Sir Isaac Newton:  This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.  This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord God . . . I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.

George Washington:  It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible . . . He is worse than an infidel who does not read his Bible and acknowledge his obligation to God.

John Adams:  The Bible is the best Book in the world.

Thomas Jefferson:  I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the Scared Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, better husbands . . . The Bible makes the best people in the world.

John Quincy Adams:  My custom is to read four or five chapters of the Bible every morning immediately after rising . . . It seems to me the most suitable manner of beginning the day. . . . It is an invaluable and inexhaustible mine of knowledge and virtue.

Abraham Lincoln:  I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible.  Take all of this Book upon reason that you can, and the balance by faith, and you will live and die a better man.

Theodore Roosevelt:  To every man who faces life with real desire to do his part in everything, I appeal for a study of the Bible.

Woodrow Wilson:  I have a very simple thing to ask of you.  I ask every man and woman in this audience that from this day on they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book.

Martin Luther:  Holy Scripture is a sweet-scented herb, and the more you rub it, the more it emits its fragrance.

John Wesley:  O give me that Book!  At any price, give me that Book of God.  Here is knowledge enough for me.  Let me be a man of one Book.

William Penn:  The Scriptures contain a declaration of the mind and will of God. . . . They ought also to be read, believed, and fulfilled in our day.  We accept them as the words of God himself.

William Wilberforce:  Let no religious book take its place.  People do not read the Bible enough.

Benjamin Franklin:  Cultivate an acquaintance with and a firm belief in the Holy Scriptures.  This is your certain interest.

Daniel Webster:  From the time that, at my mother’s feet or on my father’s knee, I first learned to lisp the verses from the sacred writings, they have been my daily study and vigilant contemplation.

William Gladstone:  I have known ninety-five great men of the world in my time, and of these, eighty-seven were all followers of the Bible.

John Wanamaker:  I cannot too greatly emphasize the importance and value of Bible study – more important than ever before in these days of uncertainties, when men and women are apt to decide questions from the standpoint of expediency rather than upon the eternal principles laid down by God himself.

Douglas Macarthur:  Believe me, sir, never a night goes by, be I ever so tired but I read the Word of God before I go to bed.

So what do you believe in if you don’t believe in God?  Yourself – and evolution?  To believe that man evolved from lower life forms requires belief in spontaneous generation (life came from non-life) which was long ago disproved by science.  From nothing comes nothing.  We have something; therefore, something has always existed.  There are but two possibilities: mind or matter.  Which is more plausible:  that dead, lifeless, inanimate matter brought this complicated world into existence; or that there was an eternal, intelligent, powerful mind behind the creation of the universe?  Surely the latter is more plausible.  Isaac Bashevis Singer said, “A number of materialistic thinkers have ascribed to blind evolution more miracles, more improbable coincidences and wonders, than all the teleogists could ever devise.”  Nikita Ivanovich Panin (1718-1783) laid it out logically:  “The world we inhabit must have had an origin; that origin must have consisted in a cause; that cause must have been intelligent; that intelligence must have been supreme; and that supreme, which always was and is supreme, we know by the name of God.”

When one says there is no God, he must be omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent (all-powerful, all-knowing and everywhere at the same time).  Otherwise, the power he does not have may be the power of God; the place where he is not may be the place where God is; and, the knowledge that he does not have may be the knowledge of God.  Some doubt God’s existence since he is not perceptible to our sensory system.  According to this reasoning, we would have to repudiate everything that is not perceptible to our senses.  What about one’s conscience, molecular adhesion and gravity?  Just because I have never seen Katmandu doesn’t mean it is not at the base of Everest.

On Christmas Day 1968, the three astronauts of Apollo 8 circled the dark side of the moon and headed for home.  Suddenly, over the horizon of the moon rose the blue and white Earth garlanded by the glistening light of the sun against the black void of space.  Those sophisticated men, trained in science and technology, did not utter Einstein’s name.  No one heard them say Sagan or Hawking.  They did not go to the poets, the lyricists or the dramatists.  Only one thing could capture the awe-inspiring thrill of this magnificent observation.  Billions heard the voice from outer space as the astronaut read it:  “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” – the only concept worthy enough to describe that unspeakable awe.