he most important thing we can ever know, salvation in Christ, we know only by faith, a concept that, by definition, comes alloyed with uncertainty. It's a strange universe, ours, when the only knowledge that divides heaven from hell cannot be proved, at least not the way it can be proved that 70 cents is less than 80 cents. Correct change can be certain-but salvation is known only by faith? Why?
Given the nature of things, it's hard to see how it could be any other way.
For example, imagine if the words Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for the sins of the world! . . . , were written every day across the sky in every land, in every language, by a means that eluded rational, scientific explanation. What a powerful testimony, to be sure. Yet it would still require faith to believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for the sins of the world, would it not? Those miraculous letters wouldn't make the truth of His death absolute, any more than a voice shouting from the sky in every language, in every land, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for the sins of the world, would either.
Suppose an angel, all tenderness and translucence, appeared before you and talked about Jesus' perfect sacrifice, then promised that Jesus would return soon. Would not that experience increase your faith? Your what? Faith? You'd need faith, even after that? Of course.
Scripture asserts that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Heb. 11:1). Our two great hopes, Christ's death on the cross and the Second Coming, are two things that we haven't seen. How can we believe them other than by faith? Even though those who witnessed Christ's death, His post-resurrection appearances, and His ascension didn't need faith to believe in those events themselves-they needed it to believe that He was who He said He was, that His death had atoned for their sins, and that He would return in the clouds of heaven, as He promised. And if those who were at the cross needed faith, we-who weren't-surely do too.
What could possibly make our belief absolutely certain? Letters written and voices echoing from the sky? I don't think so. Angels in our faces? I don't think so. If, as Jesus said, the dead resurrected wouldn't cause some folk to believe, it's hard to see, considering the nature of our belief (about an event in the past that promises an event in the future), what could make this belief so certain that faith would be unnecessary.
Our deceitful hearts' biggest deceit is to downplay their own deceitfulness. What we often call honest questions are mere cloaks for a polluted conscience. Lust, passion, pride-these are the witching chords that incite doubt within us. Disbelief is always easier than belief, especially in things that you have never seen, and especially when those same things whistle at our aberrant urges.
Whatever we've been given, or could ever be given, it would never be enough to make faith redundant. The witness of predicative prophecy, the testimony of nature, the evidence from history, our personal experiences of God's mercy and grace, even miracles are all part of a continuum, and no matter where we are on that continuum it's never, at least now, at absolute certainty. There's always room for more. It's like trying to go from the number 1 to the number 2 by halving each step; you'll never make it.
If, though, judgment, condemnation, and destruction are coming, there must be enough reason to have faith, because a just and fair God isn't going to punish anyone who doesn't deserve it. Hell, in a just universe, demands of the damned accountability; those who perish do so only because they rejected what could have spared them.
Someone once asked the twentieth century's most famous atheist, Bertrand Russell, what he would respond if, in the end, there was a God who said to him in the judgment, "Why didn't you believe in Me?"
"I would answer," Russell said, "'Because there just wasn't enough evidence.'"
Wrong.
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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide
