Divine Warnings

from here

by Max Lucado

 

Warnings.  Red lights in life that signal us of impending danger. They exist in all parts of life. Sirens scream as a marriage starts to sour; alarms blare when a faith weakens.

We usually know when trouble is just around the corner. Christians who’ve fallen away felt the fire waning long before it went out.  Unwanted pregnancies or explosions of anger are usually the result of a history of ignoring warnings about an impending fire.

Are your senses numb? Are your eyes trained to turn and roll when they should pause and observe?  One-night stands.  Dust-covered Bibles.  Careless choice of companions.  Denial of Christ.

Proverbs 19:27 says, “Cease listening to [My] instruction and you will stray from the words of knowledge.”

Divine warnings.  Inspired by God; tested by time. Heed them and safety is yours to enjoy!

From God Came Near

This is Water

David Foster Wallace - commencement speech

The problem of evil

Post by Freedom From Atheistic Scientism.

QUESTION: The fact that six of my relatives were murdered in concentration camps informs my belief that God was not listening. Now, if he was listening ... well, wouldn't a kind and merciful being help his true believers? Of course he gets all the excuses made for him. Man's will and all that crap. If he can split oceans and turn folks to salt, he sure as heck can help those facing genocide.

ANSWER: Was God not listening during WWII? Better question: Why has man willfully refused to listen to God for thousands of years now, and separated himself from Him, and as a result brought about the kind of evil men that defy God and do things like concentration camps? That's the real question. Yes, like it or not, the free will that God gave us has a lot to do with it. God made us free-thinking creatures, not robots. Therefore, while we have the ability to freely do all kinds of good, we also at the same time have the freedom to do all kinds of evil -- if we choose to misuse the ability God has given us. We cannot have the one without the other. If God is directly responsible for all evil that happens (as some people say), then should Hitler's parents have been held responsible for the evil their son did, simply because they brought him into the world? Should ALL parents everywhere be held responsible every time their children do something evil, because they made that evil possible by bringing their children into the world? Should all people stop having babies in order to bring an end to evil in the world?

And yes, God does hear the prayers of His people for justice and accountability. Most of the people who ran the concentration camps have already answered to God for what they did. So does everyone who does evil. "The Lord will be no means leave the guilty unpunished" (Nahum 1:3), and "For he who does wrong will receive the consequences of the wrong which he has done, and that without partiality" (Colossians 3:25). But in order to rightly and justly judge people for their actions, God has to allow those actions to play out. That is why there is evil in the world. Not because God wanted it, or because He isn't listening, but because He waits as long as He can to judge people because He doesn't like to condemn people. He wants to forgive them. But He cannot forgive them if they do not first choose to turn away from their evil and regret what they have done. "The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9). But pay attention: a day of judgment IS coming, where NO one who has done any kind of evil will escape.

People have a right to their opinions. But that doesn't make all their opinions right. Or in alignment with reality. Just because God gave us the ability to think doesn't mean that everything we think is right. Those who hate God for not immediately and supernaturally stopping all the evil in the world (and there are many today) simply don't understand who He is, or what He is trying to do. What is the point of giving people free will and making them independent, thinking personalities, if at the same time God must constantly swoop in to undo the consequences or results of every wrong, stupid, or evil thing that they might choose to do? God cannot contradict Himself. But humans often do. That is the way things are. The entire Bible is about how God judges evil -- and how one day (on a day of His choosing) He will do away with it permanently.

An ‘old-earth’ answer provides only problems

from here

Responding to an old-earth critic and his ‘authority’ arguments

by Gary Bates

Published: 4 January 2014 (GMT+10)

Recently, Mike Hore, an author from a specifically old earth creationist website, responded to my article What is your authority? Christians who invoke millions of years cannot make their arguments from the biblical texts. It might be worth a quick divert to my original article first before reading on.

123rf.com/rudall30

My responses to his article are interspersed below.
He wrote:¹

I’ve deliberately named this article after the heading that Gary Bates (CEO, CMI-Worldwide) used as a heading in his recent supporters’ newsletter. This is really the big issue for YECs, and probably the main issue driving most of them. In fact, in recent years they’ve been calling themselves not “young-earth creationists”, but “Biblical creationists”,

Indeed. As a matter of fact, I was the first one who instigated this suggested clarification of terms back in October 2011 in a CMI newsletter. I advocated its use of the term to highlight the point that we actually believe what the Bible says to contrast with old-earthers or theistic evolutionists whose deference to secular science seems to trump what the Bible clearly indicates. You can read it here We are … biblical creationists?

thus implying that if we don’t believe in a young earth, we’re not Biblical, even if we think we are.

