Q: Who made God?

A: No one. He had no origin, no beginning.  There never was a time when He did not exist.  This is impossible to illustrate because he is unlike anything and anyone else in the universe. He made it all.  He made us all.

Q: Where did God come from?

A: He fills the entire universe and everything beyond it, so He didn’t come “from” anywhere! He was always here before the worlds were made, so there is no place where He never was in existence.

Q: What is ultimate Reality?

A: Gods own uncreated being. Beyond matter and energy beyond all the creation we see, more basic than anything else in the cosmos is what has always been and always will be- Gods own unmade substance.

Q: What is the difference between God and man?

A: He is uncreated, we are created. He is metaphysically unlike us in His basic essence or being; His “stuff ” is absolutely and wholly different from ours- or anything else!

Q: Why can’t man become God?

A: Because it is impossible for the created to become uncreated. We has a point of beginning in created time; we are finite. God did not begin in time and is infinite.

Q: I didn’t choose to be born. How can an uncreated God understand how I feel when I had no say over what package of humanity I was given?

A: Like you, God had no “choice” in what He is either. He has always had His being, because there was never a time when He began. He is changeless and, unlike you, unchangeable.

Q: Where is God?

A: He is in all places at once; His uncreated being literally transcends, fills, and upholds the whole universe. There is no place where we can go that does not contain His presence; He is immanent. “For in Him we live, move and have our being.” (Acts 17:28).

Q: Does God have limits?

A: He cannot do anything that is unwise, unholy, or intrinsically impossible. So God cannot lie (Heb.6:18), be unfaithful (2 Tim. 2:13), be tempted to sin (James 1:13), or do anything else that is foolish, unrighteous or practically contradictory.

Q: If God can do everything, can He make a rock so big that He can’t lift it? (Or any similar question.)

A: The premise of this dilemma is false and unscriptural- it is a postulate of nonsense. The Bible defines God’s infinite power sanely and clearly; “infinite” does not mean “God can do anything.” God will always be true to Himself. He can do all that is physically, legally and morally possible. The proper answer to this kind of question is: Your question is meaningless as “What makes a be blue?” As C.S. Lewis said, Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible., not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense.”

Q: Why can’t God be tempted?

A: Only an infinite person can see all the results of any choice and weigh their values against all other alternatives. God could no more be tempted to sin ( knowing its hurtful, destructive outcome) than you could happily, sanely, and enthusiastically eat a plate of worms.

Q; The Bible says, “God cannot lie” If He is omnipotent, why can’t He lie?

A: The fact that an omnipotent God cannot do some things does not disprove His existence; it merely shows that some activities are incompatible with omnipotence. Omnipotence does not mean the ability to do what is impossible. If the ability not to do evil, not to go into nonexistence, or not to do the physically contradictory are limitations, then God is severely limited (2Tim. 2:13; Tit.1:2; Num.23:19; Ps.78:41). But this is a misuse of the word “limited.” The only limits God has are the unlimited possibilities of His own nature and will. God cannot make a stone heavier than He can handle; that is impossible. If He can create it, then he can control it. He alone holds it in existence and He alone can snuff it out of existence.

Q: Why can’t people discover God by reason alone?

A: No finite being can “search out” or comprehend exhaustively, the Infinite. By using reason alone, it would take forever to understand enough of God’s nature and character to see Him in His true majesty. Thus He must show Himself to us (revelation) or we will never know Him (Job 11:7; Isa. 40:28).

Q: Will we know everything in heaven?

A: No, We will never stop learning in heaven or eternity, for God is infinite in His knowledge and perfection’s, and we will always be finite. Our fellowship will be absolutely intimate (1Cor.13: 12), but the saved will have limitless things to learn, to grow in, and to do. Heaven will be anything but boring or stale!

Q: If God is everywhere and in everyone, why aren’t sinners Christians?

A: God’s infinite being only upholds all reality (including the life and physical being of sinners). Salvation, however, is not metaphysical in the Bible. A sinner is separated morally from God, not by distance but by an estranged relationship (Isa. 59:1-2).

Q: Why doesn’t God just destroy the Devil?

A: Perhaps any God- created personality cannot just cease to exist. Maybe creations cannot themselves be wisely “uncreated” by their Creator. But the Devil is no big threat to God’s purposes; he is not even remotely comparable in power. He has been given a limited time before his final judgement to try to prove his case, just as all other moral beings who have chosen to live in rebellion against heaven (Rev.12:12).

Q: Why doesn’t God stop war?

A: Depending on the sincerity of the question, I could say:

(1.) For the same reason He doesn’t stop you when you are at war with Him. Why doesn’t He stop you from sinning? Answer that and you answer your own question.

(2) God is going to stop the war- all wars. But as C.S. Lewis declared, ” When the author walks on stage, the play is over.” When God comes back (and we expect Him to) it will be the end of the world.

(3) God could stop the war- He could stop all wars, and He could do it within the next sixty seconds! He could do it by simply wiping out every selfish person on the face of the earth. But there is a question for you : How many people would be left when He was finished?

(4) God has only two choices with warring nations: let them go on hurting themselves and Him too, or step in personally to stop the fight. If He stepped in and they turned to fight Him, the fight would be over, it would be the end of the world.

Q: What is Spirit?

A: A spirit is bodiless, invisible reality. R.A. Torrey says, “To say that God is Spirit is to say God is incorporeal and invisible.” (Luke 24:39, Deut.4:15-18)

Q: What does the Bible mean when it says, ” God created man in His own image” (Gen.1:27)?

