot up, torn up, and told to shut up. It seems like a pretty raw deal. So why is there no answer from heaven? Why doesn't God send some fireworks to bring atheism to an end?

In their book, "How Now Shall We Live," Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey describe three "camps" that nonbelievers can eventually find themselves in. The first one is naturalism. The naturalist believes that everything we see can be attributed to natural forces. What looks like a miracle to the Christian, they say, can be explained some other way by a scientist in a lab coat.

The second group is the postmoderns. A postmodern believer looks at world headlines and crowded jails and says: "There are no over-arching truths." You decide what your truth is and I'll decide what mine is. What's right for you is whatever works. If going to church each week calms your soul, be my guest. If not, that's fine too." As a society, we have to collectively find values that seem to work, and of course, reexamine them in the next election cycle to see if they are still functioning.

Then, in addition to the naturalists and the postmoderns, there is "existentialism", which in Colson's words, "proclaims that life is absurd, meaningless, and that the individual self must create his own meaning by his own choices." I think the people living in Noah's day, the scoffers, were probably the world's first existentialists! "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," they said.

So those are the three groups, the naturalists, the postmoderns and the existentialists. So let's get back to our atheist Adoniram Judson, who is marching down the aisle of Providence College, class of 1807. As the organ plays "Pomp and Circumstance" he follows in the footsteps of his best friend, Ernest, who was very earnest in his own denial of God. In fact, Ernest played a key role in helping Adoniram abandon his faith.

Now, let me push the pause button and throw in a little warning. I know doubts come to all of us. Doubt is not a sin. Satan bombards us with dark thoughts and with unanswerable questions. But I pray to God that we are careful how we give voice to our doubts.

Many times, as we have already seen in another program, sincere people asking hard questions often help 50 other people skate deeper into atheism than they would have ever gone themselves. There is a danger to voicing your doubts before you've really thought them through. By all means, let's fall on our knees at night and ask God to show us the truth. But heaven keep us from infecting a fragile friend or a trusting child with our doubts, because long after we recover, they might still be doubting.

In any case, there were now two mighty men of atheism from Providence College. First there was Ernest, and then Mr. Adoniram Judson, the man he helped to become an atheist. They eventually lost track of each other, but one day Judson decided to go on what we would now call a "road trip." Back then it was on horseback, and he and several cheerful, careless friends spent quite some time clip-clopping their way from one sinful adventure to the next.

In his own words, it was a "wild, reckless life." After a time, he decided he could party by himself, and so left his group of friends to continue his own odyssey of sin and sightseeing.

One night he came to a country inn and asked if there were any vacancies. "Just one," the owner said, "but I really don't want to give you that room."

"Why not?"

"Well, because it's next to a man who is extremely ill, and he's probably going to die sometime during the night. I don't think you want to stay in a room with a dying man next door."

"Oh, that doesn't bother me," the young man said, pulling out his wallet. "I'll take it. Death has no terrors for me. You see, I'm an atheist."

So he checked into the hotel, unpacked for the night, and tried to get some sleep. But sure enough, through the paper-thin walls of the inn, he could hear the dying moans of a man in great distress. He could tell that the anonymous invalid next door wasn't just facing death, he was looking raw fear in the eye, in the void of spiritual lost-ness.

"The poor fellow is evidently dying in terror," he thought to himself. "I suppose I should go to his assistance, but what could I say that would help him?"

He was, after all, an atheist. He wasn't supposed to be afraid of death, but at this moment he realized how little he had to say that might comfort another atheist, or himself for that matter. What words of hope could he give?

Now think about this with me. At the end of your journey in life, you can be comforted by just two things. First of all, there is the rich, full, successful, generous life you have lived as a blessing to others. Secondly, there is the promise of an even better eternity with God. Those two things can mean a lot to a dying person.

In his book, "Expect a Miracle, But Trust in Jesus," Dr. Adrian Rogers shares a quote, from the late Jess Moody, that has special meaning as we ponder a young man in a hotel room, suddenly afraid of death: "What do aged atheists have to talk about," Dr. Moody wonders aloud, "as they sit around waiting to die? Do they discuss the legacy of morality, decency, integrity, and spiritual sensitivity they have bequeathed to their children? Or the good atheism has done the world: the hospitals, orphanages, the elevation of women, and the mass distribution of decent literature? Perhaps they discuss the great bulwark against communism that atheism has erected?"

Then he really gets down to brass tacks. Listen to this: "And when the sun is sinking low, and when the conversation for the wheelchair atheist begins to lull, they can joyously contemplate their future. There is so much for an aged atheist to look forward to."

Well, maybe we can forgive the bit of divine sarcasm, but back in the hotel room where the desperate cries of a lost neighbor were seeping through the cracks, Adoniram Judson's face was filled with horror and shame. First of all, he realized that he was a man without hope. What could he say to a dying friend? What could he say to himself on the day when the Grim Reaper might come to his hotel room?

He thought with embarrassment about his friends at Providence College. All of those nights in the boarding house where he had entertained them with his brilliant diatribes against religion and the Christian faith. Their boisterous laughs rang hollow in his ears as he looked in the mirror and saw fear. What would his friends say now if they could see him cowering in the valley of the shadow of death? Above all, what would Ernest say, his mentor in the world of atheism? Ernest would surely shake his head at how his young disciple was wavering on this dark night. What kind of an atheist shivers from uncontrollable fear when faced with death?

The night passed in slow agony. Adoniram finally pulled the thin blanket over his head, trying to drown out the faint cries of death from next door. At last it was quiet, and still there was no sleep for this God-forsaken young man.

