Viggo Olsen 2019 - Psalm 19:1-14

Patient in the Scriptures. He's got a concordance of the Bible. He said I studied the eyewitness accounts of the change in the disciples when Jesus was in the two terrified, unwilling to say anything, do anything.

Jesus appears look at the proof of what happens in their own lives. Now they become these courageous, bold and fearless man. Most if not all of them are led to violent and horrific execution demand that Stephen was a man named Viggo. How did this brilliant agnostic physician go from having a certainty of evolution to having a certainty of the magnificent and miraculous hand of God. Well, the Lord brought Dr. Olson and his wife to saving faith through intensive research. Then following their conversion. God took them to Bangladesh, they served as medical missionaries for many years. It's a remarkable true story and Stephen introduces you to it today. This is wisdom for the heart and Stephen concludes his series called legacies of light by looking at the life of Viggo's buffer.

Today I went and initiated an individual and his wife and get into the word of God that impacted their lives in New York Times call Viggo Olson another David Livingston. I've had a an interest in this diplomatic leader of the statesman is pioneering a church planter Bible translator. I have his two-volume biography title.tar DAK TAR which is Bengali for Dr. and also had a personal interest because of a member of my own extended family. 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 sorry and wearing a very winsome smile as she talked about the ministry of Christ through their work in Chittagong that you knew this surgeon she would serve alongside when he was still a medical student, Viggo. All his friends: for you would have met brilliance agnostic young man who was convinced of his evolutionary worldview. He believed that answer fundamental questions of life, though he was still a little trouble with some of the fill in the blanks that had not yet been filled. He considered Christianity.

Just one more religion and it was religion sort of created by people like all the other religions of the world were afraid of death and the unknown and so this have their minds, their consciences and made him 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 Mayo Clinic medical staff. He will turn down incredibly lucrative opportunities, including the opportunity to become the chief surgeon in the second largest hospital in America and will go to this Third World country when we see take my life and let you get out. All I have in a really mean that. And in every respect.

He will give it all away something radical will happen to his life.

What begins the process 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 is doggone in one ear and out the other will they get married and their visits to her parents home would often unfold in the visa late night debates and know they were civil and polite. Vic would later write he was boiling inside as they debated and in the course of one of those debates late into the night. In the early hours of the morning. He agreed really to be polite and accommodating. But he still got agreed and she with him that they would personally explore the claims of Christ. Now Vic was convinced it would take all that long to debunk this what he called "unscientific religion.

It wasn't anything of lung tissue that Christianity, besides the argument fully immersed in an evolution in the sight of day and God was effectively you know uninvolved in creating people all over the world. The University believe like a deist God probably existed but was impersonal. You could know I'm an it really didn't matter anyway, the idea that God created the universe that God designed the human body. The animal kingdom plant life, everything else to all said that IDL was at best unintelligent. Certainly it wasn't intriguing to this rather brilliant medical student. He been raised during the rather heady days of scientific discovery and advancement. Like 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 is in the underpinnings. At least Deism was of our own country that there was a guided started it all.

And so he found refuge in their comments which were becoming bolder in the 1930s, a famous astronomer made the statement publicist thoughts that quote.

The notion of a beginning was repugnant that a steady state.

Held sway for a long time. That is, that the universe was infinite and an everlasting that's been proven untrue in our worldly by the evolutionist. Now that there was some sort of explosion of time, matter, beginning at a called Big Bang. He said here to sign this openly and without apology that the idea of God creating the universe was where apartment in the Lord that made him nauseated and he was applauded for making that kind of statement the most brilliant mind, by far, Olson was entering high school was Albert Einstein who said it and published an interview and I quoted the circumstances of an initial moment of creation irritates me. Will Paul the apostle said. For one thing, the idea of God creating the heavens and the earth is where apartment unscientific, foolish and irritated. The apostle Paul writing from his own evolutionary world that believe the gods, the sort of collateral happen according to their dictates duties of infected reach Asia minor. By the time Paul was a missionary in their very aware of this worldview.

