"Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him." (Psalm 38:4).
A friend of mine received one of the most painstaking pieces of news a scientist could get this week. "Did you hear?" he asked as he came running over. "We got scooped!"
Getting "scooped" by another laboratory is bad news. Simply meaning, another group published their study before you got the chance to. For my friend, it means his ability to get a professorship is mitigated. It will probably take another year or two for him now. For scientists, funding and viability are at risk when you get scooped. It's awful.
But there is a silver lining to getting scooped. It means another laboratory, in a completely independent set of experiments, have produced very similar data to yours and have thus made similar conclusions. For other scientists not involved in that work, this bodes very well for the fidelity of the data. In other words, the data is probably true if two labs independently of each other have come to the same conclusions.
The truth of God's word makes it clear Jesus offers the same corroboration. Man's history has been full of faithful saints, showing the evidence of Jesus Christ through their changed hearts and lives. Taste and see. Come to me. Pursue me. Trust me.
There is something about the character of God -- and the character of humans -- that provokes God to only bring those to eternal rest with Him that have sought Him. God restrains from writing "I AM" in the sky for all to see. God restrains from removing lies from the lips of men, poverty from the hands of children, evil from the existence of the world. Whatever the reasons are, God still allows man to find Him if they desire. The whole existential purpose of the universe rests on this fact. It is only those that seek Him that will find Him.
And thus, Jesus Christ is testable. When we call on the name of the Lord, when we seek Him with all our hearts, He shows Himself. Forget Mathematics. Newtonian Physics. Darwinian Evolution. This is the ultimate law of the Universe.
And here we stand, on a planet in a universe that offers most of us just enough days to have the chance to seek Him if we choose. Moses sought God, and found Jesus Christ. David sought God, and found Jesus Christ. Ancient people, emerging as bipedalists from our ancestors, had the chance to find Jesus Christ and test Him. People today, with the full revelation of Jesus Christ present in every Western Hemisphere Hilton Hotel nightstand drawer, have the same chance to seek Christ and test Him.
There are two laboratories in the world that now can link a particular enzyme with a signaling receptor in human cells. This hypothesis has been tested, and found to be true. This is considered corroboration in the scientific realm.
There are millions upon millions of people that have sought God and found Him in the person of Jesus Christ, over the past couple hundred thousand years. This is corroboration in the Spiritual realm. God is forever faithful and immutable. He offers us the same chance always to test Jesus Christ. Matthew records Jesus promising "Ask and you shall receive." "Seek, and you shall find."
This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The Creator of the Universe calls out to us and has provided us with the miracle of physical life, and the miracle of cause and effect. He is the first Cause, but He has given us all freedom to respond or to hide in selfishness and lust. To test Him, or to succumb to distraction and our survival of the fittest mind.
There is no more pathetic excuse than one we often hear as evangelists. Where is the proof? Why doesn't God just appear to me and then I will believe? How can i believe in a God who I cannot see, cannot communicate with, cannot test to see if He exists?
You, and I, can. Millions who will spend an eternity of joy with Jesus Christ have. Those who want to trade their selfishness with meaning and their aging and dying bodies with eternal vessels of hope and love, can do what man since the beginning could do. With an extension of the finger, we can touch the hole in Jesus' hand and be overwhelmed, speechless, seeing truth for once in our lives. And pull back and join St. Thomas, and the millions of humans that have re-discovered their identities, and discovered for the first time the purpose of life, in emphatic declaration of the truth of the Universe. "My Lord and My God"!
