“You'll never succeed in idealizing hard work. Before you can dig mother earth you've got to take off your ideal jacket. The harder a man works, at brute labor, the thinner becomes his idealism, the darker his mind.”
 D.H. Lawrence

Our Earth has some amazing things on it and if we travel around, we get to see this.

 Take for example the lakes that deposit single celled algae in certain seasons of the year each year.

These deposits create annual bands of different colors in the sediments. In Japan, Lake Suigetsu has about 55000years of these bands. So, logically, it really seems highly unlikely that our earth is 6000 years old.

This appears to be good evidence on the surface, but the fact that it no longer occurs today does bring it into question somewhat. However if the overwhelming evidence is weighed in all the different areas, I do believe common sense would cause us to face facts, would we would agree the Earth appears older than 6000 years! (See my last two blogs)

 The crowd that believe science can disprove the bible at this point tend to shout “hurray!”

 They are premature in their happiness!

 Let’s get it straight, investigation has as yet not shown a link between Darwin’s tree trunk and the branches. In fact, science only really supports the fact that the phylum all start independently at different times. Hmmm! Sounds more like a God co-ordinated event since science actually points to each group being separate from the other.

 Unless you apply a scientific “faith” in unproven facts, Darwin’s theories have currently failed to produce the goods of explaining the origin of the species.

 The “missing link” is more correctly termed the missing “links”!

 Does this mean evolution is out? No!

 Let’s get it straight, evolution within the species and to some extent within the phylum’s is pretty likely. We also cannot discount evolution did occur since we haven’t got all the pieces yet! So, let’s be fair and give everyone the right to their opinion as long as it’s logical. Right?

 This does not mean God didn’t create! It does however seem to indicate there is a careful pattern behind the created order.

 Every day scientific discoveries show more and more intricate mechanisms.

 Perhaps a God may have co-ordinated this development?

 Science can talk about what happened, religion discusses who may have orchestrated what happens. I give credit to God, your choice of belief is yours to make!

 The complexity and exactness of DNA also supports some type of intervention in creation. Do any of us think a computer or TV remote could work without careful thought on the part of a designer?

 Living matter is far more complex and much easier to screw up. Why do we want to ignore the possibility that God orchestrated this work?
 
 Seems rather simple minded doesn’t it?

 Then, do you know about that the ground breaking experiment that showed the ability to create the building blocks of living matter out of the primordial gases and lightening. It’s called the Miller–Urey experiment. Well, for a while it was well respected and upheld by the science community, but it has since been discredited. It didn’t use gases we now know to have made up the initial atmospheres.
 
 So far, science cannot describe how life originated! Hmmm, that’s not what we hear in the media is it?

 Maybe Einstein is right! To re-iterate “All new ideas go through three phases. Firstly they are ridiculed. Next they are violently opposed. Lastly they are accepted as obvious"  ALBERT EINSTEIN

 Okay, so another anti-God argument is that the bible talks of seven days of creation and there is no way this earth was created in a day, right?  Maybe!  

I guess we probably all know that creating something as complex as the earth in a day is probably implausible. 

 But, then we with human brains for thousands of years also considered that creating something out of nothing was implausible, and we proved that to be true just a few years ago.  

This Universe was created from nothing at a single point that developed into space and time as we know it.

The theory is called the “Big Bang” theory and is the current main stream science theory. (I am discounting the current “string theory” for now as it is not holding up to well, but we can perhaps discuss this later)  How counter intuitive is it that everything came from nothing!


If some one said to me “take nothing, and out of that make everything we know”, without knowing that science backs this fact, I would say they were crazy! Logically it seems as if they are crazy if we apply the thought to our common sense right? Strange but true, the bible agrees with science in that fact! 

The more we learn, the more true some of these counter intuitive aspects seem to become.  

Let’s rather say it’s unlikely the Earth was created in a day, but if you are God it could be possible!

 Isn’t this a more reasonable statement?  

Giving others the benefit of having a free will, enjoying opinions of people who disagree with us, and loving them is all that we as Christian can do in this situation isn’t it? 

Others may believe in mother Earth but I believe in Father God!  

Have a great day!

 

You can't choose up sides on a round world.
Wayne Dyer

People quote this 6000 year age of our earth as if it is if it is a fact! 

Interestingly when I ask them who actually first came up with this 6000 years, when it was calculated, and if any further information had been gained since then, sadly, most people don’t know these facts.
 
The media and in this case the rumour mill strikes again! We believe what we are told so easily don`t we? If you check up, you will find and interesting story… 

 In 1650 a guy of the church of the time, Archbishop Usser published a timeline called the “Ussher chronology” showing that creation occurred on the night preceding October the 24th 4004BC.

