The Bible speaks of many men of old that had this wonderful illusive faith which are meant to inspire us. But of course they did! They saw fire a lightning come from the sky, they heard the thunderous voice of God from the heavens, they saw countless vast enemy armies vanquished with miraculous supernatural forces and whole cities swallowed with with fire and brimstone right before their eyes.
Of course they would then have faith after experiencing such things if true.
Later according to the same Bible in Jesus time people had faith only and because they saw him perform countless impossible miracles and bend the laws of nature.
People in those times prayed to God and often got an unmistakable response from him in less than 5 minutes. People today can pray for 50 years and have no response what so ever.
God was seemingly far more friendly and sociable back then and liked humans more making several of them his 'friend'.
I'm sure if any of us today saw or experienced a single iota of this we would have the most unbendable and unbreakable and valid faith. But we don't.
In fact no human has experienced any direct interaction what so ever with God for over 2,000 years. We instead are told that we must have this same unbendable, unbreakable faith based on mere stories, legends, fables, parables passed down in copied, translated, manipulated, twisted, even possibly fabricated untrustworthy and unreliable documents written in languages we can not read and the veracity of which too can never ever be proven.
This is a form of 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 20th, and even a hundredth hand faith. Faith in the story of the faith of another person is not real faith.
We are then also told in that same Bible and by those that promote it that of we do not have this faith we are utterly rejected by God. Apparently to be acceptable to God, it is necessary for one to exercise faith in Jesus Christ, and this makes possible a righteous standing with God. (Ga 2:16) Those lacking such faith are rejected by God.—Joh 3:36; compare Heb 11:6.
The men that wrote that either knew or had a real and personal experience of God and Jesus so it was easy for them to say and write such things. No one in 2,000 years has had any such real experience.
It seems that to have a real faith today in an uncontactable God and a 2,000 year absent Jesus is a physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual impossibility.
What is needed to have genuine faith then is not the study of some dusty old antiquated parchments housed in the British Museum or the Vatican Library but rather for the living God to actually unmistakably do something in our lives today, right now to inspire and foster such faith. Without this there can be no surprise that the world is in utter and total confusion as to the existence, identity, nature and will of God.
