Today's message comes from our most popular series called Legacies of Light. Stephen has a new book. Legacies of Light Volume two We're sending that as a gift to those who make a special donation to our ministry during this series. We need your financial support to make this ministry possible, and this new book is our way of saying thank you. I've put a link in the show notes that gives you all the information you need.
Now, here's Steven. He didn't have a college education in the scriptures. He's got a concordance. And a Bible. He said, I studied the eyewitness accounts of the change in the disciples when Jesus was in the tomb.
They're huddled. Terrified. unwilling to say anything or do anything. Jesus appears, and look at the proof of what happens in their own lives.
Now they become these courageous, Bold, fearless men, most if not all of them are led to violent, horrific executions.
Well, for today, I want to introduce you to an individual and his wife, and then we'll get into a little bit of the Word of God that impacted their lives. The New York Times called. Vigo Olsen, another David Livingston. I've had an interest in this diplomatic leader, this statesman, this pioneering A church planter, Bible translator. I have his two-volume biography.
It's entitled Dr. D-A-K-T-A-R, which is Bengali for Doctor. And uh I've also had a personal interest because of a member of my own extended family. Uh my father's cousin, my third cousin, Becky Davey. spent decades serving as his nurse.
In the hospital they built In Bangladesh. I can still remember as a boy Becky visiting our home while on furlough. I can still see her dressed in a very colorful sari. And wearing a very winsome smile as she talked about the ministry of Christ through their work in Chittagong.
Now, if you knew this surgeon, she would serve alongside. when he was still a medical student, Vigo, or his friends call him Vic. you would have met a brilliant agnostic. A young man who was convinced of his evolutionary worldview. He believed it answered the fundamental questions of life, though he was still a little troubled with some of the fill-in-the-blanks that had not yet been filled in.
He considered Christianity just one more religion. And it was a religion.
Sort of created by people like all the other religions of the world who were afraid of death. And the unknown And so this salved their minds, their consciences, and made them feel better. But then something begins to happen in his life As a medical student, His life will eventually so dramatically change That he will eventually refuse an invitation to join the male clinic medical staff. He will turn. turned down incredibly lucrative opportunities, including the opportunity to become the chief surgeon in the second largest hospital in America.
And it'll go to this third world country. When we sing Take my life and let it be. You can have it all.
Well, to him, it's going to really mean that in every respect, he will give it all away.
Something radical will happen to his life. What begins the process Uh would be his marriage. To a woman, a young lady who is also an agnostic. though raised in a believing home. Her parents were committed Christians.
And yet it had all gone in one ear and out the other.
Well, they get married. And their visits to her parents' home would often unfold into these late-night debates. And though they were civil and polite, Vic would later write he was boiling. inside. as they debate it.
And in the course of one of those debates, In fact, late into the night, into the early hours of the morning, he agreed really to be polite and accommodating, but he still yet agreed, and she with him, that they would personally. Explore the claims of Christ Now Vic was convinced it wouldn't take all that long to debunk this what he called, quote, unscientific religion. It wasn't going to take him long to shoot down Christianity. Besides, he'd already been fully immersed in evolution and the science of the day, and God was effectively uninvolved in creating. People, the world, the universe.
He believed like a deist that God probably existed but wasn't personal, you couldn't know him, and it really didn't matter anyway. The idea that God created the universe That God designed the human body The uh Animal kingdom, plant life, everything else. To Viggo Olson, that idea was. at best unintelligent. Certainly, it wasn't intriguing to this rather brilliant Medical student.
He'd been raised during the rather heady Days Of scientific discovery and advancement when he was in elementary school in the 1930s. the medical community and the scientific community was becoming a little bit more brash and bold in their denunciation of what had been the underpinnings, at least deism was, of our own country, that there was a God who started it all. And so he found refuge in their comments, which were becoming bolder. In the 1930s, a famous astronomer Made the statement, published his thoughts that, quote, the notion of a beginning was repugnant.