Even at this time this was not considered valid by many, and only a minority agreed!

Then a few scientists tried working with the same thing and came up with similar but slightly different results. Names like Isaac Newton and Johannes Kepler being among them! This supported the idea! So it was science that gave Usser’s words their weight! (Now how often do you hear that said?)

 As a side point it is important to realize that many famous scientists of the day agreed the universe was created by a God.
This agreement did not necessarily mean that they agreed with this timeline however. Some of the scientists in this group included Copernicus, Faraday, Galileo, Maxwell, Boyle, and Pascal.

So, it was only around the 18th century that people first started questioning this timeline in earnest. 

Then, in the late 18th, early 19th century, the 6000 year old earth was used as an argument against evolution!

Well, this was a weird approach! We do have dinosaur bones and lots of evidence that shows the earth is older than 6000years and since none of us were around 6000 years ago, so we need to be working with likelihood that information that the earth is older than 6000 years is true, right? Okay, no need to agree with me yet as we still have a lot to look into!  There are people on both sides of this fence.

The father of evolution was a guy called Darwin. His arguments claim to refute creation and the 6000years old earth theory.

The scientists say his theories said we evolved from the first single cell organism and following a tree of life that had a trunk that diversified into branches (phyllum’s) and leaf’s(species).  His basic premise was that everything came from very small changes of the previous living thing(s), that these were magnified over huge durations of time, being pruned by survival of the fittest. As an aside, we need to understand that Darwin didn’t know of DNA, or of complex organic mechanisms we have discovered lately (like a self-assembling nanomachine with fine switching capability called the flagellum motor of a bacteria.

What is amazing is that this bacteria’s tail operates at 20 000rpm, and has numerous very specific engine like parts that depend on each other to exist! The key issue is it is unlikely that this bacteria was constructed from changes in previous organisms). 

 Darwin actually said that if it could be shown that you could not derive something from a change in a previous living thing then his theory would fail. The Flagellum motor is one of these that needs investigation and does bring up the question of whether Darwin’s theory fails in this instance.  

Unfortunately, the 6000 year advocates go further and like to point out Darwin couldn’t be right because the earth is too young to have enough time for the changes. 

Perhaps in this case it’s the 6000year old earth people that are wrong? 

 The bible is not a scientific textbook and has never pretended to be one.  

Our knowledge of time inconsistencies, related ages and relationships are flawed, being damaged by lack of evidence that has eroded due to time passing. Bible timelines are elastic and confusing to say the least! The more we discover, the more elastic they seem to become. 

 Usage of words like “son of” in the bible have been proved to include the meaning of being “grandson of” in some instances. (See how Shelah is represented in Genesis 11:12 and Luke 3:35 & 36 to see one example)  So how many “sons” were grandsons or perhaps great grandsons? 

 Then there is a time where the years reported both in the bible and other non-biblical texts are known to be significantly different to those  years we know today.

 Non-bible texts such as the ancient Sumerian king list support this. [People lived a huge numbers of years, way outside any human life capability so the times in these ancient documents had to have been measured differently]. 

The ancient people didn’t use our calendar, so there was no uniform time keeping system in the world of the past like there is today. (Do you know we still have different calendars and time keeping systems today, eg. Hebrew calendar is different form the commonly used Gregorian calendar, then computer scientists often us a Julian dating system, and with very little investigation we could add many others) 

Which of many calendars of the time were used in the writings?  

Other, more direct facts like evidence in a progression of the sequence of annual rings in trees can be shown to go back further than 6000 years. (This is done by matching seasonal differences in annual rings of trees in similar locations going back in time to form a consistent timeline). This is solid physical evidence that most people can understand and see with their own eyes! It’s called the bristle cone pine tree ladder if you want to examine the evidence! This is fairly strong evidence.

 The carbon dating arguments that go back and forward are vigorous, enflamed and so I am not going to say much about this other than Christians use the technique to date scripture fragments and items around the time of Christ.

People submit to medicine techniques that use the very same radioactive principles of the science believing they work and are safe, but many reject this method as a valid tool in dating without understanding it at all!
 
Carbon dating in the near term, is considered accurate when combined with other information (like that tree ladder we have discussed). 

 How does it work? Well carbon comes in different types in the air of our atmosphere, one of which is radioactive. Plants absorb this until they die, and then the radioactive parts start to decay. This take a long time and the amount in the plant material at a given time is able to be correlated to the time that the plant died (at least that is the argument). It depends on the amount of carbon in the atmosphere being known (which is difficult to prove but logically before we started messing around with internal combustion engines and fires was relatively consistent and the tree rings correlating with carbon dates show this), and the state in which the item to be measured is found.

