Does Science Prove God's Glory? | Dr. Hugh Ross | Regent University

[Music] [Applause] you know I'm here this week to make the point that God has given us two books the book of Scripture and the book of nature and how in the 21st century we're seeing daily scientific discoveries they're giving us more evidence for the Christian faith so that's the we're about it reasons to believe is providing you with those new evidences from the book of nature that shows us that we can trust the book of Scripture if you text hew 2 3 1 9 9 6 that your gateway to all kinds of free videos free book chapters articles and much more and so far I've been able to answer all the questions I get on Facebook and Twitter so if you think of a great question as result of today feel free to engage me there and that the talk I'm giving is based on this book beyond the cosmos and we're giving away a free chapter just by going to reasons org slash Ross but as advertised we're going to talk about what science has told us about what exists beyond the cosmos how recent scientific discoveries reveal God's glory and power and I'm going to begin with a quote from China's most famous scientists Fong Li ji he's an astrophysicist and he died recently and died as an atheist but he wrote a book in which he said this in his book creation of the universe quote a question that has always been considered a topic of metaphysics or theology the creation of the universe has now become an area of active research and physics and indeed today we could actually see to the full extent of the universe and the farther away we looked the farther back in time we see and we actually have images that show us the state of the universe when it was created by God we can actually directly observe that cosmic creation event and as a result of that my peers have been able to come up with 30 space-time theorems this is the most famous of those theorems which says that of mass exists and of general relativity reliably describes the movements of bodies in the universe then space and time must be created implying that there's a causal agent who transcends space and time who created everything and the significance here's another one any University expands on average and only universe that expands on average permits the existence of life implies a causal agent outside of space and time who creates space time matter and energy the significance of this is that the non-biblical religions tell us a god or gods create within space and time that he ternal II exists the Bible stands alone and saying that time and space don't exist until God creates universe if you're interested I've actually got one of these space-time theorems here that you can come up afterwards and look at you're fans of tensor calculations are going to really eat this thing up but the author of one of these theorems Alexander blinken himself not a believer wrote this in a book about these space-time theorems he said with the proof now in place cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past eternal universe there is no escape they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning and what is that problem a God beyond space and time must have created the universe but you know the Bible said it first Genesis 1:1 that you heard earlier in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth or would you see in the New Testament the universe was formed at God's command so what was seen was not made out of what was visible the universe that we can detect did not come from that which we can detach and we can detect space time matter and energy and there's actually passages in the Bible that tell us that God was active before time existed this grace was given us in Christ before the beginning of time or if we see in titus the hope that we share in Christ was put into effect before the beginning of time implying that God was already beginning his works of redemption before he created anything which implies that everything that God creates is for the purpose of redemption and that theme is brought out in my latest book improbable planet but you know when I present this evidence on secular university campuses the most common question I get in response okay you've given us all this scientific evidence that God exists and that God created universe but who created God you ever gotten that question who created God it's not just scientists that asked that question I get that question from little children if God created the universe who created God matter of fact both of my sons before they reached four years of age asked me that question and so what I was able to explain to them was these spacetime theorems that tell us that there's actually more than one dimension of time and four-year-olds can understand this time as that dimension in which cause and effect phenomena occur and we have these theorems that tell us that we have the universe coming into existence before time exists which implies that for the creator the universe that creator must have access to at least the equivalent of two independent dimensions of time which means for example that we could have the universe on a timeline over here and we could have God dwelling on a different timeline over here in a plane of time as such that God would have no beginning no ending and would be uncreated and of all the world's holy books only the Bible says that about God that is no beginning no ending and as uncreated the Bible also stands alone in saying that God can arbitrarily expand time and compressed time a day of the Lord is like a thousand years a thousand years is like a day a thousand years is like three hours in the night mathematically it's only possible for a being that has access to at least the equivalent of two independent dimensions of time now something else that happened when my sons were not quite 4 years of age as I said dad you have us pray every night how can God listen to our prayers and the prayers everybody else is probably praying at the same time I took him back to the same analogy of two independent dimensions of time I said okay here's our timeline here and at this moment we got seven billion people praying to God all at the same time but because God has access to at least the equivalent of a second dimension of time he can take infinite time perpendicular to our