He writes in Romans one, the power and the nature of a creator God is evidence obvious and because of what is discovered about what he may. Paul said there only response could be to suppress it is interesting. His use of that verb to suppress its Greek verb that means to steer as TER and in other words, the matter what they see or what they observe are 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 that steer them into their own interpretation, which by the way is the reason why there's anything to discover or observer where people are giving up all why did that about my knee to God and believe in Jesus that is that people came to life by the way, and enter Jerusalem after Jesus finished and what they do suppress the truth.S to open the eyes of understanding the pulses 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 still make. They politely agreed to study. They said it would take long to defend their evolutionary worldview to prove that God was uninterested and distant that Jesus was just a marvelous teacher and a moral example and that Christianity was just simply one of many religions. So they began 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, firepower, waterpower, atomic power only a power can bring into being a power packed system. The question to me was, could it have happened by some on direct did random explosion which was gaining popularity as a medical student, Viggo was being exposed to what he called the pattern of the human body.

The pattern of cell 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 in many cities we as we begin to just look more broadly, the patterns really were everywhere. The pattern of the universe. According to set laws. This all trouble pattern everywhere. He wrote there seems to be proof of some intelligent power not random that brought it into being thought struck in this analogy, which he shared with his wife that bothered. He said you know, it occurred to me that if I took all the wooden blocks of 100 Scrabble game and it took all of those letters I put them into a plastic top and I shook those letters vigorously in the knife through all 9000 pieces out onto the floor. That would be a demonstration of power by which they fall so that the letters formed patterns sentence no. Some would lie on top of other letters. Many of them would rest face down so would be turned sideways, upside down. None of them none of them would form a paragraph, but suppose he said it was like you know I'm thinking about that. Suppose someone with fingers connected to an intelligent mind picked up the scattered pieces and form them into words and sentences so a story emerge that would be intelligent. He said to her in a power can shake that and thrown letters on the floor but will take intelligent power to write a story in the patterns we see around us with everything from orbiting planets to cellular structure Viggo Olson and his wife would 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 the research.

I want you to turn to its great declaration of David it's all chapter 19's poem on the creative handiwork of God.

We called Psalm 19.

I couldn't help but think of this text, as I read their biography and we just make a few comments. David writes in verse one. The heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse that the sky, the planets, the stars, the galaxies around us.

David writes they are declaring the work of his hands. The rewards for telling and declaring, by the way, are continuous in their tents. In other words, their message never turns off you could translate this that happens, keep on telling us about the glory of God by doing that as a believer so thrilling to me because they figure out an even greater and more powerful telescope. One of the discover there is even more. Well, the Bible tells us God design that, so that he would just simply add to the glory of his creative handiwork. So the bigger it gets bigger God is the reason it is so incredibly glorious.

He says here that heaven is key on telling us about the glory that the sky keeps on describing his handiwork creation is that handiwork that mean it's the hand work. It's his fingers like a sculptor crafting something or an artist painting something and signing it as it were, with his signature. Viggo was given a book by a pastor, they decided that they would agree to attend the church that Jones parents recommended and they went a few times. The pastor gave him a book written by 13 scientists, believers on creation and I know you want to know the title of it. I couldn't find the title of it. It's not in his biography.

It is 13 Scientists Rd. and so they can ask me after nine.

I don't know what it is, but he did right after reading that.

He said this was "just disproving what I believe to be iron clad. He says my polite interest was becoming a passionate fascination wasn't long before they settle in their minds the reality of a creator God still in believers, but they turn next to try to attempt to disprove the consistency and reliability of Scripture and in time to get all her explorations but also 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 40 different more than 40 different authors from peasants to fishermen the physicians the poets the Bible harmonize with consistency. He said to his wife if it's as one person is supervising the writing of in college. He had been taught that writing was unknown during Moses Tommy Moses was a caveman over which a charcoal. He was taught the Hittite civilization was a myth. The Edomites were met.