No, I wasn’t implying it, that’s exactly what I am saying. While this might seem a strong claim, I honestly feel that to claim that one is biblical when there is so much reading into the text is a tad disingenuous. Note, that I am not saying that an old earth creationist cannot be a Christian—just that one does not get the belief in an old earth (or evolution) from Scripture. This represents a low view of Scripture. Ergo, one is not being biblical and is being massively inconsistent with Christian beliefs. Our only source of knowledge about what is means to be a Christian, i.e. our fallen state and need for salvation come from the Scriptures to start with. Perhaps those passages need to be reinterpreted as well.

If we defer to ‘science’ as our hermeneutical filter, and do so consistently, that will represent some major problems for theology. For instance, that same science shows that men don’t rise from the dead, so perhaps we should culturally reinterpret the Resurrection also. Science also shows that matter cannot be created or destroyed, but Hore has no problem in believing that God was able to do that in Genesis 1:1 when He created a massive, almost incomprehensively vast universe. What’s ironic is that he does have a problem in ‘believing’ that God is powerful enough to take only six days to do it. This is tragically familiar to the admonition in 2 Timothy 3:5 “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.”
See Did God create over billions of years? And why is it important? for the single most important understanding of where the idea of a billions of years old earth came from.

In fact, (they think) we’ve compromised on the Bible, by letting science stand as another authority.

It’s what you’ve actually done—by your own argumentation and admission.

It doesn’t matter that many evangelical scholars of great reputation don’t seem have a problem with long ages; they’re not really Biblical, apparently.

No, they are not. But thanks for demonstrating another point. Not only is secular science your authority, but you are also saying that we should believe in an ancient earth because lots of other Christian scientists and scholars do. I.e. “Let’s believe because they do.” That is also a secondary argument from authority, but again the wrong one. It’s irrelevant if one million Christian scientists believed in an old earth or old universe. At one point in Church History, the non-Trinitarian Arian heresy² was much more popular than the orthodox understanding of the Trinity, but we are glad that the deity of Christ was not decided by a popularity poll. As Christians, opinions (and particularly those based upon external evidence to the Bible) should not be our final authority—the Bible is, as in Sola Scriptura.³ This is the same tactic that the progressive creationist compromiser Hugh Ross uses to emotionally manipulate others into believing him, “Trust me. I’m an astronomer” or words to that effect!

Gary in his article comes to the crux of the matter when he quotes an answer he gave to a questioner at a meeting, who raised the problem of a reputed scholar having no problem with billions of years. In Gary’s reply, he said “…For instance, could you show me anywhere in Scripture, if I read it at face value, where I can read the term millions or billions of years? Or, even get the impression—just from Scripture—that the universe or the earth is that old?”

Gary appears to have a good point,

Thanks, but the following answer doesn’t negate it.

but the problem with his answer is the words “at face value”. None of us can actually read the Bible, or anything else, simply at face value. It sounds easy, but it’s not. We bring our cultural background understanding to everything we read or hear, and our culture is very different to the cultures at the time and place when the Bible books were written.

So, in our enlightened ‘scientific age’ we need to reinterpret Scripture based upon our current (but ever-changing) scientific knowledge. But if this is the case we can never ever be sure that we’ve interpreted correctly and even understood the Bible. Tomorrow we might discover something (using ‘science’) that we don’t know today. Because I understand this principle I can never be sure or know if my current interpretation is correct. For example, if I interpreted Scripture in the light of the big bang theory. I would have changed my interpretation of Scripture many times over due to the ever-changing nature of the big bang. The big bang that I learnt in school is nothing like the big bang of today. For one thing, today’s version is approximately 10 billion years older. Those ‘days’ in Genesis will just have to keep being stretched!
The ‘Hore’ old earth approach is actually no different to the way that the ‘fundamentalist high priest’ of evolution, Richard Dawkins, advocates. He claims that by looking at the natural world one could easily deduce it has been designed. But his starting hypothesis is that naturalism is true so he says: “biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose⁴ [but are not].” In short, you need a scientist (read: evolutionist) to help you understand. In the same way, Hore is kind of saying “Gary Bates has a good point. At face value Genesis 1 appears to speak about normal days and nowhere in the Bible are millions of years mentioned, but this is not what Genesis 1 means.” Huh?
To be clear; yes, context and studying the grammar of Hebrew, what different genres communicate, etc., is important. But when we do this, we find even stronger evidence that Genesis means exactly what it appears to mean ‘at face value’. For instance, see Syntax and semantics in Genesis 1.

