E3 Creation and Salvation

Science once encapsulated all knowledge. Today, it is biased knowledge limited to natural phenomena. Science has been hijacked by scientists biased in atheism. Could defending biblical creation be necessary today? Might defending creation be related to saving souls?

Closing and Credit remarks

Transcript

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What would you think if I said the doctrine of Creation is related to salvation, and it’s probably more relevant and critical to the pulpit today than when it was written?

Before you say that I’m unbiblical for declaring this teaching is related to salvation, let me explain. Of course, it is not required to believe certain details about God’s creation to be saved. But it can still affect one’s salvation. I’ll explain this salvific relationship, then provide some of the best Scriptural support I’ve heard for biblical creation, and finally discuss some scientific evidence.

To explain the salvation aspect, let me tell you how I came up with the phrase God is Near. My first year in college was a time of…unhappiness. I became a little depressed thinking about my future career, which developed into deeper melancholic questions about purpose in life and the purpose of life. I majored in engineering and proud of sciences and my capabilities with math and science. I thought certainly scientists had a firm understanding of the age of the earth and universe. They always sound like they know, always speaking so assuredly about millions of years for this or billions for that. I believed in millions of years and it affected my understanding of God. How could it not? If Christians have any continuity in their teaching about God, it was that God is Love. The conundrum for me was, If God is so loving, then where has He been? Loving people do not abandon others. Why has there been so much abandonment since He supposedly made everything from a bang and the current age of human civilization, or the time from the first human to His coming and dying on a cross? How could a loving God be so distant from His creation for so long? What could possibly be the purpose? Or could it be that Christians didn’t know God as well as they thought they did? Perhaps there are some serious issues with the Bible?

My searching during this time returned some fascinating results. I had many questions about life as I said, but I still searched for answers, in part, from the Bible. I didn’t grow up going to church. But my paternal grandparents gave me a Bible for Christmas one year when I was a child. I kept that Bible and while growing up and moving around from one Army post to another, I periodically read a little of it. I had a sense that it was special and a general belief that God existed. The mere existence of all created things in this universe, in minute detail yet delicate balance within every physical and natural law for its survival, it all just speaks to me that of course a god is out there. Accidents don’t begin to explain the growing field within the anthropic principal or “fine-tuning” as some call it. So for me, even before becoming a Christian, it was self-evident that a god existed. But where do I go to learn reliable answers to my questions about life and God? Could I find answers from the Bible or Christianity? 

Well, the Bible wasn’t the only thing I was reading in my lonely, uneventful evenings. I read a few science magazines too…to stay balanced you know. Browsing one day in a mall’s bookstore I found a neat journal that I have never heard of before. Had to do about space and the universe. I knew I looked smart walking out of the bookstore with that journal in my hands. One evening, lying in my bed as usual when reading, I began looking it over. Unfortunately, for you, I don’t remember the subject of the articles I was reading. What’s significant is that while reading them, a strange revelation came over me. After reading a few different astrophysics-based articles, I began to notice all of the contingency in the writing. A lot of supposed scientific facts and very precise results from very complicated equations were followed with a bunch of “possiblys, maybes, perhaps..” I then had this simple and clear idea: they actually don’t know. And instantly I had a sensation pulse throughout my body. I look up from the journal towards the ceiling and said, “Maybe God is Near, and always has been?” Fear gripped me, I remember it.

I suddenly became much more persistent at reading the Bible and began attending a variety of churches during an internship one semester. I had so many more questions. The deep questions about life as mentioned before, but also questions about the Bible. The analytical man that I am, I had to test the Bible before I could trust it. If it had errors or wasn’t consistent, then I knew I couldn’t trust it. I kept on studying it. Amazingly I kept finding answers to my questions about the Bible from the Bible and from sermons at churches I visited. I visited several churches. Looking back, I think I was testing God a little. If I could keep getting questions about God and Jesus answered from churches I looked up during the week, then maybe God is near, maybe He did care! Amazingly, questions being answered from different pastors, and all I did was show up to churches that I had no prior knowledge of what they would be preaching. But I still had that one haunting unanswered question about God’s love and millions of empty years – they were, and are, incompatible. Nonetheless, I had enough doubt removed about Jesus and the Bible that I became a Christian at First Christian Church in Junction City, KS, baptized by Darel Boston. Coincidentally, this was a time when the Kansas school board attempted to make a small change to the state’s science guidelines circa 1999. They did not remove evolution from the science curriculum, but stated that scientific information contrary to evolution could be taught in classrooms. A simple open-minded approach really. But an inclusionist approach wasn’t tolerated for an uproar in the state ensued. Hmm…do you realize there’s an orchestrated effort to restrict the information you can learn from, even regarding science in schools? Well, to help defend and educate people about non-evolutionary scientific information, Dr. John Morris and personnel from ICR…that’s the Institute for Creation Research…came to none other than Junction City KS for a weekend of presentations on biblical creation in various sciences. My pastor, Darel, informed me about the conference.