A: The words ‘image’ and ‘likeness’ evidently do not refer to visible bodily likeness, but to intellectual and moral likeness- likeness in ‘knowledge,’ ‘righteousness,’ and ‘holiness of truth.’

“And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after image of him that created him” (Col.3:10). “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness” (Eph. 4:23-24) “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature” (Col. 1:15)

Q: If “no man can see God face to face and live,” how could Moses, Isaiah, or even Jesus’ disciples see God?

A: As our face is the ultimate focused expression of our own nature, character, and personality, God’s gentle warning to his zealous but ingenuous friend was to simply remind him just who he was speaking with. The expression “to see my face” refers to the unmediated essence of God’s glory, the fundamentally awesome and focused power of His substance, nature, and character. God never speaks to mortals without mediation: in the Old Testament through His angel (Exod. 3:2-6), the flame of fire, or the cloud of glory in the wilderness and in the New Testament through His Son (2 Cor.4:6). Gleason Archer says, ” The Bible draws a clear distinction between gazing on God in His unveiled glory and beholding a representation or reflection of God (like a TV broadcast) in a personal interview or encounter with Him.” The expression speaking face to face as a man talks with his friend” (Exod.33:11) carries the image of frankness and intimacy and does not refer to any unveiled revelation of God (cf. 1Tim. 6:16). God hid Moses in a cleft of a rock and revealed His “afterglow” to honor Moses request (Exod. 33:23; 34:6-7).

Q: If God is spirit, and Jesus is God, did Jesus give up being God when He became a man?

A: No, because an uncreated being cannot ever surrender its unmade nature. You cannot unmake an unmade! Jesus gave up His rights and privileges as God when He became a man (Phil.2 2:8) but always retained His essential nature.

Q: Does God have a body?

A: No, but He can manifest Himself in one locality if He chooses. We call this theophany (an appearance of God) or even more specifically a logophany (an appearance of the Eternal Word, the Son or second person of the Godhead in human form, often called “the angel of the Lord”). That Word became flesh (John 1:14); God incarnated Himself as a real human being with a flesh-and blood body (Heb.2: 16) so that in a true sense God, in the person of the Son, has a literal body.

Q: But doesn’t God need some kind of physical or material form in order to exist at all?

A: If God were material being that, no other matter could exist; He would exclude or else incorporate all other material existences. But neither physical nor human form is necessary to retain or communicate intelligence and personality. Electron patterns communicate daily via radio, TV, video and audio tape, or telephone. Computers demonstrate the possibilities of “intelligence” which would not require human form. It is a much more obvious possibility to modern man that intelligence, order and personality can exist and communicate without human shape or form, or even “solid” existence apart from the actual interface to the person.

Q: But doesn’t the Bible say God made man “in His image and after His likeness? (Gen. 1:26; Heb1: 3).

A: In what way can a creation be made like his uncreated Creator? Certainly not in substance or essence; you cannot make an unmade. By “image and likeness” we understand mankind to be creative like the Creator, a unique and distinct race from the rest of creation (Gen. 1:26) molded after God’s own attributes of personality and with potential to have the same character likeness as our Heavenly Father.

Q: What does the Bible mean when it says God sits (Isa.6:1), and stands (Isa. 3:13), and why does it speak about God’s hand (Job40:4), eye (Ps.32:8), and other parts of His body as if He were human?

A: When the Bible attributes physical features to God (anthropomorphism), it refers to His actions by means of their human or physical counterparts, which we understand. Likewise when the Scripture says we are to be kept under the ” shadow of His wings” (Ps. 57:1), we are certainly not to understand that God is a giant eagle or chicken!

Q: People can draw near to God (Ps. 73:28), or depart from Him (Jer.17:13).

How can that be if He is not corporeal?

A: The omnipresent God who upholds the entire creation by His Word of command cannot be physically approached or abandoned. All such words are words of relationship. “The Lords hand is not shortened that it cannot save, “but “your iniquities” (Isa.59:1-2) can certainly separate you from His fellowship.

Q: If God really is in all things, He would dwell in Satan and the demons but the Bible teaches there is no fellowship between light and darkness (2Cor. 6:14). Is the Devil somehow filled with the Holy Spirit? If not then how can God be infinite?

A: Again, good and evil are not qualities of substance or essence, but character. God does uphold the reality of the entire created universe and is absolute author of its original existence. However, sin itself is a moral (not physical) creation of rebellious moral beings, and each moral member of creation will be held responsible for his own actions. Moral character (unlike metaphysical substance), related to God’s own creative personality, goes on forever in redeemed or unredeemed alike, heaven and hell are eternal realities because of God’s omnipresence.

Q: The Bible ascribes height, depth, and breadth to God (Job 11:8-9). Doesn’t this mean that He has form or shape of some sort?

A: In all these descriptions God transcends known dimensions. Our own dimensions of space may be created- and thus finite- analogues of His own infinite extension. Our three dimensional space may be a lesser and perceivable correspondence to His omnipresence. Some have thought the terms of size are instead used as illustrations of God’s power, wisdom, and love; depth meaning unfathomable wisdom; length, the extension of His reality and pervasion of His power; breath, His comprehensive protection and care for creation, and height, His infinite rule and power over all things.

Q: How can God be in all things as well as above all things as in Ps. 113:4?

A: Not hard for an omnipresent being. He is there in the same way that Christ, who already dwells in our hearts by faith by the holy Spirit, can yet baptize and flood our lives with power from on high. Again, these are questions about manifestation, revelation, and communication with the God who is there.