In Hebrews 11:6 the author of that eloquent treatise made this very pertinent observation: "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6 New King James Version). The existence of a personal, moral, almighty God is fundamental to all that Christians believe. If there is no moral God, there is no moral being against whom we can sin, and therefore, such a thing as salvation is not needed. Furthermore, if there is no God, there could be no acts of God in the history of mankind, so all the Bible must be looked upon as a collection of myths that really have no purpose in existing. Hence, the most fundamental question having to do with all of life is, "Does God Exist?"

Today, we begin a series of articles dealing with this question. There are four basic arguments for the existence of God, which are called, the cosmological, teleological, axiological and ontological arguments. We begin with the cosmological argument, which is also called the argument from creation. Our fundamental idea here is that there is in existence a universe in which we live. The universe did not cause itself, so it must have been caused by something else. Just as our infant children do not come into existence without a cause-effect relationship, and the existence of a child demands that there is/was somewhere both a mother and a father, so the existence of the universe states that it had a cause beyond itself. This is based on the law of causality, which says that every limited thing is caused by something other than itself. Almost all agree that the universe is limited because they agree it had a beginning.

Now, there are those who deny that the universe had a beginning and insist that it has always existed. However, very little serious thought is given to such a notion because all the scientific evidence gathered to this time inexorably points to the idea that the universe had a beginning. In order for the universe to have always existed, it would have to constantly produce hydrogen atoms from nothing! Secondly, the preponderance of scientific evidence shows that the universe came into existence in a sudden and cataclysmic way. Those who deny creation by God say the universe came into existence suddenly through what is called the "Big Bang" theory. However, the "Big Bang" theory is not very satisfying because a sound explanation must exist for such an explosive birth of our universe, and it does not. Science cannot tell why the "Big Bang" took place, in other words. Scientific pursuit of the past must end at the moment of creation for they can go no further.

Another reason we know the universe had a beginning is that "time" exists. If the universe has always existed, then we could never have passed through time to get to today. If the past is an infinite series of moments, and right now is where the series stops, then we would have passed through an infinite series and that is impossible. But we have reached today, and you are reading today's paper, so time must have begun at some particular point in the past. So, the universe is finite. It had a beginning, and in order for there to be a beginning, there must be a cause. If a cause exists, then there must be an Uncaused Cause, or God. Moses told us about that Uncaused Cause when he said,"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1 NKJV).

This argument has a second phase into which we will delve in our next article, but we do not have the space for that in our present article. Before leaving today, we wish to point out that the only thing that makes sense, even to the mind of a fifth grade child, for the existence of the universe in which we live is that it was begun by someone or something. Everything we know in life has its beginning and its end, and what is true of what we know is also true of the universe, for that is what we know!