Holy Matrimony

Posted on March 18, 2015 by ApoloJedi

Marriage is a hot topic in today’s culture. Whether it has to do with seeing your bride walk down the isle, your friends avoiding marriage, your friends getting married, gays trying to redefine marriage, or the government trying to define marriage, marriage is on our minds today.

Well, Oklahoma has taken steps to get the government out of the marriage business. The reason is that the government should not be in the marriage business at all. In Genesis, God invented the institution of marriage, so it should be his followers that engage in it.

House Bill 1125, which would effectively ban all secular marriages in the state, was passed by a Republican majority and will now go to the state Senate for consideration.

“Marriage was not instituted by government. It was instituted by God. There is no reason for Oklahoma or any state to be involved in marriage,” said one of the bill’s Republican supporters Rep. Dennis Johnson, though marriage is a legal contract.

Marriage is not just a legal contract, it is a picture of God’s love for his church. In Ephesians 5, Paul tells husbands how to love their wives,

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy by washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies.

So, without redefining marriage to mean something that God never intended, how can atheists participate in marriage or fulfill its purpose? Marriage is a continual act of selflessness, and while an atheist can be selfless, there’s no reason for them to be selfless. High atheist, Richard Dawkin, even praises the virtue of selfishness at the expense of sacrifice in his book The Selfish Gene. This is the exact opposite of marriage.

The good news is that everyone can participate in marriage, because God can redeem anything. He has mercifully given his Son so that our sins can be paid. We can all enjoy fellowship with Him knowing that our debt is paid.

Swim Party on Mars

Posted on March 9, 2015 by ApoloJedi

At least that’s what scientists would have you believe the Martians used to put on birthday invitations long long ago.

The huge body of water spread over a fifth of the planet’s surface, as great a portion as the Atlantic covers the Earth, and was a mile deep in places. In total, the ocean held 20 million cubic kilometres of water, or more than is found in the Arctic Ocean, the researchers found.

Did they find this body of water? How do they know how deep it was? These scientists were speaking with ~~presumption~~ unimpeachable authority, when discussing details with such exactitude, a history that they claim to be 4.5 billion years ago. And yet here on Earth it would be remarkable for someone to know for certain the contents of the Lochness Sound.

Scientists with a passion for finding extraterrestrial life are so desperate that they have postulated these huge floods Mars even though the planet has no liquid water. These same scientists join with old earth creationists in denying the Biblical worldwide flood as told in Genesis 6-9 and confirmed by Jesus (Luke 17:26-27) and Peter (I Peter 3:20, 2 Peter 2:5, 2 Peter 3:5-6).

You really can trust God’s Word when he tells us about history. Since we can trust God about history, we can also trust him about the future too.

Hitch Your Wagon to a Star

Posted on March 3, 2015 by ApoloJedi

Just make sure it is the right star. I first heard this phrase (Hitch your wagon to a star) in Kenny Tamplin’s 90’s release, Get Out of My Sun. At least now you know some of my obscure musical tastes. Anyway, the idea is that if you know someone who is rich or smart or famous, then maybe you can get something that you didn’t necessarily earn. I’m going to take this on to a logical conclusion with the recognition that if you got your riches, fame, or information based on a falling star, then you too are doomed.

If you’ve hitched up to a falling star (or foundation) then your wagon (or worldview) is also bound to fail.

Old Earth Creationists have been shouting the mantra of the necessity for Christians to embrace Big Bang Cosmology and other naturalistic-based ideas (evolution, deep time…) One of the more famous groups to have done this is Hugh Ross’s outfit, reasons.org. They claim that the Bible introduced the Big Bang cosmology to the world. One of the many problems with the idea of the old earth creationists is that the Bible does not have anything at all to do with the Big Bang. As noted in Genesis 1, God created dry land on day 2, plants on day 3, stars/planets on day 4, birds/fish on day 5, and land creatures on day 6 (including mankind). But the Big Bang theory describes something totally different in a totally different order in a totally different time frame. The two creation stories are completely different.

Despite the obvious differences, the old earth creationists continue to hang onto the idea that naturalistic assumptions about the universe should form the basis by which Christians should interpret scripture, and from a cursory look at their websites, they have grown adept at this method of interpreting the Bible.

Unfortunately, for them, like phlogiston, abiogenesis, and leech-blood-letting before, the Big Bang model has been tossed aside by secular scientists. In this article, the naturalistic thinkers no longer want the universe to have a beginning because this would seem to imply that there were a Higher Power, to whom they might be responsible.

