A FAITH OBSTACLE

By
Pierre Bittar

May, 2020

To believe in God is to have faith in Him. The Bible is undoubtedly one of the best ways to strengthen our faith. This is a confirmed fact since the majority of believers in God have succeeded in developing their faith thanks to the Bible.

What some people still ignore is the existence of a spiritual warfare that began when Satan and his angels rebelled against God and were cast out of heaven.

By their rebellion they became angels of darkness and by their separation from Divine Wisdom they became perverted. Their goal is to prove that they are gods as capable as their Creator.

Their plan is summarized as follows: Invade this planet earth, prove that the children of God that we are will listen to them rather than listen to our Heavenly Father and finally choose to live eternity in their company in the darkness of hell rather than with our God in the kingdom of heaven.

Of course, if they succeeded their plan they would have won on two fronts. They will have on the one hand proven to themselves that they have won this spiritual war against God and they will have on the other hand succeeded by indirectly striking the untouchable God through the possession of His own children’s souls that He loves so much.

These perverse spirits disappointed humans from the very beginning starting with our ancestors Adam and Eve and continuing to this day. God who granted us the gift of free will cannot go back on His promise. It is us indeed who, thanks to this freedom have chosen to taste the fruit of evil.

Only God knows how many of the 100 billion who lived and died in the past 6,000 years have their souls in Paradise and how many have their souls in the Torments part of Hades.

This spiritual warfare has no restrictions for evil spirits. On the contrary, it gives them an advantage over us humans since they are invisible to us when they can see us, read our thoughts and even disappoint us at will.

As for us humans. Although God cannot prevent evil spirits to attack us with respect to his commitment He never ceased to warn us of the bad consequences if we ever submit to their temptations.

The advent of Jesus Christ is a good example that can show us how much God loves and cares for us. The Word of God was made flesh and accepted to be humiliated and crucified for us. Jesus shed His blood on the cross to wash away our sins and to grant us His forgiveness.

The purpose of this article is to draw our attention to the bad intentions of evil spirits towards us so that we become cautious and never again be deceived by their malice and hypocrisies.

The worst that can happen to Christians, is when a disagreement on God’s word separates them. This weakens their faith in God and discourages the young generation from becoming Christian.

This controversy has started since the beginning of the Christian era and is regretfully progressing very fast today due to scientific discoveries capable to prove that the earth age is beyond billions of years.

On the one hand the Bible specifies in Genesis 1 that God created the universe in six literal days of 24 hours each. If this is true, the age of this universe is equal to our human age which is about 6,000 years. On the other hand science has proven that the age of our planet earth is over a billion years and the Big Bang theories certify that the universe' age is approximately 13.8 billion years.

That said, believers are torn between their faith and science. The unbelievers ridicule those who believe literally in the six days of creation. The pressure is felt more and more. Several Christians began to suspect. There are even some who have lost their Christian faith.

I am neither a theologian nor a philosopher. However before becoming a professional artist, I spent 23 years in a computer company called NCR, France. I was the Director of the Education department teaching sales people how to sell computers. Therefore I can express my opinion from the art of teaching point of view. The first rule of a good teaching is to study the entry level of your audience. You never teach a subject the same way to every body. You adjust it according to the average of your audience’s knowledge and experience.

When God inspired the prophets to write the Bible He started with the Prophet Moses. This goes back to some 3,500 years ago. At that time people were illiterate and couldn't even understand the difference between thousand and million and certainly not what billion means. Therefore, to convey them His scriptures, God used simple language that could be understood by the audience of the time.

In Genesis 1, at the very beginning of the Bible, God addressed the story of the creation of the universe. It is a complex subject that requires a fairly advanced vocabulary and refers to durations that exceed millions and even billions of years to achieve this gigantic creation of the universe.

Obviously God simplified His presentation as much as possible and avoided the details. He confined himself to quoting the essentials of what people see and know such as the sky, the earth, the animals and He spoke to them of course of humans. He divided all of His creations into six groups. As for the order in which the groups were classified, God chose the days of the week that they know perfectly well. However, to avoid any confusion between the days He reminded them every time of the beginning and the end of the day with the phrase "There was evening, there was morning. It was the first day." and he repeated the same sentence to them for each successive day.

Finally, to make them understand that it took Him a lot of work, He told them about the seventh day on which He rested.

If such explanation seems too primitive to us today, this wasn't the case for those who lived thousands of years before us.

Here is a reminder of the 7 days of creation:

1- The creation of Heaven and Earth.
2- The sky.
3- The Land and sea.
4-The Sun, Moon and stars.
5- Fish and birds.
6- Animals and Human.
7- God rested from all the work.

Of course God knew that His Bible will serve many generations to come and people evolve in knowledge and understanding. He certainly knew that His explanation will be too primitive for us today in our 21st century. To solve such problem, God had the option between updating His Bible periodically which is practically impossible or, trusting the common sense of future generations. Which option would you choose?

I am personally convinced that the creation of the universe by God required several thousand and even several millions years and this has never been denied by God. God could even accomplished His creation in a blink of an eye if He wanted it. For God is not limited by time or space. Here is what was written about God’s time in 2 Peter 3: 8 "But there is one fact that you must not forget, my dear friends: it is that, for the Lord, a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years are like a day".

Brothers and sisters don't give up your faith in God. Don't let Satan fool you. God loves you. Jesus is the way and the truth. The truth you have just discovered in Jesus will strengthen your faith and give you the means to convince your relatives and friends who involuntarily gave up their faith because of this universe age controversy. Rest assured that your conviction is much stronger today and this will help you convincing others much better than ever before.

May God bless you and protect you from all evil. Amen