Category Archives: nature
MIXING TWO WORLD VIEWS
The reason why I write this blog is based on that I believe the idea of God creating the universe based in millions and billions of years only compromises with the secular world view and it has implications that are far more reaching than just difference of opinion.
If you have the time here is a nice little debate or conversation between the idea of young earth and old earth via Ken Ham and Hugh Ross. Ken Ham is young earth and backs his theology by scripture while Ross is old earth that is trying to interpret scripture and the Bible with the idea of fitting millions of years into the Biblical historical picture.
Most secularists will say both proponents Ham and Ross are wrong because the universe is billions of years old.
What I find as the problem with the old earth belief is there is not good evidence and you have to add to scripture to make the point while the young earth is better equipped to follow scripture.
Interesting out of a panel of six on this show, five of the guest believed in a young earth and one (Ross) believes in an old earth that included the big bang.
Out of that 5 only three so it was split evenly (with Ross being the 6th), but only three Ken Ham, Ray Comfort and Eric Hovid believed the scripture was more clear on the idea of each day as it was created by God (day being 24 hours) and that this statement of scripture was very important, not only understanding Biblical creation but it aided in the understanding of Biblical knowledge for everyone.
The interpretation of each creation day being one day (24 hour day) is important to teach people based on if we demand that people believe in the parting of the red seas, a virgin woman getting pregnant by the Holy Spirit and a man dying and coming back to life. How then can we tell people that in Genesis God was not talking about 24 hour day but he meant millions of years and that the passages of Genesis aids itself more to how modern science interprets the age of the earth via millions and billions of years.
On one end we demand people believe in supernatural events but in Genesis we compromise and say there is nothing supernatural how God created the universe. That statement maybe a bit over the top due to that Christians believing in a creation of a million years still view it as supernatural but the idea of God creating the world in 6 days has to be agreed as a bit more of a supernatural event than using a naturalistic way to explain creation.
Sean McDowell and John Bloom from Biola University were more on the fence of Biblical interpretation, McDowell even so far as to going there and saying so much as can we really know the true interpretation from Greek, Hebrew to English. I chalk McDowell statement to his youth; this statement is what secularist use to kill the conversation on Christians that don’t know there Biblical history or believe in actual words of our Biblical authors and we cannot accept such a statement.
Bloom and McDowell were willing to question interpretation while Comfort, Ham and Hovid felt that the Bible was God’s breathed word that all can know, people could know then (thousands of years ago) we can know now. 1 Timothy 3:16 Ephesians 4:11-16 and Hebrews 11: 1-40
McDowell and Bloom walk a slippery slope that will have you back peddling trying to explain Biblical truth in a sea of secular lies and it does not have to be that way if we take scripture at its word.
I believe Ross is trading certainty for truth and McDowell and Bloom are entertaining that idea as well Bloom more so than McDowell.
The truth is we can know scripture and what it says, understanding that not everyone will completely get what is being stated in every book or letter but the main theme of the Bible is God and following God. His grace to us and for us and how and why he did what he did for his creation.
You will see at the end of the video Ross offers a truce and I have no doubt Ross was very sincere just as I have no doubt Ross is a Bible believing man of God. The problem I have with Ross’s truce is it is not as the same way we can view the main purpose of truth from such men as George Whitfield and John Wesley.
Whitfield was a strong preacher of election with his main theme on salvation, while Wesley was a strong preacher on the will to know God with the main theme on salvation so we see two men that preached different styles had the same theme and that was salvation. This is what made these men great in the eyes of Biblical history the final authority was God and his salvation for you.
Ross’s truce is genuine but misguided based on the issue we live in different times than Wesley and Whitfield did; the average person had a standard of who was God and the respect of who God was not to mention being a pastor or evangelist during the 1700’s was a very respectable position.
Today’s western world does not respect God as it once did nor has a standard of who God is. Today’s western world does not respect men like Ross or Ham they view them as the enemy. People like Bill Nye who puts out hate messages that parents that teach creation are abusing their children.
We can easily see why main stream media and science who is desperate to be the grand daddy of all authority of life will mock and tear down our children and young people in the public arena.
How can we as Christians tell our children God did all these great supernatural things but that stuff in Genesis may not be literal, can you see why liberal Churches are not teaching that Jesus died or was born of a virgin, compromise to secularism to be relevant in today’s world is the in thing for people and Churches that think this is the only way to get people to God.
