6. Age of the Earth—What Did Jesus Say?

There are many theories by Christians that would have you believe that Genesis is a collection of myths or poetic writings that simply refer to God as the Creator. They place little or no value on the historical veracity of Genesis, thereby bringing doubt to most of the rest of the Bible. Most of these Christian theories would however, trust the new testament as authoritative. Well, ok, let’s see what Jesus had to say about Creation as recorded in the new testament gospel of Mark.

“From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.”

The words of Jesus speak clearly that he believed that humans were created at the beginning of creation. Someone might argue that Jesus was just shooting from the hip, and didn’t really intend for his audience to understand the REAL beginning of creation.

Do you not think that gifted modern speakers are very careful with their words? Would not “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6), the man who has “the words of eternal life” (John 6:68) have total control of his words to speak exactly what he intended?

There are many examples of New Testament writers showing a clear understanding of Genesis as historical record.

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Earth

Explicit references to Creation by Jesus show that He placed the creation of man at the Beginning, not after long eras of evolution leading up to man.

When teaching on marriage Jesus asserted,
From the beginning of creation, God made them male and female
(Mark 10:6-9).
Thus according to Jesus, God created mankind fully formed as man and woman ready for marriage at the Beginning, not after billions of years of evolution following the Beginning.

While pronouncing woe on the Pharisees Jesus said, “…in order that the blood of all the prophets, shed since the foundation of the world,…from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah.” (Luke 11:50-51) Chronologically, Abel and Zechariah were the first and last martyrs of the Old Testament. We see from this that Jesus believed that Adam’s son Abel lived close to the foundation of…

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Creation in the New Testament

I few years ago, I listened to the audio book trilogy from Bryan Liftin: The Gift, The Sword, and The Kingdom. I recommend them. The premise of the books is that our world is destroyed, and a remnant of people survive in a Medieval-type “new world.” This remnant of humanity only had access to the Old Testament. It’s a fun story about how they looked for the continuation of the story.

But, what if things were reversed. If we had access only to the New Testament, what would we really know about our origins or the creation account? Check out this video.

Creation in the New Testament

 

ENCODE Eviscerates Evolution

The Grand Theory of Evolution essentially tells us that with no divine intervention, all biological creatures came from a rock while developing through small, successive modifications to mature into the tree of life that is seen today.

While popular and convenient, the grand theory of evolution has been facing very serious scientific challenges. One of the most recent of these challenges comes from the ENCODE project, which analyzed the human genome. Their findings undermined the predictions and expectations of evolution. Although the project itself is very technical, some clever people at EvolutionNews.org, have written four of a six part analysis of the project.

Here are some highlights from each of the blog entries:

  • Post One – “If the human genome is indeed devoid of junk DNA as implied by the ENCODE project, then a long, undirected evolutionary process cannot explain the human genome. If, on the other hand, organisms are designed, then all DNA, or as much as possible, is expected to exhibit function. If ENCODE is right, then Evolution is wrong.”
  • Post Two – “Despite their bluster, critics have been unable to disprove what a leading ENCODE researcher stated in 2014: “There is not a single place in the genome that doesn’t have something that you might think could be controlling something else.”If we’re willing to follow ENCODE’s experimental evidence where it leads, unhindered by evolutionary assumptions, evidence of important genomic function is everywhere.”
  • Post Three – “Critics like Dan Graur charge that ENCODE is guilty of “divorcing genomic analysis from its evolutionary context” -and that’s exactly right. ENCODE’s empirically based finding that the vast majority of our genome is functional has withstood theoretical, evolution-based objections from critics. Maybe a divorce from evolutionary thinking is exactly what we need to liberate biology from bad evolutionary assumptions and explain what’s happening inside our cells.”
  • Post Four – “However, what I’ve shown above only scratches the surface of a huge body of literature. Again and again, evolutionary biologists have predicted that our genome is primarily useless junk. Occasional caveats from evolutionary scientists, allowing that some small amount of the “junk” might be functional, do not mitigate the widespread, longstanding view that our cells are full of junk DNA. We now know that, on this point, evolutionists were wrong. The “junk DNA” paradigm has conclusively faltered.”

