This past week I received the 60th anniversary report of my college graduating class. It included summaries of the survey they conducted of classmates’ attitudes. I was appalled that half the Harvard graduates of 1961 do not believe in God and two-thirds of the Radcliffe graduates don’t. It hard to imagine that supposedly rational thinking persons could ignore the evidence in formulating their opinions. “Don’t bother me with the facts. My mind is made up.” It is rare to find an astronomer, cosmologist, or physicist who thinks there is no God; they have seen the scientific evidence. Consider Hugh Ross’s The Creator and the Cosmos for a summary of this evidence. Former world-class atheist Antony Flew wrote There Is a God in his 80’s after seeing the accumulated evidence of the twentieth century.
Of the eyewitnesses to heaven and hell, every one them knows there is a God, and that He is active in our lives, and it makes a huge difference what we do with regard to Him. Ian McCormack was an atheist until the last few seconds of his life when he prayed for forgiveness. As soon as he died he went to hell and was being tortured by demons until Jesus came and took him out. After he miraculously came back from death he traveled the world telling people there is a God and He matters and what we do with Him matters to the effect that thousands turned to God and Jesus because of His testimony.
Dr. Maurice Rawlings in Beyond Death’s Door tells the story of a woman hit by lightning while on a camping trip: “In the moment I was hit, I knew exactly what had happened to me. My mind was crystal clear. I had never been so totally alive as in the act of dying. [Regrets of past actions together with things she wanted to do with her life filled her mind.] At this point in the act of dying I had what I call the answer to a question I had never verbalized to anyone or even faced: Is there really a God? I can’t describe it but the totality and reality of the living God exploded within my being and He filled every atom of my body with His glory. In the next moment, to my horror, I found I was not going toward God. I was going away from Him. In my panic, I started trying to communicate with the God I knew was there.” Dr. Rawlings said she begged for her life and offered it to God if He would spare it.
He also tells the story of Thomas Welch from Oregon’s Amazing Miracle. He was working on a conveyer at a lumber mill when he fell off into the log pond below. It was an hour before he was found and rescued. In the meantime his landlady kept praying for him because he was not a believer. He found himself beside a lake of blue flames that appeared to be the place of the final judgment. He saw others there and none were happy. There was nothing anyone could do. But Jesus passed by and he knew Jesus was the only one who could get him out. Before Jesus left the scene, He looked directly at Thomas and then Thomas was immediately back in his body. He does not say he saw God other than seeing Jesus, but he certainly had no doubts about God’s reality.
There is more we could say, but the bottom line from these testimonies is that God is very real, he enforces the destiny we have chosen: to be with Him forever or not, all freewill stops the moment we die, and our travels are determined for us. God does not send anyone to hell. He accepts into His perfect wonderful Kingdom those who have chosen His Son who died on their behalf and rejects all those who have rejected Him in their lives, wanting to be the masters of their own destiny. When the person has chosen not to be with God dies, he or she does not spend eternity with Him. God respects their choice to be apart from Him. The only other option, like it or not, is Satan’s domain.
Of course, another source of evidence is the person and work of Jesus as reported to us in the Bible. He is the most powerful witness to the reality of God through His life, His teaching, and His resurrection. His life and His resurrection are among the most well documented of ancient events. So He, too, gives us firm evidence of the reality of God.