Does God Exist?

Hi, this is Bernie Dake. Welcome to the Salvation Army's Words of Life. Hi, for the Salvation Army, this is Bernie Dake.

And I'm Cheryl Gillum. And Bernie, it is so good to have you back in the studio. Thank you. Welcome back. It is good to be back. And I'm glad to tell you, I'm blessed to say that I was out for surgery related to colon cancer.

And the doctors tell me that they find no evidence of disease. And that's a beautiful thing. Amen.

Praise God. We're starting a new 11-week series today with our friend and my pastor, or what the Salvation Army calls Corps Officer, Captain Ken Argot. And the series is called Skeptics Welcome. This is a series we've been working on for a while, and we're very grateful to all of you who have sent in your own questions around this topic.

That's right. Several weeks ago, we began asking our listeners what questions you get from unbelievers or questions you may have yourself about God, creation, the Bible, you name it. And Ken Argot has joined us to do a deep dive into many of these questions.

And I know this is going to be a tremendous blessing for us all. Now, full disclosure, Ken is a seminarian. He's really very knowledgeable about the Bible, and he does not ever come unprepared to a pulpit. And in a sense, this radio program is a pulpit for him.

He gets to share what he's learned or gleaned from his study of the Word of God. But I think we should say it's perfectly natural for us to question our faith, particularly when bad things happen, or in my case, when you're given a diagnosis of cancer. I mean, how could God let that happen? I feel like I'm a good person.

I do good things. But at the end of the day, if I love God, I have to trust God. And I think you've probably heard people ask questions about their faith or why God would let things happen to good people. Well, the thing is we're not machines, right? We weren't created as machines, and we're created to have a personal relationship with God. I think these crisis moments that you're talking about are actually very important for our development and our faith. It helps us to know the very foundation of why we believe what we believe, because we're going through it ourselves. And it's not you're not being spoon-fed, whether that's from your parents or a spiritual mentor or anybody else, but it's your own personal faith journey with God.

I've heard some people say that God does not have any grandchildren, because we're all children of God. He doesn't want us to be harmed, to experience harm or bad things. But this is one of those times when in a fallen world, like you said, as we were preparing for the episode, things happen.

And we believe that God can make all things work together for good for those that love Him. And it's just this is going to be a great series. I hope that our listeners really tune in, particularly to hear Ken.

Now, we will say that while Ken tried to address specifically as many of the questions as he could, there's only so much he could cover in this series. So please reach out to us during the series if there's a question or a topic that you're really looking for answers on. We'll try our best to point you in the right direction. And we've got a great team of people here that want to help. Send us an email at radio at uss.salvationarmy.org or call 1-800-229-9965. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,