Adrian Rogers - Can an Intellectual Believe in God?
Would you take God's Word and find, please Psalm chapter 19, the nineteenth Psalm? And when you've found it, I want to read to you from a little leaflet that has been handed to me. The title of this leaflet is, "An Invitation to the Intellectual Elite". Now I wonder if you're a part of the intellectual elite. This says if you accept that: number one; God is a myth. Humankind's future is in its own hands. Number two; prayers are what you say to yourself. Success in life depends upon human effort. Three; humans are part of nature and developed in it. What purpose there is in life, humans make. When you die, your life is over forever. Only your ideas can survive. Next; humankind is responsible for what it does. There are no sins. Crimes cannot be forgiven by religious rights. Next; the time to live is now. The place to live is here, and the way to be happy is to make yourself and others happy.
Now this little leaflet has been presented by the American Atheist Association in Austin, TX. And so if you believe that it all just happened: there is no God, there is no such thing as sin, and that man is the sum the substance the center and the circumference of everything; if you believe that, according to them, you are a part of the intellectual elite. Well I want to ask you this question today: can an intellectual believe in God? That's the title of the message, "Can an Intellectual Believe in God"?
With that in mind I want us to look here in Psalm 19 and I begin in verse 1 and we'll read through verse 6. I'm going to read the whole Psalm before I'm finished, but first of all the first six verses. "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them He set a tabernacle for the Son, which is as a bridegroom coming out of His chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the Heaven, and His circuit unto the ends of it: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof".
Now God has spoken and anybody who wants to believe in God can believe in God. And if a man does not believe in God, it is not because he has intellectual difficulties; it is because he has moral difficulties. And I want to make that very clear and very plain. Unbelief never comes out of the head. Unbelief always comes out of the heart. The Bible says in another Psalm, Psalm 14 and verse 1, "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God". Now can you be an intellectual and believe in God? Absolutely! Many intellectuals believe in God and many nonintellectuals believe in God. Some intellectuals don't believe in God and many nonintellectuals don't believe in God.
As matter of fact, your intellect has very little to do with it. But I want you to know that if you want to believe in God, you can believe in God and God has spoken in three mighty ways. And we're going to see that as we look into Psalm 19. And not only has God spoken to mankind in general in these three ways, but God has, God will speak to you in these three ways. Now what are the three ways in which God speaks to you? How can you know beyond the shadow of any doubt or per adventure that God exists, that He loves you, that you can know Him and that you can have a personal, vital relationship with Him and still call yourself an intellectual?
Number one; there is the declaration in the skies. You have it? The declaration in the skies. Look in Psalm 19 verse 1, "The heavens declare the glory of God". That's the declaration in the skies. The very skies themselves tell you that God exists. The heavens above tell us that God exists, and what do they tell us about God? Well, first of all they tell us about God's glory. "The heavens declare the glory of God". Several years ago Joyce and I took a vacation down to the Bahamas and I wanted to be alone with her and just to have just some think time and we found a little cottage there on a beach and it had a little dock out in front of it. And it was absolutely wonderful. There was no air conditioning in that cottage, and we had to leave the windows open and fight mosquitoes all night, but none the less it was wonderful that little dock out there.
We went out at night time. There's no television, nothing like that, no telephone. As a matter of fact, no automobiles on that little island. Just, you took foot paths. And to get from place to place we had a little boat that you had to go with a little outboard motor. It was wonderful. But the most wonderful thing about the vacation, the thing we remember more than anything else; we went out on the dock, out there in that Caribbean water and laid down on our backs and looked up at the stars. And for about, well, I don't know how long, an extended period of time, just the two of us, on our backs on that dock just looking at the sky.
