Jackie Womack, age 10, of Visalia, Calif., for her question:
WHO IS GOD?
Some people do not believe there is a God. Persons with this belief are called atheists. Other people, while not denying the existence of God, believe that man cannot know whether God exists or what His nature is. Persons who profess this logic to sum up their religious feelings are called agnostics.
God is the Supreme Being. He is the Creator and Ruler of the universe. Throughout history, large numbers of people have believed that there is a Reality in the universe that is greater than themselves. They call this Reality by the name of God.
God is worshiped by large numbers of people as the all knowing, all powerful, infinite and ever present Supreme Being.
Many ancient peoples were polytheistic, which means they worshiped many gods. Today most of the world's religions stress monotheism, which is the belief in one God.
The Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament, does not concern itself with speculation about God's existence. It proclaims it simply as a matter of fact. It speaks of God as Adonai, Elohim and Yahweh, and teaches that He must be obeyed, worshiped and loved as the one true God.
The prophets in the Old Testament emphasized the ethical relationship between God and man. They taught that God is all good and demands moral conduct of His people.
In the New Testament God is spoken of as the Father of man, the savior and the pure Spirit of Love. He appears as a personal God. Christians believe that God offers His love and blessings on all through His son Jesus Christ. All Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and many Protestant churches accept the doctrine of the Trinity as the central teaching of Christianity. They believe that God is one Divine Being in three Persons: the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit. Not all Protestants accept this teaching, however.
Many different religions in the world use different terms in speaking of God. He is called Allah by the Muslims. Hindus believe in a single spiritual being called Brahman. The Taoists in China seek submission to the Tao, the moving
force of the universe, while in Japan the followers of the Shinto religion, called Shintoists, pray to hundreds of nature gods and ancestors.
Scholars have found that many early peoples worshiped spirits and gods representing the natural forces they did not understand, such as the sun, moon, rain and wind. They thought of their gods as being much like men, with bodies, voices and even human desires.
As time passed, ancient men came to regard one of their gods as the most powerful. God Aton was the only one to be worshiped in Egypt, while Greek mythology proclaimed Zeus was the king of gods.