For us in western society, scientific questions are very important, and we look for answers in exact periods of time, or mass, or velocity, or whatever. It’s bred into us. So of course when we look at Genesis 1 we are inclined to see 24-hour days, and pick out all the detail of how God did things. This is natural for us.

As Christians, we should believe that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). If “God’s Word” is the truth, then what should be “natural” or straight forward is understanding the text the way the author (God) intended. Would we really want to imply that the One called “the Word” was unable to communicate clearly and effectively?
The big issue for old earthers is their eisegetical approach to the text (reading into, rather than ‘out of’). They read into the Scriptures, not based upon empirical, testable science, as in, operational science, but quite tragically via the glasses of ‘secular science’. There have been so many attempts over the years to reinterpret the word ‘day’ in Genesis one to accommodate this eisegetical approach.

Problem 1 for old-earthers. An inconsistent (pick and choose) approach to Scripture.

Let’s take a closer look at the graphic (right).
As you can see, everywhere else in Scripture the word day (in Hebrew yom) is used outside of Genesis, when combined with a number or the words “evening” or “morning” or “night” and so on, there is no disagreement on the context of the word day. It is only questioned in Genesis chapter 1, and why? Because, if your a priori assumption is that secular science has shown the earth to be millions of years old, then one is forced to look for somewhere to fit the MOYs! So, to repeat, an old earth view does not come from the Bible, nor is it even implied by the Bible.

But for people of another culture, what they get out of the text might be quite different.

Exactly. That’s the point I am making and Hore is actually agreeing with me. Culturally, despite thousands of years of accumulated knowledge post Creation and post Flood, the later Bible authors also always understood the plain simple meaning of the Genesis word ‘day’. The old-earther’s cultural ‘glasses’ are secular science. A tribal culture’s might be spirit gods. But that does not mean that God’s Word should be interpreted or filtered in such a way. If the Bible says there is only one mediator between man and God (1 Tim. 2:5), for example, and this is open for interpretation, then one could argue that all religions are equal and there are many ways to God. As such, Scripture would be open house for any wacky idea or reinterpretation of supposed difficult passages that people want to invoke. What would be wrong with the popular current scientific trend suggesting that aliens are our creators and that maybe the ‘primitive’ Bible writers mistook them for god(s) based upon their cultural understanding of the times?

For example, I’ve worked for 30-plus years with Australian Indigenous people, and they wouldn’t be interested in these “scientific” questions at all. What is important for them in Genesis 1 is the spiritual power at work. We see no other spirits, just God alone, making everything from nothing, and then forming all the plants, animals and humans, just by his word, without any other spiritual forces having any role whatsoever. These people simply wouldn’t be very interested in such questions as what the days are, or how Adam could name all the animals within one day—other things are just far more significant for them.

I’m sorry but this is an illogical premise or line of thought. Firstly, being an Australian myself and having met many Aboriginal Christians, I’ve found that most have no problem in accepting what the text of Genesis says once they are saved. Once they believe God for who He is, they are free to also believe what He wrote, and as He wrote it. In fact, this could be described as their minds being conformed to Scripture, regardless of what their cultural bias might be. Romans 12:2 exhorts us, “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
In this context, although very unfortunate, it might actually be a blessing that many of them have not had the benefit of years of ‘high class’ secular public education (indoctrination) into the idea of millions of years. That’s why they would not be interested in the “scientific questions” as you’ve put it. In short, their knowledge of God comes from the text so they simply believe it without the extraneous baggage that old-earthers want to heap in there. BTW here is the answer to how Adam could name all the animals in one day that was raised.

So, I’m suggesting that while YECs are commendably determined to maintain the authority of the Bible, their particular interpretation is culturally determined, and isn’t in fact necessarily part of what the Bible is actually teaching us. And why should it? Why would God want to spell out for us in his Word details that we can find out for ourselves with the abilities he’s given us?

