I suddenly had a whole new understanding of the character of God the Father. Now when I say a new understanding, I mean a different understanding. No longer could I look at God as kind of a celestial Santa Claus, a cosmic bellhop who was on call to respond to every one of my requests and my commands. No longer could I think of faith as being something that began and ended in my experience.
Now my attention was not on the one who was saved, namely myself, but on the one who had reached out from heaven to meet me, to redeem me, to forgive me, and to claim my life for Him. On October 3rd, 1994, Renewing Your Mind was officially launched by R.C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. For three decades, Truth has been broadcast on stations and signals around the world, and today also downloaded millions and millions of times every year. Over those 30 years, this daily outreach has only been possible thanks to you, how generous and faithful listeners. So as we thank God for 30 years of broadcasting truth, we also give thanks to God for you. Today on the episode that officially marks 30 years of Renewing Your Mind, you'll be hearing the message that was first broadcast over the airwaves in 1994 and the dramatic events that changed the course of R.C. Sproul's life and ministry.
Here's Dr. Sproul on the otherness of God. Sometimes I think it seems to us that nothing ever changes. We feel like we're in a personal rut and that our lives just repeat a certain sameness over and over again.
But that is not reality. The reality is that we do change and that we change every single day of our lives. But most of the changes that we undergo are superficial.
We add some weight, we reduce and so on. But changes in our personality, in the very direction of our lives, are for the most part gradual and almost imperceptible. But I think every one of us has experienced crisis moments in our lives that have radically altered the direction of our personalities and of our careers. If you think back over your life, you think back if you think back over your life, you will be able to identify, I'm sure, a handful of crisis experiences, crisis moments that forever afterwards changed the course of your life.
But when I think over my own life, I always go back to a moment in the year 1958 took place in the dead of winter during my years in college. I was lying in bed one night, and it was close to midnight, and my body was tired. I'd had a big day, but I couldn't get to sleep. I remember turning my head from one side of the pillow to the other side trying to find a way that I would be able to drift off into peaceful slumber, but I couldn't do it.
My mind was racing, and I had this overwhelming urge to get up out of bed and leave the building where I was staying. And so I swung my legs out over the bed, and I got into my clothes, and I went out into the night. And it was a bitter cold night.
I remember it vividly. It had snowed the entire day long into the evening, but by now nearing midnight, the skies had cleared. There was a full moon. The stars were bright in the heavens, and it was one of those ghostly moments in a country rural setting after a fresh snowfall where the night was silent and still, and we had this beautiful blanket of snow across the fields and hanging from the limbs of the trees. And I began to make my way up the street in this little college town in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania.
No one else was out, and there was this eerie silence, and I was left alone with my thoughts. I could hear the ice crunching under my feet as I was walking up the street, and I made my way deliberately to the college chapel. Now if you can visualize it, the college chapel was adjacent to the chief administration building of the college that was called Old Main, and Old Main was adorned with this huge tower, and in the tower there was this large clock like Big Ben, and every fifteen minutes the chimes from that clock would reverberate clear across the quadrangle of the central portion of that campus. And as I was walking toward the chapel, it was so quiet, and it was almost exactly midnight, that I could hear the gears in the mechanism of the clock shift and change and sort of clunk together before the chimes rang at midnight. And then following the chimes, there was the striking of the hour, and it was always my custom in those days because I could hear those hours being chimed even as far away as I was staying.
I would lie in bed, and I would listen to the chimes and count them every time to make sure that the clock was correct. But this night it happened to be exactly midnight as I approached the front entrance to the chapel, and I counted the striking of the chimes to the number twelve. And then I opened the front door of the chapel, and it was a huge oak arched doorway into a Gothic mini-cathedral, if you will. And as I walked in that door, hearing every sound that the door made as I opened it, the creaking door, it was spooky. Because normally when we'd walk into the chapel, we'd be going in there with hundreds and a couple of thousand students at the same time milling about, and all of those sounds would be muffled by clothing and footsteps and people having conversation.
But this night, every single sound was accentuated by the silence. And I walked in there, and the door closed behind me, and I was thrown into utter darkness. I had to stand in the foyer of the chapel to allow my eyes to adjust to the darkness because the only light was that light from the moon that was kind of seeping through the stained-glass windows. And I waited a few moments and then began to walk down the center aisle of the chapel. And have you ever been in a church at night that is adorned with stained-glass windows? In the daylight, each one of those windows acts as something as a prism, and the illumination and the effulgence of the light that comes makes the stained-glass window a spectacle of unspeakable beauty.
But at night, when the light is almost nonexistent, what you see standing out of the standing out on the lights are the lead portions that separate the panes in the windows. And that's what I remember. As I walked in there, it was frightening. And I carefully went down the center aisle, and my footsteps sounded like hobnail boots of German soldiers marching on cobblestone streets. I could hear them reverberating throughout the chapel.
And finally, I reached the front of the chapel, and there was a rug on the chancel stairs. And I knelt at that place. And the first sensation that I had was a sensation of a foreboding loneliness. I sensed that I was absolutely alone. And then almost in an instant, I was overcome by the sense of another presence. It was almost tactile. It was like I could reach out and touch the massive presence of God.