Big Bang? What Big Bang? In a new theory, researchers suggest that the start of the universe may have involved no bang at all.

There’s no need for Christians to compromise the revealed Word of God to try to accommodate naturalistic assumptions about creation…especially as they have a tendency to be discarded as more information is discovered. You can trust God’s Word as revealed in the Bible to be true and unchanging.

UPDATE:

“The science is settled! It is beyond dispute that the Big Bang never happened.”

“What?! New evidence is in, and the Big Bang never happened?”

“The science is settled! The universe is eternal. The Big Bang never happened. Those who cling to the Big Bang are science deniers!”

http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/02/10/watch-the-big-bang-never-happened/

Starlight, Star bright

Posted on February 27, 2015 by ApoloJedi

Stars are utterly fascinating to me. Whenever I get out into the country on a clear moonless night, I love looking up into the heavens to look at these wondrous creations. One of my favorite memories was seeing the Milky Way as clearly as I could imagine while traveling away from the city during my trip to Belize. It was so beautiful. As the Psalmist said, “The Heavens declare the glory of God.” – Psalm 19:1

stars

But there is an alternative view on the origin of the stars. Actually the most widely held view of the origin of stars is that they formed and continue to form as a result of natural forces. There are all kinds of problems with the naturalistic assumption that stars have formed on their own. To name a few of these problems, naturalists say that the original stars, Population III stars, formed with special conditions that no longer form stars. The problem is that none of this is observed. No one has ever even seen a Population III star. They are not scientific evidence; they are a required figment of the evolutionist’s mind. There’s no evidence that they ever existed, but for the evolutionist, they are necessary to have existed, so that the Population III stars could supernova and create Population II stars.

Population II and Population I stars have their own set of difficulties as they require high pressures from exploding supernova to compress debris and gases enough to trigger nuclear fusion. As of July 2014, astronomers estimate that there are an 7 billion trillion stars (7X10^22). If each of these stars were formed by the pressure of supernova explosions, why is the universe not saturated with the supernova remnants (SNR)? Instead of finding billions and trillions of SNR that would have been needed to form all of these stars, what is actually observed fits almost exactly within a biblical time frame.

Even today evolutionists say that stars continue to form in stellar nurseries, but this is simply wishful thinking in order to perpetuate the deep time worldview. There is no evidence that stars continue to form.

We have historical records of the creation of the stars in Genesis 1

And God said, “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years, and let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.” And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the fourth day

Truly the Heavens declare the glory of God!

At no charge, I have done the math for you. If there are 7X10^22 stars, and (for the sake of argument) we accept the unbiblical age of the universe at 13.7 billion years, then every year 5,109,489,051,095 stars would have to form. That’s 9,721,250 stars every minute and 162,020 stars EVERY second for almost 14 billion years. This is completely unfathomable and beyond credibility.

Asking Tough Questions

Posted on February 12, 2015 by ApoloJedi

This article appeared as a headline on The Drudge Report this morning. It intends to mock Republican presidential nominees who do not worship at the feet of atheist patron saint, Charles Darwin.

While 99.85% of American earth and life scientists believe the theory of evolution to be bedrock fact, 42% of the general public surveyed in a 2014 Gallup poll said they believed that human beings arrived on the earth in their present form.

While the belief in evolution, or lack thereof, may not directly impact whether a given candidate is qualified to become president, the question is regularly put to those who seek the White House. Why? Because some liberals believe it helps demonstrate whether a politician will be guided by evidence in making decisions

The article goes on to show some video clips of republican presidential candidates squirming in their seats when having to answer direct questions on whether they believe that the earth is 6000 years old or whether or not people come from monkeys.

Here’s what I’d like to see. I’d like a reporter to ask those candidates, who support evolution wholeheartedly, these questions about the effects of evolution in their decision-making:

Since you strongly believe that biological evolution is true, what intrinsic value would you place on human life? If humans are simply here because of a collection of accidents, why not kill your political enemies and take from the populace whatever you want? Only the strong survive…right?
As a strong believer in the success of natural selection, why do you think that the government should provide handouts, entitlements, and assistance to the downtrodden, the weak, and the victims? Are you not abandoning your strong stance of evolution for more of a Christian worldview by helping the weak?
There have been national leaders in the past, who were strong advocates of evolution, and because their value of human life was consistent with this belief, they made decisions that lead to the death of tens of millions of their own citizens. Should you be elected, what assurances do we have that you will not make decisions that are consistent with your belief that evolution is true?
Should apes and higher simian mammals receive more protections under the law since you believe that people are closer relatives to these evolved “cousins”? Where should we draw the line? Why not include the entire order of primates? Or the family of mammals? Why do you not advocate protecting the rights of bacteria…after all, they’ve been here longer and propagated more successfully? Is it because they do not pay taxes?

http://evidentcreation.com/

I give full permission for any journalist to take these questions and ask…no, press hard for answers to these questions from the presidential candidates. I also give full permission for any candidates who speak boldly to supporting biblical authority to link their campaign website to my creation manifesto, which goes into much detail about the truth of God’s Word and the emptiness of evolution.