Evolution has been masquerading as science for decades. It has become common to expel people from the discussion if they fail to worship at the altar of Saint Darwin, but with the latest findings, the charade is proving to be empty bluster.

Evolution is diametrically opposed to the Christian worldview, and is now being challenged on scientific grounds.

If we stand on the unmovable foundation of God’s Word, then there is a basis for Absolute Truth by which we can do science. Trusting what God has told us about our past gives us faith to trust Him with our future as well.

That’s fine for you, but

Moral relativism. The idea that everyone determines their own standards of morality. Is it cogent or absurd?

  • Relativists Can’t Accuse Others of Wrong-Doing
  • Relativists Can’t Complain About the Problem of Evil
  • Relativists Can’t Place Blame or Accept Praise
  • Relativists Can’t Claim Anything Is Unfair or Unjust
  • Relativists Can’t Improve Their Morality
  • Relativists Can’t Hold Meaningful Moral Discussions
  • Relativists Can’t Promote the Obligation of Tolerance

Why or why not could a moral relativist be able to handle the above scenarios?

When viewing reality through a Christian worldview, these things make sense. We can make comparisons and analyze the just nature of actions. The problem of evil makes sense, and since Jesus paid the penalty for our evil behavior, there is forgiveness and life.

Made Me Smile

This post is a little out of the ordinary from what I usually post, but I thought it was too funny not to pass along.

This is an actual screen shot from my phone as I was updating the Yahoo Fantasy app from the app store.

UpdateYahooApp

RGIII no longer supported!

I suppose I can kinda’ make it work as Biblical Authority post since we know that the Native American team from Washington is not supported by Christ followers.

Jurassic Nightmare

Who has seen Jurassic World? I’m anxious to see it as I was a huge fan of the original Jurassic Park from 1993. The idea is that scientists were able to clone dinosaurs from dino DNA that was retrieved from amber-trapped blood parasites. Great story, but it is built upon a foundation of irrationality.

The dominant paradigm of billions of years of evolution acting on genetic code to form all terrestrial life from a single cell ancestor is completely at odds with the historical account of the Bible. It is said in this dominant paradigm of scientism that the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

The problem for this epic fairy tale is that the dates are wrong. The bards of this epic fantasy tell us that radioactive dating has proven that the fossil material recovered in archaeological digs is absolutely dated as older than 65 million years. The problem is that they have disregarded one of the Creationist’s best friend, Carbon-14 testing.

This article shows how the story of evolution is coming apart.

The CRSQ study authors tested seven dinosaur bones, including a Triceratops from Montana, hadrosaurids, a cartilaginous paddlefish, a bony fish, and fresh-looking wood and lizard bones from Permian layers in Canada and Oklahoma. Five different commercial and academic laboratories detected carbon-14 in all the samples, whether from Cenozoic, Mesozoic, or Paleozoic source rocks.

carbon14_Dinosaur

Evolutionists are left with the choice that either radiometric dating is untrustworthy because ALL fossils have carbon-14 (and therefore, they cannot prove that fossils existed millions of years ago) or carbon-14 is a reliable dating method (and therefore since all fossils have carbon-14, then not enough time has passed to validate their fantastic tale.)

It’s a nightmare for old earthers like Hugh Ross and evolutionists.

But all of these dates verify the historicity of the Bible. At every point, we find that God’s Word can be trusted. We find that since we can trust God about his revelation of history, we can trust Him in his prophecy about our future.

Why Scientism is Untrustworthy

What is scientism? From a simple Google search:

Scientism is belief in the universal applicability of the scientific method and approach, and the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion of other viewpoints.

The call by many atheists to discard history/religion/common sense and embrace scientism has some problems. One of the biggest problems with scientism is the predictions that are made. Here’s just a few examples.

So, let’s take a look at some of his predictions, made in 1968:

1) “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate,” he said. He predicted four billion deaths, including 65 million Americans…

What actually happened: Since Ehrlich wrote, the population has more than doubled to seven billion — but the amount of food per head has gone up by more than 25 per cent. Of course there are famines, but the death rate has gone down. I don’t think a significant number of Americans have starved….