Let’s say cultural interpretation might have had something to do with the way the author wrote. But here we are today in our ‘modern culture’ still arguing for a plain understanding of the text. And why, because we have demonstrated time and again that the scientific methodology used to claim an ancient earth is flawed and cannot determine the ages of such things. Moreover, real science continues to show us how flawed old-earth interpretations are, and that the Bible’s timeframes are correct.
1. But the real reason that God tells us anything in Scripture (and therefore the reason for it) is so that we can believe in God and have a relationship with Him (there's nothing culturally that can change this view). Thus, this overarching tenet of Scripture would be undermined if we can't simply believe what He wrote. Why trust Him if He cannot be trusted? 2. Everything that we can observe in God's World should also agree with what we read in His Word. Nothing in science should contradict the historical Bible's historical points. While it might not be possible to prove scientifically, for instance, that God created in six days, there is lots of evidence to contradict an ancient age for the earth. 3. If the interpretation was culturally determined, we would expect the interpretation to change with the culture. For instance, a 1st century BC Jew, a medieval monk, and a 16th century reformer would all have a different interpretation of Scripture. Yet, 6-day creation was the majority view (including the church Fathers) until people started compromising on this point because of uniformitarian geology.

If we really have a high view of the authority of the Bible, we should be very eager to find out what it’s really teaching us, and not to look for other information which might interest us greatly, but isn’t actually part of the teaching.

I think that, in light of a plain reading of the text, that the aforementioned statement is again a tad disingenuous (sorry, but it’s actually gobbledygook, but I was trying to be kind ). But let’s continue to investigate this big picture further anyway, because the Bible actually does teach us about the very things Hore is claiming it doesn’t.

Problem 2 for old-earthers. The Gospel hinges on a literal interpretation of Genesis.

For example, and this is just one possibility, Genesis 1 might be a parable or story giving a graphic account of creation in everyday terms. In Jewish culture this would be quite common, as we see in the New Testament parables, or when the Saducees [sic] came to Jesus with the story of the woman who’d been married to seven brothers, one at a time. Nobody thought this actually happened literally, but it was a vivid “thought experiment” to try to prove a point. Now I’m not claiming that this is necessarily what Genesis 1 is,

If it is not apt, then why use this as an appropriate illustration? Jesus was using an illustration as a teaching point. This is not the same genre as historical narrative. It’s a totally inappropriate comparison, in fact. This is an instance of a parable, a well-defined sub-genre present in Jesus’ teaching, intended to be interpreted figuratively. Hore’s method here is known as bait and switch , and once again, the arguments are not being made from the text itself. This violates the hermeneutical principle which is to test Scripture with Scripture—something that the church has done throughout its history. This ‘poetic’ approach is similar to the discredited Framework Hypothesis. There are many articles on our site (which have obviously not been read) about the context of the writing of Genesis 1, which demonstrate its genre as historical narrative. And as we shall see, what really happened in history is vital to most of our Christian doctrine including soteriology (the doctrine of salvation).

but just that it’s one possibility that would fit the culture. And this is the sort of question that should be in our minds when we’re trying to understand the Bible correctly. Sorting out the real teaching from the side details or teaching method isn’t always easy, but must be tackled if we really take the Bible seriously. And of course, this has been the lifetime’s work for these same evangelical scholars who have been written off by the YECs.

Again, this is an appeal to the authority of, “Look we are scientists—trust us”. Please note that I could respond and say that CMI employs more Christian scientists than any other ministry that I am aware of, but it is irrelevant when trying to determine the meaning of the text of Genesis.
Also, Genesis is hardly a side issue that deflects from ‘real teaching’. What about the culture of the New Testament authors who referred back to Genesis 1 when they were establishing doctrines for the church? There are over 100 references to the book of Genesis in the NT. Specifically, 60 references to Genesis 1–11. Every NT author references Genesis 1–11 (see graphic).
Clearly, Paul and the NT authors and even the Lord Jesus Christ believed in a literal Genesis, the six days of Creation, a literal Adam and Eve and a global Flood. You would have to advocate that perhaps the Lord Jesus (the Creator—Colossians 1) did not understand what He was talking about or that He framed His teaching in such a way so that the culture of the day would understand Him. The problem with this view is that we would have to look back and say He was actually wrong. For example, In Mark 10:6 He said that God made human beings right at the beginning of Creation (day 6 of course). If the days were billions of years each that would have put them at the ‘end’ of Creation. See graphic. This is no small thing. Did ‘beginning’ mean after a 14 billion year period? Or perhaps wait a few more years and we will revise that timeframe in the light of ‘modern science’.
If Jesus was wrong then Scripture cannot be inspired. If He is capable of making mistakes, He is fallible and not divine, and therefore cannot pay for our sins. This is similar to the approach of the theistic evolutionary group Biologos who say that the NT authors were wrong when it came to Genesis. See It’s not Christianity!
As such, if Genesis is not real literal history, with a literal fall into sin and death, then we literally don’t need to be saved from anything. Believing in the events of the Garden of Eden is the basis and reason for the entire Gospel itself.