UPDATE: Steven Meyer, who is a scientist and writer for the intelligent design movement recently posted this article that is supposed to help conservative politicians answer the question of whether they believe in evolution. The succinct answer he gives is appropriate for the campaign trail:

Reporter: “Do you believe in evolution?”

Candidate: “I believe that organisms change over time, but I am skeptical about unguided evolution.”

I’d really like to see more push-back from candidates, who are asked this question, to expose the equivocation fallacy that many evolution-believers espouse. Does evolution mean change over time? Does it mean universal common ancestry? Does it mean naturalism’s mechanism for forming all of life?

There has most certainly been evolution…change over time, but as the Bible tells us, there is no change between kinds of animals. The coyote, fox, dog, and wolf probably all came from a common ancestor, which was a kind of dog. Canines have always borne canine pups, and this is verifiable by experimentation. To claim that sometime in the past, an animal had offspring that were of a different kind is perpetuating their naturalistic religion.

For the Love of Darwin

Posted on November 3, 2014 by ApoloJedi

Is the modern understanding of the grand theory of evolution compatible with the Bible? The pope, in all of his wisdom, recently approved the atheist’s origin story as being okay for Christians to embrace. But is this true? Can the Biblical account of creation be manipulated in such a way as to unquestionably accept Darwin’s theory?

Biologist, William Provine doesn’t think so.

Belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.

Either God created the world like He said, or He did not. Either option has profound implications about where you put your trust.

Pope

God’s Word

Genetics is no friend to evolution

Posted on October 16, 2014 by ApoloJedi

You might have heard the mantra, “Creationists are stupid or wicked because they hate science or don’t understand that genetics proves evolution.” If not, a quick web search will confirm that this mantra is prevalent.

Rather than believing the mantra, the scientists at the Institute for Creation Research have been doing actual scientific work that proves quite the opposite. In this article, you can see that scientific predictions by creationists are confirmed by the actual data, and the predictions that evolutionists expect are incorrect by several orders of magnitude.

Pay special attention to the charts below that come from the article, as they tell the story.

At the end of the article, the author also answers the anticipated objections from the evolutionists. So, instead of the mantra holding weight, the evidence actually points towards biblical creation being the most reliable model.

The Bible is ultimately trustworthy and is the standard for authority. If we start with the pre-supposition that the Bible is the revealed Word of Almighty God, then we can expect his creation to coincide with the facts of his revelation. As scientific study progresses we continue to find this to be true.

For the Children!

Posted on September 3, 2014 by ApoloJedi

Should Christians worry about the incursion of atheism into the nursery? Finding adults and reasoning too challenging, atheists are now targeting children with their message of the non-existence of the Creator. As shown here, evolution by random mutation and natural selection is a philosophy designed to exclude God from his rightful place as the author of life.

According to the Wall Street Journal, children have a natural tendency to attribute their surroundings to intelligent design.

By elementary-school age, children start to invoke an ultimate God-like designer to explain the complexity of the world around them—even children brought up as atheists.

This is alarming to the atheists, so they have planned a strategy to indoctrinate the children with evolution early on in order to counter the children’s intuitions of a creative designer.

Dr. Kelemen and her colleagues thought that they might be able to get young children to understand the mechanism of natural selection before the alternative intentional-design theory had become too entrenched.

The secret may be to reach children with the right theory before the wrong one is too firmly in place.

It is an intentional strategy by atheists, and it is important for us as Christians to recognize the battlefield. If evolution is accepted within the walls of Christendom, then before long, the children will have no need for the Creator. Besides the obvious negative side of children embracing evolution in place of biblical creationism, there’s really no reason for anyone to be deceived since the global flood explains the evidence much better.

Genesis – What was the writer’s intent?