3) “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people … If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

What actually happened: I’m not hungry. I just ate. Are you hungry? Were you hungry in 2000, especially? Does England exist?

So, what is a reasonable alternative to scientism? Well, if you’re looking for a worldview that has been faithful to historical trustworthiness, religion, and common sense, check into Christianity…not into joining a religious club but truly letting Jesus guide your life. The prophecies contained in the Bible (as opposed to scientism) have been 100% accurate.

Have people (even popes) misrepresented Christianity for selfish or even wicked purposes? Most assuredly. Does it then follow that because people have rationalized bad behavior in the name Jesus, that Christianity should be discarded? You might have even been on the receiving end of poor choices by Christians, but please let me encourage you to test a person’s actions on their alignment with the Bible. There is forgiveness through Jesus, and only in Him can we find hope for the future.

Apolgetics Done Right

This is my first exposure to Michael Ramsden. After watching this video, I am very impressed. If you have 45 minutes, I would highly recommend this video as an classroom session on helping someone understand their need for Christ.

His easy conversational tone in leading someone to their own realization of a need for Christ is highly compelling.

Listening to people and knowing that the Light will always overcome the darkness brings in the harvest for the Kingdom.

After watching this video, I searched and found several articles from Mr. Ramsden on BeThinking.org.

Enjoy!

How Long Were Those Six Days?

Genesis 1 lays out the historical account of God’s creative work. According to the account, the Creator took six days to make everything, and then he rested on the seventh day. Exodus 20:11 and Exodus 31:17 confirmed the Genesis account when it says,

“Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God…For in six days the LORD made the heavens and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.”

Many people have tried to reconcile the modern understanding of deep time with the historical Biblical account of creation even though they are diametrically opposed.

It is so important that we start with the foundational Truth of God’s revealed Word, and then interpret evidence based on this Truth. Since we can trust God in historical matters, we can trust Him with our future as well.

What Could Persuade You?

What Could Persuade You that evolution were not true?
If archaeologists found a rabbit in the Cambrian layers of soil then evolution would be disproven…right?
Well, as it turns out, proverbial rabbits are found all of the time in layers much “too old” for them. The problem is that people do not change their view based on conflicting evidence…they evolve their interpretation of the evidence to fit their view.
In an article entitled Radiometric Backflip, Volume 37, Issue 1, Creation Magazine describes just such an example. Here’s an example where the “science” (based on absolute radio metric dating) proved suggested that the rock layers of the Santo Domingo rock formation were 200 million years old (Nature 417 (6892):936-938, 27 June 2002).  But when footprints of sandpipers were found in layers of soil underneath the 200 million year old layers, scientists were able to scrub away 175 million years to make the data fit with the idea that sandpipers evolved about 37 million years ago. It must have taken quite a bit of soap to scrub away 175 million years that fast.
And this is not an isolated case. A hominid fossil, KNM-ER 1470 was found beneath soil that had originally been absolutely dated at over 200 million years old. Once the fossil was found, Richard Leakey requested a re-test. Not surprisingly, the NEW absolute dates of between 2-5 million years fit perfectly in the range that was needed to perpetuate the evolutionary myth. What happened to the original 200 million years? They were donated to a local charity for all we know.
So no amount of evidence will change someone’s mind regarding origins. This is why it is so important for Christians to be familiar with presuppositional apologetics. Everyone has presuppositions that define how we interpret evidence. So, the argument is not over evidence; the argument is over which presuppositions can correctly account for the preconditions of intelligibility. Only Christianity can account for intelligibility
Christians presuppose that there is a Creator God and that he revealed himself through the Bible, through creation, and in Jesus. Those who presuppose that there is no God are reliant on billions of years and a creative mechanism (evolution by natural selection and random mutation) to explain the origin and development of life.
So to convince someone that there is a God and that his word is infinitely reliable, you have to show how their atheistic presupposition contains contradictions.
We can trust God’s Word about history, and since it is a reliable history book (and the revealed Word of God), we know that we can trust God at his word regarding salvation and our future hope (Romans 8.)