Category Archives: Bible Study

Authority

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Across time and space, authority has shifted from one perceived power to another. Who or what was able to make authoritative statements to which there was no greater appeal? Let’s look at how authority has changed hands over time and see how we as Christians should handle authority.

Might Makes Right

Throughout history we have seen world powers demand compliance because of the might of their armies. From the Assyrians, to the Babylonians, to the Persians, to the Greeks, to the Romans…those with the mightiest armies have said what is right.

In the midst of these world powers, we have records of the Hittites, the Huns, the Mongolians, and the Turks kill people who disagreed with them.

Should a soldier in a Roman army force you to carry their gear 1 mile, there was no recourse or appeal. If the Roman centurion came into your village and told you to join the legion as a soldier, you were conscripted. Whatever they said had authority because of the might of their arms

Authoritative statements were proclaimed by the kings and commanders of those armies. There was no appeal higher than those with the most might

Roman Catholic Church Magisterium

Power shifted from armies to theologians as the Roman Empire was both consumed by its own depravity and picked apart by barbarians. Authoritative power began to be condensed within the walls of the Vatican and its sister in Byzantium. Proclamations from the bishops of those ecumenical ivory towers carried the greatest weight. Peasants and princes alike fell into step when pushed by the papacies. Christianity was established as the dominant ideology throughout western civilization. Amidst this shift from military power to the church, the seeds of the scientific revolution were planted. As that unchecked authoritative power grew, so did the corruption among the bishops. Indulgences, worldliness, and idolatry weakened the power in Rome…while the militant barbarism of the Muslims crushed the power of Byzantium/Constantinople in the East. Anyone (like Martin Luther, Jan Hus, William Tyndale and others) who questioned the authority of the Roman Catholics was met with swift and brutal retribution. Luther escaped death, but the others were killed for questioning the authority of the Papacy. Until the Reformation, there was no appeal for justice or truth higher than the Papacy.

Scientism

As the scientific revolution matured, it began to grow in influence, the authoritative power of the Roman Catholic church waned. What scientists said carried unquestioned authority. Anyone who dissented from what scientists said were summarily and ruthlessly expelled from academia. You hear this authority being expressed even today as “the science says…” and “the science is settled” and “it’s been peer-reviewed”. The priesthood garments of the Roman Catholic’s authority shifted to the white lab coats of the scientists. Anyone wearing a white lab coat was seen as having unquestioned authority in claims about truth. The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic bishops, priests, and deacons were similarly transformed to the peer-review journals and accompanying gatekeepers. Those, who wished to produce “sacred” texts into the peer-review journals must swear “fealty to Saint Charles Darwin”. Anyone, who questions the “most holiest” of ideologies in scientism (natural selection acting on random mutations produced all biodiversity) were viewed as heretics and denied entrance. As with those, who questioned the authority of the Papacy from the previous era, anyone, who makes the slightest inquiry about evolution, is swiftly and prejudiciously expelled from academia by the gatekeepers of scientism.

Statism

Governments in the 20th century began to take power from the scientists in matters of authority. From the monumentally destructive policies of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, the federal government metastasized far beyond its intended borders. It wasn’t a complete transfer of authoritative power from the scientists to the state, but with the military and financial power of the American government, scientists began subjecting themselves to the funding and judicial authority of the state. Funding subservience is evident in the way that scientists have requested grant money and structured their requests from the public funds. We also see that many scientists have capitulated to the narrative of global warming. Public funding for scientific solutions for energy problems went almost completely to “green energy”, so the authority was logically in the hands of those holding the purse strings (the state) rather than the scientists. Judicial subservience was highlighted most obviously in the Dover trial of 2005. When the evidence for scientific advancement was strongly favoring the intelligent design movement, the scientific gatekeepers appealed to what they viewed was a higher authority: the state. In the trial, it was determined by a rogue judge that intelligent design was not a scientific theory, so he denied educators from questioning the theory of evolution.

Experts and Artificial Intelligence

Statism devolved rather quickly to the belief that “experts” have the greatest authority to which there was no higher appeal. In the 21st century, authoritative power began to be accumulated in the hands of experts. The power of the “experts” reared its ugly head in 2020 when they told the world that a bio-engineered virus was simply a natural pathogen that got into the food supply from a market in China. They told the world that this most deadly of human contagions could be solved by shutting down all businesses, wearing a thin cloth mask, and standing 6 feet apart. None of those things were true yet the “experts” retained their power over the government and the populace. Experts were interviewed by the media for issues like the epidemics, economy, climate, health/medicine, philanthropy, politics, and the environment. Sadly, “expert” isn’t an objective measure by having so many expertise points or expertise units…it’s a completely subjective title – and many so-called experts have shown themselves to be unqualified as paper-tigers. With the advent of artificial intelligence, everyone with a phone can now be an “expert”. Authority in the information space is now manifest in the gargantuan processing power of super computers (and the programmers that have built the response algorithms.) If you’ve spent time making searches and questions of AI apps, you’re sure to recognize the biases that have gone into their “authoritative” responses. As artificial intelligence is still in its infancy, it has yet to be determined how large an impact AI will have on culture, the economy, politics, industry, and humanity itself.

As Christians, what should we view as our ultimate authority?

The Bible

Over and over in the Bible, we read “Thus says the LORD…” and “The LORD said…” and “Jesus said, Truly I say to you…”

The Bible records the very words and expectations of the Creator. What the omniscient omnipotent God has said cannot fail to be correct. All of the Bible has been inspired by the word of the Holy Spirit. Worldly authorities like armies, ecclesiastical fiefdoms, nations, and experts can claim to have the standard of truth, but only God’s eternal Word “will not pass away…remains forever…will stand forever…endures forever…”

Jesus claims to be “the Truth” and that if you hold to the teaching of Jesus as his disciple, “you will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free.” As Christians we should believe what Jesus has said in his eternal word: our ultimate authority. Now before anyone accuses me of being a bibliolater, we worship God alone (not the Bible), and we trust the revelation of God in his written word.

In the early 21st century there are competing authorities vying for the title of magisterial. The aforementioned Roman Catholic Church claims to be the only authoritative entity from which all truth resides. Sadly, they have proven to be a false authority with their false teachings of Mariology and the prevalent breaking of the 2nd commandment. The RCC disqualified itself as the authority for truth by fabricating the sale of indulgences to substitute money/works in place of time in purgatory. Scientism, has corrupted itself with bias and self-indulgence. While the scientific method is good and works because Christianity is true, scientism is a self-defeating ideological assumption. The State continues to demand obeisance in matters of right/wrong even though states are frequently the most corrupt and wicked entities. Experts are biased and can ignore the truth when it suits them. Other competing authorities are “the science“, culture and autonomous reasoning. Each of these claim to be proven truth or the “right side of history” or “just common sense”. But in every case, they fall short of Truth as revealed by God. In some cases, these counterfeit authorities want the facade of the Bible to hide their deficient epistemology, so they try to inject their teachings into the Bible, so that their advocates can say:

  • “Look, the Bible supports evolution!“
  • “Look, the Bible supports homosexuality!”
  • “Look, the Bible supports socialism!”
  • or if you’re a Catholic: “Look, only the bishops should read the Bible…and only in Latin! They’ll tell you what to believe.”

None of that is true, and in each instance, language must be destroyed for them to say that the Bible supports their special interest.

False authorities come and go, but the Word of our God remains forever!

Colloquialisms From The Bible

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In my most recent journey through the Bible, I’ve made a list of phrases that in the past have been used as colloquialisms in American culture. Because of the general biblical illiteracy in 21st century America, I thought it would be a good idea to identify some of these common phrases as having origin in the Bible, since most people would probably not recognize their origin or its basic meaning. Here are the ones I’ve come up with:

  • Genesis 3:19 “for dust you are and to dust you will return”
  • Exodus 3:8 “a land flowing with milk and honey”
  • Exodus 21:24 “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”
  • Deuteronomy 32:10 “the apple of his eye”
  • Job 19:20 “I have escaped by the skin of my teeth”
  • Proverbs 13:20 “He who walks with the wise grows wiser, but a companion of fools suffers harm”
  • Proverbs 16:18 “Pride goes before destruction”
  • Proverbs 17:22 “A cheerful heart is good medicine”
    • Although not a direct quote, we see the source for the colloquialism “Laughter is the best medicine” as coming from Solomon’s wisdom
  • Proverbs 17:28 “Even a fool who keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips he is deemed intelligent”
    • Abraham Lincoln is believed to have said “It is better to be silent and be thought dumb, than to speak and remove all doubt.” Whether he said it or not, the quote clearly has its origin in the Proverbs
    • Proverbs 27:17 “As iron sharpens iron”
  • Proverbs :29:24 “The partner of a thief hates his own life”
    • You can see the colloquialism: “there’s no honor among thieves” as having its genesis in Proverbs 29
  • Isaiah 22:13 “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”
  • Isaiah 40:31 “They will mount up with wings as eagles”
  • Ecclesiastes 1:9 “there is nothing new under the sun”
  • Ecclesiastes 1:17 “chasing after the wind”
  • Ecclesiastes 3:1 “For everything there is a season”
  • Ecclesiastes 3:2 “A time to be born and a time to die”
  • Ecclesiastes 3:20 “All are from dust and to dust all return”
    • Similar to the Genesis 3 phrase, Americans, who have watched movies that have funerals or have attended a funeral will be familiar with the phrase the God created Adam from dust, and while our souls are immortal, our bodies return to the dust in death
  • Ecclesiastes 4:12 “a cord of 3 strands is not quickly broken”
  • Ecclesiastes 5:15 “naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return”
  • Jeremiah 13:23 “Can a leopard change his spots?”
  • Daniel 3:27 “Not a single hair on your head is harmed”
  • Daniel 5 “The writing is on the wall”
    • This exact phrase does not appear in Daniel, but the promise of impending doom is clearly communicated from God’s hand to Belshazzar for his rebellion and wickedness. The colloquialism is clearly understood to be an inevitable calamity
  • Hosea 8:7 “reap the whirlwind”
  • Matthew 3:12 “separate wheat from chaff”
  • Matthew 5:39 “turn the other cheek”
  • Matthew 5:43 ” Love your neighbor”
  • Matthew 5:44 “Love your enemies”
  • Matthew 6:24 “You cannot serve 2 masters”
  • Matthew 7:3-5 “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.”
  • Matthew 7:10 “Do to others as you’d have them do to you”
  • Matthew 15:14 “blind leading the blind”
  • Matthew 25:32 “separate sheep from the goats”
  • Matthew 27:24 “he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood'”
    • Again we don’t see the exact phrase, but we hear people say “I wash my hands of this” as if to declare themselves innocent/unaffiliated of/with a failing or guilty entity
  • Mark 8:36 “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul”
  • Mark 12:17 “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s”
  • Luke 14:27 “anyone who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy to be my disciple.” The colloquialism is usually phrased “It’s my cross to bear” or something similar
  • Luke 16:10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can be trusted with much. Whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much”
  • Acts 20:35 “More blessed to give than to receive”
  • 1 Corinthians 15:32 “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”
  • 1 Corinthians 15:33 “Bad company ruins good morals”