The difference between Ross and Ham is that Ham uses the Bible to interpret scripture for both knowing God and understanding God in a Biblical context with the final goal preaching the word of God for the purpose of following Jesus to salvation. Ross uses the Bible to prove science is correct and prove there is a God while returning a standard of the belief in God to science and while this is important without the notion of one following Jesus and putting God first before all things there is no real hope for people to know God.
Final thoughts I know those six men, Ham, Comfort, Hovid, Ross, McDowell and Bloom are good men of God and I know they want the best for bringing the Gospel to all people but the western world we live in is now requiring we either go with the world or against the world.
Trying to compromise or make a hybrid world view with a mix of some world and some Christianity will not work. It is not Biblical to mix Holiness with evil 1 Corinthians 15:33, like my old youth pastor use to say, two rivers running into each other, one is flowing clear blue water the other is dirty brown water and when the two come together and mix the clear blue water turns to dirty brown. The two cannot mix.
A COMMON SYMPTOM, STATEMENT 2
A COMMON SYMPTOM (10 statements unbelievers don’t believe about the Bible)
This in respond to a blog that was posted some time ago on a Christian blog forum by a professing Christian that obviously does not really believe in true Christianity. The blogger made 10 statements that they did not believe about the Bible and what I found is these are not just statements or beliefs from Christians on the theological fence but these are statements that unbelievers would make as well in fact these statements are nothing new.
Because these statements are common in today’s world view I will take each statement as its own otherwise this can become a long drawn out blog so in order to keep your attention we will focus one statement at a time and this is statement 2, you can check out my first blog on these statements at A COMMON SYMPTOM, STATEMENT 1
“I don’t believe the Bible explains the time and manner of earth’s creation and population accurately. The Creation accounts in Genesis are not scientific writings designed to instruct, as much as they are poetry and song meant to inspire. They should not be read as a literal explanation of the fashion or timetable of what Science clearly tells us were the far older and more gradual evolution of life than a literal Biblical translation contends. Genesis 1 and 2 are a who story, not a how story.”:
Understandably one who lacks faith and trust in God will question God’s creation. If we cannot believe the Bible is the real inspired word of God then how can we believe God created all things much less in 6 days.
There is much debate in the creation theater; secular science today has muddied the waters that have divided Christians on how many days to how many billion years old the earth is. One thing is for sure Genesis is not a who story but a real account on God creating the universe, the earth and its inhabitants. Nehemia 9:6 and Acts 14:15
There is a debate on how many years the earth is and it falls under good credible conversation. Both Greg Koukle and Ken Ham have a radically different perspective on the earth age yet both will agree Genesis is a story on how and why God created the earth Christians can agree on this.
People that do not believe in the sufficiency of the word of God will of course be incline to believe the account of Genesis is poetry and song and a story of who. The problem with people that do not consider the Bible as the sole word of God is the who is only two people when in fact the who needs to be on more than a man and a woman, there is a creator involved and eventually a redeemer involved. Isaiah 44:24 “Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who spread out the earth by myself”
The complete understanding of God’s time table is not needed fully. Understand even today when secular science throws out time tables it is not concrete but a theory. Science uses dating that can be fallible; there is not exact perfect way to date God’s creation.
Some Christians use God’s word (Bible) along with archaeology, the flood and other scientific anomalies like volcano and earthquakes to help date while other Christians use stars and light years to help their definition of the date of the earth. Either way does not diminish what God has created and how he created and why he created.
To say the Genesis account of the earth population states that writer of Genesis is not in literal is to have no credibility. When you make a statement like what is made in first statement “I don’t believe the Bible was dictated by God” then we can fully understand why a person cannot believe in the full account of Genesis 1-2 and how man and woman flourished.
If Genesis and the Bible is not a full account of how and why God made everything do we then fall back on the worlds view of evolution and big bang and if so then how did that start and as a Christian would then one begin to compromise the word of God. To not completely understand how society became many is to deny how God made his creation or a coward of the truth.
It was Martin Luther that said “ But, if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six day then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are” Simply stated we know what we know because God lets us know.
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS LITTLE ROOM FOR ATHEIST
We might think atheism and secularism as a minor force with strong arms today trying to end Christianity as we know it.
Atheist claim they don’t believe in any religion but for reasons that can be debated they seem to pay particular attention to Christianity trying to discredit it, they’re more anti theist than just people that claim not to believe in a God or the supernatural and leave it at that.
