FaithSearch Bible Learning Center

“Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth.” 2 Timothy 2:15

Revealing the Fingerprints of God

About the Series

The foundational question in 21st Century world culture is not whether Christianity is true. Instead, it is whether a personal God exists, other than in the imagination and wishful thinking of theists. In this video series, Dr. Don details three easily understood and persuasive reasons which reveal the “fingerprints” of God: the argument for intelligent design in nature, the validation of the historicity of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the common experience of life transformation of people everywhere who are born again through faith in Jesus. Indeed, the Bible states that the testimony of nature, history, and life transformation render people “without excuse” if they deny the existence of a personal creator God (Romans 1:18-20).

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3
Back to Media

Small Group Study and Discussion

Revealing the Fingerprints of God for Small Groups 

This video series has three parts. Each part articulates additional evidence for the existence of God. Click a session to skip down to begin your session.

  1. The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in Nature – 20 minutes
  2. The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in History – 27 minutes
  3. The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in Transformed Lives – 21 minutes

Support resources available (FaithSearch online store)

For each part of the presentation, a session outline, the key issue, and discussion questions are provided in this guide. A suggested sequence for your facilitation of the group is itemized below.

Suggested Session Sequence for using Revealing the Fingerprints of God in small groups

  1. Open in prayer.  
  2. Introduce the video series to your group (a recommendation has been included in this Quick Guide just before the first session below). 
  3. Watch the session video segment.
  4. Identify the key issue and interact with your group about it.
  5. Use the questions provided for discussion. The author’s thoughts are also provided for each discussion question to give you and your group additional insight.
  6. Announce the next session in the series.
  7. Close your time with prayer.

A suggested introduction of Revealing the Fingerprints of God video series

The foundational question in Twenty-first Century world culture is not whether Christianity is true. Rather, it is whether a personal God even exists beyond the imagination and wishful thinking of theists. In this presentation, Dr. Bierle details three easily understood and persuasive reasons which reveal the “fingerprints” of God: the argument for Intelligent Design in nature; the validation of the historicity of the incarnation of Jesus Christ; and the common experience of life transformation seen in people everywhere who are born again through faith in Jesus. Indeed, the Bible states that the testimony of nature, history, and life transformation render people “without excuse” if they deny the existence of a personal creator God (Romans 1:18-20).

Session One: The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in Nature 

VIDEO play time – 20 minutes
Resource: Making Sense of Creation and Evolution, pages 23-28

Outline 

  • An intelligent source is expected by the intuitive conviction of even a casual observer of nature. 
  • Nature can reveal “that” an intelligent Creator must exist, but not anything about “who” it is. 
  • Examples of scientific evidence clearly support intelligence and design in nature. 
  • Without Excuse – Romans 1:18-20 

Key Issue: How can nature, with its abundant evidence of high specificity, be explained without an intelligent cause?

Session 1 Q&A 

Group Discussions and Reflection Questions.
Click each question to read the Author’s Thoughts.

1. If someone told you that the four presidential faces on Mt. Rushmore are the result of millions of years of wind and water erosion, what would you think or say? What if someone claimed to get a musical score by tumbling millions of plastic notes in a rock polisher for a year? Discuss whether these examples are different from the claim that the entire universe is the result of billions of years of chance events without any intelligence.

Author’s Thoughts: Albert Einstein made the observation that chance events will only result in chaos and unpredictability. He stated it this way, “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible!” The combination of complexity and great specificity are only possible through the application of intelligence. The entire universe can be described by precise and predictable mathematical equations on one side of one sheet of paper. The example of the 3.2 billion chemical letters of DNA code needed to direct the embryological formation of a baby reinforces Einstein’s scientific conclusion. The sequence of letters must be perfect. Otherwise, a flaw will result during the formation process. This is what is meant by “specificity” – the kind of order that could never have resulted from chance. According to the Bible, God said to Jeremiah the prophet, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, And before you were born I consecrated you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). An intelligent Creator is the only reasonable explanation for the remarkably complex and ordered world.

2. Anyone who says that God is their starting point for origins will be challenged with the question, “Where did your intelligent Being (God) come from?” How can that be answered?