I’m sure there are many that I missed. Feel free to add them in the comments. The idea behind this post is the importance of an understanding of the Bible. At one time, the American populace had a much greater knowledge of God’s eternal word. So colloquialisms that appeared in the lexicon were well understood because of how familiar Americans were with the scripture.

Fathers, read the Bible. Fathers, read the Bible with your family. Make sure that your family has a deep and abiding knowledge of the Bible

Debate: The Bible Teaches that Animals Died Before the Fall

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In this debate, my Christian friend @CuriousChristianity attempted to argue the positive for this case, and I took the much easier (and biblical) case for the negative

Opening

Americans on average go through 12 years of public school indoctrination in evolution. Those, who go to college and those who get advanced degrees get 4, 6 or 8 more years of deeper indoctrination into the ideas that animals have been dying for millions of years. Even those who don’t get advanced degrees are saturated with movies and tv shows and news bulletins and flyers and conversations among work associates that bloodshed and death are pervasive for the assumed millions of years of evolutionary development. Some would call this science, but it is at the very least a philosophical idea that is deeply ingrained in 21st century thinking. It takes courage and discernment not to drink in and believe the worldly philosophy of evolutionism as a basic assumption. My friend may or may not believe in evolution, but the influence of the philosophies of death for millions of years is both pervasive and assumed in this culture. Many Christians who have been indoctrinated in the philosophy of death for millions of years search for holes in the text of the Bible to see if there is room to insert these outside ideas of death and suffering before the fall into sin. See if in this debate, you can discern how the assumptions of death have influenced the arguments of my friend rather than starting instead with the eternal word of God.

My case will have 3 points: Good, Food and Blood

Good

My friend has the very unenviable task of building the case that the Bible teaches that animals died before the fall of mankind. It is particularly difficult since no where in the Bible will you find death before the fall. He might make some assumptions and you’ll likely hear him try to talk about how good death really is, but please pray for my friend: his case is hopeless

During the creation account in Genesis 1 God declares his creation to be good 7 times and the 7th time, He declared it to be very good. What does the Hebrew word (tove) mean? Those, who hold to the temple inauguration view (like my opponent) will say it means “functional” or “ready”. Does this hold up to a textual analysis from Moses, in the same context to the same audience?

Gen 1:31 “God saw all that He had made, and it was very functional”

Gen 2:17 “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of functional and dysfunctional”

Gen 3:22 “Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing functionality and dysfunction”

Of course, this does not make any sense, but this is what the guru, John Walton, would have us believe from p50 of his book The Lost World of Genesis, where he says: “the meaning of the repeated formula ‘it was good’, which I propose refers to functioning properly…functional readiness”

This is the trendy tactic for Walton’s followers to get around the serious problem of animal death. If they can redefine good to have nothing to do with sin/morality or the fall, then they can accept the modern paradigm’s view that animal death has been happening for millions of years (or as they might say “for an unknown amount of time). But if good has to do with the absence of evil or the antithesis of evil/harm/destruction, then those who hold to this view have a serious theological problem.

This word good H2896 tove (tob) is used to describe God Himself at least 27 times in the old testament. Are we to believe Walton’s definition that the Almighty is functional? 40 times in the old testament tove is paired with ra (evil) H7451 as its inverse. And we clearly see from Isa 11:6-9 that the destruction caused by the fall includes predatory destruction. The Apostle Pual picks up this seamless theme in scripture that during creation week there was an absence of corruption but because of the curse of sin “For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

If my friend’s case is true, then suffering, cancer, and death are “very good”. But I Cor 15:26 tells us that “the final to be destroyed is death”.

If good is to have any meaning at all, then it cannot include suffering, harm, destruction and death as would be necessary for my friend’s case

Food

Genesis 1:28-29 has 5 commands

  • Be fruitful
  • Fill the earth
  • Subdue it
  • Have dominion over the animals
  • You shall have them (green plants) for good

Gen 1:30 relates the 5th command of God to “every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens & everything that creeps on the earth – everything that has the breath of life”

Predation is shown to be forbidden. Humans SHALL eat the green plants for food & those under man’s dominion shall eat green plants. Why would we assume that those under Adam’s jurisdiction be granted a freedom to consume meat that was denied to humanity?

If you doubt that the Genesis 1 command to eat only the green plants is NOT a command, we can look to the recreation language of God after the global flood in Genesis 9

Gen 9:1-3 “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground amd all the fish of the seas. Into your hand they are now delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood”

Again we see the commands of God to be fruitful, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over animals. But the 5th command is freed of the restriction of animal consumption. This pattern at the creation and recreation is apparent and even if not in words, is logically denied by my friend. There’s every reason to believe Gen 1:29 is also a command for humans because this command is reversed in Genesis 9. And by deduction, we see that the animals are subject to God’s pre-fall dietary commands as well – to be vegetarian

Blood

The 1st recorded bloodshed in the Bible is the penal substitutionary atoning sacrifice of an animal in the garden by God Himself to cover the sins of Adam and Eve. The skin of this animal was used to cover their nakedness. This picture of the eventual bloodshed of Jesus was represented in the garden by the 1st recorded death of an animal. Without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness

Before the fall, God’s creation was very good – completely absent of evil/harm/destruction/predation and God promises that his creation will be restored to a state that is absent of evil/harm/destruction/predation through the redemptive work of Jesus. There was no room for animal death suffering or predation in God’s very good creation prior to the fall. As the writer of Hebrews tells us “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness”. Has there been millions of years of needless suffering, bloodshed, and death in a world that God called very good as Walton tells us? Or as Romans 8 tells us, did the whole of creation become subjected to its bondage to corruption and groaning because of the sin of mankind?

It would be unexpected (according to my friend’s view) for something as meaningless as the bloodshed and death of animals to represent the atoning bloodshed of the Savior. It’s discordant with all of scripture to assume that there was some unknown epoch of meaningless bloodshed/death of animals that suddenly became the picture of Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice. But it is perfectly aligned with the teaching of the Bible that no bloodshed occurred until mankind sinned. The Spirit revealed to the writer of Hebrews how animal death isn’t meaningless as would be the logical result of my friend’s view.

Hebrews 9:13-22 “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. Therefore not even the first covenant was inaugurated without blood. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, “This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you.” And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”

All of the Bible is about Jesus as seen in Luke 24:44-45. The picture of the bloodshed of Jesus was represented in the bloodshed of animals as recorded for the 1st time after Adam/Eve had sinned. There is a gaping theological hole in the argument that rather than there being representative significance to the bloodshed of animals, the bloodshed and death of animals is meaningless because it happened for millions of years prior to the curse of sin. It is an unwitting diminution of the blood sacrifice of Jesus

Closing

As you can see from the video, the Bible does NOT teach that animals died before the fall. You have to appreciate the effort by my friend, but he had an impossible task. The assumptions and speculations he has made are just not found in the text itself.

There is great symmetry between the old and new creation. The Bible has a clear chiastic structure which we can see when looked at as a whole. God’s original good creation was cursed by bondage to corruption and death because of man’s sin. But because of what Jesus has done as the prophets & Revelation reveal, God will restore creation to a state that will be absent of evil and harm. This redemptive plan brings glory to Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus has power to redeem all of creation from its bondage to suffering, corruption and to defeat the last enemy: death.

Be brave and discerning dear Christians. Though the dominant paradigm is saturated with worldly philosophies like evolution and deep time, we need not be captive to this kind of thinking. We have the mind of Christ, and out thinking should be shaped according to Christ’s revelation and for His glory

The Bible tells us that humans are made in the image of God. As image bearers, humans were empowered to uphold God’s dominion over all of his lovely creation. Genesis tells us that the curses for sin were thorns, suffering, and death. Jesus took each of these curses upon Himself at the cross. Denying that the curses for sin had no effect on the creation over which mankind had dominion, limits both the universally destructive power of sin AND the redemptive work of Jesus, whose power is even greater than that of sin. His death and resurrection heals not just the hearts of the repentant, but restores the relationships of the wolf and the lamb, the leopard with the goat, the calf and the lion. There will no longer be harm and destruction that has pervaded this sin-cursed creation.

Post Debate Discussion

During the debate, Adam said, “We should let God define good”. And I heartily agree. When we let scripture speak for itself, goodness is clearly an absence of evil/harm/death. God uses the Hebrew word for good (tob, H2896) to describe Himself at least 27 times in the old testament. And at least 45 times in the old testament God contrasts good (tob) with evil (ra, H7451). The Hebrew word ra means evil, harm or destruction. The definition of good is the absence of evil, harm, & destruction. So, Adam’s entire case is discordant with what the Bible teaches. So, yes – Let God define what is good

While the argument about the tree of life is a good one, it is easily shown to be insufficient to overcome the teaching from scripture that everything in creation was very good before the fall. And since the Bible (Rev 22:2) tells us that the tree of life is for the *healing* of the nations. This healing is easily inferred to be from the mortal wound of sin. Without sin, there would be no need for healing.