Posted on August 31, 2014 by ApoloJedi

It is fair to ask the question, “How did the writer intend his audience to read the content?” Genesis is written as history, and is not poetic like Psalms. The writer intended his audience to see the contents of his writings as having actually happened. The form of writing is distinctly different from Psalms, in which there are many allegorical and metaphorical components. It has become a recent fad for some scholars to reinterpret the writings of Genesis based on Egyptian cosmology or the perceived framework parallels. But what did the writer of Genesis intend his audience to understand? Hebrew scholars are nearly unanimous in their view that the writer intended his audience to see his writing as a historical account in which God created the universe in six literal days.

Should one erroneously claim “The first 11 chapters of Genesis are mythological“, I would ask them:

What contextual clues make you think that the first 11 chapters are mythological and the rest of Genesis is historical?
Why do you arbitrarily choose to assign mythological genre to the first 11 chapters when it is written with in same style as the rest of Genesis?
Which of the Christian doctrines in the first 11 chapters now have no basis because you choose mythology for Genesis?
- God is the Creator
- God created a good creation that was frustrated in corruption by man’s sin
- Marriage between one man and one woman
- The curse of sin is death, suffering, and corruption
- The promise of redemption from the curse
- Blood lineage of Jesus to Adam/Eve so that Jesus could be a kinsman redeemer of all mankind
- God’s covenant never to flood the earth again
- Making of the nations at Babel

Further Research:

http://creation.com/hebrew-scholar-affirms-that-genesis-means-what-it-says-ting-wang

http://faculty.gordon.edu/hu/bi/ted_hildebrandt/otesources/01-genesis/text/articles-books/young_days1a-wtj.pdf

http://creation.com/is-genesis-poetry-figurative-a-theological-argument-polemic-and-thus-not-history

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/1538-is-the-genesis-creation-account-poetry

Back to the Creation Manifesto Outline

Creation Manifesto

Posted on August 31, 2014 by ApoloJedi

Tell me if you’ve heard this before, “Could God have used evolution as his creative mechanism?”

I have had several friends tell me that the evolutionary origins story is compatible with the whole biblical narrative and that there is no need to reject the evolutionary story. I would like to take on that claim and analyze it against God’s Word and later against some scientific observations.

The purpose for writing this manifesto is this:

Define evolution and look at its history / intent
Look at scripture to see if (as a whole) it can accommodate evolution. If not, what are the implications of trying to dissolve evolution into the biblical narrative?
Look at the scientific reasons why evolution might not be on as solid ground as we’ve been led to believe.

Introduction

Not only is the acceptance of evolutionary thought unnecessary for Christians, but it is dangerous. The acceptance of the evolutionary origins story within the Christian church will erase the conviction of the historicity/truth of God’s Word. If the foundations of scripture (established in Genesis) can be marginalized as mythical or poetic, why should we not also be able to reinterpret doctrinal and historical scriptures to match the latest cultural/societal/scientific paradigms? For example, as homosexuality becomes more and more acceptable in today’s culture, it is feasible (seeing how pliable Genesis has been redefined) to expect Christian churches to ordain homosexual ministers. This is already happening in Episcopal, Presbyterian (PCUSA), and Anglican churches. So the battle for the integrity of God’s Word is not just about Genesis, but about the historicity/veracity of the Bible.

The battle of creation/evolution has been waged on many fronts and in many forums. Can my entry into the fray make a difference? My tiny blog may not turn the tide of the many battles, but for those who get a chance to read the following Manifesto, I hope that:

Non-Christians come to faith in Jesus because they see that they can trust God’s Word.
Christians are encouraged to trust God’s Word as cohesive and foundational.
Christians are persuaded not to compromise the clear teachings of scripture simply to accommodate the currently popular paradigm and avoid falling into apostasy.
Everyone is encouraged to study God’s Word for themselves and grow closer to the Creator.

The intended audience of this manifesto is brothers and sisters in Christ who are unsure of the Biblical teachings regarding origins, Christians who purposefully incorporate the evolutionary story into their worldview, and non-Christians who have categorically dismissed the teachings of the Bible because of the belief that the Bible conflicts with the modern academic paradigm. I have sincerely tried to remove wording that would be inflammatory, and my hope is that this presentation will instead be persuasive in order to help bring unity to Christians.

Biblical reasons to exclude evolution in preference of a biblical creation model
Scientific reasons to exclude evolution
1. Cosmological
2. Geological
3. Biological/Genetic
4. Misconceptions, Misinformation
  1. Junk DNA
  2. Chimp/human similarity
  3. Radiometric dating
  4. Geologic Column
  5. Evidence for evolution
  6. Convergence
  7. Missing Links
  8. ALL scientists believe in evolution

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