Now, the steady-state theory had held sway for a long time, and that is that the universe was infinite and everlasting. That's been proven untrue. In our world, even by the evolutionists, that now know there was some sort of explosion of time-matter beginning. They call it the Big Bang. He said Hear this scientist openly and without apology that the idea of God creating the universe was repugnant.
In other words, it made him nauseated. And he was applauded. for making that kind of statement. The most brilliant mind. By far when Olson was entering high school was Albert Einstein, who had said it had been published in an interview, and I quote him: the circumstances of an initial moment of creation.
Irritates me.
Well, Paul, the apostle, said it would. For one thing. The idea of God creating the heavens and the earth is repugnant, unscientific. foolish and Irritating. The Apostle Paul writing.
From his own evolutionary World That believe the gods just sort of allow it all to happen according to their own dictates. Buddhism, in fact, had reached Asia Minor by the time Paul was a missionary and They were very aware of this worldview. He writes in Romans 1 that the power and the nature of a creator, God, is evident. Obvious And and because of What is discovered about what he made, Paul said, their only response can be to suppress it. It's interesting his use of that verb to suppress.
It's a Greek verb that means to steer. S-T-E-E-R. In other words, no matter what they see or what they observe or what they discover, the world wants to steer it all into their own interpretation and away from the idea of a creator God. And to steer people away from that concept and to steer them into their own interpretation, which, by the way, is the reason why there isn't anything that's going to be discovered. or observed where people are going to go, oh.
Well, I didn't know that.
Now I'm going to bow my knee to God and believe in Jesus. That isn't going to happen. Dead people came to life, by the way, and entered Jerusalem after Jesus said it's finished, and what did they do? They suppress the truth. God has to open the eyes.
of understanding, but Paul says in the meantime, the unbelieving world wants to steer away from that which they observe, which to us as believers is one more declaration of, wow, what a glorious God we have. But still they they politely agreed to study. They assumed it wouldn't take long. to defend their evolutionary worldview. To prove that God was uninterested and distant.
that Jesus was just a A marvelous teacher. And the moral example and that Christianity was just simply one of many religions.
So they began their their study in an attempt to disprove the concept of creation. He would later write this. Scientifically, we already knew that planet Earth and the universe had not always existed. which meant that they must have been created by some mighty force or energy. The earth Is packed with power, fire power, water power, atomic power.
Only a power can bring into being a power-packed system. The question to me was, could it have happened by some undirected random explosion, which was gaining in popularity? Known as the Big Bang.
Now as a medical student Uh Vigo was being exposed to what he called the pattern. of the human body. The pattern of cells. Cellular structure. He said, I could study tissue under the microscope and determine if it was lung tissue or brain tissue or heart tissue simply because of these amazing.
Patterns. And then he said, as we began to just look more broadly, the patterns really were everywhere. The pattern of the universe, according to set laws, this all troubled them. It's a pattern. Everywhere, he wrote, there seems to be proof of some intelligent power, not random power.
That brought it into being. Then the thought struck him this analogy which he shared with his wife that bothered him. He said, you know, it occurred to me that if I took all the wooden blocks, of a hundred Scrabble games. And I took all of those letters and I put them into a plastic tub. And I shook those letters.
Vigorously, and then I threw all 9,000 pieces out onto the floor. That would be a demonstration. of power. But Would they fall?
so that the letters formed patterns, sentences. Yeah.
Some would lie on top of other letters. Many of them would rest face down.
Some would be turned sideways, upside down. None of them, none of them would form a paragraph. But suppose, he said to his wife, you know, I'm thinking about this. Suppose someone with fingers connected to an intelligent mind. picked up the scattered pieces and formed them into words and sentences, so a story.
emerged That would be intelligent. Power. He said to her, You know, power can shake that tub and throw letters onto the floor. But it will take intelligent power to write a story. and the patterns we see around us.
With everything from orbiting Planets. to cellular structure. Vigo Olsen and his wife We'd come to believe the truth of David's Great declaration of God's glory. Keep in mind. They were not Christians.
But they came to believe that God did intelligently create. After all. One of the texts that would mark them in their research, I want you to turn to, it's the Great Declaration of David. It's Psalm chapter 19. His poem on the creative handiwork of God.