What about plants or bacteria or spiders (as Adam brought up several times in the debate? Plants, while categorized as alive today, are really just a self-replicating food source. As for the others, see the article here.

If you are unfamiliar with the misery, suffering, bloodshed, and harm that animals deal with, follow these accounts on X. These are the behaviors that old earthers think are part of a “very good” creation for millions of years prior to the sin of mankind

  • @TheBrutalNature
  • @BrutaINature1
  • @TheeDarkCircle

Some more thoughts about how God views blood as important, check out these passages:

  • Leviticus 17:10-14 atonement comes from the shedding of blood
  • Acts 15:29 abstain from eating blood

So animal blood, while much less valuable than the blood of Christ, is shown to be valuable for covering sins. The shedding of animal blood is the picture of Christ’s blood, so it is not insignificant as would be necessary in the views of old earthism. Predation and death of animals would not be expected from a biblical view. It is only the worldly philosophies that bring in the ideas of perpetual predation and animal death prior to the sin of mankind

Don’t overlook the effects of the cultural saturation of evolution in the arguments of my friend. The myth millions of years of death and suffering are so engrained in the cultural milieu, that Adam just assumes death has been a part of history for that long. It’s definitely not a biblical teaching. It comes from outside the Bible. So, we can say with certainty that the Bible teaches that animals did NOT die before the fall

Does the Bible Teach That The Earth is Young?

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Yes…clearly. Here’s the definitive debate and some post debate thoughts to help clarify some things that didn’t get full discussion during our allotted time

Here are my notes for my opening:

The word ‘Trinity’ does not appear anywhere in the Bible, but we know from reading the Bible that the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. And we know that God is One. Anyone who denies the trinity is not a Christian. The biblical teaching of a young earth is more clear than the trinity. While people can deny a young earth and still be a Christian, we must wonder why denial of a young earth is so pervasive. For 18 centuries Christians have universally accepted the biblical account that the earth is young. But with the advent of the modern scientific paradigm of deep time at the end of the 18th century, some in the church began to look for ways to bring the biblical account into concordance with that deep time paradigm. It’s a trendy fad with many different ideas on how to do so. From postulating that days actually mean eons to inventing a billions of years gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, the ideas have been creative. The trendiest of ideas that is hyperbolically 15 minutes old, is that Genesis is agnostic to ideas of age and does not deal with “material” creation; just its functional ordering due to the influence of the writings of the Hittites, Sumerians, and other ancient near eastern people groups that were judged with destruction for their wickedness. ALL of these trendy ideas have one thing in common – a specialized guru who tells you that the words don’t mean what they are commonly understood to mean. They mean something unique that only the guru with his secret knowledge can reveal. They say that it is the text of scripture that must be redefined so that the Bible can be brought into alignment with the emergent dominant paradigm.

Is it valid to consider trendy ideas to make the Bible concordant with the worldly philosophies, or should we as Christians uphold the authority of scripture as the magisterial principium? If words have meaning at all, then accepting the Bible’s clear teaching of what we now call young earth creation is self-evident. It is at the expense of denying language itself that fellow brothers in Christ deny that the Bible teaches what I will defend tonight (Does the Bible teach that the earth is young?)

  1. The earth, the universe and everything in it was created in 6 calendar days as the Bible says
  2. The earth was created about 6000 years ago because of the ages given in the corresponding accounts of the unbroken royal lineage of the Seed from Adam -> Abram in Genesis/Chronicles and from Abram to Jesus (Luke) as the Bible says
  3. Jesus confirms that mankind was made at the beginning of creation as the Bible says in Mark 10:6

As Christians, we do not want to hold onto things that are demonstrably false. Genesis and the rest of scripture very clearly tells us that God created in 6 calendar days about 6000 years ago. Most of God’s word was passed to us from the Spirit inspiring the prophets and apostles, but part of the case for young earth was literally written by the hand of God in stone. This was completely undisputed but for the rarest of outliers for about 1800 years until the end of the 19th century. Suddenly when Darwin’s idea of evolution took hold of academia more time was needed to explain his biological theory, so it became trendy to see if the words in the Bible could be stretched to accommodate these naturalistic ideas.

Text: Genesis 1 

  1. “In the beginning” – This may come up later as we identify that one of the trendy tactics today is to stretch the word beginning far beyond all recognition. Hebrew grammar and narrative structure of Genesis 1 doesn’t permit a time gap between verses 1 and 2. The waw consecutive (“and”) at the beginning of verse 2 in Hebrew implies a direct sequence of events
    • Use of the word yom (meaning day) and it’s literally defined there in Genesis 1
    • Why did God not use any of the deep time words like:
      • Yamim (plural of yom) – Not used
    • Qedem (days of old) – Not used
    • Olam (days of old) – Not used
    • Some might object and say that Moses didn’t understand large numbers like billions of years, so God had to speak to the simpleton with simpleton language, but this objection would be ignorant of the covenant from Gen 22:17 “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore”, yet God did not communicate to Moses about his creation in this way
    • The only reason that God would withhold using large words to describe the time it took for Him to create is because it took only 6 calendar days – just as He said
  2. “Sequential days” are confirmed by the ordinal usage of the text. Had God wished to communicate non-sequential days, it would have been quite easy for Him to say something like “some time later” or “many years later” or “as things developed over time”. Instead, He used language that we all understand to mean sequential consecutive days. The point is clear: God was not giving some ambiguous myth. The words of Genesis have meaning of sequential consecutive calendar days
  3. The days are bounded by evening/morning patterns to separate the days. Not eons. Not years. Not months…but only days are bounded by evenings/mornings. God was being very clear that yom means a calendar day in this context
  4. “But Matt! Can’t yom mean a time period like in Genesis 2:4?” Yes! Notice how they always choose Genesis 2:4. No one ever chooses Genesis 1 because the context shows us that the usage of “yom” in Genesis 2:4 is COMPLETELY different than the usage of “yom” in Genesis 1. But I do agree that Yom has flexibility of usage. As faithful Christians we should look to scripture rather than some outside false authority like the scientific paradigm or modern culture or ancient near eastern cultures. Where can we look within scripture to find a usage of “yom” in the context described in Genesis 1 to give us the correct boundary? Ex 20:9-11 and Ex 31:17
    1. “6 days you shall labor and do your work…for in 6 days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them”
    2. In the same way that God’s people are expected to work each week, we can be certain that it took God the same amount of time to create the entire universe because of what the Bible says
  5. Here’s the meat of the matter: Genesis 5 and 11 record the ages when those in the unbroken royal lineage of Jesus fathered their children. The summation of these ages confirm that the earth is indeed young. For those who would object that there may be gaps in the lineage, I ask “Who is missing? How do you know?” For those who would object that it doesn’t necessarily mean they fathered the direct descendant because the Hebrew word Yalad might just mean “was an ancestor of” I reply “it doesn’t matter because the age of the patriarch is mentioned whether it be father or grandfather”. To those who object “why does it have to be an unbroken lineage?” Seed of the woman vs. the seed of the serpent. Genesis tracks the unbroken royal line of the Seed of the woman as each generation looked for healing of the curses of sin. We know that the Matthew lineage has purposeful omissions for purposes of symmetry, but the other lineages (with their ages) show that Jesus is indeed the promised Kinsman Redeemer, who would crush the head of the serpent. Those, who would assume that there are genealogical omissions in Genesis/Chronicles/Luke are faced with the unenviable task of trying to show WHO is missing, how they know it, and how the line of kings remains verifiable in Jesus
  6. Lastly: Mark 10:6 “for at the beginning of creation God made them male and female” Jesus is confirming that it was the beginning when He created everything else that He made mankind. Remember, Jesus is the Creator: He would know. Those who have fallen prey to the lure of the modern scientific paradigm may say “That passage is just about marriage”, but this objection ignores the actual words that Jesus said. Would you contend with Him, that the very specific words that He used are unimportant? If beginning has any meaning at all, then it must be referring to the creation week and not as old earthers claim 13.787 billion years after creation. To say that “the beginning” can mean anything from 14 dozen hours to 13.787 billion years ago renders the word as meaningless. It literally destroys language

Consistency

If fellow brothers who deny YEC would apply the same level of skepticism they do against Genesis 1 and Exodus 20 to other parts of scripture, you might hear:

  • “Of course the plagues against Egypt were just symbolic. There’s no way that an entire river turned to blood. God was just saying metaphorically that it’s the blood of Jesus that saves you. Besides there’s no record of the Nile turning to blood in Egyptian writings”
  • “When we look at ancient near eastern writings like the Sumerians, there are many stories like that of Samson, who had superhuman strength, so the Bible’s account of a man whose strength relied on the length of his hair is figurative in nature. Samson, while interesting, is hyperbolic of a leader, who probably existed but never pushed over a building with his hands”
  • “Jesus didn’t calm a literal storm. If you look at the Greek, you can reasonably surmise that Jesus comforted the storm in the hearts of his disciples. The storm was just a picture of the trauma that his disciples felt in knowing that their teacher would face persecution. Jesus’s words calmed the storm within them”

But it’s inconsistent for YEC deniers to declare “God could not have created the earth/universe in 6 days in the recent past…but it’s totally possible for a virgin to bear a child”

The text demonstrates that the earth (even though it is the oldest entity in the universe) is young, and Christians should not hold beliefs that are demonstrably false.