Folks if you haven't done that in a long time I want to recommend it. Just get out somewhere where there's no ambient light around, where there's nothing else. Just the candelabra of Heaven and just look up at God's stars and think about those stars. Think how vast His mighty universe is. And you will be filled with a sense, an awe that David must have had as a shepherd boy when he looked up and saw that those heavens and he wrote here in Psalm 19, "The heavens declare the glory of God". But not only do they speak of the glory of God, they speak of the greatness of God. Look if you will in Psalm 19 verse 1 again, "The firmament," that's another word for the heavens, "sheweth His handy work". That is, all of this is the work of God. God created it all. He made out of nothing. What great, incredible power is seen in the creation of this universe!
Now you know that out of nothing, nothing comes. And this is the great stumbling block for the atheist. If he doesn't believe in a self-existing God, he has to believe in a self-existing universe or else he has to believe that nothing times nobody equals everything. It's really kind of intellectually contradictory not to believe in God. The Bible never argues the fact of God. The Bible just presents God. Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". Why? Because we all know that out of nothing, nothing comes. A very eloquent and gifted preacher said one time, and I love this. He said, "God stepped from behind the curtain of nowhere and stood upon the platform of nothing and spoke a world into existence".
You know, man can't create anything. All the scientists can do is rearrange what God has created. You think of these heavens, the incredible size of the heavens. You know that light travels 186,282 miles per second. How fast is that? Well, one thousand, two thousand, it's past the moon. Two seconds, light travels past the moon. But traveling at more than 182,000 miles per second it takes it four and a half years to pass our closest star, our nearest star. And traveling at that incredible rate of speed, light in order to reach the edge of our known universe, would have to travel at that incredible speed at the edge of our known universe for ten billion years, past the moon in two seconds. God made all of that.
That's the incredible size of, and you think of the not only the immensity but the you think there of the intricacy of God's creation. I mean the Psalmist said in another place, Psalm 139 verse 14, considering himself. "I am fearfully and wonderfully made". The smallest unit in your body is the cell. There are over thirty billion of them in your body. And yet Paul Doty of Harvard University said that, "One cell in your body is more complicated than New York City". And I hope in a lot better shape than New York City. But, billions of these things and they're so incredibly complicated. We've heard a lot about DNA today, and I don't even know enough to even begin to talk about it except to say that God has put together a universe with great immensity and great complexity and it's all the work of God's hands and therefore its absolute stupidity not to believe in God.
As a matter of fact, the Bible says in Romans chapter 1 verses 19 and 20, "Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God hath showed it unto them for the invisible things of Him, for the creation of the world are clearly seen. Being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and God-head so that they are without excuse". Now let me tell you something. Of all of the professional groups do you know what professional group has the highest, I'm talking about secular professional groups, have the highest number of believers in God? The astronomers. Over 90% of the worlds great astronomers believe in God. Isn't that interesting? Because, why? I mean they study the heavens. They have been in awe. It's not a sign of intelligence not to believe in God. Why if you're intelligent, you have to say somebody created all of this.
Dr. Moody tells us that there have been in the history of the world 54 great philosophers. In 6,000 years of recorded history only 54 philosophers could be called great. And we're talking about people like Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, and others. Only 54 great philosophers in the history of the world. Now let me tell you something of these 54 great philosophers. Out of the 54, 40 of them believed in God. Of the 14 who did not believe in God, listen to this, all of them hated their father. It's a very interesting thing. Every one of those great philosophers, who did not believe in God, hated their father. Eight of them were preachers sons, and their fathers were legalistic preachers.
I was in London, went to the British museum of natural history. There's a statue of Charles Darwin in that museum, and the museum is just one big colossal lie. It's all about evolution and they talk about evolution as if it is a fact. And Charles Darwin's statue is in that particular British museum. Let me tell you about Charles Darwin. I'm talking about these philosophers who did not believe in God. Charles Darwin had a father that he hated. Charles Darwin's father was a physician and he was a monstrous man. He was six feet three inches tall, weighed 345 pounds. When he spoke, it was like the roar of a lion. And he had huge hairy hands.
