The Knock-Down

[via email from Steve K.]

A college professor, an avowed atheist, was teaching his class. He shocked most of his students when he flatly stated he was going to prove there is no God:

Addressing the ceiling he shouted: "God, if you are real, I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you 15 minutes!"

The lecture room fell silent. You could have heard a pin fall.

Ten minutes went by. Again he taunted God, saying, "Here I am, God. I'm still waiting."

His count-down got to the last couple of minutes when a Marine, just released from active duty and newly registered in the class, walked up to the professor, hit him full force in the face and sent him flailing from his lofty platform.

The students were shocked and a little scared. But the young Marine took a seat in the front row and sat silent. The class also fell silent...waiting.

Eventually, the professor came to, quite shaken. He looked at the young Marine in the front row. When the professor regained his senses enough to speak he asked: "What's the matter with you? Why did you do that?"

"God was busy. He sent me."

The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Exodus 3:7-10 (emphasis added)