History

While the biblical text is the ultimate authority, is it worthwhile to see how Christians from the past have understood the text? Of course. If in my reading of the text, I ‘discover’ something that no one else in history ever thought or saw, I should question my own interpretation. To my knowledge, no Christian before the 18th century is recorded to have believed in what we would today call an old earth. To confirm the young earth consensus of the time from the earliest Christians to just over a century ago (a span of about 1800 years), let’s look back at some of those, who wrote about it (I’ll link the work of Ben Kissling in the show notes):

  • Irenaeus 165 AD – Earth is less than 8000 years old
  • Theophilus 180 AD – “All the years from the creation of the world amount to a total of 5698 years”
  • Julius Africanus 221AD – From the creation to 221 is 5499 years
  • Origen 248 AD identified his old earth atheist opponent with the implication that those who would deny the biblical age of less than 10,000 years are “assailants of the Christian faith”
  • Augustine 426 AD who wrote: “reckoning by the sacred writings (the Bible), not 6000 years have passed”
  • Johannes Kepler 1619 – Earth was created in 4997BC, so was less than 6800 years at the time of Kepler’s writing
  • James Ussher 1650 Annals of the World – Earth was created in 4004BC, less than 6100 years old
  • All Reformers accepted young earth (Did God Create in 6 Days? – Pipa)
  • Charles Lyell in the late 1800s (while not a Christian, recognized the hold that Christianity and thus the dominant paradigm of his time had on scientific studies) in his writings he wished to “free the science from Moses” which as we all know is Genesis
  • Jack Repcheck wrote a biography of James Hutton called The Man Who Found Time: “The age of the earth is the wedge that shattered the biblically rooted picture of Earth and separated science from theology”

As Christians, which we both are, we should want to interpret scripture consistently and rightly. Consistently by offering the same level of scrutiny to the passages that conflict with modern sensibilities (like Genesis) as those passages deemed crucial to Christian orthodoxy (like the miracles of Jesus). We’ve established that throughout all of church history before the dark times, everyone understood that the earth is young because of what the Bible tells us. And we have clearly established that the Bible teaches that the earth is young. The language demands it and we do not want to hold to teachings that are demonstrably false – especially the clear teachings of God’s Holy Word.

Closing

Thank you Keith for hosting this debate. You’re an above average timekeeper. Thank you Adam for a brotherly conversation on this important topic. Why is this topic important? I’m a Christian. Adam is a Christian. I love God’s Word and Adam loves God’s word. It is a matter both of authority and meaning. Dear Christians, if words have meaning, if language can communicate ideas, and since God has revealed history in his word, then we must hold to young earth creation. In Today’s culture redefining words to accommodate formerly abnormal views has become pervasive and acceptable:

  • Abortion is healthcare
  • Trespassing is an armed insurrection
  • Sexual perversion is normalized by asserting love is love
  • Anything certain parties don’t like is now defined as racism
  • Woman is whatever a person feels in their mind
  • Weird was used to describe the nuclear family

Sadly, this kind of thinking has leaked into the church when the foundations of scripture are compromised:

  • Day has been redefined as billions of years
  • Good has been redefined by John Walton as “functional ordering”
  • God’s creation of the universe in Genesis 1 has been redefined as temple inauguration
  • Death/suffering/thorns have been redefined as being very good
  • The beginning has been redefined to be some mysterious eon of time in which virtually all of the supposed billions of years of history have been hidden

As shown tonight, the plain reading of the Bible in its context…what some call the young earth understanding of God’s revelation in the Bible is the correct understanding. Young earth creation has been clearly understood since Moses penned those words and in Christendom until the dark times, until it became fashionable to reinterpret the meanings of words to accommodate modern sensibilities. If you need a guru like John Walton or Hugh Ross to give new definitions to words that no one in Christian history has ever before believed simply to accommodate modern scientific and cultural paradigms, take caution brothers. As Paul warned the Colossians “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ”. If you start with the human traditions of evolution or ancient near east hermeneutics, it will never lead you to Christ as that is not their purpose. But the purpose of God’s word is to lead us to Jesus. Just as the Bereans were called honorable for “searching the scriptures to see if what Paul said was true”, we too should test ideas by what is demonstrably true in God’s word. The Bible tells us that God created the universe very good (completely absent of evil/harm/destruction), but sin affected all of creation – and right there in the garden after the fall, God promised a Redeemer to heal that bondage to corruption against which we still groan today. But because the Bible can be trusted about God’s revelation of the past, we can trust his revelation about the future as we eagerly await the redemption of our bodies and the end of harm & destruction when the knowledge of the LORD fills the earth as the waters cover the sea. As Christians we do not want to have views of demonstrably false things, and it is demonstrably false that the Bible is agnostic to the age of the earth because of text of the Bible itself says. And it says that the earth is young

Post Debate Thoughts

The debate was effectively over when during the cross-examination, asked Adam:

“To accommodate something other than YEC, I can think of dozens of changes that would need to be made to the Bible. Conversely, if God actually did intend to communicate to us that the earth is young, what changes to the text of scripture would need to be made?”‘

His reply was “If he eliminated the 1st two verses of Genesis.” We can deduce from his statement that all of scripture supports the view that the earth is young if you do not hold Adam’s presuppositions. Now Adam has presupposed that Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 refer to God’s assembly of preexisting materials into the planet we see today and there are eons of time hidden in those verses that prevent us from knowing how old the earth is. In order to hold this presupposition, Adam has to ignore Exodus 20:9-11 and Mark 10:6, which if you watch the debate, this is exactly what he did. He tried very hard to dismiss the obvious connections of the creation of the waters and the earth in Exodus 20:9-11 and even laughed off the words of Jesus as referring to “the beginning”. Adam’s presuppositions are also at odds with the biblical text itself. No English translation supports his view, and if you say “well, but the original Hebrew…”, then you must conclude that you know Hebrew better than the 1000s of Hebrew scholars that have translated the text for hundreds of years.

Another of Adam’s dismissals is the idea of what the church has taught exclusively for thousands of years: the earth is young. He said in the debate that it’s “irrelevant” to this debate. While it is not authoritative, it is certainly relevant. Adam and I are both Christians and we both agree that the Bible is the authority, so our difference is over interpretation. If this debate had some different opinions over the course of church history prior to the dominant and oppressive modern paradigm, he might have a point. But the young earth view is exclusive from the beginning to hyperbolically 15 minutes ago.

I’ll repeat my contention from the opening: If in my reading of the text, I ‘discover’ something that no one else in history ever thought or saw, I should question my own interpretation. YOU should question my new and exciting interpretations that no one has ever seen before. And this is what we see with Adam’s interpretation: no one has ever seen his view in all of church history.

Lastly, because there is a strong cultural pull to be in alignment with what “science” teaches, we will look to see what some of Adam’s underlying assumptions are. The allure of being concordant with the dominant modern paradigm can be enticing. You can see this enticement from Adam in his other interviews with/about young earth creationists:

“I would be all too happy to see young earth creationism to be proven correctly scientifically…The Bible is the driving force for pretty much all of this (YEC view) And not that the Bible shouldn’t be our authority…”

“The only reason that I don’t believe that (sun stood still in the sky) is because of modern day science“

“I’m willing to leave more of those discussions (age of the earth) up to the scientists”

“If I’m going to say that the earth is billions of years old, that’s clearly a scientific question. Unless someone can show me a passage in scripture, it’s a scientific question”

In matters of history, historical documentation is the primary and authoritative source for answering those questions. The Bible IS that historical documentation and Christians have abdicated the authority of the Bible in favor of the dominant modern paradigm. Adam is simply incorrect about history being a scientific question. Questions of history should be answered – not by extrapolations – but by historical documentation

Bible Contradiction? Did Jesus Claim That No One Has Ever Gone to Heaven?

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It’s a fairly common online assertion that the Bible is “fuLL oF cOnTraDicTioNs!” by those who are unfamiliar with the common mistakes that skeptics make when they make such claims. In a recent online discussion, a God-denier claimed that that Bible was full of contradictions. The principle assertion of contradiction was that Elijah ascended into Heaven (2 Kings 2:11) but Jesus claimed in John 3:13 that no one but the Son has ever ascended into Heaven

https://twitter.com/AmputeeAtheist/status/1538180851002970113?s=20&t=lNX1CRdWwIG0GNEupkEzRQ

Before I begin the rebuttal, let the reader understand that God-deniers have no grounds for declaring anything to be contradictory. Unless one starts with the God, who has revealed Himself in creation, in the Bible, and in the incarnation, there is no possible justification for logic, knowledge, morality, or truth. So, when a God-denier (like AmputeeAtheist) claims that the Bible contains contradictions, he has no logical or knowledgeable grounding from which to determine anything to be contradictory. From the perspective of the God-denier, there is only chaotic matter. As the imminent naturalist Carl Sagan religiously stated: “The cosmos is all there is, or was or ever will be.” There is no room in the worldview of the naturalist for unchanging abstract absolutes like laws of logic or induction. Lastly, before I refute this critic, AmputeeAtheist has NOT demonstrated conclusively that this is even a contradiction. He has taken only a paper-thin glance at the words (likely from an atheist meme online) and declared lazily that it ‘jUsT hAs tO bE a cOntraDictiOn”. For it to actually be a contradiction, no possible explanation can exist (which I will show below), and AmputeeAtheist has failed to demonstrate that there is no possible resolution. The unjustified assertion that “there is a contradiction” is echo chamber material suitable only for the “atheist choir”.

Let’s see what Jesus said in John 3:13

And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven

Is Jesus saying that no one has ever gone to Heaven? Would Jesus have been familiar with the 2 Kings passage that describes how Elijah was whisked off to Heaven in a chariot? Of course! So, why would Jesus make the claim that none have ascended into heaven?

To answer this, we must 1st look at the scriptures (the Old Testament) to see what Jesus was actually saying. Since the New testament is essentially the inspired commentary & fulfillment of what was revealed in the old testament, we should exegete (study the scripture) to see what Jesus might have meant when He said “ascend”.

