Introduction
“The Reason Why” is a captivating Gospel exposition which has helped unnumbered thousands find salvation in Jesus Christ. Robert A Laidlaw, CBE, founder of the Farmer’s Trading Company is widely known as one of New Zealand’s most successful and respected businessmen. Born in Scotland in 1885, he was one year old when his parents migrated to New Zealand. At the age of twenty-three he commenced a mail order business in Auckland, which grew into a retail organization with a staff of 2,700. It was Robert Laidlaw’s concern for his staff which originally prompted the writing of “The Reason Why” as a testimony to his Christian faith. By 1969, over 16 million copies of this booklet had been printed in more than 30 languages, and thousands of lives had been changed by its Gospel message. A dynamic speaker and inspiring leader, Robert Laidlaw has been described as “one of the world’s great Christian laymen.”
This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
1 : The Reason Why
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How is your soul today? Suppose that a young man sent his fiancée a diamond ring costing $10,000, placing it in a little case which the jeweller threw in for nothing. How disappointed he would be, if upon meeting her a few days later, she says, “Sweetheart, that was a lovely little box you sent me. To take special care of it, I promise to keep it in a safe place so that no harm shall come to it.” Rather ridiculous, isn’t it? Yet it is just as foolish for men and women to be spending all their time and thought on their bodies, which are only cases containing the real self, the soul, which, the Bible tells us, will persist long after our bodies have crumbled to dust. The soul is of infinite value. Longfellow expressed it this way:
Tell me not in mournful numbers, Life is but an empty dream, For the soul is dead that slumbers And things are not what they seem. Life is real, life is earnest, And the grave is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul.
Hear what Jesus said of the soul: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” In Christ’s estimate, man’s soul is something incomparably more valuable than the whole world. Ponder this thought. There is more, far more, to life than meets the eye: there is life beyond life, life which transcends death. That life is not to be found in this world. It is in God, and to Him we must go. Thought: Life is more than a good home and three square meals a day. Prayer: Lord, help me not to neglect my “diamond” in its “box.”
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
2 : Some Basic Questions
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A fully comprehended God is no God
I would like to discuss with you some of the basic things that relate to your most valuable possession, your soul. For instance:
Is there a God?
Is the Bible true?
Is man accountable?
Is there divine forgiveness?
These are some of the problems which perplex those who think seriously about the future. How may I know there is a God?
I have an innate conviction that God exists. No matter how my intellect has tried in the past to produce reasons proving He does not, or however much I have wanted to believe that there was no God, that “still small voice” came to me again and again, just as it has come to you in the quiet of life’s more sober moments. Yes, I knew that at least for me, there was a God. And as I looked at others, I realized how many were looking for God, seeking in “religion” to silence the same voice that spoke within me.
True, there are some men who don’t believe in God. But to me, the problems of unbelief in god are greater than the problems of belief. To believe that unaided dead matter produced mind, that mind produced conscience, and that the chaos of chance produced the cosmos of order as we see it in nature, seems to call not for faith but for credulity.
No true son demands that his father prove himself. Neither does his father see the need to, for he has revealed himself by many irrefutable and loving proofs. So it is with God. Therefore, in the Bible, there is not one word that seeks to explain God. The evidence of God is everywhere: only the blind will not see.
Thought: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God” (Psalm 14:1)
Prayer: Open Thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
3 : Proving God
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God is not for explanation but for proclamation
The president of the New York Scientific Society once gave 8 reasons why he believed there was a God. The first was this: Take 10 identical coins and mark them 1 to 10. Place them in your pocket. Now take one out. There is 1 chance in 10 that you will get number 1. Now replace it, and the chances that number 2 will follow number 1 are not 1 in 10, but 1 in 100. With each new coin taken out, the risk will be multiplied by 10, so that the chance of 10 following 9, is 1 in 10,000,000,000 (ten billion). It seemed so unbelievable to me that I immediately took pencil and paper and very quickly discovered he was right. Try it yourself!
That is why George Gallup, the American statistician, says: “I could prove God statistically. Take the human body alone – the chance that all its functions would just happen is a statistical monstrosity.”