Going to that conference was one of the most life impacting experiences I’ve had. At the end of the conference, Dr. Morris took questions from guests, one on one. When it was my turn, he could sense I was concerned with holding up the line. He gently put his hands on my shoulders, looked right at me and said to ask my questions. I asked probably half a dozen questions, like, what about the evidence that S America was once part of Africa. My thinking at the time was surely it took many many years to divide these continents. But he had a confident response to this question and every question. He didn’t look surprised, shriek back, or embarrassingly admit something like, “we don’t have a good answer for that one.” No, he had answers that indicated seeing evidence today and then concluding only one history from it wasn’t so scientific. How matter and life began wasn’t observed, it’s not testable, or repeatable. But there are indeed solutions that fit the Bible’s timeline and description in Genesis. 

My soul felt revitalized if not reborn. It was a heavy question I’ve held on to for so long, and all the doubt about God’s loving character was being removed. But more significant, I found the assurance I needed in my Christian faith because I now have confidence the Bible is a trustworthy source. We can trust it for what it claims. The Bible became sacred literature to me; handed down from God Almighty. And coming away with that perspective may have saved my life, and could save many others. Like I said, I was in college taking engineering courses. It would have been easy to walk away from Christianity or continue in life with a divided heart towards the Lord once there were enough examples I could point to indicating the Bible made false claims, which there are plenty of supposed examples according to ATHEISTIC sciences. And this is the salvational aspect: there are competing sources of truth – competing claims about the purpose of life, about the existence of God, the nature of God, the nature of man, the condition of man’s soul, and competing claims about the who, why, and how of salvation. When we boil it down, the Bible is the Christian’s source for truth as Jesus said in John 17:17. Christians need to defend the Bible as the source of truth. I did NOT change my life and my beliefs about Jesus because someone said God is love and Jesus died for my sins. I’ve heard that one many times. What I needed was assurance the Bible could be trusted because we did not witness a resurrected Jesus. When you hear the gospel message today, it doesn’t come with signs and wonders as it did from Apostles. It rarely comes with explanation from Biblical text as Philip provided for the Ethiopian, or as Paul and Apollos typically did. Christians are out there trying to evangelize…making truthful statements, and yet hollow statements. There is a prevailing religious teaching today that is undermining the foundation which Christians are preaching from. An atheistic, if not anti-god, religion becomes more convincing than God’s church. 

And that’s why you see survey data showing the church has falling numbers, has lost its influence in culture, and not as impactful as it should be in the lives of church attendees. Changes to church’s music and programming will not reverse this trend. Jesus said a person cannot live on bread alone but every word of God. We need to get back to exalting God’s word by showing it is holy and inerrant. If you claim to know an Omniscient God who claims to be Truth and claims His word is true, then His Word cannot start with an error. If you claim to know a good and perfect God, then His Word cannot begin with a lie. Since an alternative view to creation is more common today than the biblical teaching, teaching on creation is critically in season. So the next time you hear a Pastor say it doesn’t matter what you believe about creation, remind him that actually it may not matter what a Pastor says, but it always matters when God speaks. And in principle, it matters what God has revealed in Scripture about any doctrine. God chose the information in His revealed word to correct falsehoods and teach truth according to 2 Tim 3:16. Whenever any of His Word is in season it is the Christian’s responsibility to teach it. 

Now that we have addressed how critical biblical creation can be, let’s make sure we have proper exegesis, or interpretation of biblical creation. First, let’s talk historicity. The reading of Genesis has been clearly understood by almost everyone reading it for millennia, for all of history really, except somehow in the last 200 years or so teachings began to change. When you hear teachers with a new interpretation of Genesis, ask yourself, “why did God not write this passage clearer to begin with?” To bolster the clear reading of the first 2 chapters of Genesis, I could interject facts, like there are over 350 times outside Genesis 1 when the word for day is modified with a numeral and always means a 24-hr day, or that every time outside Genesis 1 when the word for day is combined with “morning” or “evening”, or combination of “morning and evening” as it is in Genesis 1, it always refers to a literal day. But these facts haven’t seemed to humble our contemporary preachers. So I want to focus on just a few of the many God-inspired verses mentioning creation outside of Genesis 1 and 2. Discussing creation from outside of these chapters seems to counter all of their contemporary analysis and eisegesis, which is the only explanation for a new interpretation of creation. 