Throughout the old testament, there is a theme that those, who met with God or interacted with God, did so on the mountaintops. This is important because man was incapable of getting to the “heavens” where God was. The understanding is that God must, in his grace, come down to meet mankind because man is unable to get to Him

  • Gen 8:18-22 When the ark landed on the mountains of Ararat, Noah built an altar to the LORD. Noah could worship the Lord, but despite the fact that Noah was at the highest point, he could not ascend to heaven
  • Gen 11 Shortly after the flood, the people intended to build a tower to the Heavens so that instead of proclaiming the Name of God as image bearers, they wanted to make a name for themselves as gods. The people at the tower of Babel failed to ascend to the presence of God.
  • Gen 22 God told Abraham to ascend Mount Moriah to sacrifice Isaac there. At the top of that mountain, God intervened and provided a substitute atonement for Abraham and his son. Abraham ascended as high as he could, but God had to descend from Heaven to meet with Abraham
  • There are 149 places in the ESV of the use of the phrase “high places”. Even the pagan worshippers, who setup their idols put them on the mountains or high places as a failed attempt to ascend to the Heavens or ascend to their false deity
  • Exodus 3 – Moses was tending his sheep on Mount Horeb and this is where God descended to meet with Moses. Moses could not ascend to Heaven. God had to come down to meet with Moses
  • Exodus 19 – Moses ascends Mount Sinai to meet with God, but since Moses cannot ascend into Heaven into the presence of God, God says in verse 9 “I am going to come to you” at the highest point you can possibly reach, which is far short of ascending to Heaven.
  • Exodus 34 – This theme is repeated but stated more clearly.in verse 2 God tells Moses to “come up on Mount Sinai” and in verse 5 it says “the LORD came down”. No one (including Moses) can ascend to Heaven in their own power.

Secondly and more importantly, let’s look to see in what context Jesus was speaking these words to Nicodemus. In the interaction Jesus has just scolded Nicodemus that as Israel’s presumed teacher, Nicodemus (while knowledgeable of the scriptures) does not understand them

Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.

John 3:10-13

Jesus is taking from Proverbs 30, which is a lament by the author in his realization that rejecting the understanding/knowledge/wisdom of God is stupid. Jesus is equating the author of Proverbs 30 with Israel’s teachers of the law in general and Nicodemus specifically.

Surely I am too stupid to be a man. I have not the understanding of a man. I have not learned wisdom, nor have I knowledge of the Holy One. Who has ascended to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his fists? Who has wrapped up the waters in a garment? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is his son’s name? Surely you know!

Proverbs 30:2-4

The author continues saying that there is no who who can ascend into heaven to learn from God and return to teach the people about God. But in John 3, Jesus claims to ACTUALLY be the One, who has done this. Jesus has been in the presence of the Father, and He has both descended and ascended to the Father to bring both knowledge and forgiveness to mankind. Unlike what the skeptic has learned from atheist memes, Jesus is not claiming that no one has ever gone to Heaven. Jesus is displaying his rightful divinity and exposing, that despite their rote memorization of the law/prophets, the supposed teachers of Israel are unlearned (stupid) about God.

Nicodemus would also have recognized from Jesus’s words the passage in Deuteronomy 30 where Moses writes

“For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?‘ Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Deuteronomy 30:11-14

For those, whom the LORD has called and empowered, the commands of God are expectations. To follow those commands, one need not perform the impossible tasks of “ascend to heaven” or swim “beyond the sea” to obey. And yet, when Israel (and ultimately all of mankind) do fail to keep God’s commands, Jesus is faithful to perform the impossible Himself: bring the knowledge of God from Heaven down to mankind and atone for man’s disobedience.

Jesus does not stray from his consistent train of thought in John 6 verses 38, 42-44 and 62-63

For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me…So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day…Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

John 6

Jesus did not claim that no one has ever died and gone to Heaven. Considering Jesus knowledge of the scriptures, the context of his teaching, and the audience, it is clear that Jesus was identifying Himself as God, who has been in the presence of the Father, but has descended to mankind to bring knowledge and redemption.

We also see from Jesus’s disciples that they understood Jesus to be talking about Himself as descending from Heaven. John the Baptist says in John 3:31

He (Jesus) who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks an earthly way. He (Jesus) who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what He has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true.

John 3:31-33

And Paul in Rom 10 and I Cor 15

But the righteousness based on faith says, “Do not say in your heart, ‘who will ascend into heaven?'” (that is, to bring Christ down) “or ‘who will descend into the abyss?'” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).

The first man (Adam) was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man (Jesus) is from heaven.

And while Paul did not specifically use the words ascend or descend in Philippians 2, it is clear that Jesus came from the presence of the Father in Heaven to descend to earth

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross

Philippians 2:5-8

There are no contradictions in the Bible. Although the God-denier was lazy and ignorant of the scriptures in making the claim that Jesus contradicted the scriptures with his words in John 3, with an understanding of the context, we see that it is silly to make such a claim. If you’re interested in more articles like this, check out the ever-growing list of refuted claims-of-contradiction by the author of Domain for Truth!

Because God, who knows everything and is eternally faithful, can be trusted in his revelation about the past, we can trust His revelation about our future

Drink Up or Shutup!

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How do you answer the exvangelical or God-denier or self-proclaimed atheist who says,

Go read Mark 16:18 and then drink up or shutup!

Let’s look at the words of Jesus recorded in Mark 16 and see if we can provide an apologetic answer

And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

This sounds like an example of an internal critique. If the Christian is truly convinced that they are a follower of Jesus (so the skeptic would challenge), then the signs spoken of above will be exhibited in their life. Should a Christian immediately go out, find some serpents and slurp up some venom? Mmmm – No. Here are a few tips for how to respond to our skeptic friends.

  1. When faced with a similar temptation from Satan, Our Lord responded with scripture. Flip over just a few pages to the right in your Bible, to find the history of Jesus’s temptation as recorded in Luke 4. Starting in verse 9 “And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, “‘He will command his angels concerning you, to guard you,’ and “‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.'” And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'” So, the first of our possible responses is that we are not to put God to the test. Jesus, in the face of the same temptation as our skeptic friend (although He also had the assurance of God’s protection), did not yield to the whims of Satan and his petty temptation. In like manner, let the skeptic know that as a follower of the Way, you will act as Jesus did in the same situation
  2. We see from Mark that remaining healthy after drinking deadly poison as a possible “sign”. But not every Christian is associated with every sign in the Bible. Acts 2:3, Acts 5:12, 2 Cor 12:12, I Cor 12:4, Acts 9:6 are all examples of signs that have accompanied some believers. Not every believer casts out demons. Not every believer has spoken in tongues. Not every believer has the gift of healing, so in logical progression, we can can say that not every believer will survive drinking serpent venom. From the context and from the rest of scripture, we see that this sign is not intended as some sort of entry exam or comprehensive conditional test. It was in fact recorded several times that not every disciple was exhibiting every sign but was still a faithful disciple of the Eternal Monarch (Mark 9:28, Mark 14:66-72). Not every Christian has every gift, so it’s a false expectation for someone to say that “if you don’t survive drinking venom, then you are not a Christian.” It’s a false expectation
  3. We have indisputable proof that the poison of a deadly serpent did not harm the Apostle Paul as recorded in Acts 28. So shocked were the onlookers that they recognized the divine protection afforded to Paul. So, God remained faithful to his Word in protecting Paul for the glory of God. It does not logically follow, however that EVERY instance of encounters with asps by Christians will be health in this life
  4. From Genesis to Revelation we see the serpent as the enemy of God and his people both literally and figuratively. Because of what Jesus has done, the works of the devil are both destroyed in this life and in eternity. Either way, the Christian need not fear the works of the devil (Matthew 10:26-31)
  5. Like the young men, who were exiled in Babylon, it may very well be that a Christian is called upon to stand for his faith in the face of persecution. Shadrach, Meshach, & Abednego faced the dire choice of purposeful apostasy or death. They bravely faced their accuser and rather than obeying his unrighteous mandate, “drank the poison” of death by fire. Their testimony rings powerfully “If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” In that instance, God protected his people with power and effectiveness. God has proven Himself capable, but He is not obligated to go against his eternal plan (of which only the part of his plan recorded in scripture is known) for the sake of earthly comforts or long life for Christians
  6. Lastly, all modern translations note that Mark 16:9-20 is not found in the earliest or most reliable manuscripts from which the book of Mark has been translated. Scholars have debated the reasons as to why this segment of scripture does not have the same kinds of support as the rest of scripture. You can hear some of the information in this video.

We can see, that this challenge from the skeptic is not a proper internal critique. Whereas a proper internal critique would take into account the other assumptions of the Christian from above. So, there’s no need to wilt or despair should you encounter the “venom” of the skeptic. God is faithful and we can trust his eternal Word

Review – A Matter of Days – Chapter 23

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Tranquility through Testing

To finish his book Dr. Ross proposes a way that he thinks will bring resolution to the choice between the “creation-day controversy”. Whether you’ve been following the chapter reviews up to this point or not, you might be able to guess what Dr. Ross proposes as the solution:

Interpretations of Evidence!

Those who have been following along know that he would NOT choose the highest authority – God’s Word.

Given that various creation perspectives are readily testable, a pathway exists for peaceful resolution of creation-day controversies. With so much scientific data  and many different biblical creation accounts open for investigation, little basis remains for conflicts or disputes over creation doctrines.

Ross seems deaf to the effects of interpretations when discussing evidence, and I want to return to the last chapter’s review. Ross claimed that he won a debate with biblical astronomer, Danny Faulker because when both he and Ross presented their evidence to the panel of 13 old earthers, the old earthers determined that Ross was correct. I wonder what would happen if Dr. Ross presented his evidence for special creation of each kind of creature over periods of time to a panel of Christians from BioLogos against the evidence presented from a Biologos evolutionist. Is there any doubt that this panel would expel Ross for his heresy against biological evolution? Interpretations of evidence are used to confirm one’s worldview biases and Ross does not recognize the inherent bias that old earthism has had on him since he was very young. Dr. Jason Lisle has tried valiantly to point out the role that biases have played in Dr. Ross’s eisegesis of scripture, but those habits have been ingrained deeply in Ross’s thinking and business model.

