1 Kings 8:27
27. “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!

John 8:12 (NLT)
12 Jesus spoke to the people once more and said, “I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won’t have to walk in darkness, because you will have the light that leads to life.”

A simple statement. True or not? In its context, it says everything. The people of the time, especially the Jewish leaders, the scholars, knew exactly what he meant. English doesn’t do it justice and we’ve watered it down to a “maybe”. Christ is saying – God’s here, on earth, now and forever.

2 Corinthians 11:1-4 (NLT)
11 I hope you will put up with a little more of my foolishness. Please bear with me. 2 For I am jealous for you with the jealousy of God himself. I promised you as a pure virgin to one husband—Christ. 3 But I fear that somehow your pure and undivided devotion to Christ will be corrupted, just as Eve was deceived by the cunning ways of the serpent. 4 You happily put up with whatever anyone tells you, even if they preach a different Jesus than the one we preach, or a different kind of Spirit than the one you received, or a different kind of gospel than the one you believed.

We have been deceived, just like Adam, just like Eve. Bought the lie lock, stock and barrel. Time to really think if our designer religions or denial of God are the best way forward to eternity. I pause when I hear people who think they are wiser than God and how they create their own. God lays it out who he is and we really don’t have the capacity to tell him he’s wrong. He doesn’t give us that choice. We accept his terms or not. A simply fact.

John 5:24
24. “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”
Annie Dillard Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

John 8:31-32 (NLT)
31 Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. 32 And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

A simple statement. A simple fact.