Charles Darwin was frightened to death of him and he could never please his father. He said, and here's a direct quote from Charles Darwin, he said, "My father could not stand to be opposed. If opposed he would roar at me and he had the gift of always making people do just as he wanted them to do". Now Charles' mother died when he was a little boy, when he was eight. But he wrote later on he couldn't remember anything about his mother, not one thing about his mother. He remembered things that happened to him when he was four, five, and six years of age, but he couldn't remember anything about his mother. But he did remember that when his mother died, he had a deep resentment to his father because his father was a doctor. And he said, "My father was a doctor who healed others but he let my mother die".
Now Charles Darwin went to school. He failed in school. His father came in and bullied the teachers and somehow he got a passing grade and he graduated. Then his father wanted him to go to medical school. Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, went to medical school. He couldn't hack it in medical school. As a matter of fact, when he had his first autopsy, when they had to work on a cadaver, he fainted; he passed out. He said, "I can't, I can't do it". He couldn't stand surgery. He flopped out of medical school. Then his father said, "Well maybe you can be a preacher. You know if you can't do anything else, maybe you can preach". So his father said, "Well maybe you can be a minister," and enrolled Charles Darwin in seminary. And Charles Darwin there in seminary was studying the Bible, his father saying, "You're going to be a preacher".
But there he met a biologist, a man who became a father figure to him and got him interested in biology. So he dropped out of seminary and he began to travel. And you remember his trips. You know, he went to the Indies. He went to Brazil. He went to the Galapagos Islands and so forth. He began to make pictures and drawings of biology and he began to get this idea concerning evolution.
Now actually, Charles Darwin didn't come up with evolution. As a matter of fact, Aristotle and others had already toyed with the idea of evolution. But Charles Darwin now began to say, "Well maybe, how can I explain all this apart from God," and for 35 more years he was sickly. He was hating God, hating his father, hating everybody. Finally he wrote his book, The Decent of Man and The Origin of the Species. And he effectively explained how you can have creation without a creator so he thought. It's the next best guess of the mind and the man that rejects God.
Now there was another man who bought into this and his name was Nietzsche. Nietzsche was a philosopher also, Frederick Nietzsche. Frederick Nietzsche, by the way, was the son of a dogmatic preacher and he hated his father. He learned to hate God. He learned to hate the idea of God. Nietzsche became a sexual pervert. As a matter of fact, he died of syphilis, and he died insane. But he got the idea if there's no God then man must be ever onward and upward. So he wrote a book, Man and Superman. He had the idea that somehow man could become superman, not fly through the air, but just that he could achieve all that he wanted to achieve. And so you've got Darwin; hated his dad. You've got Nietzsche; hated his father; one the son of a preacher, the other the son of a physician.
A mad man named Adolf Hitler got hold of the works of Darwin and Nietzsche, especially Nietzsche who had been molded by Darwin. And Adolf Hitler wrote after he got to thinking about what Nietzsche had said and Darwin had said, he wrote his own book, Mein Kamph. That is his plan to make the Arian race, the super race, the idea of a super race. And he had a venomous hatred toward the Jewish people. And Adolf Hitler said in Mein Kamph, quote, "I have a right to eliminate an inferior race that breeds like vermin". He was talking about the Jews. Now, we're talking about intellectuals and believing in God. Can an intellectual believe in God? Every so often, you will hear people say something like this.
You will hear people say, "You know the trouble with religion is there are so many religious wars. These religious people are fighting everybody. And all the wars in the world are caused by religion. And all of the people who have died have died as a result of religion". I want to give you something folks, and I want you to listen very carefully to this because you need to be very careful when you say that people are dying as a result of belief in God. In the 6,000 years of recorded history, in religious wars about three million people have died and that's regrettable, but about three million people.
Did you know that Hitler and Stalin alone, both who rejected the idea of God, Hitler and Stalin alone are responsible for the death of fifty-seven million people, a conservative estimate, Three million, all religious wars; fifty-seven million by those who say there is no God? So don't let anybody put that on you that if you believe in God that somehow you are a part of all of the trouble, dissension and all of this problem in the world. As a matter of fact, we're talking about all religious wars. We are talking about people from Muslims and Hindus and oriental religions. If you talk about religious wars that involve Christians, those who are, quote, Christians, end of quote, about 1.8 million.
