An Atheist’s Dream House

Last week, I was privileged to preach in a Gospel Meeting at the Minksville Church of Christ, in Harrison County, Ohio. You won’t find Minksville on a map of Ohio, because it is not even an unincorporated town. It is a point where two county roads cross. There is a cemetery, a church building and two cow pastures there. Nothing else. As the brethren are fond of saying, “It’s not in the middle of nowhere, but you can see it from here.”

I think that the brethren considered the meeting a big success. The average attendance at the Sunday morning worship services of the Minksville Church of Christ is about 40 souls. On the Sunday morning of the Gospel Meeting, there were 73 souls in attendance, with 125 present for the afternoon singing and 112 present for the evening worship service. More than 70 souls came for the Monday and Tuesday evening meetings and there were more than 50 souls present on Wednesday evening. It was my pleasure to preach the gospel in the presence of my mom and stepdad, as well as my mother-in-law, my uncle Dail, my aunt Marcia, and a dear old friend from my childhood, Greg. There were visitors from almost a dozen other churches of Christ, and about a half a dozen denominations. People came to the meeting from Florida, Tennessee and West Virginia. One visitor, who was going to go back home on Wednesday, decided to stay an extra day, just so he could be at the last service. I got a chance to visit with brethren and old friends I had not seen in many years, and I got to make some new friendships that I will treasure for the rest of my life. The brethren at Minksville worked very hard to make this meeting a success, and God blessed their efforts abundantly!

On Monday night, of the Gospel Meeting, I think I made a lasting impression on those who were there. The sermon that night was called, “Is Faith Rational?” and it was about some of the arguments atheists use to try to prove that God does not exist. In an effort to demonstrate the foolishness of the atheist’s argument that the “Big Bang” theory for the creation of the cosmos is more reasonable than the Biblical model of creation, I told the story of my plan to build a dream house using the “Big Bang” method of construction.

I told them that, even though Tracy didn’t know it, I had been saving money for the last 25 years and that I finally had enough to build our dream house. I announced that I was going to buy a parcel of land and that I would have enough left over to purchase all of the materials I would need to build the house. To save money on the cost of labor, I was going to put all of the lumber, nails, screws, decking (it was going to have a big deck out back), shingles, carpet, tile, etc. in a big pile in the middle of the property. Once I had it all tightly packed together (that’s the secret), I was going to slip a few sticks of dynamite underneath it – and blow it up! Of course, as the atheists say, you have to give it enough time, but I was confident that, before too long, Tracy and I would have a beautiful, move-in ready dream house. After all, if you can make a universe with a cataclysmic explosion, you could surely build a dream house the same way. Right?

I got a big reaction from that illustration – especially from Tracy, who, for a few glorious seconds, thought that I was serious about having secretly squirreled away money for 25 years. I wish I had, but, alas, I did not. I also don’t expect to use the “Big Bang” method of house building, with any success. We all know that destructive forces do not yield constructive results. Dynamite is good for knocking buildings down, but it is not much good for putting them up. Yet, atheists want humanity to believe that the universe was born from an explosion?!

Anyway, the Gospel Meeting that I preached last week was inspired by my late father-in-law, Ed Rose. He did not live long enough to see it come to pass, but I remember how excited he was, when he told me about the plans for it, last December. He was a man who loved the Lord. He loved the Lord’s church. He loved lost souls. He spent a great deal of time, while he lived in this world, thinking of ways that he could help lead others to Jesus. He was a source of inspiration to me and to everyone else who knew him.

If human beings are just hairless apes with large brains, why do we aspire? Why do we have consciences? Why do we recognize a difference between good and evil? Why aren’t we like the animals? Could it be because we are more than just the sum of our chemical parts? Could it be because God designed and built us for a purpose? Open your mind to the possibilities (Genesis 2:7)!