“When the son of man comes, will he find faith on the Earth?” – Luke 18:8
We live in a time, where there is a lot of cloud on this subject. Today in our generation, we are unclear or doubt or challenge or even don’t want to involve in this debate. This is not quite untrue, when we hear everyday something about an atheist talk around us.
On 3rd September 2010, I heard in BBC news on Stephen Hawking’s, a physicist, universe theory on universe’s origin and life without invoking God. There had been a lot of debates for and against this so far. My focus today is that this is the real times we live in now, where our faith is challenged and we would be lost, if we are unsure and unaware of this basic context.
We know from scriptures, faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 12:9), on which, rest of all the Holy Spirit’s gifts make sense. If one has faith, he can do marvellous things than what Jesus did (John 14:12). In other words nothing is impossible without faith. Hence it is important to learn and practise faith.
This brings to question, what is faith? The dictionary explains, “Faith is the confident belief or trust in the truth or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.” Paul in his letter to Hebrews 11:1 quotes, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” We are quite clear by this, that faith is a quality, which you realize it is there, yet you don’t see it. It is phenomenal, isn’t it? How true is it?
I went to check this statement and asked my junior doctor, how he perceived faith? He said, “It is taking the head of the thinking,” which sounded good, but not quite perfect to me. I went on to operate on a patient’s hand under local anaesthetic and at the end of the procedure asked her to move her fingers, which she did without a hesitation. I further asked her, as to she knew she was moving her fingers, yet not seeing it and if she still had 5 fingers, for which, she counted her fingers one by one and replied yes. Perfect!, that is faith, I yelled! The nurse said perfect teaching!!
Of course, I haven’t chopped her fingers away! Yes, she trusted me that I will do a good job and hoped it will be the case and when, she could realize she had those fingers safe without seeing it, but trusting it, hoping it and finally feeling it, she was not disappointed, was she?
Yes my friends, faith is a quality of feeling, which you believe, hope and realize it is there to be cherished. When you board an aircraft, you believe the aircraft is checked for safety, staff’s trained and hope you will not have any accidents, which you realise is true only when you reach your destination. Otherwise no one would ever travel, will they? On the contrary you will panic to travel, which is not uncommon when you meet an accident, setting an enquiry and the purpose is it to put things right to move on. Amazing isn’t it?
So faith is an unseen subject, which is there to be seen, yet not seen, but it is there surely. Keeping our trust and hope in the Lord, whom you might not have seen, but have heard seen by many from Adam, Eve, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, the Apostles and their generations unto me, you trust, hope and believe in faith, for that to happen to you.
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” – John 20:29
Faith in Mankind
Now if we would put this to practise in our daily life, we slowly start to understand, what an important quality is faith to lead a peaceful life, without which there is total turmoil in the whole universe. This world had so much to offer mankind and more so since the twentieth century, when we had great advancement in our knowledge and lifestyle. At the same time we had fought many wars than any generations in the past and there are still many to come as it sounds. Nations neither trust its own people nor other nations setting a culture of spying, terrorism, wars and broken peace deals, resulting in enormous suffering to mankind. We also know about the cooked facts of climate control. Where does it all take? Lack of faith in our fellow humans, isn’t it? Humans are proving to be unreliable, dishonest, arrogant, bureaucratic and selfish, spoiling neighbour’s peace. Human values are slowly declining, aren’t they? Is it what we aimed to achieve? Surely not!!
Faith in God
No wonder now you will realise, why Jesus said this statement on faith in Luke 18:8, as he clearly knew and anticipated our generation’s pathetic situation on faith. Here I take a direct responsibility to challenge the faithless and the non believer’s on the subject of faith in Lord. We clearly proved above and could more and more how we lost faith within our mankind, making us live in an ever unsafe fearful peace less society. In this pathetic situation is there anyone whom we can place our faith in? Yes, there is only one person, whom you can trust than ever over these generations and it is our Lord Jesus Christ.
How we prove that the Lord is trustworthy to keep our eyes and place our faith for all times. Let us now see a few of many fulfilled promises of the Lord!
1) God said to Noah (Genesis 6:13), that he is going to bring great floods on the earth and would save only his family, as they stayed righteous, which he did by keeping them in the ark (Genesis 6)- and only 8 humans (Genesis 9) were saved from this flood, from where humans procreated (Genesis 9:1).
2) Terah and his family, Abraham’s father, lived in Ur (Genesis 11:27-31). For long time archaeologists were saying this was a fantasy town, which never existed. Now if you would go to the British Museum in London today, you would find the excavations and pottery from Ur, which clearly says this is the town where Abraham lived, to prove its existence. Whom shall you keep your faith now, with God, isn’t it?
3) God asked Abraham to leave Haran, where they had moved form Ur with his father Terah, to Canaan, which he promised unconditionally by oath with seven promises (Genesis 12: 1-3). Of course Abraham didn’t live there outright, but he believed with hope to realise it was coming, by his faith, which God confirmed (Genesis 12:7). We know God fulfilled this promise to his generation, after 430 years of slavery under the Egyptians, when the great Passover feast happened during Moses’ time, when they set foot to the Promised Land, which they inherited through the promise to their forefathers (Joshua 12). Today we know this Promised Land Canaan is Jerusalem, where Israelites live, which they occupied again from no where in 1948.
4) For long times historians denied the existence of Hittites (Genesis 23), who were the second of the nations in Canaan, the tribe which became non-existent. Now it has been widely acknowledged from the scripts taken from the Anatolian Empire that this Indo- European population indeed existed, who descended from Heth, son of Canaan, son of Ham, son of Noah. Who tells the truth, God, isn’t it?
5) We can see ample evidence for many other Biblical characters in History and proved archaeologically about their existence. E.g. Sennacherib, Nimrod, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, Kind David, Solomon, Ezra and the list goes on and on. You can find evidences for this at the British Museum at London again.
6) The promised messiah (Jesus Christ) was well predicted and had been confirmed, as we all know without doubt on His first coming. E.g. Genesis 3:14,15, Numbers 21:8; 24:17-19; Psalm 2:1-3,6-9; 22; 45: 3-6; 72; 110; Isaiah 7:14-16; 9; 11; 49; 52; 53; Zechariah 3: 8; 9:9; Malachi 3:1-3.
From the above facts we realise that God is the faithful master, unto whom all generations can reliably keep their faith and be proud in professing it.