Surely no thoughtful persons would wish to base their eternal future on a “statistical monstrosity”. Perhaps that is why the Bible says in Psalm 14:1 “The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”
Men may resort to computers and complicated statistics, trying to prove God. But that is quite unnecessary. A little reflection in humility will convince us of the Creator. Then we will say with the Psalmist: “O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me… whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence?”
The fact of God is everywhere embraced by men of tender heart. His love and goodness reaches to all. Only the ungrateful deny it. Do not try to prove God! Only proclaim His saving name everywhere!
Thought: God is His own best evidence.
Prayer: “Search me, O God, and know my heart.”
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
4 : The First Cause
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God is the Cause of all causes
Suppose we are standing at an airport watching a big jet come in for a landing. I say to you, “A lot of people think that plane is the result of someone’s carefully designed plans, but I know better. There was really no intelligence at work on it at all. In some strange way the metal just came out of the ground, and fashioned itself into flat sheets. And then these metal sheets slowly began to grow together and formed the body and wings and tail. Then after a long while the engines slowly grew in place, and one day some people came along and discovered the plane, all finished and ready to fly.”
You would probably consider me a lunatic and move farther into the crowd to escape my senseless chatter. Why? You know that where there is a design there must be a designer, and having seen other productions of the human mind just like the plane in question, you are positive that it was planned by human intelligence and built by human skill.
Yet there are highly-educated, professional men who tell us that the entire universe came into being by chance, that there was really no higher intelligence at work in it. They claim to know no God but nature.
On the other hand there are many thoughtful men who believe that God is transcendent: that is, while He reveals Himself in nature (in that its laws and principles are expressions of His power and wisdom), He Himself is greater than the universe. But all that atheists can offer us is the riddle of design without a designer, of creation without a Creator, of effect without Cause.
Every thinking person believes in a series of causes and effects in nature, each effect becoming the cause of some other effect. The acceptance of this as fact logically compels one to admit that there must be a beginning to any series. There could never have been a first effect if there had not been a First Cause. This First Cause to me is Deity.
Thought: “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1)
Prayer: Give me eyes of faith, O God, to see You as the Cause of all causes.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
5 : Believing Is Seeing!
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By faith we see the invisible
Although man has discovered many of the laws that govern electricity, even the greatest scientists cannot really define it. Then why do we believe it exists? Because we see the manifestations of its existence in our homes and industries and streets. Though I do not know where God came from, I believe He exists, because I see the manifestations of Him everywhere around me.
Dr Wernher von Braun, director of NASA research, and developer of the rocket which put America’s first space satellite into orbit, says:
“In our modern world, many people seem to feel that our rapid advances in the field of science render such things as religious belief untimely or old-fashioned. They wonder why we should be satisfied in ‘believing’ something when science tells us that we ‘know’ so many things. The simple answer to this contention is that we are confronted with many more mysteries of nature today than when the age of scientific enlightenment began. With every new answer unfolded, science had consistently discovered at least 3 new questions. The answers indicate that everything as well ordered and perfectly created as are our earth and universe must have a Maker, a Master Designer. Anything so orderly, so perfect, so precisely balanced, so majestic as this creation can only be the product of a Divine idea…”
The late professor Edwin Conklin, a noted biologist, very aptly said, “The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of Chamber’s Dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop.”
God’s Word says: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear” (Hebrews 11:3).
Thought: The heavens declare the glory of God!
Prayer: Give me a heart of faith, O God, to believe Your Word.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
6 : The Revelation of God
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When God speaks, we must listen
God exists whether or not men choose to believe in Him. The reason why many people do not believe in God is not so much that it is intellectually impossible to believe in God, but because belief in God forces the thoughtful person to face the fact that he is accountable to such a God. Many people are unwilling to do this. Most of those who take refuge in atheism or agnosticism do so because it is a convenient escape from the stern reality that man is accountable to his Creator. It is usually not so much a case of “I cannot believe” as it is a case of “I do not want to believe.”