Below is the chart that Dr. Ross includes in his book as a way to resolve the “Creation-day controversy”. He explains that if both the young and old earth predictions get analyzed as more data is discovered and interpreted, that the old earth model will win out. From the biblical creationist perspective, the data from the expected predictions have lined up perfectly to confirm the young earth model. So, while I recognize my young earth bias, I want to point out how since Dr. Ross has written his book, the predictions he makes about the big bang completely unravel

Evidences for the big bang will increase and become more compelling. Astronomers will establish the big bang model as the uniquely explanation for the origin and structure of the universe.

Over the last few years, evidence for the big bang has NOT increased or become more compelling. It has been in massive need of resuscitation and repair

The other areas of the chart have not fared well for old earthism either. 

If you’ve learned anything from the review, I hope it is that God’s Word is the authority for the life of the Christian. There’s no need to compromise with the hollow and deceptive philosophies of the world as a way to interpret scripture.

As biblical creationists, we can praise God for the consistent nature of his revelation. We do not have to redefine the words in the Bible to accommodate modern academic paradigms or cultural changes in sexuality or political revolutions as we have seen Dr. Ross do. God’s Word is eternal and we can trust God to keep his word regarding the future since we can trust his revelation from the past.

Back to the Table of Contents

Review – A Matter of Days – Chapter 17

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The Scientific Case for a Young Cosmos

In this chapter, Dr. Ross lays out 12 well known arguments from biblical creationists that are used and that were used in the past to refute old earthism. He then gives a reply to all twelve in an attempt to preserve old earthism. In the first sixteen chapters (and the introduction), I have shown that he has failed to build a congruent case for old earthism from both scripture and science. Let’s see how he does responding to these dozen claims for a young cosmos

Exhibit A: The continents erode too quickly for Earth to be old

Essentially the case for a young earth is measuring the erosion rate of the continents, and this extrapolation gives a time limiting factor of only 16 million years.

Reply: This challenge focuses on one side of the equation only. It fails to acknowledge that lava flows, delta and continental shelf buildup (from eroded material), coral reef buildup, and uplift from colliding tectonic plates occur at rates roughly equivalent to, and in some cases far exceeding, the erosion rate.

I’m not a geologist…neither is he. But neither of us need to be a geologist to identify the GIGANTIC problem in his rescue device. The short answer is that fossils exist, so his reply is impotent.

The long answer, will take a little explaining and maybe a few pictures. While Dr. Ross is not a biological evolutionist he agrees with their interpretation of fossil layers since he rejects the worldwide flood account of Genesis 6-9. While he says he believes the Bible, he thinks instead that the account in Genesis is a local flood.

Let’s start with the picture below, which is a picture of what Ross is describing, but clearly not what is found. To begin with, I disagree with the ages that have been assigned to each layer for both biblical and scientific reasons, but for the sake of argument, we’ll use Dr. Ross’s understanding of the fossils to refute his rescue device. As wind and water erosion takes off the top level, Dr. Ross has claimed that uplift from tectonic plates replaces the levels that are lost to erosion. As stated earlier, and clearly an extrapolation with which Dr. Ross agrees, the continents could have been COMPLETELY ERODED AWAY were it not for continental uplift. The continental uplift replaces the eroded layers, but the erosion would have removed the fossils completely in at most 16 millions years. But there are fossils. The fossils that are dug from the earth are clear evidence for a worldwide flood about 4500 year ago, just as the Bible tells us.

ErosionDestroysFossils

In “Exhibit B: Lunar dust accumulates too quickly to allow for an old earth” Ross mentions a contention that biblical creationists abandoned more than two decades ago, so there’s no need to go into this one.

Exhibit C: Earth’s magnetic field decays too rapidly to allow for an old Earth

Reply: Earth’s magnetic field does not undergo steady weakening but rather a variable alteration

Dr. Jonathan Sarfati and Dr. Jason Lisle have built cases for the steady exponential decline of the earth’s magnetic field such that the earth must indeed be young instead of Dr. Ross’s claims.

https://creation.com/the-earths-magnetic-field-evidence-that-the-earth-is-young

https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/the-age-of-the-universe-part-2/

Exhibit D: The Sun burns by gravitational contraction, so it cannot be billions of years old

Reply: This argument overlooks significant data.

This is another obsolete argument for biblical creationists…however, the resolution with which Dr. Ross replies turns out to have its own serious shortcoming. It is so bad in fact, that it’s been given the name: The Faint Young Sun Paradox. Essentially, since the sun provides energy by nuclear fusion, it is getting brighter. So, billions of years ago, the sun would have been so dim that there would not have been enough energy reaching the frozen earth to sustain any kind of life. The older that old earthers think the sun/earth combination is, the worse the problem gets for them

Ch17FaintYoungSunParadox

Exhibit E: Galaxy clusters would be more widely dispersed if the universe were old.

Reply: This argument rests, first, on an incorrect assumption. It assumes that all the mass within galaxy clusters is luminous.

First of all, it is rich that Dr. Ross would accuse someone else of incorrect assumptions when we’ve seen over and over how he assumes the creation, which has been corrupted by sin, is on equal authoritative grounds with God’s revealed and eternal Word. We’ve also seen him incorrectly assume that the modern academic paradigm is the same as science. But on to his reply

Dr. Ross’s reply depends upon the non-scientific concept of dark matter/energy. He also resorts to dark ordinary matter (brown dwarfs, planets, asteroids, rocks, dust, and cold gas) as being four and a half times more mass than luminous matter. However, this is the special pleading fallacy since our own solar system, which is the best place for measuring matter and mass shows that the sun has 99.9% of the mass. He’s got to assume all of the other solar systems (which are much harder to get accurate measurements) are not just different from the one we inhabit but so different as to make them completely unrecognizable

Exhibit F: The crystal halos that arise from radioactive polonium decay indicate that the earth is young.

Reply: If the granite crystal halo evidence proves reliable, it simply indicates rapid formation of certain rocks, not the entire planet.

This argument takes the form that since polonium-218 has a half life of 3 minutes and the halos that record their decay still exist in granite, that the granite did not take millions of years to cool. Ross’s reply is utterly deficient, even to the point of a concession:

Even if Gentry’s granite crystal halos do result from polonium-218 decay, Gentry has merely exposed a phenomenon that requires further study, a phenomenon that geologists’ current understanding does not explain.

So deep has old earthism got its hooks in Dr. Ross that he cannot see the clear evidence for biblical creation.

Exhibit G: Rapid sedimentation and peat deposition following the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption demonstrate that geological processes are rapid, not gradual. So earth could be young.

Reply: The problem lies in what rhetoricians call the “either-or” fallacy – the assumption that all geological processes occur either gradually or rapidly. The young-earth versus old-earth debate is pictures in this context as a battle between the principles of uniformitarianism and the principles of catastrophism, with one significant difference…Evidence of rapid geological processes, such as those resulting from the Mount St. Helens eruption, fail to support the notion that every structure in Earth’s crust formed quickly and simultaneously.

Yet, isn’t science supposed to make observations and see if it supports or falsifies a theory? The evidence resulting from the Mt St Helens eruption are directly comparable to what one would expect during the worldwide flood of Noah’s day if scaled up appropriately. So, rather than taking what has been observed to create hundreds of layers, Ross rejects observations and instead inserts an unobserved mechanism to preserve old earthism. His attempt to refute Exhibit G is a disastrous mess as shown in these videos below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjdZ3Gs-PTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4a6oWZQ2ok

https://youtu.be/W4vK6NaSLBg

Exhibit H: Given that a spiral galaxy’s spiral structure winds up and disappears after just three of four rotations of the galaxy, spiral galaxies must be relatively young.

Reply: Young earth creationists would be correct about spiral arms windup if the arms were material structures, But they are not. As first explained in 1964…galaxy arms are density waves.

Astrophysicist Jason Lisle tells us the postulating density waves as a rescue device for old earthers creates more problems than it solves.

Ch17DensityWaves

Exhibit I: Trails of human footprints beside or crossing over dinosaur prints prove that dinosaurs were contemporaneous with humans, not millions of years old.

Reply: The dinosaur prints at the discovery sites have been identified as belonging to tridactyls, three-toed carnivorous dinosaurs.

There are many such evidences that have been put forth as dinosaur and human footprints. And it’s likely that some or most have been refuted. But there are still some fossils that have merit.

See the virtual tour of the creation museum in Glen Rose, TX 

Here is the personal testimony of the evolutionist-turned-creationist who excavated one of the Paluxy tracks

Even if those particular tracks turn out not to be human footprints, the evidence for humans and dinosaurs co-existing is overwhelming

MarcoPoloDinosaur

Not specifically about dinosaurs and humans living together but that dinosaurs lived in the recent past, here is an updated list of fossils that old earthers contend should be old but are shown to be young

Thinking that dinosaurs was a stronghold of old earthism, Dr. Ross included this exhibit in his book, but as you can see, the evidence is clearly on the side of biblical creation since dinosaurs lived recently enough to be seen and documented alive by mankind

Exhibit J: Since a comet’s average life span is only a few thousand years and the supply of new comets is limited, the existence of comets today proces the solar system cannot be more than several thousand years old.

Reply: …estimates of average comet longevity made prior to 1980 leaned heavily on the low side.

Dr. Ross declares with certainty that there are at least three sources for comets because he knows that comets would have disintegrated if they were truly billions of years old

Today, the existence of Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud comets is no longer based solely on theoretical calculations. In addition to finding the two distant comet clouds, astronomers have found a third distant comet repository, “the scattered disc.”

But a quick internet search reveals that Ross’s assertions of evidence are vacuous

Exhibit K: The lack of greatly expanded supernova remnants (SNRs) proves that such remnants have been expanding for no more than (probably less than) a few tens of thousands of years.