Let’s look at the 4th Commandment in Exodus 20:8-11. It says, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work…”and skipping on to verse 11, “For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day.” Seems pretty clear. Remember Dr John Morris, former president of the Institute for Creation Research, whom I mentioned earlier? He has a great not-so-technical book for beginners in this subject. The book is called, The Young Earth. In it, Dr Morris said, quote, “In this passage, God instructs us to work six days and rest one day because He worked six days and rested one day – during which week He created the heavens, the earth, the sea, and all things in them. The word “remember” in Hebrew, when used as a command, as it is in verse 8, always refers back to a real historical event. And “for” in verse 11 is usually translated “because.” It too refers back to a real historical event. Thus, the days of our real workweek are equated in duration to the real days of creation.” End quote. Dr. Morris goes on to add in his book, that the Hebrew plural word for day is used over 700 times in the Old Testament, including Exo 20:11, and it always means a literal solar day.

Jesus referred to biblical creation and the early chapters of Genesis several times. My favorite example is when He was approached about divorce in Mark 10. His response in verse 6 adds an unnecessary detail about creation. He said, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” Notice that Jesus affirmed a short time span for creation. He did not say, “God made them many years after creation,” nor did He say simply that God made people during creation, but He said, ”from the beginning of creation, God made them.” Have you heard the comparison of earth’s history parsed in a day? According to the current evolutionary timeframe, the age of the earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old. If this 4.5 billion years were to represent a 24 hr day, then homo sapiens have only existed the last 10 seconds of time. That means in the 24 hours since the earth was formed, people have existed for the last 10 seconds of our clock, a mere .01% of time since the earth’s creation. If people only existed in the last sliver of time and billions of years have occurred since people were made and billions more years existed before the earth was formed, (scoff) then our perfect Savior either lied or was in error. The current atheistic scientific belief is that the earth is 4.5 billion years old but that the universe is 13.78 billion years old. According to this atheistic timeframe, people were not created at any time close to the beginning of creation. Is it really consistent to think that the perfect Son of God who used verb tense when quoting a passage in Exodos to rebuke the Sadducees in Matt 22, would then also add unnecessary errant details to Scripture regarding creation? Not the perfect God I know.

The last passage we’ll look at is 2 Peter 3. Here, Peter says in the last days scoffers will mock at God’s return because these mockers say, “…all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation (v4).” Peter says the mockers think like this because it escapes their notice that the world at one time was destroyed, being flooded with water (v6). When reading Genesis chapters 7-9, it will not be obvious what the flood has to do with biblical creation. It’s not a story about creation, but is an account of a catastrophic remaking of much of the earth. And this account formidably stands in the way of any and all attempts to read billions of years into the historical account of Genesis 1 and 2. How does it? We first have to address the nature of the flood. It was global, affecting the whole earth. In 6:17, God says He is bringing a flood of water to destroy all flesh which has breath of life in it, except for Noah’s family. Notice this is not Noah speaking about what he thought would happen, this is God speaking. God said he would destroy all flesh with breath in it, except that in the ark. 7:19 describes the flood as covering all the mountains everywhere under the heavens. 7:21 and 22 assure us that all flesh that lived on the earth perished. That the earth was completely covered and that all flesh perished is the basis for God’s covenant in Chapter 9 verse 11 where He says he will never again send a flood to destroy, not a local region on the earth, but destroy the earth. A global catastrophic flood, however, is not supported by current atheistic science. Secular geology looks at all the sedimentary layers of soil and rock on the earth’s crust as being deposited primarily in small layers over long periods of time. This process is called uniformitarianism. Uniformitarianism is the assumption that observed geologic processes today explain the geology of the past. Secular Geology finds local floods and volcanic eruptions in the earth’s layers, but the critical piece of information here is that uniformitarianism requires millions of years. It takes many many years for present processes to create the geologic events and deposition on the earth. This dichotomy is the problem for the contemporary preacher. Though he may insist he’s teaching God’s word, and insist that he’s an expository preacher who believes what the Bible says, he’s actually failing the Bible and God. This contemporary teacher cannot preach a global flood while also insisting in billions of years at creation. The ideas are incompatible. There is no evidence for a global flood anywhere within earth’s geology with a uniformitarian approach. There is either a 6-day creation followed by a catastrophic global flood, or billions of years of uniformitarianism without a global flood. 

Remember the 2 Pet 3 passage, about scoffers believing all things continue just as it was from the beginning of creation and they did this unaware of the global flood? Sounds a little like uniformitarianism. Hmmm, oh well, moving along to scientific data.

I no longer have a hobby of studying scientific journals. There are seasons of life, and mine have changed. But if you have any questions that interfere with your trust of Scripture, whatever the discipline or field, there are Christian experts out there. You can visit Institute for Creation research at ICR.org, which has online publications and literature. They also have some clever uploads focusing on evidence for biblical creation on youtube. Again, that’s icr.org. Another resource is a ministry called Answers in Genesis. They have a great website at answersingenesis.org where you can search for a cache of articles related to any specific scientific question. I highly recommend these two sources for information related to scientific inquiry. Before moving on, I want to touch on a couple scientific topics to whet your appetite and be edified.