They were all folktales from the Old Testament to make Jewish people feel good about their nationality and yet again in the early 1900s the archaeologists which our friend whether they want to be or not of Scripture were just excavating more and more and fill it until they 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 denied the existence of the Hittites use them as one of their flaming proofs that the Old Testament was a collection of now Harvard. By the way can give you a doctorate 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 have been uncovered. Once denied as a biblical myth that captivating imagination of the world, with its magnificent capital city of tetra carved into the soft stone you cannot 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 out in Petra are still discovering with the Old Testament that exist so they can as I turned on the prophecies of Scripture was a 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 dear David's talking about hands and feet being pierced servant of God, they had held the view that Jesus was a remarkable man, a martyr for his cause anyone are now allowed to his wife is maybe Jesus was God's way of communicating here.

I study Plato.

Plato and that claim brilliantly. That philosophy could in no way deny the possibility of divine revelation when they arrive at John one that this logon switches the word Plato used this lot guys this this revelation. This this explanation had come from God. It was God.

Verse 14, it became flash study the gospel accounts. They admitted to one another. The God seem to be communicating with mankind. In fact, he told his wife. On one occasion, you know, if you want to communicate successfully within and the best way to do would be to become an aunt.

So the argument is that followed, but for God to communicate with us. He would need to join the human race unit to us, perhaps for you if you been raised in the church are going yet we knew that then will have even have a college education in the Scriptures.

These data concordance of the Bible is talking with people. The Scriptures are taking him to the truth of God's explanation through Jesus Christ. They are edging closer day to the conclusions God is working in their hearts that God is real, but Jesus was sent from God, but God communicated the Bible was historically accurate and it still however took them ancient history, is Jesus really alive and without, they turned to the eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of the Lord in that stupendous claim that he made. I am the resurrection and the life you come to me, even after you die to make sure you live again really. You prove that when you come back to life so they discover the radical change in the life of the disciples undeniable proof of what happened in their own hearts and minds affect the goals of the later write the resurrection of Christ was to us the hinge at all? If he did rise from the dead get this I get this is 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 by me.

He said I studied the eyewitness accounts of the change in the disciples when Jesus was in the two there huddled hiding terrified, unwilling to say anything or do anything. Jesus appears look at the proof of what happens in their own lives. Now they become these courageous, bold, fearless man. Most if not all of them are led to violent horrific executions because of myth of the presence of the Lord who met with them over 40 days. The Scriptures tell us presenting to them undeniable proofs of who he wants 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 religions for that matter where you basically try to live a decent life and not hurt anybody in and and keep your nose clean and and and your good deeds you try to do more than the near bad beats mechanic cancel each other out to be good with God, and we kept studying the Scriptures. He said we encounter verse after verse that shows 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 to sort catalog is barred his autobiography. Titus 35 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us.

Second Timothy 19 God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our work, but according to his own purpose and grace verses like acts 1631, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved again. He's he's studying these these coming across liaison is maybe like you did. John 112 as many as received him, he gave the right to learn about Romans 1013. Whoever said call upon the name of the Lord shall please say that's exactly what Viggo and Joan Olson did that one night he came home and he heard another little argument against Christianity, and he had picked up at we picked up on the idea for the last two weeks is like the been kinda quiet when he came home with this new thought and she he said looked at me and simply said that. But you know by now this is true, and he says I had at that moment this blinding flash of inspiration. The I was fighting what I knew to be true, and he said, when did you come to believe she said two weeks ago so we had to catch up.

They both give their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ in their life would never be the same.

He returned at every offer, and every opportunity. Eventually move to London where they would prepare them to set sail for Chittagong's desire was to go right in the middle in the gap between the ministries of William Carey and admire objects 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 untouchable poorest of the poor, but all the really aspired all of them are asking the same questions that goblet them the earth come from God really the creator did God really communicate to mankind is Jesus his revelation. Where can we find forgiveness.

How we relate to him. How can I find eternal you're asking the same question today with that we conclude not only today's lesson but this series entitled legacies of light.

We've taken this series and put it together is a beautiful hardback book with each chapter featuring a different biography give us a call today at 86 648 Bible 866-482-4253 also find this resource on our website which is wisdom online.org on Monday. Stephen begins some Christmas messages to be sure and join us for that Huron wisdom for the heart