If God ceased to exist for a second, the universe would perish with him.

Because God not only creates and that we're not only dependent upon him for our origin,

but also, since we don't have the power of being in and of ourselves,

we couldn't be for a second without his sustaining power.

It's not uncommon to hear atheists subject to Christians by asking the question,

well, who made God? But as you'll hear R. C. Sprawl explain today, if there's no supreme

being, there's no being, there would be nothing. This is the Tuesday edition of renewing your mind

on Nathan W. Bingham. We're spending several days considering the providence of God, a reminder that every good gift

comes from God, so ultimately when we give thanks, we need to give thanks to Him.

It's important for us to remember that our God has not abandoned what He created.

What He creates, He sustains. Here's Dr. Sprold to explain.

In our first lecture on the Providence of God, I mentioned that one of the dominant concepts

for the last couple of hundred years in Western society is the idea that we live in a closed

mechanistic universe, that there was no possibility for intrusion from outside and that everything

operated here according to naturally fixed laws, so the universe is sort of like a machine that functions by its own

inner machinations. But even those who introduced that idea as early as the 17th century

and the 18th century still posited the idea of a God who built the machine in the 18th century still posited the idea of a God who built the machine in the first

place, that they still couldn't get away from the need for the idea of a creator, because

those people were intelligent thinkers and scientists, and they said, look, we couldn't have

a scientific world to be observing

if there isn't some kind of ultimate cause for all of these things. And I won't get off

on that tangent here, except to say that it was tacitly assumed that even though an idea

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