timeline to give individual attention to all 7 billion people praying simultaneously you know it was great from that point onward my sons were confident that God heard their prayers every time they spoke ok we not only know that the creator of the universe must exist in dimensions of time beyond what we can experience we also know he must exist in the equivalent of extra dimensions of space and this is all thanks to something called the Large Hadron Collider which ranks as the most expensive scientific instrument ever built and use a 17-mile particle accelerator in France and Switzerland but what we discovered through our research on particle physics is if there's simply not enough room within the dimensions of length width and height for all the symmetries that are required for quantum mechanics and gravity to co-exist and only if quantum mechanics and gravity coexist is life possible and about 25 years ago a group of research scientists that included a Christian physicist friend of mine began to research ok how many extra dimensions do we need it took him a decade but the answer was we need six extra dimensions of space so we got length width and height and then we have six more dimensions basse that are very tightly wrapped up around the three big dimensions you say how tightly wrapped up a cross-section is 20 orders of magnitude smaller than a diameter of electron which probably explains why most of you haven't noticed the existence of these extra six dimensions but they're crucial for you to be sitting in this auditorium today what this implies is a God that the God that created universe must have a capacity minimally to move and operate in the equivalent of eleven space-time dimensions so where is this God well a spacetime theorems tells us that he transcends these eleven space-time dimensions and that he actually is able to exist and operate both within and beyond the one time dimension and the nine space dimensions that comprise the universe Christians have always believed this the Bible has always taught this if you've taken theology classes here you'll know that this is the doctrine that God simultaneously and continuously is both immanent and transcendent this is unique to the Christian faith you got religions like Islam for example that teacher God is transcendent but not imminent and religions like Hinduism which teach that God is imminent but not transcendent now let me actually give you some scripture passages that explain exactly what imminence and transcendence means we have this passage from Jeremiah can anyone hide in secret places so they cannot see him declares the Lord do not I fill heaven and earth basically saying that God can move and operate in every part of the universe at any time or what we see in David Psalm if I go up to the heavens you are there if I make my bed the depths you were there of a rise on the wings of the dawn if I settle on the far side of the sea even there your hand will guide me if I say surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me even the darkness will not be dark for you the night was shine light the day for darkness is light to you and what David realized was no matter where he goes no matter where any of us goes within the earth of a vast as the universe God is there he's everywhere operating simultaneously however the Bible is also clear that not only does God fill the entirety of his creation and operate everywhere within his creation he can operate completely transcendent to the creation as a says in first Kings the heavens even the highest heavens cannot continue or what we see in Jobe the Almighty is beyond our reach that passage is repeated several other places in the Bible and when we see in first Timothy God whom no man has seen nor Kensie making the point that God transcends the physical universe and therefore in that context it's impossible for any of us to see him or touch him and yet repeatedly more than a dozen times were told in the Bible the Lord is near or as it says in the book of Acts he's not far from each one of us and if you actually look at these texts the claim is basically being made that God is physically closer to each one of us than any of you in this room are to one another that's so close he is yet you can't see him you can't touch him now it's impossible to visualize dimensions beyond what we experience I got to see that when I was a sophomore mathematics student where the professor said you can take a basketball and turn it inside out without making a cut or a hole in the surface of the basketball and four independent dimensions of space the professor couldn't visualize that we couldn't visualize it but we could prove it mathematically in fact that was our assignment that week was to come up with the equations to prove that that's actually the way it works however it is possible for us to visualize phenomena and dimensions less than what we experience so to help make this point of God's imminence and transcendence I've invited a severely handicapped couple to join me here at the podium I want to introduce you to mr. and mrs. flat okay they're handicapped is there lacking one dimension of space all they have is length and width and I'm going to constrain them to a world where there is no dimension of height only length and width now it tells us that God is closer to us than we are to one another yet we can't see or touch him I got one extra dimension gods get many more but for example is a three dimensional being I can put my hand one millimeter above mr-mrs flat I'm now physically closer to them than they are to one another yet they can't see me or touch me that's the way it is for all of us throughout the entirety of our life God is physically closer to each one of us simultaneously throughout our entire life and then we have this passage in 1st Samuel man looks at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart this is one of many passages in the Bible it tells us that God sees us like we can't see ourselves he can see things that is impossible for us to see he knows us better than we know ourselves which is why it makes rational sense so he put him in charge of our life he knows better than we do what's best for us let me take you back to mr. mrs. bland mrs. flat looks at her husband what does she see she sees a line that's all