Reply: The mere existence of SNRs says that our galaxy and other galaxies are old…Observational difficulties, rather than an actual deficiency of SNRs, lie at the core of this cosmic age challenge.

It seems enormously hypocritical that Ross would declare the Oort cloud, which is unobservable, is irrefutable evidence, but SNRs which are thousands of light years across and visible from hundreds of thousands of light years away have “observational difficulties” and are therefore moot

For astronomers who are biblical creationists, the expectation is that if the Milky Way is about 6K-7K  years old, there should be about 125 visible Stage 2 supernova remnants. Conversely, for those who (like Ross and Bill Nye and Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson) believe in billions of years, would expect there to be about 2300 stage 2 SNRs. When actually looking into the Milky Way, we observe about 200 SNRs. So, you can see from the chart below that the evidence strongly supports biblical creation and is discordant with old earth assumptions. The problem gets even worse for those choosing to compromise God’s Word in favor of naturalistic assumptions when considering stage 3 SNRs.

SuperNovaRemnants

Exhibit L: Backward-rotating planets and backward-revolving moons in the solar system demonstrate that the solar system cannot be very old.

Reply: The standard model for our solar system’s formation does not predict, as this challenge assumes, that all solar system bodies will rotate and revolve in the same direction as the sun.

The standard nebular model for planetary formation is saturated with galaxy-sized problems:

“The formation of planetesimals is the biggest unsolved problem…The formation of giant planets is another unsolved problem…Another problem of giant planet formation is their migration…different rotation between the inner and outer parts of a ring could not allow condensation of material.”

But these are all of the questions that the nebular theory is supposed to EXPLAIN, so it can’t explain the formation of planets if THAT’s the biggest problem!

Regarding the backward-rotating planets, Astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle has this to say

“Secularists (and other old earthers including Dr. Ross) do not have a good explanation for the backward rotation of Venus. In the secular scenario, the solar system is supposed to have formed from the collapse of a rotating nebula. The natural expectation of this would be that all planets would rotate in the same direction at about the same rate, and they would all have very little axial tilt. Venus is the worst offender to this concept, since it rotates exactly the opposite of what the evolutionary models require. But we expect such diversity in the biblical view.”

Dr. Ross does not specifically include this next YEC point as an exhibit for a young cosmos, but he does include this as a sidebar on a full page.

Does Lunar Recession Refute an Old Earth?

Lunar recession refers to the Moon’s movement away from Earth due to the transfer of angular momentum from Earth to Moon as a consequence of the tidal interaction of the Earth-Moon system…the Moon could not have been receding from the Earth for more than 1.4-2.3 billions years.

Ross’s rescue device is:

The conflict is resolved if the Moon’s tidal torque was less forceful in the past than it is now. In 1982, Kirk Hansen showed that the number, sizes, shapes, and geographical placements of the continents and their accompanying continental shelves hugely impact the Moon’s tidal torque on Earth.

 But we can clearly see that this is special pleading. There’s no evidence that the moon’s tidal torque was less forceful in the past. It relies both on a special (unobserved) amount of matter in a special (unobserved) arrangement of matter for a special (unobserved) amount of time.

Dr. Henry from Creation.com had this to say regarding the secular origins of the moon and moon recession

“Over the approximately 6,000 years since the creation of the universe, the lunar recession rate has been essentially constant at the present value. However, assuming a multi-billion year age, lunar recession rates would have been much higher in the distant past than now. The currently accepted parameters indicate that the moon would have required 1.3 Ga to move from its origin at the Roche limit to its present position. This is the moon’s upper-limit age and shows that the conventional chronology is incorrect. If the solar system were actually 4.6 Ga old, the moon would have receded to a distance from earth approximately 20% beyond its present position. There is a widespread belief that the impact theory of lunar origin has neutralized these dilemmas for conventional chronology”

Ross’s special rescue device is insufficient to preserve old earthism. 

To finish the chapter, Dr. Ross writes:

John Morris, a geological engineer and current president of the Institute for Creation Research (ICR), once acknowledged in a radio interview that he has never met (or heard of) a scientist who became convinced on the basis of science alone that the universe or Earth is only thousands of years old.

In the footnotes, it is noted that the question that was asked to John Morris was

Have you or any of your colleagues ever met or heard of a scientist who became persuaded that the universe or Earth is only thousands of years old based on scientific evidence without any reference to a particular interpretation of the Bible?

That is not the stance of most biblical creationists, but for sake of argument, let’s grant this and suggest this change to the question:

“Have you ever heard of a scientist who became convinced that a person could be dead for three days and then return to life based only on peer-reviewed evidence rather than reading it in the Bible?”

This is why proper biblical hermeneutics is so important. The question could be formed in such a way as to make those reading Dr. Ross’s work think that this is a case-closed argument. Here are a few examples of scientists who HAVE been convinced of the scientific evidence for biblical creation that led them to Christ and that contradict Ross’s implication:

As you can see from the above responses to Dr. Ross’s 13 replies to young earth arguments, he has fallen far short of refuting them, but he did not even attempt to tackle the other 100 arguments presented  by creation.com

As biblical creationists, we can praise God for the consistent nature of his revelation. We do not have to redefine the words in the Bible to accommodate modern academic paradigms or cultural changes in sexuality or political revolutions as we have seen Dr. Ross do. God’s Word is eternal and we can trust God to keep his word regarding the future since we can trust his revelation from the past.

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Review – A Matter of Days – Chapter 15

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starry sky

Photo by Philippe Donn on Pexels.com

Challenges to an Old Cosmos

This is indeed the most difficult chapter for me to review. Since I am not a practicing astrophysicist or astronomer, my review will be as a layman, and I freely admit that I do not fully comprehend many of the issues mentioned.

Having said that, Dr. Ross does take a large chunk of the chapter refuting ideas that biblical creationists no longer believe or are rhetorical (Challenges 1-4 and 11)

In challenge 7, Dr. Ross gives reasons why he disagrees with Jason Lisle’s Anisotropic Synchrony Convention (ASC). In their most recent debate, when Dr. Ross brought up his disagreements, Dr. Lisle showed why Dr. Ross’s assumptions and reasons were based on the question begging fallacy and flawed assumptions. Because Dr. Lisle has shown to be consistent in his biblical hermeneutics, I find his answer more compelling.

Below is a new answer for the starlight reaching earth in a biblical timeframe for which Hugh Ross has yet to provide an answer.

Creation Time Coordinates

There is more information about this new model in the links below

https://www.steveschramm.com/072-part-1-distant-starlight-and-creation-time-coordinates/

https://www.steveschramm.com/073-part-2-distant-starlight-and-creation-time-coordinates/

On pg96 when trying to address “Challenge 9: Old-earth creationists have their own light-travel-time problem” he says:

However, it is not possible for the universe, given its current spatial dimensions, to possess such uniformity and homogeneity in only 13.79 billion years unless the universe experienced a very rapid, very brief hyperinflation event shortly after it was created. Without the inflation event the universe would need to be orders of magnitude older than billions of years to exhibit the uniformity and homogeneity that it does.

It seems to me that even though Dr. Ross says “the laws of nature have never changed”, he tries to hide the changing of the laws of nature within the one trillionth of a one trillionth of a one trillionth of a second after the beginning where there is some supernatural alternative physics called hyperinflation. He says that term, hyperinflation, which sounds very sciency, but it appears to simply be a place to hide his altered physics to accommodate old earthism.

In Challenge 10: Radiometric decay was faster in the past, Dr. Ross says he will address it in a future chapter, so I will address his addressing in a future chapter.

Dr. Ross ends this chapter with some comments from non-Christians:

A spokesman for the U.S. Geological Survey (a key witness in the 1981 Arkansas creation-evolution trial) equated the creationists’ claims for a young Earth with “the flat Earth hypothesis and the hypothesis that the sun goes around the Earth.”

This is both ad hominem and a strawman fallacy.

Allen Hammond and Lynn Margulis made this comment about the young-universe view: “Adoption of creationist [this is, young-universe creationist] ‘theory’ requires, at a minimum, the abandonment of essentially all of modern astronomy, much of modern physics, and most of the earth sciences.”

This is both a sweeping generalization fallacy and strawman. The wording could be more truthful if instead of the word “science”, we replaced it with “modern academic paradigm.” Both old earthers and biblical creationists use the concepts of science. It’s a matter of presuppositions. Old earthers assume naturalistic origins and extrapolate backwards. Biblical creationists assume catastrophism (global flood as the Bible teaches), which explains what we see in the past.

If taught that a young universe is the Bible’s clear message, many seekers and nonbelievers will conclude, under the barrage of compelling scientific evidence for the universe’s antiquity, that the Bible must be accepted on a purely subjective, nonfactual basis.

Anytime you see Dr. Ross say “scientific”, you can replace it with “modern academic paradigm”. But the way Ross has stated it, we see again that he elevates the modern academic paradigm over the Bible. This is terrible hermeneutics.

He finishes with a strawman argument

As for sincere young-earth Christians, the tenets of young-earth creationism dictate that they must shut out science and its facts altogether to preserve their faith.

As biblical creationists, we can praise God for the consistent nature of his revelation. We do not have to redefine the words in the Bible to accommodate modern academic paradigms or cultural changes in sexuality or political revolutions as we have seen Dr. Ross do. God’s Word is eternal and we can trust God to keep his word regarding the future since we can trust his revelation from the past.

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Review – A Matter of Days – Chapter 8

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beige analog gauge

Photo by Ylanite Koppens on Pexels.com

Guided by Theology

One would think Dr. Ross became a biblical creationist in between ch7 and ch8 as he begins this chapter with

The Bible is a harbor of truth. And yet, navigating a harbor safely often requires a guide who offers clear, specific direction around dangerous obstacles especially during a storm. God calls Christians to love Him with all of  their minds, and to do so, serious followers must explore the breadth and depth of His recorded Word. Jesus said, “Seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7). Good theology helps direct an honest search. Wise church scholars throughout history have acknowledged that determining the precise meaning of a biblical word or passage sometimes requires more effort than a mere surface reading. Many passages that address or allude to the age of the universe and Earth are difficult to interpret. Such sections require careful consideration of both context and relevant theological points.

