Chag Sukkot sameach kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah - welcome to the seventh and final day of the Feast of Tabernacles and to my final message of the season before we move on to Shemini Atseret tomorrow.

I am not sure I have anything new or interesting to say about Sukkot itself so instead of repeating what you all already know, today I am going to focus on the One who created Sukkot, Yahweh-Elohim, our Heavenly Father, Himself, whose day today is His, and share a word with my atheist friends which I hope you, in your turn, will be able to share with yours.

Ever since I was in College at Oxford I have heard atheists and sceptics alike making a case for the non-existence of Elohim (God). As I am sure many of you know, Richard Dawkins, the famous British evolutionary biologist who has made a name for himself as an outspoken opponent of Christianity, is from Oxford like myself. He, like me, was born in what were then the British colonies - he in Nairobi, Kenya (then British East Africa), and I in Singapore (then a part of the British Federated Malay States). He is one of the leading members of a movement known as the New Atheists who may be described as 'evangelical atheists' since for them evangelising for their on-faith is what drives them.

When I came up to Oxford to study Biochemistry in 1973 aged 19. I was what you might call an 'old atheist', meaning I was not, like Dawkins, a missionary for my worldview. I was not out to prove or disprove, let alone convert anyone else. And though I had been an Anglican previous to slipping into atheism while at boarding school, I was not out to disprove or destroy Christianity like the new atheists. Indeed I wasn't searching in either direction - I simply came to Oxford to do science - nothing more, nothing less. It was Elohim (God) who came knocking on my door, rather than the other way round, and this He did by giving me a dream which awakened a forgotten memory of an event that had taken place nine years previously in Malaysia which it is not my purpose to share with you again today [1].

I left Oxford 15 years later for Scandinavia a firm believer, as you know, after a long and exciting search for the truth. I would not reconnect with Oxford again until I discovered the internet and chanced upon another Oxford man, John Lennox, whose origin was one of my encestral homes, this particular one being in Northern Ireland. Lennox actually came to Oxford in 1997 as a lecturer in Mathematics and was alteady a deeply committed evangelical Christian and evangelist. I mention him because I highly recommend you listen to him on YouTube or read his excellent books. And though he was not a part of my conversion experience in Oxford, he came to subsequently aid me on my journey of discipleship. It's his brilliant teachings, which he adapts so well for the layman, that has in part inspired my message to you today. He has debated Richard Dawkins numerous times in his convivial and friendly way, and repeatedly defeated his atheist rival time and time again.

The message of Sukkot is our eschatological hope. By that I mean, it is the hope of every believer for the future when we shall return to the earth no longer as mortals but as resurrected, immortal beings, to be with the One who ransomed us from sin and death on the cross of Calvary to make such a wonderful future even possible. It is described in poetic language in the Book of Revelation as the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. I'm going to read this by now very famous passage in one of the best paraphrase versions, the New Living Translation:

"Then I heard again what sounded like the shout of a huge crowd, or the roar of the mighty ocean waves, or the crash of loud thunder. 'HalleluYah! For Yahweh our Elohim (God), the Almighty, reigns!' Let us be glad, and rejoice and honour Him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and His Bride has prepared herself. She is permitted to wear the finest white linen.' (Fine linen represents the good deeds done by the people of Elohim/God). And the malak (angel) said, 'Write this! Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.' And he added, 'These are true words that come from Elohim (God).' Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said, 'No, don't worship me. For I am a servant of Elohim (God), just like you and other believers who testify of their faith in Yah'shua (Jesus). Worship Elohim (God). For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Yah'shua (Jesus)'" (Rev.19:6-11, NLT).

As by now I hope everyone understands, this is not a literal supper that John is describing. There aren't going to be millions of believers seated around a gigantic table with Yah'shua (Jesus) at the head, or even thousands of tables (as there would have to be were this literal). Rather, what is being described is both a moment as well as a very long period of time - a thousand years, to be exact - whose purpose and essence is similar to that of a wedding banquet. It is a description of a new kind of life being lived out in immortal bodies on a renewed earth that is being prepared for final glorification once the Millenium has been concluded, and everyone who must yet be born, live and die, has done so, to then be transformed into resurrected beings like those who begin the Millennium. I explained this to you six days ago at the beginning of Sukkot as well as at Yom Teruah when I did my best to explain the difference between the New and the Renewed Jerusalems which I know are new concepts for most of you. So if you per chance missed those two sermons, do take a look at them if you get the chance.

Today's message is much simpler. In fact I want to connect the end of the Sukkot cycle with the very beginning, even before Pesach or Passover. I want to return to where most of us started our journey to Christ, with some very basic thoughts about the existence of Elohim (God) and the kind of opposition the evangelical atheists like Richard Dawkins present to those seekers at the very beginning of their journey. It's here where witness like John Lennox, who is a brilliant mathematician, play such an important rôle especially for young, impressionable students, who these days mostly get to hear the case against rather than for.

I want to address the most common argument of atheists against. It's so common and so deceptively presented that I think it's worth our time and effort to expose, because once exposed, the journey to faith becomes so much easier and reveals itself to be far more logical than the claims of atheism. What is this chief argument against faith? It's this: it is the failure of Christians to live up to the standards of the profession of their faith. And we must be absolutely truthful here and agree with the atheists: for, as John Lennox reminds us, it cannot be denied that many evils have been done in our Heavenly Father's Name as we look at the chequered history of the Church. And those so called 'Christians' who have indesputibly done much evil in the name of Elohim (God) have not only brought shame on Him but hampered the work of evangelism. Our record stands against us - and, yes, I deliberately use the word 'our', for unless we repudiate these workers of iniquity, they become our responsibility too. When atheists mock the greatness of Yahweh because of the depravity of man, we mustn't defend the latter. Ever.