Author’s Thoughts: That is not a unique problem for the theist or any person beginning with God as eternal. An atheist pointing to evolution as the starting point has the same problem. Where did the matter come from which began the evolutionary process? They must assume the matter is eternal, or that it came into existence at some point from nothing! To get started in origins, both creationists and evolutionists must assume something has always existed, either an intelligent Being like the Christian God or the material chemical elements. Neither can reasonably start from nothing. Everyone can agree that it is reasonable to get life, persons, and minds from a Being which has life, is a person, and has a mind. It is hard to even conceive how chance (without life, personhood, or mind) could direct chemical elements to become such. Rather, chaos is the more likely outcome.

3. What factors, intellectual or otherwise, may cause some people not to believe in God?

Author’s Thoughts: Possible intellectual factors might be: 1) The conflicting claims of many religions often confuse people, resulting in uncertainty whether all religions are right, or none is right, or how anyone can know; 2) Many don’t believe that the alleged holy books like the Bible are trustworthy records; 3) Some struggle with the problem of evil—if God created all things, and God is good, where could evil have come from? 4) If there is a loving and all-powerful God, why is there so much suffering and pain in the world? Polls in this country continue to indicate that over 70% of people believe in the existence of God. The problem is that most do not know God as a personal and loving Being in their life because they are ignorant of the way to God, i.e., Jesus Christ. Therefore, it is the author’s personal conviction that the critical intellectual factors which keep people from a personal relationship with God (“faith,” in the biblical sense) are skepticism of the truthfulness of the New Testament records (SBF, chapter 2), and skepticism concerning the historic incarnation, i.e., that Jesus Christ came to earth as fully God and fully man (SBF, chapter 3). Factors other than intellectual ones may include: 1) the moral factor—the person won’t acknowledge and repent of sin; 2) the lifestyle factor—the person believes God will cramp their style, and they don’t want to change; 3) the emotional factor—the person has had a bad experience with religious people, or with suffering and pain (e.g., a mother died of cancer; a whole family was killed in an auto accident; has a mentally-challenged son or daughter, etc.); 4) the pride factor—the person won’t surrender to God or acknowledge their need (addressed in detail in SBF, chapter 6).

4. What difference would it make to the sober reality that all people die if an eternal and all-powerful God exists?

Author’s Thoughts: If an infinite, personal, and benevolent God exists, one who has all power, then He may choose to prevent death from being the ultimate end of our lives. Indeed, that is the Good News of the Christian faith (John 3:16). God has broken the power of death through the resurrection of Jesus and has provided an eternity of life for those who believe in Him (John 11:25-26). He cares for each person as precious to Him. We were created by God with purpose and meaning. Our earthly work, though temporal, has an ultimate context and consequence. This gives dignity and ultimate value to our lives.

The Christian position is that individuals find true dignity and worth when they discover they are here by the choice of an Intelligent Designer who created them for a purpose which transcends the grave. This eternal perspective gives ultimate significance to each individual and provides the absolute context for making sense of our contribution to family and society.

5. Take time to read the following Bible passages which are relevant to the first fingerprint of God in nature. Discuss the implications of these for the existence of God.
Job 12:7-10; Psalm 8:3-8; 19:1-4; 136:4-9; Romans 1:18-20; Revelation 4:11

Author’s Thoughts: Personal responses.

Session Two: The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in History 

VIDEO play time – 27 minutes
Resource: Surprised by Faith, chapters 2-3

Outline 

  • The incarnation of Jesus in history reveals “who” God is.
  • There is evidence from manuscripts and archeology to confirm that the New Testament text is accurate and its content is reliable history.
  • The New Testament provides eyewitness testimony of the claims and actions of Jesus.

Key Issue: The incarnation of Jesus to earth in history not only reveals who the intelligent Creator of the world is. It also makes the existence of God an objective and confirmable reality in the physical world.

Session 2 Q&A 

Group Discussions and Reflection Questions.
Click each question to read the Author’s Thoughts.

1. What changed the minds of Jesus’ contemporaries, even of many skeptics, from unbelief to faith that Jesus is God? (John 20:24-28; Acts 9:1-20). Discuss the role of evidence and reason as a basis for faith in Jesus as God.

Author’s Thoughts: Thomas changed from skepticism to faith when he saw the evidence of visible nail marks in Jesus’ hands, and the wound in His side (John 20:24-28). Saul, who became the apostle Paul, changed from skepticism to faith when he saw the evidence of Jesus’ physical appearance to Him on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:1-20). Many of Jesus’ contemporaries, even Jewish priests, changed their minds when confronted with the evidence (see John 11: 45-48). That evidence was in the form of Jesus’ claims to be God and his actions which supported His claims; e.g., miracles. However, His resurrection was the critical and unique evidence that Jesus was who He claimed Himself to be. The title, “Lord” (translates the Hebrew for “God” in the Old Testament) became the most common title of Jesus after the resurrection.