I know only two ways by which God’s purpose and God’s person may be known. First there is the process of reason. As a good detective can, for example, tell you many things about my skills, habits and character just by examining something I may have made or handled, so much can be learned about God by a careful examination of the universe, the work of His hands.
But the detective who examines only what I make can never say that he knows me. He may know some things about me, but before he can say that he knows me, there must be a process of revelation: I must communicate with him. I must tell him what I think, how I feel and what I want to do. This self-revelation may be in conversation, in writing, or in some other way. Only then does it become possible for him to know me. Just so, if God is ever to be known and His thoughts, desires and purposes perceived, He must take the initiative and make at least a partial revelation of Himself to men.
We recall again the famous words of Zophar to Job. “Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? Deeper than hell; what canst thou know?” (Job 11:7-8). But we thank God, He has revealed Himself.
Thought: How well do you know God? And, does He know you?
Prayer: Help me, O God, to know You as revealed in Your Word.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.
7 : The Book of Books
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“All you need to know for salvation is the Bible”
Of all the many books this world contains, there is only one that claims to be a direct revelation from God, telling us of Himself and His purpose for us. That book is the Bible. The Bible is a book of such importance that it is surely worthy of thoughtful investigation. So, with the advice of Francis Bacon neither to accept nor reject, but to weigh and consider, let us approach this book with its unusual claims.
To be fair to ourselves and to the Bible, we should read it through. As a judge must not make his decision when the case is half heard, neither must we. Rather, like the judge, we should compare the evidence of the witnesses, and weigh and consider every work, seeking its deepest significance rather than accepting its surface meaning. Surely, the importance of the Bible’s claims justifies spending the necessary time on the study of its 66 books written by at least 40 different writers (some well-educated, some barely educated, some kings, some peasants) over a period of 1600 years in places as far apart as Babylon in Asia and Rome in Europe. With such authorship, one would expect to find a miscellaneous collection of contradictory statements. Its unity is therefore especially striking, for each contribution is the complement of the others.
In my consideration of this whole matter, the truth of 2 Peter 1:21 slowly became certain to me. There was no other reasonable explanation. “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” This belief was confirmed as I read prophecy after prophecy in the Old Testament, which found their fulfilment, down to the letter, hundreds of years later. For instance, Isaiah 53 foretold the death of Christ with minute accuracy 700 years before His crucifixion! Yes, the difficulties in the way of doubting the Book seemed to me greater than those in the way of believing it. The problems were all on the side of unbelief!
Thought: Can you say, “I Believe the Bible to be the Word of God, inspired, inerrant, and infallible”?
Prayer: Help me to treasure the Bible as Your Word, O God.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
8 : God’s Standard
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“Be holy as I am holy”
Accepting the Bible brought me face to face with a serious difficulty, however, for the Bible set a standard of righteousness I had not attained. It pronounced that anything short of its standard was sin. Remembering that God knows your every secret thought, just measure yourself alongside the standard: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:37,38)
Confronted with such a statement, can you claim to have lived up to it throughout your life? Have you put God first in everything? No man can honestly claim such perfection. Every honest heart echoes Romans 3:10 and 3:23: “There is none righteous, no, not one… All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” All have failed to reach God’s standard.
A young man once asked me, “Do you think it is fair of God to set the standard of holiness so high that we cannot reach it, and then judge us for falling short?” I replied, “God has not set an arbitrary standard of holiness as an official sets an arbitrary standard of height for his bodyguards. In such a case, a man may have all the other qualifications, but if he is an inch too short he is disqualified. God has not really set a standard at all: He is the standard. He is absolute holiness, and to preserve His own character He must remain absolutely holy in all of His dealings with man, maintaining that standard irrespective of the tremendous implications which it may hold for both Him and us.”
We see, then, that God has not only revealed His absolute holiness, but He has also shown us our miserable lost condition, and our utter need of His salvation.
Question: How can we be holy as He is holy?
Prayer: Create in me a clean heart, O God.
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This audio CD is approximately 59 minutes, divided into 34 chapters.
Edited by Dr SH Tow
Please note that the last paragraph of some chapter texts may not be present in the audio tracks.