Problem 3 for old-earthers. The metaphorical approach to Genesis.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’s lineage is detailed all the way back to Adam. In Matthew it is traced to Abraham. These generations are there (see also Genesis chapters 5 and 11) to demonstrate that the Bible records real history from the beginning of time itself and that the characters in the Bible are real people who existed in real time and space. They are also important because they trace our Saviour’s lineage from Adam. Jesus was the ‘last Adam’ (1 Corinthians 15:45) because there was a real physical and historical first Adam who brought sin and death into the world. And remember, Jesus said Adam was there at the “beginning” of Creation. Jesus had to become human and a descendent of Adam like us to be our ‘Kinsman/Redeemer’ (Isaiah 59:20). If these genealogies are inaccurate in both the Old and New Testament, it would once again invalidate Scripture and also Jesus’ stature as our blood relative and Saviour.
Even if there were a few missing generations as Hugh Ross and some others claim, there are not millions of missing generations which would be needed to insert secular timeframes into Scripture. Such a notion stretches credulity.

Problem 4 for old-earthers. An appeal to an old earth violates the need for a Saviour.

Half the time I am not sure if old earthers really understand where the idea of an old earth actually comes from. Many might think that radiometric dating can somehow prove the age of rocks and fossils etc. and defer to that. Quite simply though, the age of the earth is derived from an interpretation of the earth’s geology. It is the belief that the majority of rock strata and the very fine sedimentary layers within them have been laid down slowly and gradually over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. That’s it!
It is staggering that old earthers, who acquiesce to science then disregard the very same science that now demonstrates these sorts of layers can be laid down rapidly due to catastrophic processes (the latter is now very much a part of secular geology). See Rapid Rock and Experiments on laminations of sediments.

Guess which one gets modified? Apparently there is no conflict with science even though it is ‘updated’ every few years!

Although they claim they believe the Bible, they see no place for Noah’s Flood in creating the vast majority of these sediments—thousands of metres of them all over the earth. Yet, another inconvenient section of Scripture has to be ignored or reinterpreted (as a local Flood perhaps).

But here is the rub. These same sediments contain fossils, and fossils are a record of dead things (and there are fossilized human remains in the rocks also). So, if one believes in millions of years then one is actually placing millions of years of death before Adam’s sin. And given that Adam’s fall in real time and space history is the reason we need a saviour, then the Gospel is undermined by a belief in millions of years.

The Bible is not in conflict with science

It’s ironic that the site Mike Hore wrote for is called Old Earth Ministries Bringing the Bible and Science Together Without Conflict. Of course, for there to be any conflict it just depends upon which type of scientific glasses one wears and whether the Bible is your final authority on all things (or things that it clearly addresses—like the age of the earth issue). This is the huge blind spot that old-earther, theistic evolutionists and the Rossites of Progressive Creation have. They confuse the ‘science’ of an old earth which has more to do with history and beliefs about the past, with ‘real science’, the sort of science that can test gravity, for example.
There is no need to resort to the theological gymnastics that the cause the Bible to be ‘modified’ or reinterpreted in some sort of novel or cultural glasses of the time. Although it was meant to be a response, Mike Hore only resorted to arguments outside of the Bible. This actually reinforced the point of my original article which was that the arguments for an old earth do not come from the Scriptures themselves.

Related Articles

• Did God create over billions of years?
• The authority of Scripture
• Arguing about authority
• Creationist qualifications
• What is your authority?
• Jesus on the age of the earth
• Why would a loving God allow death and suffering?
• Drawing power: People get the point when they see these two pictures

Further Reading

• Genesis Questions and Answers
• Creation Compromises
• Creation: Why it Matters
• Death and Suffering Questions and Answers

References and notes

1. Creation Science. What is our Authority?, oldearth.org/authority.htm, accessed 7 October, 2013. Return to text.
2. This was a controversy that arose between Arius (who supported the non-Trinitarian position) and Athanasius (the Trinitarian position). The latter was even exiled for holding fast to what he thought the Scriptures clearly taught. Return to text.
3. Latin, ‘By Scripture alone’. Return to text.
4. Dawkins, R., The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design, Norton & Company, 1996, p. 1. Return to text.