If you talk about those who are Bible believing, what we call evangelical Christians, less than a quarter of a million. But you're talking about people like Nietzsche and Darwin and Hitler and Stalin and Karl Marx. Fifty-seven million have been slaughtered and the number is growing. No, listen friend. An intellectual can be an intellectual and believe in God. The great intellectuals have believed in God. And when you look at the heavens, they declare God's glory. When you look in the heavens they declare God's greatness. And when you look in the heavens they declare God's goodness. Look if you will in Psalm 19 verse 2, "Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night sheweth knowledge".
Now what does that mean? It means there is a fixed order in the universe. Day follows night and night follows day. There is beauty, there is order, there is harmony and you can say thank God, His mercies are new every morning. What a good God we serve. God is a glorious God. God is a great God. God is a good God and the light and the warmth of the sun speak of the light and warmth of God's grace. To look up in those stars is something. To rise in the morning and see the sun rise is something. You'd have to feel sorry for an atheist who would see a sunset and have nobody to thank for it wouldn't you? He just, you have to feel sorry for it.
So there is the declaration of the skies, the heavens declare the glory of God. But let's move on to the second thing. Not only is there the declaration of the skies, but there is the revelation of the Scriptures. That's the second way we know. First of all, God's Word written in the heavens. And number two, God's Word written in the Bible. The revelation of the Scriptures.
Now continue to read if you will. Look if you will in Psalm 19 verses 7 through 11, here's the second way that you can know God. "The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yeah than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them, is thy servant warned and in keeping of them there is great reward".
You see, you can know about the fact of God by studying the heavens, but you can never know the heart and mind of God by looking at the stars. You need more than that kind of natural revelation. You have to see not only what God has wrought, but you have to see what God has taught. You have to have the Bible. You have to have the Word of God to explain to you this God that you see in general in nature. And so the Psalmist speaks not only of the declaration of the skies, but the revelation of the Scriptures. And first of all he speaks of the virtue of the Scriptures. Look in Psalm 19 verse 7, "The law of the Lord is perfect converting the soul". The only way that you can be saved is by the perfect Word of God.
Read First Peter 1 verse 23, "Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the Word of God". It is the Word of God that converts the soul. It's the Word of God, the entrance of His Word that gives light. And the Bible says it's perfect. This speaks of the inerrancy of the Scriptures. Every sentence, every syllable, every jot, every pen stroke were put there by the mind, the purpose of God. It is absolutely perfect and Jesus said in John 10:35, "The Scriptures cannot be broken". And then look again if you will in verse 7, "The testimony of the Lord". Not only is it perfect, it is sure. "Making wise the simple". You want to be a true intellectual? Get in the Word of God.
Friend, it it's sure. What does that mean? It means you've got a firm place to stand. You have a foundation. You're not building on Jell-O. And here's the wonderful thing about it, "God hath hidden these things from the wise and prudent and hath revealed them unto babes. Making wise the simple". An ordinary person without a Ph.D., an ordinary person, can go to God's Word and receive food for his soul. So clear, so plain is the Word of God. Read Isaiah 35:8, "That a wayfaring man though a fool shall not err there in". And then look in Psalm 19 verse 8, "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart".
The word right here has the idea of a straight path. It means the Bible will never lead you astray. Hallelujah for that! You know, so many times we thought that God's will is hard and God's way is onerous and difficult. Oh, no, no, no. Listen to it again, "The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart". Oh, how we ought to delight in the Word of God. To delight in God's way, what a joy there is in knowing God's Word. God's way is not difficult and hard and onerous. Psalm 84 verse 11 reads, "The Lord thy God is a sun and a shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly". His way is a way of joy. If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then notice also in verse 8, "The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes".