she sees now she carefully walks around her husband she can see long lines and short lines and she can use her two-dimensional brain to calculate the outline of her husband but notices the three-dimensional being no calculation is necessary I see the complete outline right away moreover I see something that he can't see and she can't see I can see the insides likewise God sees things within our soul and spirit that were not able to see ourselves because of his dimensional advantages now the Trinity is something that's impossible for any of us to visualize because it's impossible is no accident we see it record and only one book any religion that's an invention of humans will show the limitations of human visualization and so unique to the Christian faith as this doctor and the Trinity no let me go to missus flat the only way she's gonna have any contact with me is if I come into her plane but a notice I can't come into her plane the totality of my physical being likewise when the crater the universe in the incarnation came unto our planet as a human being we were seeing part of the God a second person of the Trinity he lowered himself and humbled himself so we're just seeing a portion now I could put a finger through the plane and she could come and investigate and she would conclude that I am a small circle but of course I'm much more than a small circle I could go to vistor flat the next day only this time of but three fingers through the plane he thinks I'm three small circles he runs home to his wife and says my dear you were wrong it's not one circle it's three circles she insists it's one circle and not three circles and next day being Sunday she worships at the Church of the one circle and he worships at the Church of the three circles and see what they were failing to recognize as if there's one finger and these three fingers are all part of a single closed a three-dimensional surface so in that context I could be one and three at the same time likewise a daughter in the Trinity is one essence and three persons but probably the transdimensional doctrine has caused the most consternation for both Christians and non-christians is the claim that the Bible makes that God predetermines all of our thoughts words and actions before he created the universe and yet he holds us responsible to exercise our free will to choose the right thoughts words and actions how do you resolve the doctrine of divine predestination and human free will I don't have time to give you the complete resolution you'll see it in the book beyond the cosmos ball get you started but to what I want you to think about is a three-dimensional sphere of time so here's like a little diagram but think of it as three dimensions and we're going to put the timeline of your life along a part of that surface of the sphere but we can put God at the North Pole of that sphere of time and he can drop a perpendicular time line to the day of your birth a perpendicular time line to this present moment and a perpendicular time line to the day of your death and because he lives in I can operate in the equivalent of three dimensions of time or more notice all these moments on the time frame of our existence meet together at a single moment of time up at the North Pole of that sphere of time and of course he can do that for the entire universe now that basically shows you how God can for know everything it doesn't show you how God can predestiny while holding us responsible to exercise our free will what I've done in beyond the cosmos in chapter 13 is show you three independent ways in the context of a God that transcends 11 space-time dimensions of our universe a ten space-time dimensions pardon me three different ways how you can have divine predestination simultaneously operating with human free will by the way I'm not claiming one of these three is right maybe I'll be wrong I think God's got thousands of ways of resolving it I'm simply showing you it's not a contradiction it's a resolvable paradox if we allow God to be as big as what the new physics tells us he must be and incidentally that's the chapter we're giving away for free that reasons org slash Ross but this actually had an impact on my conversion I didn't really get to know Christians till I was 27 when I showed up at Cal Tech to join their faculty however my astronomy persuaded me that there was a God I went through the different holy books of the religions world and one of the things I noticed was all these holy books except one put God in a 4-dimensional box the Bible is the only one that claimed doctrines about God attributes about God that defied the limitations of what we can visualize within length width height and time for so for me that was evidence that the message of the Bible didn't just come from mere human beings it came from someone that transcends the space-time dimensions of universe and that was my first step to realizing that the Bible indeed was the inspired inerrant Word of God and you can read about this or see this actually in the DVD we have beyond the cosmos who actually designed that for children based on my experience with my sons and other children and our book why the universe is the way it is but I want to end my time here with what I think is the most stunning biblical extra or transdimensional doctrine and this is what happened when Jesus died on the cross for example I've run into many skeptics and atheists who say the message of the Bible can't be true because it's simply inconceivable that someone could spend just six to nine hours in the cross and that's so much time Jesus spent on the cross before he passed away they said how can an individual and just six to nine hours pay the atonement penalty for all the sins and evil of every human being who has ever existed it's just too brief a period of time well what I share with skeptics when I get that question is it's not just a human being that died on the cross it was God Jesus of Nazareth was both God and man and yes he humbled himself and lured himself but he still retained many of his divine attributes and because he's not constrained to just one dimension of time but his access to the equivalent of multiple dimensions of time he can accommodate the atonement price for every human being who's ever lived upon that cross well my skeptical