Is creation apologetics a problem?

from here

Published: 5 January 2014 (GMT+10)

David B wrote in response to An entire universe … wasted on us? His entire email is reproduced below, interspersed with response from Lita Cosner:

sxc.hu/Conrados

Dear David,

“The PROBLEM is that ministries such as this that spend so much time and money trying to prove their interpretation of the Bible…”

Not just our interpretation of the Bible; that makes us sound idiosyncratic at best, like a denominational issue. It’s the interpretation of the Bible that most Christians have had throughout history. Think of the apostles, church fathers and various heroes of the faith; if they lived before 1800, chances are they believed in what we call today young-earth creation, or biblical creation. This supports our assertion that ‘our interpretation’ of Genesis is the plain reading and what God intended to communicate.
And it’s far more foundational than ‘denominational’ issues. See End-times and early-times for more information.

“…and God’s gift of “real” science is wrong, resulting in replacing real science with pseudoscience,…”

CMI employs more Ph.D. scientists internationally than any other Christian ministry that we know of, and they have published dozens of scientific papers. There are also creation scientists who make real advances in science. For instance, Dr. John Hartnett, a biblical creationist, helped to develop clocks so precise that they might gain or lose about a second every 400 million years. Dr. John Sanford helped to develop the gene gun. Dr. Raymond Damadian was one of the pioneers of MRI technology.
And we oppose all sorts of pseudoscience as well; part of that is our arguments creationists should not use.

“is that the Bible is inherently the inerrant Word of God and final authority, therefore the only problem is in the interpretation, not the science.”

Your sentence became an ungrammatical run-on here, resulting in some ambiguity. But any way you read this, you’re simply wrong. If the only place creation, the fall, and the flood were important was in the beginning part of Genesis, you might be able to make that argument. But it is literally all over Scripture. The Old Testament uses creation, the fall, and the Flood in all sorts of places, and it even builds a full theology of Yahweh based on His creative work. The New Testament follows the OT’s example. When Jesus wants to tell the disciples what His coming is going to be like, He says, “Look at what Noah’s Flood was like! It came so suddenly that no one expected it.” When Paul wants to explain how Jesus’ death saves us, he says, “You know how Adam’s sin condemned everyone after him? Just like that—Jesus’ death results in life for everyone who believes!” When God gives John a vision of the New Jerusalem, it is filled with Edenic imagery. This isn’t accidental, it’s not peripheral; it’s intentional, all the way through Scripture, and the only way it works is if the first chapters of Genesis were history. It’s not a matter of simply interpreting Genesis to allow for billions of years, because there’s no way to introduce billions of years without introducing death before sin. And that leads to all sorts of problems. I would go so far as to say that if I were convinced that evolution and billions of years were true, I would throw my Bible away, because it’s all based in the foundation of those first several chapters of Genesis. If they’re wrong, the whole thing is wrong.
What do you mean by “the science”? (There is a huge difference between operational and historical science.) This is an important point, because the Big Bang of 20 years ago bears little resemblance to the Big Bang of today. 20 years ago, ‘junk DNA’ was an important argument for evolutionists, today the consensus is there is no such thing. We know that today there is an unprecedented level of fraud in science, meaning you might be basing your interpretation of the Bible on something that’s not only wrong, but intentionally misleading!

“The danger here is that the Biblical plan of salvation is lost in these satanic distractions.”

David, this is where I begin to have a real problem with your email. Because up until now, you’re a concerned brother addressing other brothers and sisters whom you believe to be misled regarding the importance of creation. And I can respect that. But now you’re basically saying we’re being distracted and directed by Satan rather than following Scripture, which is clearly a serious charge to bring up against Christian brothers and sisters. I don’t think you meant it that way, but that’s the logical conclusion.
But the Lord Jesus said that you can judge a tree by its fruit; a good tree will bear good fruit, a bad tree will bear bad fruit, and it will never work vice versa. So what is the fruit of creation ministry? Every week I get to read testimonies of people who now take their faith more seriously because they ‘get’ that Christianity is real-world stuff. Accepting the truth of biblical creation leads to people being more confident in sharing their faith. I’ve personally talked to people after a relevance talk whose whole face was ‘lit up’ with excitement, because they get it now. And we receive not just responses from Christians but also testimonies from many who were non-believers that have come to Christ because of how God used the information our ministry produces.
Conversely, evolution makes atheists out of people; it’s indisputable. Some people can reconcile Christianity and evolution, but they have to give up so much. One Biologos author went so far as to say that Jesus and Paul erred!

