Well, I'm talking about atheists again. Another one of their favorite complaints is that there is no evidence for God. Well, there is plenty of evidence for God. This is a great big subject in itself but I'll mention just one very obvious answer. Life is much too complicated to happen by chance. Everyone should have figured that out long ago but they haven't.

A related idea is that if Jesus is really alive, and He's really God, why doesn't He show himself to us today? Here's what the atheist, Marshall Brain had to say:

Now that's a nice question! Why doesn't Jesus show up all the time? You know, like maybe, He could show up on the TV night after night giving interviews. Why doesn't He do that?

Well, Jesus had a little story about this in Luke 16:19-31. Instead of reading the whole thing, I'll just summarize. It's about a guy in hell who's talking to Abraham (who is not in hell) and saying that if someone rises from the dead, then his brothers, who are still alive on Earth, will decide to believe and follow God and avoid hell. But the bottom line is this in verse 31:

Consider that phrase: "even if someone rises from the dead". Suppose Jesus did show up in the flesh today. What do you think would happen? That's easy. People today who don't want anything to do with God would still not believe that the Jesus they're seeing in the flesh is the same person who died 2000 years ago. They will claim the guy they see now is a phony. Or an advanced extraterrestrial pretending to be Jesus. Or we're just living in a Matrix-like simulation and nothing that happens is real. In that movie, the Matrix, evil machines feed visions into the brains of people to make the people see what they thought was a real world. So it was like what we call virtual reality. Or just go back to 2000 years ago when Jesus was alive and well and doing honest-to-God miracles. Did everyone in Israel believe Him then? No. They crucified Him instead. The same thing would happen all over again today. Huge numbers of people would still not want anything to do with Him. He'd be an enemy of the people.

Of course, there must be many souls who DO actually need to see the material Jesus around all the time before they will believe and decide to FOLLOW Him. In Jesus' time there was the apostle Thomas. Thomas wasn't going to believe Jesus was alive unless he could see the holes in Jesus' hands. So God placed Thomas at the right place in the world and at the right time in history to make Thomas believe in and WANT to FOLLOW God.

For other souls, who need to see the real, physical Jesus before they believe and decide to FOLLOW Him, God can place them in the Millennium, the 1000 year time period where Jesus rules from Jerusalem and there is 1000 years of peace. So there will be a time when Jesus is fully material as Brain requests. Of course, the interesting thing that happens there is that at the end of the 1000 years, huge numbers of people rebel against God even with Jesus present and near heavenly conditions present here on Earth. So, here, we see that even with really solid evidence for God and Jesus, people will simply not fall in line and WANT to FOLLOW GOD. Just KNOWING God exists is simply not enough for some people to FOLLOW God. That's an important lesson. Marshall Brain and other atheists still would not want to FOLLOW God.

There are other reasons why Jesus has been missing for the last 2000 years. If Jesus was appearing all over the place all the time, people would not be behaving as badly as they do. Jesus would, in effect, end up being like a policeman. This would radically change peoples' behavior. For instance, would we have gotten Hitler and World War II? Not likely. And we needed Hitler and World War II to show us how bad people can be. And we needed people being shot at, wounded and killed to get other people to stop and think about God, life and eternity. We need to experience a world in which we can think that there is no God just to get a sampling of Hell. Just so people will start wishing there was a better world.

And there's more. These days the intellectuals think that the world's problems can be solved with 1) Science. 2) Education. 3) The right political system run by the right politicians. So in politics, God has let people try out Communism, Socialism, Monarchies and Democracy. Eventually all these systems fail in one way or another. People who trusted in politics and politicians need to be bitterly disappointed. We need these lessons. We need to see that no system filled with sinners can actually last very long.

During our time period we also find out that large numbers of people are perfectly happy with Islam, with witchcraft, Buddhism, reincarnation, New Age and other beliefs. Plus, now, it's a wonderful time to be an atheist! Nineteenth century science has made people believe that objects are moved around by forces and life can happen by chance and then evolve by chance from simple things all he way up to people. For believers in Christ this is very educational! I'm constantly amazed that so many people don't want anything to do with God, but they don't.

So there are good reasons why, AT THIS TIME IN HISTORY, Jesus SHOULD NOT be showing up all the time. If we're going to get the education about sin that we need, Jesus CANNOT be showing up willy-nilly. Of course, despite the fact that Jesus is not appearing willy-nilly during this time in history, everyone who can get saved will get saved. No one will be lost for lack of a personal appearance by Jesus. God will manage to get everyone saved who can possibly get saved during this time period without making personal appearances.

Then isn't it strange that in our period of history where Jesus does NOT go around appearing willy-nilly, a whole lot of people still want to FOLLOW Him? They REALLY WANT HIM. So now we have a lesson in the fact that large numbers of souls REALLY WANT HIM. They really NEED HIM. For these people it is not necessary for Jesus to be physically present. They will be saved anyway. These are extra special people! This is why Jesus told Thomas in John 20:29:

This counts as an important lesson too. Some people are really hungry for God. Why do YOU believe when you haven't even seen Him?

Then, finally, to finish the subject of why Jesus is not appearing to people all the time, note that there are many reports of Jesus appearing to people in dreams and visions. The classic case is when Jesus appears to Saul on the road to Damascus. These days, the same sort of thing happens. See for instance, the website: More Than Dreams. They have videos of Muslims in Muslim countries who came to Christ because of dreams and visions. These stories are remarkable demonstrations of how God can reach everyone who can be saved no matter where they live. You can get the videos in Spanish. Make time to watch them! Of course, skeptics who don't want it to be true will, of course, claim that none of these reports should be taken seriously. People believe whatever they want to believe.