The next morning, his soul still shredded over the horrors of the night before, he went to the innkeeper to check out.

"How is that man doing, the one next door, that you said was so sick?"

"Oh, he's dead," the older man told him.

"Dead!" And for some reason, the young graduate asked, "Do you have any idea who he was?"

The man nodded. "He was a scholar from Providence College."

And Adoniram's bones turned to jelly when he heard the next words: "He was a young fellow named Ernest."

Can you imagine? This brainy young atheist had to get on his horse and ride away, knowing full well that his best friend, the scholar who had led him into a barren world of disbelief, had just died in empty fear. Ernest, the boy he had admired so much, just died whimpering in protest.

And now pay close attention, because I want to point out something. Even if you are not an atheist, in fact, I'm pretty sure you probably aren't, you may still have some of the same questions I hear from atheists all the time.

Why doesn't God answer my prayers? Why can't God just prove to me that He's up there more often? Why do so many really smart people not believe in God at all?

No matter where you are on the spectrum of questioning, I have good news. It's not too late. You can still come home. God doesn't hate you for wondering about Him. He doesn't resent your questions. In fact, He's like that father of the prodigal son, found in Luke, chapter 15, who goes out to the mailbox each day and looks eagerly down the road for the lost boy who once shouted: "I'm leaving. I don't believe in you! I don't want anything to do with you! You've never proven yourself to me!"

There is one thing I know. If you wait for every single question to be answered, you are going to be waiting a long time. In fact, you'll be waiting forever, because the universe is a big place, and there's no end to the questions you could ask.

Until this "great controversy" is fully over and we are up in heaven with God Himself, face-to-face, we are going to live with some unanswered questions. There are always gong to be things we don't know, and heavenly issues we can't prove. But still God invites us to take a step of decision toward Him even before we know everything and see all the evidence.

In the book of Joshua, chapter three, is a story where the children of Israel crossed the Jordan River just before conquering Jericho. It was a moment where God's power was demonstrated in a way that nobody could doubt! Seven silent trips around the city, then a mighty shout of faith, a blast on the trumpets, and the walls fell without a single cannon being fired.

It was easy to have faith then. But first, before the battle, standing on the edge of the Jordan, this great surging river at the height of the flood state, with no bridges to get across, what were they going to do? Why didn't God part the waters like He did at the Red Sea? But no, nothing happened. The deep currents just rolled past them, a perpetual barrier to their glorious future.

So what did they do? It says in verse 15 that God's people simply began marching into the water. And as soon as the priests' feet got wet, then the miracle happened. Then God showed Himself. The waters piled up, the avenue to liberty appeared before their eyes, and the rest is miraculous history. Sometimes God waits for you to take a step of faith before he responds in a miraculous way.

And speaking of miracles, that's precisely what happened to Adoniram Judson. After that night at the inn, he went home and pleaded with his Christian father: "Give me a faith that will stand the test of life and of death, of time and eternity."

He became a Christian. He adopted Ephesians, chapter three as his great motto: "How wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ."

He determined to do whatever God asked. And like those priests at the edge of the Jordan, he promised God that he would take those first steps of obedience, even before "proof" might come from heaven.

And God gave him a simple command: "Go to the uttermost parts and preach the gospel of My love."

And on Feb. 19, 1812, America's first missionaries, Adoniram Judson and his bride of exactly two weeks, sailed on the ship Caravan, heading for a life of travail and triumph in Rangoon.

Talk about a man stepping out in faith! This brand new Christian and his wife, Ann, spent years without making a single Burmese convert. He endured many long months in prison, with his emaciated wife bribing guards so she could slip him some food. These two exhausted missionaries in a distant land labored ceaselessly to translate the Bible into the Burmese language. Why didn't God give them some proof that He was blessing them? Where was the evidence that heaven even knew they were out there in that strange land?

Eventually, missionaries to the Karen populations of what we now call Myanmar made an incredible discovery. God had moved in ahead of them. These mountain civilizations had folk tales about a God, and a garden, and a tree, and a man, and a woman. They already seemed to know about someone dying to save others. Some of the village men, for generations, had worn bracelets of rope, symbolizing their bondage to evil spirits.

But in all of their stories told by the evening fire, there was a "Sky-God" named Gwi-Sha, a Redeemer who would someday send a friend with a book that would help them find heaven and a new life. And people like Judson, who took the first steps of faith into an uncertain future, found that God was already there ahead of them, parting the waters of disbelief, rolling back the barriers of animism and atheism.

Today, I invite you to hold onto Jesus Christ instead of your doubts. Take a first step toward Him. What you are going to find is that your faith grows and your assurance is strengthened when you act on your first glimpse of God's eternal kingdom.

PRAYER:
Lord in heaven, we live in a world where sometimes shadows and uncertainty hide your face from us. We are tempted to look at our questions instead of at your answers. Help us, Father, to keep on trusting. As you have led others in the past, as you have proven yourself over and over to those who have gone before, we believe we can trust in you today. And we thank you for always seeking us through the gentle promptings of your Holy Spirit. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Scriptures Used in “From Atheist to Ambassador”

"But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit."
—1 Corinthians 12:7, 8 NKJV

"Why do the wicked live and become old, yes, become mighty in power? Their descendants are established with them in their sight, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. Their bull breeds without failure; their cow calves without miscarriage. They send forth their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. They sing to the tambourine and harp, and rejoice to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down to the grave."
—Job 21:7-13 NKJV