Failure to be cautious and thorough in analyzing them can lead to inaccurate conclusions.

Amen. Theological considerations should be ever present when reading God’s Word. In sections regarding the origin and state of the universe prior to human rebellion against the Creator is a significant question since we (in the present) see evil, death, suffering, and corruption. Creation and human plight seem somehow marred, broken, and tarnished. Has it always been so, or did something bring the corruption we now see?

For the old earther, death, suffering, cancer, corruption, and thorns have always been a part of the creation despite God calling his creation “very good”. 

Is cancer, suffering, death and corruption very good? The old earth would be forced to say ‘YES!’

Dr. Ross continues well when he says,

According to the Bible, God is truthful and He expresses Himself truthfully all His works and words, both in the creation of the physical world and in the inspiration of His written Word. When Jesus, the visible expression of the Visible God, said to His disciples, “I am…the truth,” He identified one of His divine attributes (John 14:6). Many familiar Bible verses declare that God is truthful and He does not lie in word or in deed.’

God is indeed truthful and trustworthy, and I’m starting to think Dr. Ross has matured into a biblical creationist since his next two paragraphs sound like this:

The Bible clearly affirms the God’s handiwork displays His character…According to Christian theology, then, an honest investigation of nature leads to discovery of truths

But sadly, in the very next paragraph Dr. Ross devolves back to his old earth arguments and unsuccessfully tries to make the case that because the modern paradigm disagrees with the text of Genesis that the Bible needs to be reinterpreted to accommodate

In no way does God’s revelation via the universe detract from the importance of His written revelation. Nor does this belief in the trustworthiness of nature’s message imply that God never intervenes in the natural realm by performing miracles. It does mean that when He performs miracles God does not remove, hide, or distort physical evidence for them.

Dr. Ross continues to make clear that when there appears to be a discrepancy between the modern academic paradigm and the Bible, he’s ready to change the definition in the Bible, so he has no problem accommodating the interpretation of observations. So, while he talks about scripture having the highest authority, in practice, he surrenders the Biblical text to academia. 

Suddenly, Dr. Ross takes a dark turn on page 82 when he writes:

The accelerating expansion of the universe due to the effect of dark energy will eventually cause the radiation  from the cosmic creation event [13.8 billions years ago] to move away from us at greater then the velocity of light.

There’s some serious SERIOUS problems with dark energy and the Big Bang model upon which Dr. Ross hangs all of his theory. Because of the many inherent contradictions, the Big Bang and dark energy/dark matter fail as explanations, so old earthism loses all of its foundation.

Let’s look at some recent crushing blows to the foundation of the Rossians.

Ross inadvertently hampers his own argument when he writes,

Writers of scripture compared the number of God’s children with the number of stars in the sky and the number of grains of sand on the seashore – a ‘countless’ number. Hebrew and Greek numbering systems included numbers up to billions. ‘Countless’ suggests at least an order of magnitude greater than billions: tens of billions.

So, when God revealed to Moses how long it took from the creation until He created mankind, God said 6 days. Why did God not use these “Countless” numbering analogies or the simile He used with Abraham: number of days like the number of grains of sand on the seashore? But God chose instead to use definite boundaries and ordinal numbers of the word day to very specifically limit the creation time periods.

p83

In the above inset, Dr. Ross sneers at the old young earth model that proposed light might have been faster in the past and has decayed to its present rate. Unfortunately, he forgets that his own sandy foundation has a light time travel problem. For the universe to exhibit such uniform temperatures as is observed, light would have had to travel much faster in the past or the universe be much older than his error bars could apologize for. Ooops. 

Pg 83 turns out to be a rough page for Dr. Ross because he finishes this page with some very poor logic

God’s fourth commandment says the seventh day of each week is to be honored as holy: “Six days you shall labor…but the seventh day is a Sabbath….For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth…but he rested on the seventh day” (Exodus 20:9, 11). Young-earth creationist leaders often cite this passage as proof positive for the 24-hour creation-day interpretation. However, this passage is just one of five in the Pentateuch (the books of Moses) that address the fourth commandment. For three of these passages (Exodus 35:2; Leviticus 23:3; Deuteronomy 5:12-15), no connection at all is drawn between God’s work week and humanity’s. For the remaining two passages, the “proof” would hold only if neither the word for “day” nor the word for “Sabbath” were ever used with reference to any time period other than 24 hours.

Conveniently, Hugh Ross leaves out Exodus 31:17 which (along with Exodus 20) ties the creation week to the weekly cycle that God’s people are to observe. 

Six days you shall labor
For in
Six days the LORD made

The seventh day is a Sabbath
For on
The seventh day the LORD (SHABATH – Gen 2:2) abstained from work

It is made perfectly clear in Exodus that the days of creation week were not only a pattern for God’s people, but the same time duration. Were Dr. Ross’s interpretation valid, then the expectation would be for God’s people to work for 6 epochs of time (upwards of 13 billion years or whatever the current academic paradigm declares the age of the universe to be) and then rest for a single epoch before repeating it all again. Poor logic, Dr. Ross, but he continues

The seven days of our calendar week follow God’s established pattern. His “work week” gives us a humanlike picture we can grasp.

Exactly! So day ≠  billions of years

This communication tool is common in the Bible. Scripture frequently speaks of God’s hand, eyes, arm, even wings. The context in each case makes clear that these descriptions are not to be taken concretely.

But Dr. Ross, the context of Ex 20 and Ex 31 are not figurative or poetic in nature like Psalm 104. The text in question gives no openness to smuggle in your old earthism. There clearly are passages that are poetic in nature, and we honor the LORD because of them by their context. We also honor the LORD when He reveals historic and commandment passages. The context here in both Genesis and Exodus are not figurative, therefore, we must exercise proper exegesis and put the 24 hour boundaries on the days just as God says.

On pg 85, Dr Ross attacks a clear reading of Mark 10:6 in favor of his old earthism

Jesus said, “At the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). Ken Ham, Henry Morris, and John Morris have claimed this statement implies that virtually no time transpired between the creation of the universe and the creation of Adam and Eve.” Henry Morris asserted that “Jesus Christ…who was there at the beginning of the creation, said that man and woman were there, too!” Morris used this passage to assert that Jesus was a young-earth creationist.”

Jesus IS a biblical creationist 

However, even from a young-earth perspective on the creation week, this interpretation of Mark 10:6 cannot be correct. Adam and Eve were not created until the sixth creation day, after the creation of the universe and the earth. Therefore, Adam and Eve could not have been present at the beginning of the Universe.

Let’s look at the 2 opposing timelines of old earthism vs. biblical creation.

Timeline

ReasonsTimeline

You can see from the biblical creation timeline on top, that mankind was created during the creation week…at the beginning. Jesus was not speaking about the initial nanosecond of the creation, but the creation week as has been established in Genesis 1 and confirmed in Exodus 20/31. The word that Jesus used: “beginning” now makes sense because both from the perspective of Moses (who wrote Genesis) and Jesus (who spoke 4000 years after creation) the 7 days of creation week very clearly were the beginning.

Conversely, when we analyze the old earther timeline (which is from Hugh Ross’s website reasons.org), we see humans did not emerge until the very END of time…almost 14,000,000,000 years after creation. In this case, it makes no sense to refer to male and female being created at the beginning since from their perspective, it is at the end.

We can combine the differing perspectives into a single timeline to further highlight the distinctions

TimelineCompareYEtoOE

Ross makes a similarly futile attempt to discredit the passage in Mark 10:6 as having an anchor in history when he says:

The question asked of Jesus was about marriage. Thus, the context suggests that He was referring to the is beginning of humanity’s story, the story of the first husband and wife. On that basis, the Mark 10:6 “beginning of creation” most likely refers to the beginning of marriage.

Notice, how Ross inserts his own thoughts and words intermixed with Jesus’s words. This is called eisegesis and is a no-no when interpreting scripture. Rather than being content with the actual words Jesus spoke, Dr. Ross changes “the beginning of creation” to “the beginning of marriage”

The chapter is winding down when Dr. Ross adds to the bad logic with:

He (God) will replace this present universe with new heavens, a new Earth, and a new Jerusalem, all having new physical laws and dimensions to make possible our eternal life and rewards in His presence.

Dr. Ross, will the new heavens and earth take 14,000,000,000 years of death, suffering, cancer and bloodshed like you think this creation experienced, before it’s ready for resurrected humans? Why do you assume the current creation took that time to get to where it is in spite of the Bible rejecting that view?

To finish chapter 8 on pg 86 Dr. Ross makes a point that is in strong contention with biblical creationists because of the nature of God.

The clearest evidence of different physics in the new creation comes from the promise  of “no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” As Romans 8:21-23 further amplifies, the universe “will be liberated from its bondage to decay.” 

Dr. Ross has defined “bondage to decay” as the 2nd law of thermodynamics. The text in Romans does not support this as we read in Romans 8:20

“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.”

Creation was SUBJECTED to futility and its corruption by the curse of sin. Creation has not always been corrupted with death/disease/suffering/bloodshed/evil/thorns as Dr. Ross would have us believe because the passages in Genesis and here in Romans forbid his model of thinking. Dr. Ross, thinking that corruption was part of God’s initial creation is “very good”, but here in Romans we see that God calls it bondage. 

Even though Dr. Ross calls this chapter “Guided by Theology”, we see that his theology is poor, and we don’t want to be guided by poor theology. We want to be guided by biblical theology with a proper understanding of scripture rather than eisegesis. 

Praise God for the consistent nature of his revelation. As Christians, we do not have to redefine the words in the Bible to accommodate modern academic paradigms or cultural changes in sexuality or political revolutions as we have seen Dr. Ross do. God’s Word is eternal and we can trust God to keep his word regarding the future since we can trust his revelation from the past.

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