And I didn't say anything. I didn't pray either aloud or silently. I just knelt there, and more or less basked in this sensation of being in the presence of God. And I had an inner conflict of two emotions that seemed to be colliding in my heart. On the one hand, I had this dreadful fear. I had this sensation, this chill that began at the base of my spine and ran all the way up my back and into my fingers, and I had goosebumps on my flesh. I was clearly frightened by the sense of the presence of God. And yet at the same time, I felt drawn to luxuriate, to bask in that moment, and I sensed an overwhelming flood of peace come into my soul. And it was one of those experiences that I wanted to continue forever. I didn't want to move. I just wanted to stay there in quiet, peaceful ecstasy.
Now the reason I went there, the reason I walked through this cold night and along the snow and the streets, and I saw the icicles that had formed on the eaves of the buildings as I was walking up those streets, almost like gargoyles of nature, they added to the terror somewhat. The reason I made this mini pilgrimage was because of what had happened that afternoon in a classroom. I had been a Christian for a little over a year, and my conversion to Christ was, up until this evening, obviously the most dramatic, changing point in my life. I had fallen in love with Jesus, and my life turned upside down. My friends thought I had lost my mind.
They couldn't get over this transformation and concern that had marked my personality. And I was obsessed with learning the Bible in that first year. In fact, my first semester as a freshman, I made an A in gym and an A in Bible and all the rest D's, because I didn't care to learn anything else but the Scriptures. I just spent my whole time devouring the Bible. And we had a course that was required in our freshman year in the introduction of the Old Testament the first semester and introduction to the New Testament the second semester, and I resolved that the professor would never be able to ask me a question on an examination that I couldn't answer.
And he gave these long objective tests whose uncle was married to whose grandmother and so on. And it was almost a game with me. I wanted to master every one of the details of Scripture because that's all I cared about. And I made my major Bible. Now this second year, I was still finishing up course requirements that I needed in order to graduate, and one of them was a course in the introduction to philosophy. But I hated it. I thought it was the most boring, dry waste of time that I had yet to this point experienced in my academic training. And what I used to do in philosophy class was sit at the last row where the professor would have a hard time seeing me, and I would prop up my notebook in front of me and hide inside that notebook a little printed version of the latest sermon from Billy Graham, because that's all I wanted to read about was religion and to hear about things of Christianity.
I could care less about Kant and Hume and Locke and the philosophers that were so dull to my ears. But that day, the professor was lecturing on St. Augustine, and he was speaking about Augustine's understanding of the creation of the universe. And he read to us portions from the works of St. Augustine, and almost against my will, even though I was trying not to listen, I couldn't help but hear what the man was saying. And so slowly and reluctantly, I put the Billy Graham sermon aside and began to pay attention to this teaching from St. Augustine. And Augustine was talking about the transcendent power of God by which he could bring an entire universe into being by the sheer force of his command. He was describing what Augustine called the divine imperative or the divine fiat, that powerful command by which God could say simply, let there be light.
And the lights would come on. And as I listened to this, I had a sudden epiphany of the grandeur of the otherness of the majesty of God, that even in my first year of absorption of interest in studying the Scriptures, I had never fully realized. And what happened was almost like a second conversion experience for me. I had gone through this conversion to Christ. I had fallen in love with Jesus, the second person of the Trinity. But on this occasion, listening to this exposition of Genesis from one of the greatest minds in church history, St. Augustine, I suddenly had a whole new understanding of the character of God the Father. Now when I say a new understanding, I mean a different understanding. No longer could I look at God as kind of a celestial Santa Claus, a cosmic bellhop who was on call to respond to every one of my requests and my commands. No longer could I think of faith as being something that began and ended in my experience. Now my attention was not on the one who was saved, namely myself, but on the one who had reached out from heaven to meet me, to redeem me, to forgive me, and to claim my life for Him.
And I began to get a new understanding of the God I had to deal with. And I remember when the class was over, I was stunned. I didn't say anything to the professor.
I didn't say anything to my friends in the class. I walked out of the room, not in a spirit of excitement, but in a sober sense almost of reservation. That is, I had surrendered something in my soul.
And I walked downstairs from the classroom. I went to the registrar's office, and I went in there and changed my major from Bible to philosophy. Now when I did that, some of my friends thought that I had gone through a crisis of faith and that I'd lost my faith. They said, you mean you're not going to be studying the Bible anymore? I said, oh no, I'm going to study every class that I can possibly take in the Bible.
I haven't changed my view of Scripture at all. They said, but why would you get involved in the study of philosophy? I said, because I want to read the writings of men like Augustine and others who have penetrated to the depth of understanding that is humanly possible of the character and the nature of God. This God, whom I received a glimpse of today, I have to know in greater depth.
I have to know more about this One who bestows and who reveals and who manifests such magnificent greatness and excellence. And so I changed my major for that reason, not because I was interested in speculative philosophy, but because I wanted to get the tools in order to go as deeply as I possibly could in my soul's quest for God. You see, what I experienced that afternoon would not let me sleep. It wasn't enough for me to think about it. It wasn't enough for me to study it.