We've called Psalm 19. I couldn't help but think of this text as I read. Their biography And let me just make a few comments. David writes In verse 1, the heavens are telling Of the glory of God and their expanse, that's the sky. The planets, the stars, the galaxies around this David Wrights, they...
are declaring the work of his Hands. The Hebrew words for telling and declaring, by the way, are. Continuous in their tents. In other words, their message never turns off. You could translate this.
The heavens keep on telling us about the glory of God. By the way, that's, as a believer, so thrilling to me because they figure out an even greater and more powerful telescope and what do they discover? There is even more out there.
Well, the Bible tells us God designed that so that it would just simply add to the glory of his creative handiwork.
So the bigger it gets, The bigger God. Yes. It's the reason. It is so incredibly Glorious. He says here, the heavens keep on telling us about the glory of God.
The sky keeps on describing his handiwork. Creation is the handiwork. That means it's the handwork. It's his finger, says she. Like a a sculptor.
Crafting something, or an artist painting something, and then signing it, as it were, with his signature. A vigo was given a book. by a pastor They decided that they would agree to attend a church that Joan's parents recommended. And they win a few times. Uh the pastor gave him a book written by 13 scientists.
Believers On creation. And I know you're going to want to know the title of it. I couldn't find the title of it. It's not in his biography. It's just 13 scientists.
Wrote it. And so I know you're going to ask me afterward, and I don't know what it is. But he did write after reading that. He said, this was, again, was just. disproving what I believed to be Iron clad.
He says, my polite interest was becoming a passionate. Fascination. It wasn't long before they settled in their minds the reality of the Creator God, still unbelievers. But they turn next to try to attempt to disprove the consistency and reliability of Scripture. And I don't have time to get into all their explorations, but Olson would later write, and I quote him: even though there are 66 books in the Bible, And those books were written over a span of 1600 years.
By forty Different More than 40 different authors. From peasants to fishermen to physicians to poets. The Bible harmonized with consistency. He said to his wife, It's as if. One person is supervising the writing of it all.
In college, he had been taught that writing was unknown during Moses' time. Moses was a caveman who wrote with charcoal on a wall. He was taught that the Hittite civilization was a myth, the Edomites were a myth. They were all folk tales from the Old Testament to make Jewish people feel good. about their nationality.
And yet, again, in the early 1900s, The archaeologists. which are a friend, whether they want to be or not of Scripture. We're just excavating more and more and fill and until They've been able to prove that writing by the time of Moses was actually an art. Going all the way back in fact into Abraham's day. It was an art form.
The Hittite civilization was discovered. just prior to my lifetime. It was excavated. Harvard University had denied the existence of the Hittites. used them as one of their flaming proofs that the Old Testament was a collection of folktales.
Now Harvard, by the way, can give you a doctorate in Hittite civilization. You may have read their apology on the internet about what they said earlier. also discovered as well even the ancient Edomite culture. had been uncovered once tonight is a biblical myth.
Now it's captivating the imagination of of the world with its magnificent Capital city of Tetra. Carved into the soft stone, you can now tour it. In fact, just 24 months ago, using Satellite imagery equipment, archaeologists have discovered another structure, series of structures that has yet to be dug out in Petra. They're still discovering. What the Old Testament said existed.
So Vic and his wife turned to the prophecies of Scripture. It wasn't long before they were able to catalog. 30 of them that talked about the first coming of Jesus and his crucifixion, even before crucifixion was capital punishment or execution by means of civilization and Here David's talking about hands and feet being pierced of The servant of God. They had held to the view that Jesus was a remarkable man, a martyr for his cause. And he wondered out loud to his wife if maybe Jesus was God's way of communicating.
He had already studied Plato. Plato had claimed brilliantly that philosophy could in no way deny the possibility of divine revelation. And then they arrive at John 1. That this Lagos, which is the word Plato used. This Lagos, this revelation, this explanation had come from God.
It was God. In verse 14, it became flesh. Yeah.