The age of the moon is the first topic. According to Space.com, and about any atheistic scientific source, the current atheistic origin of the moon happened about 4.5 billion years ago with a popular theory that a small planet sized object impacted the earth, tearing out part of the earth and forming the moon. There are computer models and dating of moon rocks that can corroborate this date. Seems cut and dry, right? Well, except for one thing. One critical thing. If you haven’t studied much about the moon, you may not be aware that it is actually receding from the earth. Gravitational forces between the moon and earth, the speed of the moon in its orbit, and a physical law called conservation of angular momentum, the moon is constantly moving away from the earth. It’s been measured moving about 1.5” further from the earth every year. This scientific analysis and measurable data indicate that the moon cannot be close to 4.5 billion years old. Calculating the location of the moon in the past, it would have impacted the earth in a fraction of the time. Atheistic scientists obviously haven’t changed their theory about the moon. They add to the theory to address this. You might hear of impacts to the moon during its lifetime that altered the location of moon, and you might hear of unexplainable slower moon recession rates in the past. Regardless of the supposed cause, it is important for you to understand that the reasons they give are not based upon scientific data. Atheistic scientists will defend their position by using terms like “expected,” “likely,” and “theory.” But they made it up. The lesson here is that a Christian should not be ashamed of believing in biblical creation because non-Christians call it fantasy or a religious story. It is all the same. Both sides of the scientific debate have assumptions and unobserved beliefs about the past. Don’t think one side is more scientific because they say it is. Both sides have religious presuppositions.

The second science-based example is that science has measured the earth’s age through radiometric dating. Radiometric dating is the measure of radiometric decay of atoms. This method is commonly used to assign an age to rocks, and usually shown with an uncertainty, like +/- 100,000 years or something like that. It gives an impression of both accuracy and precision. But is it? Like much of science and experimentation, there are assumptions with the practice of radiometric dating. You can visit the resources I mentioned above for more information, I won’t take the time to discuss the assumptions here. I’ll jump right to the fascinating part of radiometric dating and using it to assign an age. Radiometric dating has been shown to give erroneous ages. Mt St Helens is known to have erupted in 1986, creating new rock formations from the cooled lava. Creation scientists desired to test the assumptions associated radiometric dating. A good way to do this of course, is to test the age of something that you already know the age of. So these scientists had certified laboratories measure the isotopes in the recently formed rock at Mt St Helens, and tested newly formed rocks from other eruptions such as in New Zealand. According to several articles at Answers in Genesis, the radiometric ages for these rocks were much older than the actual ages. By much older, I mean, by orders of magnitude older. Atheistic scientists demand you accept their age for rocks, but by using their own processes it can be shown that they can’t even verify the age of known substances. The lesson here is that atheistic science will use complicated math and measuring techniques and frame results as if they are accurate and precise. But the precision they appear to have actually does not increase the confidence in results with the methods used. Everyone is using assumptions about the past, and those assumptions will impact the belief about how old the earth is.

In closing, I’ll point out that the definition of science has changed over time. It is derived from Latin meaning knowledge, and historically meant all knowledge, including knowledge about God. That’s why the oldest universities were originally faith-based in their teaching. Today the focus of science is an explanation of the created realm by purely natural phenomenon. My American Heritage dictionary defines science as “The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of natural phenomenon.” Notice, “natural phenomenon” in the definition. A popular sentiment among scientists today, and their teaching priests in the public schools, is that they are all unbiased, simply following to where the data leads them. However, there is a deliberate bias to exclude explanations from the supernatural, that is, God. So what this means is the “Called-of-God” contemporary preacher must be biased with details from a false religion in order to read into the Bible long ages. What do I mean by this? Simply, theism has to do with God. Atheism refers to beliefs without God. Atheistic science provides theories about the past that are purely natural in scope. So when a preacher is influenced by these pure natural explanations, then reinterpret the biblical creation account, they are teaching from an atheistic bias.

The science debate is really a debate between religions. A Creation belief with God vs a creation belief without a god. Both are religions because both have beliefs about the origin of universe and matter, the existence of a god, and the nature of God, and ultimately the nature of man and purpose of life. And from these beliefs, deductions are made about right vs wrong, good and evil. Teachers who have changed the meaning of God’s word in Genesis have impacted other biblical teachings, and give credibility to an alternative religion. 

During creation we see the foundation of many doctrines, such as only 1 race, only 2 genders, the definition of God ordained marriage, family structure, parent’s ownership of children, personal property rights, and that humans are created special over nature and all other creatures – just to name a few. If Christians continue to fail to exalt the whole bible and submit ourselves to Creation teaching, then there’s no telling what the godless will invert next from that very text. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that when our Christian leaders have abandoned Creation teachings in Genesis, that the godless religions today began redefining teachings from it.