Belief

God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

There once lived a captain of a large ship who was a skeptic; this man doubted the existence of heaven, the reality of Jesus, and many other teachings of the Bible. After his retirement from active duty, the sailor spent his declining years in a soldier’s home. The chaplain was deeply concerned about the man’s soul, so one day he surprised the retired captain with a challenge. He handed the old sailor a New Testament and a red pencil, and asked him to mark everything that he could not believe. Periodically, the chaplain would visit the old man and ask him if he had found anything to mark. The man never replied; he just smiled. One morning, the chaplain was informed that the captain had died suddenly during the night. He hurried to the man’s room, where he found the Bible clutched in the old sailor’s hands as he lay dead on his bed. The chaplain paged through the New Testament looking for red marks, but found only one place where something was written. In the margin next to John 3:16 were the following words in red: "I have cast my anchor in a safe harbor; I am at peace, thank God."

There are quite a few skeptics in our world, people who do not believe that there is a God who judges sin, a Savior whose death frees us from sin, or a heaven that waits for those whose sins have been forgiven. They do not believe in what they cannot see.

The funny thing is, these same skeptics believe that Lewis and Clark traveled across the American west to the Pacific and back. They believe that George Washington was the first president of the United States. They believe that Pilgrims came to America on a ship called the Mayflower. And what do they base these beliefs on? Have they met Meriwether Lewis or George Washington or Myles Standish? No; their belief that these men lived and did the great deeds attributed to them is based on the writings from their hands and from those who knew them. It is the personal accounts and letters written at the time that convince us that history is true.

The Bible is no different. The Gospel accounts of Jesus and the letters based on His teachings were written by men who walked with Him, ate with Him, learned from Him. These eyewitnesses saw Him crucified, buried, and raised to life from the grave. Most people who are skeptics have never taken the time to read the New Testament closely; they reject it without knowing what it says. If you open it and read it, as the skeptical sea captain did, you will likely be surprised to find that the Bible tells a different story than you thought it did.