2. Muslims and Jews claim to know that God exists through alleged messages He gave to prophets, while Christians claim to know God exists because He walked the earth as a human (Jesus). Why is the difference in these two views significant when it comes to testing for the existence of God? 

Author’s Thoughts: This is the heart of the way in which Christianity differs from other religions (SBF, pp. 26-27). The apostle John said that “no one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only… has made Him known” (John 1:18). This is a reference to Jesus. The claim that Jesus is the incarnation of God is testable because it took place among eyewitnesses in history. We can apply reason and logic to the legal evidence to analyze the Christian claim that Jesus is God. If the three conditions for a reasonable testing are satisfied (SBF, pp. 27-29), then faith in God can be reasonable through the following logic: 1) The New Testament writings are demonstrated to be trustworthy first-century historical records; 2) These records provide satisfactory eyewitness evidence of Jesus’ humanity – He ate, slept, grew tired, wept, etc. – and His claim to deity, e.g., His resurrection from the dead; and 3) The existence of God is assured by His physical and personal appearances on the earth, and the final ascension of the bodily resurrected Jesus from earth to heaven. Other religions (except Judaism to an extent) have no such objective evidence for their alleged god. For them, god remains invisible, intangible, and eternally illusive.

3. Why is it so significant to Christianity whether or not Jesus is God? Do you agree that whether Jesus is God is the most significant issue of Christianity’s validity? Why or why not?

Author’s Thoughts: There are several reasons why this is true. From the perspective of our thesis in this study, it is critical because Jesus is our historical contact with an otherwise invisible God (review SBF, pp. 20-22, 26-27). Because of Jesus’ incarnation, Christianity’s claim for God’s existence becomes testable using historical evidence. This separates Christianity from all other religious truth claims about the existence of God. Some Christian people object though, stating that they do not need all this evidence and reason complicating their faith. They are proud that theirs is a simple faith based on the inner testimony of assurance by the Holy Spirit. Certainly, the testimony of the Holy Spirit within is a valid claim, but we ought also to be concerned with our effectiveness in communicating the truth about Jesus to those who are honest skeptics in our contemporary, post-modern society. If the people to whom we share our faith do not have any objections, we may be okay in expressing only the “what” of the Gospel. If an honest skeptic says they have trouble believing the Bible, or that they doubt Jesus is God, what then? To answer their objections, we must be prepared to tell them why it is true. Unfortunately, those who don’t feel that “why” explanations are necessary, often walk away from a person with honest objections, concluding that they have a hardened heart and are unwilling to accept the truth.

4. Why is it so important for the argument of God’s existence that the New Testament is a trustworthy first-century historical record?

Author’s Thoughts: It is the first condition for testing the God hypothesis (SBF, p. 28). The claim of Christianity is the physical incarnation of the infinite and personal God into our history, thereby confirming the certainty of God’s existence. This is convincing only if the New Testament records documenting this incarnation have integrity and historical reliability – that they record what Jesus actually said and did. Without the historically valid New Testament records, the Christian claim that Jesus is God is reduced to experience and allegation, i.e., it has little advantage over the truth claims of other religions. The historical incarnation of God to earth would no longer be testable in a legal sense, and the way to know God exists with reasonable and objective certainty would be gone.

5. What evidence weakens the allegation that the New Testament accounts of Jesus are only legends?

Author’s Thoughts: The early date of the New Testament writings supports the position that the Gospels were written by eyewitnesses, or those who consulted eyewitness sources. Even Luke (who was probably not an eyewitness of Jesus) says that his information was derived from eyewitness sources (see Luke 1:2). Since this is so, then these accounts can stand as legitimate legal evidence for Jesus. They are not hearsay. Prior to the early manuscript discoveries resulting from the last 100 years of archaeology, it was customary in critical writings to place the date of the New Testament composition in the second century, A.D. With so much time between the life of Jesus and the New Testament accounts of His life, critics said that it was not possible for eyewitnesses to have written them. Thus, it was alleged that the stories included considerable legendary material—things made up much later. The current dating of the composition of the New Testament writings placing them within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses makes the allegation of legend a weak one.

