SIXTY-SEVEN
In a Television studio in Los Angeles
The cameras were rolling, but the conversation had just stopped. The production director in the control booth was squirming and muttering to himself, “Come on, say something …”
The host of the television program, Bernie Bellows, was seated in the middle of his famous round table on the studio set. On his left, Dr. Nigel Huntington, the Oxford philosopher and usually bellicose atheist, was looking more passive than usual and taking a long, languid drink of water. Across the table from him, Christian theologian Dr. Maxwell Thompson was waiting for an answer to his question.
Bellows smiled and was about to interject something, just to fill the dead air. But Dr. Thompson hopped in first. “Dr. Huntington, what I’m asking is whether you are familiar with the mathematical odds worked out by a Nobel Prize – winning mathematician at your own university, at Oxford? The odds that those long-extinct volcanoes and attending earthquakes in the Middle East would explode precisely and exactly, as if on cue, just as the coalition armies and navy were about to invade Israel. Bernie, I think you have the graphic; can you put it on the screen?”
With that, Bellows clicked a button, and his set backdrop became an illuminated screen. There was an outline of the nation of Israel, with little red flame symbols designating each volcanic eruption and a lightning bolt representing major earthquake activity. An arrow represented each attempted enemy army or navy advance. On the graphic, at each exact attempted invasion point, there were symbols for volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.
Thompson couldn’t help but laugh. “Dr. Huntington, look at this. Down in the Sinai, the armies of Libya and Sudan advancing toward Israel from the south, see the arrow? Notice how the arrow is cut off by the lightning bolt of a major earthquake and two volcanic eruptions. Then over at the Jordanian border with Israel, the armies of the coalition are stopped right at the border of Israel by the same thing. Total destruction. The armies trying to cross over through the Golan Heights from Syria, stopped in their tracks by eruptions, earthquakes — incinerated. Same story …”
Huntington had both his hands in the air, waving them. “Don’t bother. We all know the story. We’ve seen the news so you don’t have to bore us.”
“Then,” Thompson continued, “up in the north of Israel, the big army push from the Russian coalition — earthquakes, volcanic ash and lava, hurtling boulders blown out of the volcanoes. Wiping them out, just at the perfect time, as if directed in perfect military precision. And what the earthquakes and volcanic fireballs didn’t accomplish along Israel’s borders, the giant hailstones falling from the sky did. Now, your Oxford mathematician, working jointly with a geologist, computed the odds of all of this happening the way it did to be eight hundred trillion to one. Conservatively speaking. But that’s just the start — ”
“Let me talk about odds — ”
“Please, Dr. Huntington, let me finish. Those odds don’t even take into account the fact that these events were predicted twenty-five hundred years ago in Ezekiel chapters thirty-eight and thirty-nine of the Bible. That additional factor was loaded into the world’s fastest computer several days ago at Cray, Inc. up in Seattle. That computer can do ten quadrillion operations per second. It is still working the question, trying to come up with a number large enough to indicate how infinitesimally small the chances are that such a prediction could have come true purely as a matter of random chance.”
Huntington was trying to look unimpressed. “Statistics, odds — they’re valid in themselves from a mathematical standpoint, certainly, but you’re missing the point … the earth was started with just those kinds of odds — ”
“Exactly! Which means that it takes more of a leap of faith to believe that life started on this planet randomly than it does to believe it was set in motion by a Creator God. More relevant to our discussion, it takes more wild speculation to swallow the idea that the rescue of Israel that we have witnessed was just by chance, than to believe the truth — that God Himself orchestrated this victory for Israel so that the world would see that He is God. It is God’s most spectacular evidence of Himself to date. You have to ask yourself, if this proof of God doesn’t do it, if it doesn’t satisfy you, then exactly what manner of proof would? That’s a question you refuse to answer, Dr. Huntington. So, my prayer for you is that you take this opportunity to get right with God, pull down your wall of philosophical obstructionism and admit the truth. God is there. That when it comes to dramatic miracles of biblical proportions, God has broken His silence, and He is calling you to believe that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to earth, according to the Scriptures — and that He is coming again.”
Bernie Bellows broke in. “Our time is up. But we clearly have to admit that something extraordinary has happened as a result of these events in Israel. Churches in America have tripled in attendance. Reports of spontaneous Gospel revivals breaking out — right here in Los Angles, Seattle, Las Vegas of all places, Denver, Omaha — stories of divorced couples coming back together …”
The credits started rolling across the screen, but Bellows wasn’t done. He kept reading from his notes while he shook his head in disbelief. “Despite the devastation here at home in New Jersey from a nuclear attack — thousands of lives lost — and the fear from these massive geopolitical events and the major outbreak of war across the ocean, people seem to be responding to some kind of movement of the spirit. Revivals in St. Louis, drug rehab centers emptying, criminals turning themselves in after confessing, more revivals in New Orleans, Boston, New York City, Albuquerque, reports of gangs in the projects of Chicago coming to Christian faith, more revivals in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Columbus, Akron, Indianapolis …”