So first of all we must clearly distinguish between the greatness of Elohim (God) and the inexcusable evil done by those professing allegiance to Him. As a scientist myself, I do not fall into the false logic trap of the atheists: I do not deduce that Elohim (God) is not great and that religion poisons everything, as Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, and the other New Atheists accuse in concert with Karl Marx. After all, if I fail to distinguish between the genius of Einstein and the abuse of his science to create nuclear weapons of mass destruction, I might be tempted (using the new atheist logic) to say that science is not great technology poisons everything. As I look back at the evils of atheist régimes of the 20th century like communist Russia, China and elsewhere, I might also be tempted to declare that atheism is not great and insist that is has poisoned everything.

As things stand, I, as a scientist, maintain that science shows some of the greatness of Elohim (God). The famous physicist, James Clarke Maxwell, who discovered electromagnetism, wrote above the door in his laroratory in Cambridge University the words, "Great are the works of the Lord's studied by all who delight in them." Yet New Atheists like the late Christopher Hitchens said, "Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, religion no longer offers an explanation of anything." Now I, like Professor Lennox, find it impossible as a scientist to take such a statement seriously - do we really believe that, for instance using a microscope on a Rembrandt painting, that we could disprove the existence of Rembrandt himself? Should we expect to find him embedded in the paint somewhere? The idea that Elohim (God) and Science are mutually exclusive explanations of the universe (which is what atheists want you to believe) is as wrong as saying that internal combusion and Henry Ford are mutually exclusive explanations of the automobile. No! They are complimentary explanations: one explains how it works (internal combusion) and the other (Henry Ford) why it exists.

To think that the reach of our scientific instruments increases the greatness of Yahweh-Elohim (God) the Creator somehow diminishes is to make the fundamental mistake of confusing mechanism with agency. Whether they do that deliberately or ignorantly they themselves must answer to. When Newton discovered the Law of Gravity he didn't say: "Now I know how the universe works, I don't need God." No, Newton's wonder at how it was done actually increased his admiration for the Creator who had done it in that way. And Newton, as you know, wrote the most famous scientific treatise of all time, the Principia Mathematica in the hope that it would persuade the thinking man to believe in a Deity. Yes, telescopes can show us the wonder of the night sky, as mine did as a boy, just as the Hubble and James Webb telescopes have in our day, but science didn't put the stars and planets up there. Yahweh did.

I am so grateful that Yahweh gave me the mind to think as a scientists and gave me the privilege of being educated at Oxfoed University because this discipline not only gave me the tools to do good science, I hope, but the tools to do good systematic theology as well. I am thankful to Yahweh for the many Christian scientists like John Lennox He has put across my path, including those of different viewpoints to challenge any compacency that might arise. As Christians we should be amongst the first to claim to be 'free thinkers' who in their arrogance claim that they alone are able to think scientifically. They're not. And praise Yahweh their arrogant attempt to be known as 'brights' in the same way that homosexuals have conme to be known as 'gays' never came to pass, the implication being that we Christians are 'dunces'. Scientists aren't, in any case, always so bright. In fact, some of the dumbest ideas have been hatched by academics, the most recent of which must surely be Critical Race Theory, and has to be one of the dumbest and most dangerous, even more so than classical Marxism, because it is shredding the very basis of science to pieces and replacing it with mental chaos. Science is important.

Our Heavenly Father is a scientist and mathematician, is He not? Did He not command us to apply our minds to reason? Did He not say, "'Come now, let us reason together,' says Yahweh" (Is.1:18, NIV)? So to me, as both a scientist and a minister, the claim by atheists that science and faith are incompatible is shere nonsense. Science is a divinely appointed method, but it's not the only one. We have mental intelligence, yes, absolutely, but He also created emotional intelligence, and - I am going to suggest to you - spiritual intelligence too, and all three of these presuppose that our knowledge of them is incomplete at any one moment of time. And since it is incomplete - because were are not divine, omniscient (all-knowing) beings - we must live by faith in all three spheres.

We wouldn't actually be able to do science in the first place if we didn't exercise faith that there was order in the universe to be made sense of. As Paul tesified, we live "by faith from first to last" (Rom.1:17, NIV), there is never a time when we don't live by faith, even if it is by false faith in things like evolution's 'fairy-godmother' creating the 'Big Bang' in the first place. We can never not live by faith without going mad. The important thing is in whom or what are we going to exercise our free will to have faith in? And Paul tells us there is only one faith-route to sanity and peace:

"I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of Elohim (God) for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Judean (Jew), then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from Elohim (God) is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous will live by faith'" (Rom.1:16-17, NIV).

I am a scientist because I have faith that the universe is orderly and may therefore be understood. I am a Theist because I believe in the Divine Intelligence who made it all so. And I am a Christian because I believe that Divine Intelligence is a Person with whom I, as a person, can personally meet and relate to, because I am wonderfully made in His image [2].

With that thought, I end what I have to share with you this Sukkot and hope that you will be encouraged to seek not just knowledge about the truth but relationship with the One who is the Truth:

"Yah'hua (Jesus) answered, 'I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him" (John 14:6-7, NIV). Amen.

Endnotes

[1] See my personal webpage and conversion story, A Glimpse Into Heaven
[2] Though he is a theistic evolutionist (and I am not), Dr.Hugh Ross' books are worth reading if you wish to see the structure and order in our apparently chaotic universe