R.C. Sproul

that God was directly involved in the daily lives of people.

Now one of my favorite anecdotes to describe the situation in our own day is one that Jim Boyce likes to use.

He tells the story of the mountain climber.

who experienced a crisis about 15,000 feet up the side of a mountain when he fell over the edge and was about to plummet thousands of feet to his death, when as he started his fall, he reached out and grabbed the branch of a tiny scraggly tree that was growing out from the face of the cliff.

And as he grabbed a hold of this thing and the roots started to come loose and he saw a certain death, he screamed to the heavens, he said, is there anybody up there

who can help me.

Whereupon he heard this rich baritone voice answering his query from the sky saying, yes, I am up here and I will help you.

All you have to do is let go of the branch and trust me.

The man looked up to heaven, looked back down into the canyon,

He raised his voice again and said, is there anyone else up there who can help me?

I like that because I think it typifies the cultural mentality of our own day because there are a couple of questions in that little illustration that I think are important.

The first question is, is there anybody up there?

Eighteenth-century people assumed that there was somebody up there.

There wasn't that much of a question about the fact that there was an overarching, almighty Creator who governed the affairs of this universe.

But we are living in a period of unprecedented skepticism about the very existence of God.

I know the polls say that between 95 and 98 percent of people in the United States believe in some kind of God or some kind of higher power, and also I think we can't escape the logic of assuming that there has to be some kind of foundational element cause for this world as we experience.

But usually when you pin people down and begin to talk to them about their idea of this higher power,

or supreme being, it is a concept of something that is more of an it than a he, almost like cosmic dust or some kind of energy.

And that's why the question is not only the question is, but the question is, is there anybody, is there a personal being in charge of the universe?

Now there are two other parts to that little anecdote that I think are significant.