Atheistic Beliefs

Atheism has its seat in the heart, and not in the understanding. "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." John 3:19-20

Nothing can be more evident, than that atheistic beliefs can never be embraced from reason, or conviction, or by an unbiased understanding. They are certainly adopted under the influence of the heart. They are believed only because they are loved--or because God is dreaded and hated. Thus the heart is the true source of the belief that there is no God; and he is a fool, who, governed by his desires, thus believes against all reason and evidence.

The great danger lies in the heart and in its hostility to God and His character. What we desire, we easily believe; and what we dread or hate, we easily disbelieve. As we dread the anger of God against sin, and against ourselves particularly as sinners, and all His designs to punish sin; and as we hate to renounce sin and its pleasures, we easily and naturally contrive to disbelieve God's designs, character, and existence. Especially is this the case, when God, provoked by our rebellion and opposition, gives us up to a reprobate mind.

[Timothy Dwight]

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Psalm 14:1 … The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.

Romans 1:28-29 …  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers,

2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 …  And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

2 Timothy 3:8 … Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.❤

Nothing!

How great and glorious is the character of God as seen in His Creation!  Possessed of perfect excellence, contemplating with infinite delight His glorious attributes, and containing in Himself a boundless sufficiency for the accomplishment of everything great and desirable, God saw that it was befitting to His character to unfold His perfections and communicate His goodness to an endless and innumerable race of beings.

From an infinite height, He took a survey of the limitless range of possible beings; and in a cosmos without limits, but desolate and wild, where nothing was, He called into existence with a word, the countless multitude of worlds, with all their various furnishings. With His own hand He lighted up at once innumerable stars, and rolled around them innumerable worlds! All these He perfectly dispersed and arranged and all, at the same time, He stored and adorned with a rich and unceasing variety of beauty and magnificence.

Throughout His vast empire, He surrounded His throne with intelligent creatures, to fill the immense and perfect scheme of being which originally existed with infinite splendor in His own incomprehensible mind. Independent of all possible beings and events, He sits at the head of His universe unchanged; and incapable of change amid all the vicissitudes, tossings, and tumults by which it is agitated.

When empires are overthrown, or angels fall; when stars are extinguished, and solar systems return to their original nothingness, He is as equally unmoved as when a sparrow expires, or when a hair falls from a head. Nothing can happen, nothing can be done, beyond His expectation, or without his permission. Nothing can frustrate His designs and nothing hinder His purposes!

All things, beside Him, change and fluctuate without ceasing. Events exist and vanish. Beings rise and expire. But His own existence, the thoughts which He entertains, the desires which He has, the purposes which He forms are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Throughout the coming limitless Eternity, also, and the boundless tracts of Immensity, He sees with serene delight His own perfect purposes daily and invariably advancing with a regular fulfillment towards their absolute completion. In its own place, in its own time, and in its own manner each exists in exact obedience to His immutable will, and in exact accordance with His choice.

Nothing lingers, nothing hastens but His counsel exactly stands, and all His good pleasure will be precisely accomplished.

[Timothy Dwight]

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Psalm 95:3-7 … For the Lord is a great God, and a great King above all gods.  In his hand are the deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.

Psalm 33:6 …  By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth.

Genesis 1:1 … In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

Psalm 90:2 … Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Psalm 102:25-27 …  They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed:  But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end.❤