“The ONLY Biblical plan for man’s salvation is preaching the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ! It is the Blood of Jesus that save…PERIOD.. NOT trying to prove the Bible is true.”

I agree—belief in Jesus alone saves. It is absolutely useless to have a completely biblical view of creation if that view is divorced from the saving belief that Jesus, the incarnate divine Son of God, came to earth, lived a perfect life of obedience to the Father, and died to pay the penalty our sins incurred, and was raised on the third day. You are absolutely correct there.

But which Jesus saves? Because we know there are false Christs; the real one warned us about them. So how do we know we believe in the real Jesus? Well, our Jesus has to be the same as the one taught in the Scriptures. And we know that the real Jesus is the One who created everything. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made” (John 1:1–3). “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:15–17). And when we look at how He created, we need to look at what the Bible says about creation, and the plainest statements about creation (though certainly not the only ones) are at the beginning of Genesis. If your Jesus did not create the heavens and earth over 6 days and rest on the seventh, you run the real risk of worshiping a false Jesus.
And as Christians, we definitely need to be able to trust that the Bible is true. Because if the Bible is not true, how can we trust it regarding salvation? Jesus said, “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things?” (John 3:12). Hebrews 11 actually makes belief in creation a result or an evidence of faith, “By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible” (11:3). And Romans 5:12 says that the evidence of God’s existence is clearly seen because of what He created.
David, I’ve spent this much time on a response because I believe that you’re genuine, and I think that you really have zeal for Jesus. I would just ask you to read the links I’ve provided that explain why my colleagues and I believe this is such a crucial issue for the church.
Sincerely,
Lita Cosner

An Example of Media Hype Around the Phrase: “Scientists say.”

from here

September 9, 2013 by Jason Petersen Leave a Comment

Have you heard someone say that a certain fact is true because scientists say it’s true? Most of the general public are unaware that even though a scientist says something has been shown in a study, it actually doesn’t mean that the fact they are espousing is true. Science is a study of the natural world, and there are a multitude of scientific models that have been discarded in favor of new ones. The fact of the matter is, hypotheses and theories are shown to be incorrect more often than not. This is the nature of science, it does not set out to prove things. Science is also not truth, so there is nothing in science that is certain. One example of this phenomenon is shown below.
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The ice cap in the Arctic is 60 percent bigger than this time last year, scientists say. A new era of cooling may be underway.
I hereby again establish the term “Scientists Say” as a category of media hype that keeps the credulous public in a state of constant and unnecessary alarm. Why? “Because,” as folks used to say, “it sells papers.”
Nonetheless, the climate change community (née, global warming community) is in a dither, according to the London Telegraph. Documents leaked to another British paper, the Daily Mail, from the UN International Panel on Climate indicate that governments that finance the UN studies are demanding 1,500 changes in the preliminary report.
Only a couple of weeks ago an earlier leak from different sources (presumably) anticipated a UNIPCC report that confirmed human-caused global warming.
Now we have some scientists predicting a decade or more of cooling. Therefore earlier reported IPCC assertions of growing confidence levels in a warming trend (95%, no less) are looking as mushy as a melting snowman.
Reports the Telegraph:

US climate expert Professor Judith Curry has questioned how this (the originally leaked IPCC estimates) can be true as that rather than increasing in confidence, ‘uncertainty is getting bigger’ within the academic community. Long-term cycles in ocean temperature, she said, suggest the world may be approaching a period similar to that from 1965 to 1975, when there was a clear cooling trend.
At the time some scientists forecast an imminent ice age.

So when groups like the National Center for Science Education (NSCE) demand that educators promote human-caused climate change as “settled science,” and Al Gore creates a plume of pollution as he jets around demanding more government-financed windmills, what is the citizen to do? “Scientists Say” one thing one day and other “Scientists Say” another the next.

- See more at: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/09/scientists_say_1076321.html#sthash.tvjUj41O.dpuf