friends will say well wait a minute don't you Christians claim that the Pennell for our fence against God is the equivalent of eternal torment in the lake of fire and I said yes but let me show you a demonstration here here's Jesus on the cross and think of a dimension coming out from the screen and so it kind of looks like this and so here's Jesus and a dimension of time coming out from the screen and he spends six to nine hours in that particular dimension of time however since he's got access to at least equivalent the second dimension of time he can exist on the plane of that screen for as much time as he likes within that six to nine hours of our time and in a third dimension he can actually experience a hundred and twenty billion times infinite time so in the context of these three dimensions of time he can easily pay the atonement penalty for a hundred and twenty billion people who have lived since Adam and Eve was created and actually experienced that torment or eternal time and notice in that context you can compress all of this back into just six to nine hours in our time context now I'm not saying that's exactly how jesus paid the atonement penalty again he's got thousands of different ways of doing it given that he transcends our ten space-time dimensions but it does show you an example of how it's possible that Jesus and just six to nine hours an hour time frame can pay for an eternity of torment for billions of human beings and Hebrews 2:3 says how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation I think one reason why we don't see meant more people coming to faith in Jesus Christ they really haven't measured the degree that Christ has paid for their sin and evil that they've committed if they actually measure a degree of which crisis suffered on their behalf it's like how anyone in the right mind the rational mind can ignore such a great offer of salvation and that's an offer he makes not to every human being on the face of the planet now I'm here this week giving 9 different talks on how new discoveries in the book of nature give us more evidence for the book of Scripture and for the Christian message and my goal in being here this week is to equip you to be more effective and bringing unbelievers to faith in Jesus Christ yes I've been a pastor in our church for the last four decades and my role in that church is as the minister of evangelism and apologetics so that's why I'm here at region is really to raise all of you up to be more effective in your evangelistic ministry at just yesterday I was interviewed in the 700 club about our latest book always be ready which basically makes a point if you prepared good reasons 1st Peter 3:15 for the hope that you have in Christ and can deliver them with gentleness respect and a clear conscience you will see God supernaturally bringing people to you to hear and respond to those good reasons and the last few minutes I got here I want to share with you one of those miraculous encounters but my whole point is it can happen to you whatever good reasons you prepare you will see God supernaturally bringing people to you that are he's prepared in advance to hear and respond to your good reasons know God knows our background and I was sitting at an airport and my flight was delayed and then they called my name and I said this isn't good news I'm going to get bumped because I had a cheap ticket but they called me up there and I said are you traveling alone I says yes I am and so we have a family here that needs to sit together are you okay with us changing your seat says yeah you can give me any seat you want the airplane so they changed my see my new seat was to a that's first-class I don't fly first-class so anyway I was pleased to be able to fly first-class down on my seat and then a man joined me and he said I don't fly first class either but I'm a consultant for Microsoft and insisted on fly me first class and then he said I'm a quantum physicist I'm from Germany I'm an atheist and a skeptic who are you now I mentioned that to a German engineer a couple of weeks ago and I was speaking he says yeah that's how these German academics behave they just let it all out at once so I said well I'm not from Germany I'm from Canada I'm not a quantum physicist I'm an astrophysicist I'm not an atheist and a skeptic I'm a Christian he said this is going to be a really interesting flight so do you mind if I ask you some questions he asked me eight questions or the course of two hours a couple of them which I just shared with you today but at the end of those eight questions he said how come you got such well prepared answers to my questions and I said well because you're eight questions of the chapter titles in a book I wrote and he said there's no way I don't believe you well I had one book left in my briefcase it happened to be that berry book and so I brought it out he looked at the table of contents he says those are not only my questions they're the titles of your first eight chapters and so as we were walking to baggage claim he was the one that calculated the probability that a German quantum physicists would be sitting beside the Canadian astrophysicists and he said it's less than one chance in two billion and so therefore we concluded what happened that day was no accident I'll tell you something else about that trip is that he said look I'm German do you have anything in German well I had one other item in my briefcase it was a DVD or DVD journey toward creation and it's in 11 languages including German I was able to give that to him again what are the odds that the one book I'd have left in my briefcase would be why the universe is the way it is and the one DVD left on my briefcase was exactly the DVD that he needed you know and that happens to you once you think it might be a coincidence when it happens to 300 times you realize this isn't a coincidence this is God at work and I know this is a campus of believes in miracles what I'm offering you here is a guaranteed way to experience miracles in your life God wants to see the Great Commission fulfilled so if you will simply obey first Peter 3:15 you will see it happen thank you [Applause] [Music] you

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Length: 29min 26sec (1766 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018