Sinclair B. Ferguson

We've been thinking this week about God's revelation of Himself in creation.

His creation apocalypse, as we might say.

And we've been seeing just how all-embracing that revelation is.

It not only surrounds us in the created order, but it also invades us because we are part of that created order, and especially because we've been created as the image of God.

Now the Bible teaches us that even though we've distorted that image by our sinfulness, it hasn't been destroyed.

We can try to suppress that fact, the fact that we know that God is and that we are made as His image and likeness, but we can never ultimately destroy it.

So there's no escape from revelation.

We're spectators of it and we are participants in it.

Everyone who claims to be an atheist will somewhere, somehow, sometime give themselves away.

Somewhere along the line, it will become clear that the atheism that they claim is simple intellectual honesty, in fact, has deep moral roots, because deep down, as Paul says in Romans 1.30, they are haters of God.

Don't you sometimes think to yourself, why do so many of these people who tell me they don't believe in God get so angry about Him?

After all, they've just told me that He doesn't exist.

I remember coming across what I thought was a very powerful illustration of this in one of the British quality newspapers, the Daily Telegraph.

It carried a report of a service of tribute that had been held in St.

Martin's-in-the-Fields Church of England in London, a memorial service for the famous English novelist, Sir Kingsley Amis.

Kingsley Amis, as you may know, had been knighted by the Queen for services, I think, to literature.

His son, Martin Amis, who was also a successful novelist, gave an address about his father.

And in that address, he told the following story.

On one occasion, these are the days of the Cold War when I suppose every Russian thought that every Englishman was a Christian.

On one occasion, the Russian poet and playwright Yevgeny Yevtushenko met Martin Amis' father.