Session Three: The Fingerprints (Evidence) of God in Transformed Lives

VIDEO play time – 21 minutes
Resource: Surprised by Faith, chapters 6

Outline 

  • The Bible reveals the human moral condition and God’s plan of redemption.
  • Becoming a Christian is to become a new creation.
  • Your response

Key Issue: Jesus said, “…I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly” (John 10:10). The testimonies of transformed lives among His followers, both physically and spiritually, gave affirmation to the existence and presence of God.

Session 3 Q&A 

Group Discussions and Reflection Questions.
Click each question to read the Author’s Thoughts.

1. Isn’t religious experience so subjective that it doesn’t prove anything?

Author’s Thoughts: There is a chorus of people who claim to have found joy, tranquility, and a host of other benefits, attributing their life change to a variety of sources or activities. Are any of these claims valid? How can we know? It is true that our experiences are considered anecdotal or “soft” evidence. Is it so subjective that it doesn’t prove anything? Consider the following illustration from Josh McDowell, as discussed in Evidence that Demands a Verdict (San Bernardino: Here’s Life, 1979), p. 327-328:

For example, let’s say a student comes into the room and says, “Guys, I have a stewed tomato in my right tennis shoe. This tomato has changed my life. It has given me a peace and love and joy that I never experienced before” …It is hard to argue with a student like that if his life backs up what he says… A personal testimony is often a subjective argument for the reality of something…There are two questions or tests I apply to a subjective experience. First, what is the objective reality claimed for the subjective experience, and second, how many other people have had the same subjective experience from being related to the objective reality?

When asked how he accounts for his life change, the student would answer, “A stewed tomato in my right tennis shoe.” To find even one other person in the entire world who has had a similar life change because of a stewed tomato in their right tennis shoe is improbable. The objective reality is more than a little suspect when it cannot be verified repeatedly in the lives of others.

On the other hand, when a Christian is asked for the objective reality that has resulted in a significant subjective life change, he/she would answer, “The person of Christ and His resurrection.” How many others share this same result from a relationship with Jesus Christ? The evidence is overwhelming. There are millions of people from every nationality and profession and period of history who have experienced this kind of positive life change. As William Wilson, a former dean of clinical neurophysiology exclaims (Decision Magazine, October 1977):

Doing research in Christian experiences, I was impressed with what conversion achieved. In fact, I was astounded. Drunkards were turned into sober people; heroin addicts into nonusers; depressed people into well-regulated people; angry people into gentle, kind people; fearful people into brave people; self-centered, prideful people into humble, loving people.

Such broad confirmation greatly increases the validity of the life-changing claim of faith in Jesus, thus supporting the existence of God.

2. If you do believe in an infinite and personal God, how would you answer the question, “What difference has my belief that God exists made in my values and the way that I live my life?” Discuss.

Author’s Thoughts: Personal answers.

3. If you do not believe in an infinite and personal God or are uncertain, how would you answer the question, “What positive benefits have I experienced in my life that are a result of my skepticism or atheism?” Discuss.

Author’s Thoughts: Personal answers.

4. What consequences in our lives follow from the belief that God does not exist?

Author’s Thoughts: The secular humanists in the world have published a manifesto of their beliefs. In addition to their foundational atheistic position that God does not exist, they say it follows that other beliefs must of necessity also not be true. Here are some of them:

  • No creation
  • No life after death
  • No revelation of truth
  • No moral absolutes
  • No prayer
  • No worship

Are all those who say God does not exist, ready and willing to reject all these items?

There are also national polls regarding peoples’ approval or rejection of various practices. The results below clearly reveal the consequences of living our lives without God:

From the Author

Congratulations on facilitating Revealing the Fingerprints of God! You may be asking, “What do I do now? What action is appropriate for me?” First, I would appreciate your feedback. There is a response form in which you can give me valuable information about your experience. Make suggestions for change. Tell me what you liked and what you didn’t like. Everything will help to make the video small groups better for future students.

Second, facilitate another “Fingerprints” group. It gets easier with experience. Third, you may want to facilitate FaithSearch Discovery, our flagship presentation. It also has a small group guide for your convenience. Fourth, if you do discipleship Bible study with others, consider taking my course on the biblical foundation of the Christian faith (Growing Faith – discipleship). It is a great course for gaining confidence in your own faith and a much-needed course for many in the church. Consider gathering a small group and go through it together. Check it out under the tab “Courses.”

Remember, the Bible Learning Center is adding new content continually. Check out the growing list of articles as a source of spiritual growth as well. Stay in touch.

Again, good job! I pray that you will continue toward the likeness of Jesus and helping others toward that goal as well. Come back often to the FaithSearch International Bible Learning Center.