Sermon delivered by U.S. TV Evangelist Rev. Billy Graham (born William Franklin Graham 1918 North Carolina) on 18 September 1984 in Novosibirsk, Siberia.

   Tonight I am reading from the third chapter of John, verse 16. This is perhaps the best-known verse in all the Bible. My mother taught me this verse when I was a little boy on the farm, and perhaps many of you also learned it when you were younger. For some of you it may be new-but it contains the teaching of the Bible in a nutshell.
   "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).
   Around the world people ask me one question: "If there is a God of love, why does he allow all of the suffering that goes on in the world? Why doesn't God stop it?" There is so much suffering in the world - disease, poverty, war, hate, loneliness, boredom, and all kinds of other problems. We are told that right now forty small wars are going on in the world. If God loves the human race, why doesn't he stop it? In my country, at least, millions of people are getting depressed; they get discouraged with life. Many end up committing suicide. But God did not intend for the world to be this way, as we see in this verse. So let's look at this verse very closely.
   The first phase says,  "For God." It brings us right at the start to the subject of God. Does God exist?
   Several years ago I was in Siberia  at the famed academic  city in Novosibirsk, and we met some of their leading scientists. As we talked, I thought to my myself, "I cannot prove the existence of God in one of their laboratories."Yes, we can come close to it from a philosophical point of view. But we cannot prove scientifically that God exists, because God is a spirit, and science can only deal with the physical. But almost everybody  believes there is some kind of supreme being. We are born with that belief that there is something-or someone-beyond this life, something in control of this vast universe. Down inside we are born with a yearning for God. 
   Recently I read  a statement from a scientific magazine  which said that many of  our astrophysicists are seldom atheists. Not long ago I was in England, and while I was there one of their most distinguished scientists said, "After working for years on the theories of cosmic beginnings, I have come to a belief there is a God."
   What is God like? We may believe something  exists out there-but what is God really like ? The Bible tells us what God is like, because God  has revealed himself to us. What is he like?
   First, the Bible teaches that God created the universe.  "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth"(Genisis 1:1). Think  of all the millions and billion of stars and planets-we don't even know how many there are. God made them all. He made this earth. He made you. And beause he made you, he loves you. You are important to God. If you were the only the person in this whole world. Christ would have died for you.
   God is not only the Creator of the universe, but the Bible tells us God also is a spirit. He is greater than the created world. The Bible says in John 4:24, "God is spirit: and they that worship him must worship  him in spirit and truth."God does not have a body like we do. If he had a body like yours or mine, he could not be all over the world at the same time. At this very moment. God is over the Soviet Union, all over America, all over Latin America, all over Africa, all over the whole world at the same time. He is not bound by y body. He does not have to get on an airplane to go to another part of the world. God is spirit.
   The Bible also says God never changes. Malachi 3:6 says, "For I am the Lord, I change not. "The Bible teaches that God is from "everlasting to everlasting"  (Psalm 90:2). He is eternal. During all of the thousands of years of changing human history, God has not changed in the slightest. I cannot understand how God could always be.

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