Cairo: Jesus in Egypt & God's Unusual Leaning
God seldom gives us all we need to understand, but He always gives us what we need in order to obey. The story of Jesus in Egypt as a boy offers a...
Years ago I met a man named Igor who told me a story I’ve never forgotten. As a child growing up in the Soviet Union, Igor always believed communism’s assumption that God does not exist.
Yet as a gifted medical student and scientist, Igor studied the intricacies of the human body and natural world and struggled over their implications. Such precision in nature demanded a Designer—something his deep-rooted atheism refused to embrace.
Then one day as he and a friend drove through a wintry countryside, Igor saw a distant snowman all alone in the middle of a field—and the truth struck him. He slammed on the brakes.
“Look!” he said, pointing to the snowman. “How did that get there?”
His friend replied with the obvious answer: “Somebody built it.”
“There was no way,” Igor told me, “the details of nature just happened by chance. I decided I must find the truth.” Just as the snowman had to have been made by someone, so did nature.
Igor went to libraries to try to find out about God. But communism had banned Bibles from public access. So he consulted atheistic authors who railed against Christianity. As Igor pored over the volumes and considered the critics’ words, the Scriptures they quoted were more compelling than the atheistic arguments!
And with only these bits of Scripture, Igor gave his heart to Jesus Christ.
God used His natural revelation—everything from science to a snowman!—to communicate His existence to Igor.
Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. —Romans 1:20
But God used His special revelation, the Scriptures—as quoted from the pens of unbelievers—to convert Igor from a reluctant atheist into a believing Christian . . . all behind the seemingly impenetrable Iron Curtain.
(Photo by Micky, Flickr, CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
With a silent voice as powerful as a prophet, God used a snowman to debunk the assumptions of atheism and to prepare a skeptic for believing the obvious. But it took God’s Word for the skeptic to believe in Christ.
God’s grace has always operated this way:
The claim that those without Jesus are unfairly condemned doesn’t hold water. Scripture shows even in places where the message of God isn’t known, if someone responds to God’s natural revelation favorably, the Lord will send him or her more revelation to respond to. And ultimately, He will send them the saving gospel message of Christ.
Many feel the tug of God on their hearts, but like the reluctant Saul, they “kick against the goads” (Acts 9). They resist God’s prodding to believe in Jesus.
Pray that those whom God prepares will respond to His Word by faith in Jesus Christ.
And join me in praying that God’s snowmen in Russia never melt.
Learn the top 6 Lessons from Visiting the Holy Land more than 20 times in 21 years with Dr. Wayne Stiles, a longtime devotional scholar who is passionate about sharing the practical application of bringing God's Word to life.
Tell me what you think: Do you know of any stories like Igor’s? To leave a comment, just click here.
Adapted from Wayne Stiles, “God’s Snowman in Russia” Insights (April 2006). Copyright © 2006 by Insight for Living Ministries. All rights reserved worldwide.
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