It is my thoughts that liberalism cannot at this point in time allow atheism to totally destroy the idea of God from our heart, our minds yes but the idea of a God must be allowed to live in the heart of man. Romans 12:2
The reason being is atheism for the most part is a leftist point of view. Yes there maybe some conservative atheist out there but they would be more economically conservative rather than socially conservative and those people that identify themselves as atheist rarely identify with the same moral ideology as people that do believe in God or Christianity. Note both can but most of the time there is normally a difference of opinion on a moral law code.
Conservatives and Christian conservatives in general think similar and believe similar. They tend to share values much the same and the embrace moral and ethical values much the same.
The leftist agenda is contrary to the conservative agenda particularly in climate change and global warming. This idea is not universally anti Christian as we see a few Christians take up the leftist cause of radical environmentalism.
Most Christians that subscribe to radical environmentalism can be defined as liberal leaning and therefore are sometimes dismissed as legitimate believers in true Christianity but make no mistake those Christians that do endorse radical environmentalism such as Pope Francis have a wide following in the leftist community.
This is where I have wrote before it’s a fine line for leaders like Sir Francis to court radical environmentalism but being that said it is also a fine line for leftist to court Christians that embrace this idea as well. 1 John 2:15
By no means is Pope Francis an advocate of abortion something leftist embrace with open arms as a rite of passage. For leftist hope to convince as many people as possible to believe in radical man made climate change they need all the help they can. If they cannot legislate it down our throats then having the aid of top Christians leaders to preach radical climate change in the pulpit is a plus which is why they cannot fully condone the actions of radical atheism that is anti theist.
To the atheist that believe in no God, believes in random chance, believes in subjective morality they in principle should not care one way or another if man made climate change is real or just junk science..
In the words of Jeff Durbin pastor of Apologia church in Tempe Arizona “So what”, so what if it’s man made or not it does not stop the random chance of happening.
So what if the polar bears run out of ice, survival of the fittest regardless if man made carbon from cars that melt ice or if three super volcanos erupt and ash covers the earth and kills one quarter of the earth species, it happens. In reality what happens is so what; if naturalism is real then life will go on, government regulations won’t change that.
Leftist who rely on radical environmentalism for power cannot have this, they need people to be behind them and to believe in the cause and while many atheist won’t buy this idea of a “so what” reality they should in order to be true to their beliefs.
Liberal leftist may just need the belief in God to continue and having the aid of Christians that believe God puts man in total control of his creation is a win. They need leaders like Rev Mitchell C Hescox that have doubt in what God can do to infiltrate the minds and emotions of their followers and a total disbelief in God cannot be on the agenda at this time.
While both atheist and like minded liberals would love to see the end of a Biblical moral law the goal might be to rid God from people’s minds but keep the notion of a God that is good, environmentally gentle and emotionally illogical in our hearts.
COEXIST CAN ONLY CONTRADICT
You run across one of these stickers probably once a week on somebody’s Prius, most likely it’s a hippie or a sharp leftist but do you wonder is it possible to truly coexist with everyone and do these people really know what they are demanding.
Next to every “coexist” sticker should be a sticker that says “contradict”. Each belief contradicts the others belief making coexistence impossible.
Each belief demands exclusivity to that belief and that belief alone. Islam demands Allah is the only God, Jews their God is the only God, Hindi has many Gods but their belief of reincarnation is a must. Atheist demand naturalism and science is the only truth.
There is contradiction with all these beliefs so who do you follow, who will you give your life to?
Atheists believe there has to be proof to be something, seeing is believing. Yet no one has seen large scale evolution, no one has seen a big bang creating life out of nothing. Gravity just exists, no why or how it just exists. DNA is magic per Richard Dawkins but wait is not magic something that cannot be seen or understood?
Buddha was a Hindu that believed there was more; he abandoned the core beliefs of Hinduism and ended up mixing atheism with reincarnation. One has to die and die again to obtain nirvana a complete blowout of the mind where one ceases to exist there is no God.
Christians and Jews believe in a one true God but unlike Jews Christians believe the one true God sent his son Jesus to die for us so that we would be worthy. That through his death God now gives us salvation by his grace alone. John 14:6 and Acts 4:12 “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved”.
COEXIST is either a complete insult or complete ignorance by one that is reaching for an end to free thought. COEXIST is not new it is the same exclusivity in the idea that no one is correct that there is no truth.
Without truth your ideas are invalid to my ideas, making the ability to truly coexist is impossible.