Now that means there is no mixture of evil, no mixture of error. There are over 6,000 promises in this book and every one of them is, "Yeah and Amen in the Lord Jesus". And not a one of His promises has ever failed, ever been broken. Then look in verse 9, "The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever". What does that mean? There are no seeds of corruption in God's Word. It will last and last and last. It's been several millenniums since David wrote this and we're holding it in our hands today. The Earth passes away, the flower of the field withers, but the Word of our God endures forever. It is the incorruptible Word of God. The Bible is never out of date. It applies to every age. It never needs to be updated or revised. Thank God for the inerrant, infallible, incorruptible Word of God. That's the virtues of the Scriptures.
Now once you see the virtue of the Scripture, then you can understand the value of the Scripture. Look if you will in verse 10 as we talk about the value of the Scripture. "More to be desired are they than gold, yeah than much fine gold. Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb". The Scriptures are precious. To a true believer there is nothing more precious than the Word of God. And a man cannot truly love God without loving the Word of God. This is the value of the Scripture. Not only is it precious, it is protective. Look in verse 11 of this same chapter. "Moreover, by them is thy servant warned and in keeping of them there is great reward". Protection is better than cure. The Word of God will keep you from so many hurts, so many harms if you will only bathe your soul in its truth and walk in its light. It's precious. It is protective. It is profitable.
Look in verse 11, "In keeping of them there is great reward". You want to be rewarded, you want to be wise, take the Word of God that is pure and clean and right and righteous. It endures forever and live by it. What fools we are not to saturate ourselves with the Word of God. So how has God spoken to us? Well, there is the declaration of the skies, there is the revelation of the Scriptures, but now wait just a minute, we're still not finished. Even though you might walk out one night and see the stars and say, "There is a God," and believe it, and you might pick up this book, hear somebody preach this book and you say, "Yes, I believe the Bible is the Word of God," you're still not home yet.
There's still one more thing that you need to really, really know God. First of all, the declaration of the skies; the heavens declare the glory of God. And then the inspiration of the Word of the Bible, "The Word of God is perfect, converting the soul". But thirdly, and listen carefully, there must be the illumination of the Spirit. When you get the Holy Spirit of God who takes what you see objectively in nature, and what you see objectively in the Word of God and then subjectively and spiritually He interprets that to you, then you can know God. So look and see how this Psalm ends. Look at it now beginning in Psalm 19 verse 12 on through verse 14, "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults". Now he's talking to God. He's praying to God. "Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me: then shall I be upright, and I shall be innocent from the great transgression".
Now here's the bottom line of the whole thing. "Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, oh Lord, my strength, and my redeemer". Now, this is what I call the illumination of the Spirit, these last verses beginning in verse 12. And tells us how God the Holy Spirit takes what we see in nature and what we see in the Bible and how God then begins to apply that to our hearts. And if you have the first two without the third one, you're still not going to be there. But if you will now let the illumination of the Spirit take what God's Word in the heavens and God's Word in your hand, the Bible, and put God's Word in your heart, then friend, you're going to see something very wonderful and very beautiful. Now let me show you what the Holy Spirit will do for you today. Okay?
Now, let's just look beginning in verse 12. What will the Holy Spirit of God do? Well, first of all, there is the conviction of the Spirit. Look in Psalm 19 verse 12, "Who can understand His errors"? You can't do it. You don't have what it takes. Only the Holy Spirit of God can help you to understand. We, you see, before we can know God, we've got to be clean of sin. And who can convict us of sin? Your old, carnal, dirty heart is not going to expose your old, carnal, dirty heart. As a matter of fact, the Bible says of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament in John chapter 6 verse 18, "When He is come, He will reprove the world of sin".
So look again in verse 12. He speaks again of something called secret faults. Look at it, "Who can understand His errors? Cleanse Thou me from secret faults". Did you know that you have secret faults that you don't know anything about? Did you know that? There are things in your heart and in your life. Now, had the seismologists that studies these things not told you, you would not have known that there is a fault underneath Memphis, TN. What is it? The New Madrid fault. There's something underneath here. Now, I mean you look around you don't see it. Can anybody look down and see that fault in the ground? No, but it's there. One of these days it may cause an earthquake.