They studied the gospel accounts. Admitted to one another that God seemed to be communicating with mankind. In fact, he told his wife on one occasion, you know, if. If he wanted to communicate successfully with an ant, the best way to do it would be to become an ant.
So the argument he said followed that for God to communicate with us, he would need to join the human race. You know, to us, Perhaps for you, if you've been raised in a church, you're going, yeah, we knew that. They don't have He didn't have a college education in the scriptures. He's got a concordance. And the Bible.
He's talking with people. And the scriptures are taking him to the truth. Of God's explanation through Jesus Christ, they are edging closer, aren't they, to the conclusion as God is working in their hearts that God is real, that Jesus was sent from God, that God communicated. The Bible is historically accurate, and it's still, however, to them. Ancient history.
Is Jesus really alive? And with that, they turned to the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of the Lord and that stupendous claim that he made: I am the resurrection and the life. You come to me, even after you die, I'm going to make sure you live again. Really? How do you prove that?
Well, you come back to life. And so they discover the radical change in the life of the disciples. Undeniable proof of What had happened in their own hearts and minds. In fact, Vigo also will later write: the resurrection of Christ was to us the hinge of the whole question. If he did rise from the dead, get this.
Now, get this. Here's an unbeliever writing this. If he did rise from the dead, we would have to grant that everything Jesus said was true and Binding. There's the rub. Binding.
He said, I studied the eyewitness Accounts of the change in the disciples when Jesus was in the tomb, they're huddled. Hiding Terrified. unwilling to say anything or do anything. Jesus appears, and look at the proof of what happens in their own lives.
Now they become these courageous, bold, fearless men. Most if not all of them are led to violent, horrific executions. Because of A myth?
Now, the presence of the Lord who met with them over 40 days, the scriptures tell us, presenting to them. Undeniable proofs. of who he was. And they would never back down again. Dr.
Olson writes that his, quote, invincible agnostic arguments were. crumbling. But He says, I still didn't know how to relate to God. I was assuming that Christianity was like Buddhism or Hinduism or any other world religion for that matter, where you basically try to live a decent life and not hurt anybody and keep your nose clean and your good deeds, you know, try to do more of them than your bad deeds, and they kind of cancel each other out, and you'll be good with God. And we kept studying the scriptures.
He said, we encountered verse after verse that showed the distinction of Christianity from every other religion. Christianity wasn't good works. It wasn't self-help. It was repentance and faith in what Jesus did. Verses like these arrested his attention.
He just sort of cataloged them in his biography. His autobiography. Titus 3.5. Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. 2 Timothy 1:9, God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works.
But according to his own purpose, And grace. Versus like Acts 16, 31. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Again, He's studying these. He's coming across these on His own, maybe like you did.
John 1:12, to as many as received him, he gave the right to become children of God. Romans 10:13, whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And that's exactly what Viggo and Joan Olson did. Did. In fact, one night he came home.
And he had heard another little argument against Christianity. And he hadn't, he sort of picked up, and hadn't really picked up on the idea for the last two weeks. His wife had been kind of quiet. Then he came home with this new thought. And she, he said, looked at me and simply said Very.
Don't you know by now? Is this true? And he says, I had at that moment this blinding flash of inspiration, indeed. I was fighting what I knew to be true. And he said, when did you come to believe and she said two weeks ago.
And so he had to catch up. And they both gave their lives. to the Lord Jesus Christ. and their lives would never be the same. He would turn down every offer and every opportunity.
It would eventually move. to London where they would prepare them to Set sail for Chittagong. His desire was to go right in the middle in the gap between the ministries of William Carey and Aden Arm Judson. They would go to Bangladesh, make disciples, plant churches, build a hospital. They would minister medically to members of the royal family all the way down to untouchables.
The poorest of the poor. But all of them, if you read his biographies, All of them were asking the same questions that God led them through. Where did the earth come from? Is God Really? The Creator.
Did God really communicate to mankind? Is Jesus his revelation? Where can we find forgiveness? How do we relate to him? How can I find eternal life?
Maybe you're asking the same questions. Today.
