The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good. God looks down from heaven on the sons of men to see if there are any who understand, any who seek God. Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.
Will the evildoers never learn- those who devour my people as men eat bread and who do not call on God? There they were, overwhelmed with dread, where there was nothing to dread. God scattered the bones of those who attacked you; you put them to shame, for God despised them. Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion! When God restores the fortunes of his people, let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!
The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” Only a fool can say that. But even a fool can’t say it logically, from his head, because there’s too much evidence to the contrary. He has to say it emotionally, from his heart. (Of the 593 times the Hebrew word leb appears in the Old Testament, it’s translated heart, as the seat of emotion, 508 times.) Foolish opinions based on emotion don’t need to be true.
In what other religion can you find an unblemished record of first predicting and then performing major interventions in the history of man as a god’s way of proving himself to his followers?
This method of validation is called predictive prophecy, and because of it, evidence of our God’s existence is so overwhelming that when He speaks of the unbelief of His people He uses a word that really means disobedient. That means He sees unbelief as being a refusal to believe, as unwillingness rather than inability.
Listen to His own words from Isaiah 42:8-9
“I am the LORD ; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols. See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”
And from Isaiah 44:6-8
“This is what the LORD says- Israel’s King and Redeemer, the LORD Almighty: I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God. Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come- yes, let him foretell what will come.
Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one.”
This is His proof; first predicting and then performing, and frankly He’s done it so many times that you can’t blame Him for saying, “Enough discussion! I’ve proved Myself to you well beyond any reasonable doubt. Now are you going to believe me or not?”
I recently conducted a very rough analysis of just 7 of the most widely believed prophecies concerning the First Coming from a total of over 300. The probability of Jesus fulfilling them coincidentally is about 1 in 9 with 45 zeros after it. The point is that He’s proven who He is with greater certainty than we can prove who we are.
“Be still and know that I am God,” He tells us. (Psalm 46:10) He doesn’t say “Hope that I am God”, or even “Believe that I am God”, but “Know that I am God.” He wouldn’t command this of us unless it was possible. The proof He offers us consists of Him predicting and then performing. We call it prophecy, and it fills more of the Bible than any other topic, so that we can know that He is God.