Now you see, a lot of times, people have moral earthquakes because they have secret faults. They don't know they are there. Do you know why some people fall into sin? Let me tell you what a lot of sin is. And this may happen to you if you don't pray this prayer, "Cleanse me from secret faults". Do you know what happens? We see some people just sailing along, all of a sudden they just collapse and they're in terrible sin. Do you know what a lot of sin is? It is an undetected weakness, an unexpected temptation, and an unprotected life. Did you get that? An undetected weakness, an unexpected temptation, and an unprotected life. Put those three things together. You don't know it's there. You have a moral fault in you, but you don't know it's there. It's a secret fault. And then along comes some temptation. You've never been faced with it before and you've not prayed this prayer and you have an unprotected life. You have an undetected weakness. You have an unexpected temptation and down you go.
Now, you can have God's Word in the skies, and God's Word in the Scriptures, and still fall unless you have God's Word in the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God that is speaking to you and there must be the conviction of the Spirit. And what happens when you pray this prayer, "Oh God, help me to understand my errors. Help me to understand my ways"? Now, you move from the conviction of the Spirit to the cleansing of the Spirit. Look in Psalm 19 verse 12, he says here, "Cleanse Thou me from secrets faults". God's Holy Spirit will do subterranean surgery on you. I mean He will cleanse you. And there's no cleansing apart from the blood of Jesus Christ.
First John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness". And so, there must be, for you to know God, there must be the conviction of the Spirit, the cleansing of the Spirit, but that's not enough. Then you've got to have the control of the Spirit. Look if you will in Psalm 19 verse 13 of this same chapter. "Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins". Now there are those hidden faults and then there are just those times where we sin with our eyes wide open. And we don't have the strength to say no. So we must pray, "Keep back Thy servants also from presumptuous sin, let them not have dominion over me".
Now, pray this prayer because the control of the Spirit is linked to your prayer life. Every morning when you wake up you say, "Lord, cleanse me from secret fault. Do subterranean surgery on me. And then dear Lord, cleanse me from every sin. And now Lord God, keep me from presumptuous sin". Pray this in the morning, not at the end of the day, but pray it, unlock the door of the morning with this key. "Oh God, keep me". You see, when there is the conviction of the Spirit and the cleansing of the Spirit and the control of the Spirit, then you're going to know God, have fellowship with God and walk with this God. And last of all, it leads to the final thing and I wish I had more time, the communion of the Spirit.
Look in Psalm 19 verse 14 see, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, oh Lord, my Strength and my Redeemer". And that's when God is so real to you. God has put His Word up there in the skies. God has put His Word in the Bible and then God has sent His Holy Spirit to convict you, to cleanse you, to control you and to have communion with you. Can an intellectual believe in God? Absolutely! Beyond a shadow of any doubt. But you don't come to God because of intellect. You come to God because He first loved us. And God reveals Himself to us.
When I was in school, there was a man in school with us. He had been a Russian paratrooper. Nikolai Alexandrenko was his name. He was fighting back in World War II. He was at the front when the Germans were advancing on Moscow. He was put out there by the Dnieper River there to fight and he was shot in the leg. And the Germans were advancing. The Russians were told, "Don't surrender; suicide rather than surrender". But he surrendered. He put up his hands. He didn't want to die. The Germans took him, put him on tank, and along with about 14 or 15 others.
Alexandrenko, the boy that I went to school with, the Russian paratrooper, was taken to Munich and he was put in a prison camp there. And he lived for days and days on grass soup. That's about all that he had, cold and shivering in Munich. He had been taught all of his life there is no God. He had been taught you can't be an intellectual and believe in God. He had been taught the atheism of Karl Marx that he learned from Darwin and Nietzsche. And then the war was over, and he was a prisoner of war and now he was free. He didn't want to go back to Russia however, because he was afraid that he'd be sent to Siberia because he had surrendered. He pled, Alexandrenko pled that he might stay in Munich. They allowed him to stay. He was in a displaced persons camp; stayed there for a long time. Had no food, was cold, lonely, bitter. Not understanding anything.
One night he found himself in a little abandoned barracks building. And it was very cold and he's trying to start a fire and he was looking around for scraps of paper and he picked up a scrap of paper and it was a Gospel tract. It was dirty and smudged and he only found two verse on that. He had never read the Bible before. One was Matthew 11:28, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest". The other was Revelation 3:20, "Behold I stand at the door and knock, if any man will hear My voice and open the door, I will come into him". And he said, "This is about God". He said, "Could there be a God"? And Nikolai got to thinking. He said, "Who made all of this"? He got to thinking about God's Word in the skies. Who made all of this? Who made it?
Then he had God's Word in the Scriptures. Could this be the Word of God? Could God be knocking at my heart's door? And then he bowed his head and he prayed, "God, if you exist, if, oh God, you are there; speak to my heart that this is Your Word". And he said a warm feeling came over him and God whispered to his innermost being. "My child, I'm here. I've been here all the time. I am knocking at your heart's door". And Nikolai Alexandrenko said, "I began to cry". He said, "I didn't cry when my mama died when I was a little boy. I didn't cry when I was wounded in the war. I didn't cry when I ate grass soup in the prison camp," but he said, "I began to cry and to weep". And I said, "God, thank You for showing Yourself to me".
You see there was God's Word in the skies, there was God's Word in his hand, but then God's Word in his heart. The Holy Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit of God began to convict Nikolai Alexandrenko. He met another Russian who was a Christian. He said, "Nik, we'll get you a Bible". And they went to a little church there in Germany, would you guess, a little Baptist church. He didn't know who Baptists were, but they gave him the Word of God. And Nikolai Alexandrenko was born again.
I went to school with him at New Orleans seminary. He's earned a Ph.D. and he taught Bible in one of our Baptist colleges. How'd all that happen? Here's a Russian paratrooper, been raised as a child to believe there is no God. But he said, there's God's Word in the skies, there's God's Word in the Scriptures, and now there is God's Word by the Spirit and God has spoken to my heart. And the same God that spoke to him is the God that is speaking to you right now.
Would you bow your heads in prayer? Heads are bowed, eyes are closed. Father God, I thank You, Lord, so much for Your Word. Oh God, I thank You that it goes beyond intellect. Thank You for Your Spirit, Lord, that reaches the heart of a little child or a Russian paratrooper, or a college professor. Thank You, Lord. And now, Lord, I pray that You'll speak to hearts today. Now while heads are bowed and eyes are closed, if you're not saved or you're not certain you're saved why don't you get it settled right now? Let me lead you in a prayer and in this prayer you can receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, right where you are today. Would you pray a prayer like this:
Dear God, I need You, I want You in my life, I'm a sinner and I need to be saved. I want my sins forgiven; I want fellowship with You, God. I want to go to Heaven when I die. Jesus, I believe You're the Son Of God, I believe You paid my sin debt with You're blood on the cross, I believe God raised You from the dead. I now, right now, open my heart and receive You, right now, this moment, right now I receive you, Jesus, into my heart. Come into my heart, forgive my sin, save me, Lord Jesus. Save me, Lord Jesus. Save me, Lord Jesus.
Did you ask Him? Then pray this prayer:
Lord Jesus, thank You for saving me. I don't ask for a feeling, I don't ask for a sign, I stand on Your Word. Thank You, Lord, I just claim it by faith. And now, Lord Jesus, begin to make me the person You want me to be. And Lord Jesus, give me the strength and the character to make it public. Don't let me deny You, Lord. Help me to make it public. Help me not to be ashamed of You. In Your name I pray, Amen.