I didn't want simply an abstract understanding of ideas. What now I wanted more than anything else was to meet this God alone. And when I went to my bed that night before I went to bed, I got on my knees and I sought Him there by the bed, but it wasn't enough. Now, I know that God is not isolated to the confines of a church building, but there is something about a sanctuary that is holy ground. There's something about the front door to a church that marks a threshold from the profane to the sacred, from the secular to the holy. Even in Israel, in the tabernacle and the temple, there was a place within that sanctuary that was called the holy place. And even the holy place was separated by this massive veil from the inner sanctum that was called the sanctus sanctorum, the holy of holies, where only the high priest could go, and that only after elaborate rituals of ceremonial cleansing, and then only once a year. I was looking for a place like that, and that's why I had to get out of bed, and that's why I had to walk through the cold and through the snow to go to that chapel.
Again, not because I believe that was the only place God was present, but in there somehow I found a refuge, a haven, a sanctuary where I could be still and know that He was God, and I was not disappointed. That private and personal experience that I had in that chapel was a life-changing experience for me, and it was the beginning of a lifelong pursuit of the holiness of God. And it was a lifelong pursuit, and the Lord used R.C.
Sproul to help others better understand who God is. This is the Thursday edition of Renewing Your Mind, and today officially marks 30 years of broadcasting truth through this daily outreach launched by Dr. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries in 1994. And don't forget to subscribe to the newly launched Renewing Your Mind YouTube channel.
When you subscribe, also turn on notifications and perhaps share the channel with a friend. R.C. Sproul is well known for teaching on the holiness of God, but did you know that in addition to the original series, there is a 15-message extended edition. We're offering both of those series, plus four other classic series from R.C. Sproul, their study guides, and his book Everyone's a Theologian when you give a donation of any amount in support of the next 30 years of Renewing Your Mind. Help extend the reach of Renewing Your Mind by making this teaching available in more places and on more platforms.
So give your gift today at renewingyourmind.org, by calling us at 800-435-4343, or by using the convenient link in the podcast show notes. When Renewing Your Mind turned 10 years old, we asked R.C. Sproul why the holiness of God was so central in his teaching and ministry.
I think that's really easy to answer. When I became a Christian, I had one of those sudden, dramatic conversions, like a Damascus Road conversion, and my virginal reading of the Bible beginning at Genesis and reading through the Old Testament, you talk about shock and awe. The whole concept of God revealed to me on the pages of the Old Testament was utterly foreign from anything I'd ever been exposed to in the Christian culture in America. The God of the Old Testament was systematically hidden from view, from my view at least, growing up in a liberal church. And all of a sudden, when I was converted to Christ and I was confronted with the biblical portrait of Yahweh, the God of holiness, the Most High God, I quaked in my boots and I said, this God is a God who plays for keeps. And if I'm going to be a Christian, I can't mess around with it as a religion.
This has to be my life. And that's what came across to me through my maiden reading of the Bible. And then as I began to study more thoroughly, actually, when I was in college, this was going on. First of all, I was a history major. Then with my conversion, I changed to a Bible major. But I had to take some courses in philosophy, which I thought were dry as dust, until about halfway through the semester, the professor began to lecture on St. Augustine's doctrine of creation. And it was like I had a second conversion experience. I mean, I'll never forget sitting in that room listening to this man lecturing on Augustine's exposition of divine creation.
And again, it was a question of shock and awe. I had like a conversion to God the Father. I went down and I changed my major to philosophy. I still took a lot of Bible classes, but I wanted to go into the deeper dimensions of Christian thought with people like Aquinas and Augustine and others. And I began to see as my studies unfolded, particularly in seminary and in graduate school, that when I would read a Calvin or a Luther or an Edwards or an Augustine or a Thomas Aquinas, the greatest titanic intellectuals of Christian history, though they differed at many points on fine issues of doctrine, the one thing that came across in all of them is that they were overwhelmed by the transcendent majesty of God. It was in the writings of these great men, as well as in the pages of Scripture, that I found the transcendent holiness of God an inescapable aspect of who he was. And I have to say this.
This is something I've got to be very forthright about. Because I talked so much about the holiness of God, people look at me and think I'm some kind of saint. You know, they think, well, anybody that's that interested in holiness must really be a paragon of virtue and a really holy person. And I'm saying, you don't understand.
You don't get it. You know, I came from the streets. I had a lot of rough edges when I came into the Christian faith. And what I discovered was I could play games with myself, with my own conscience, and with my own shortcomings until I would confront again the most high God. And I have to focus my attention on the holiness of God, not because I'm holy, but because I'm not holy. But the holiness of God is not something I dread or fear. I delight in it because I know there's something so much greater than anything I've achieved or anything I see out there that I've long ago got past the idea of dreading God's holiness. I delight in it even though it overpowers me. Join us tomorrow as you'll hear another classic message from R.C. Sproul as we continue to give thanks for 30 years of broadcasting truth here on Renewing Your Mind.