Now, generally this technique is pretty accurate! There are odd occasions when it misreads, but people do take care to make sure that when this occurs they report it as having more than one potential date and a variance on the age is noted.

No matter how inadequate we think this is, when we test it against the bristle cone ladder, it comes up fairly accurate!

Sorry folk, common sense says we need to respect this method, but use it wisely! It also says the Earths age is older than 6000 years! 

That all said, I need to re-iterate what I said yesterday. IT IS NOT IMPORTANT. 

As Christians it is our own relationship to God individually and the application of his guidelines to our lives that is important. These guidelines show one great principle, love God and others!  That’s what is important! 

That’s how I will approach today and people who want to accept the theory that the earth is created in six physical days!

It’s okay to have free will, God made sure of that!

“A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.”
 Miguel de Unamuno 

 Yesterday I heard a radio evangelist (one I actually respect somewhat since I really don’t like this medium of evangelism) venting his opinion on those of us who may not believe the earth was created in six physical days.

 He even implied the only “true” Christians are those that believe the earth is built in six days.

He held up as proof that death only came to the earth after Adam and Eve’s sin and pointed out that since the geological record shows millions of dead creatures before man, that science is wrong and only the bible is right.  

GARBAGE!

 I wish people would keep themselves to facts.

Mr Mac Arthur, the facts of being a Christian are based in acceptance of Jesus as the person who is the son of God, the one we love and loves us, and that we give ourselves to living life and helping others under the direction of God’s word and Holy Spirits guidance. 

 It has nothing to do with whether I believe in a 6 day creation or not! 

 Next, the fact that you acknowledge the fossil record has millions of dead creatures before man and yet you acknowledge only a six day creation must mean God greated all these fossils with the Earth right? Why?
 
Is God a confidence trickster?
 
Not the God I know, and from what I know of your teaching not the one you know either. Then you state there is no reason scientifically to doubt the seven days with mans creation on the sixth day. 

I disagree and so do most Christians that are scientists. I am not talking of that specific sector of religion that call themselves “Christian scientists”, I am talking of Christians who love Jesus and are scientists. There are those who myopically look at facts and fight for small aspects within science pointing out they prove the 6 day theory, but these are a fringe MINORITY.

 Now let’s look at bible facts since these are only ones you would acknowledge, and I tend to agree.

Oh, and by the way I DO believe in every word of Genesis and I HAVE investigated every sentence and find current science does not disagree with the words of Genesis if you keep open to Gods work being done in his way as he controls every aspect of creation.  

Okay, so now for that biblical question I want you to answer adequately.

 Take a look at Genesis 1 where it says

 “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”   27 So God created mankind in his own image,    in the image of God he created them;    male and female he created them.   28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”     29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.     31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. “ NIV

 Let’s be very sure this was the SIXTH day! 

Now, lets look at Genesis 1

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day. 

 Let’s agree vegetation occurs on the third day!

 Now lets look at Genesis 2

This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the LORD God made the earth and the heavens.  5 Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground, 6 but streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. 7 Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.   8 Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed.

 Here it says man is formed before vegetation!  

That is the THIRD day my friend Mr Mac Arthur. 

Now you say take everything literally. Take that literally and explain to me why the bible contradicts its self? 

I don't think it does!

Here is my argument! DNA was established before plants and in God’s great wisdom he already preplanned mans DNA before he even created vegetation! He FORMED man then and the final creation occurs on the SIXTH day (which IS the word YOM that you mentioned) 

YOM can mean more than just DAY as many scholars have agreed and yet you made out there is only one meaning!

 Why be so sure of a fact of which you yourself said we could not be sure, since it occurred so long ago. 

You are splitting our Christian world and to many of us who love Jesus and science, you are calling us liars. 

No wonder non-Christians point to Christians and laugh at us pointing out we are out dated and simple minded.  In many cases they are right!

 If we had just a bit more love for each other, if we are willing to compare facts to our bible a little more, we could find that the two are in heavy alignment and there is no need to be so negative to others.

 I don’t mind if people think of creation as 6 days or 4,3bn (not the 6bn you said) years old.
 
All I want is,  that we give people who love God the ability to do that in a loving church environment and give them the free will to make up their own minds. Jesus did that didn’t he?


 That said, I couldn’t just let you put out those half truths since they are very biased (not you usual style) and can hurt people.

 I hope today those that read this will be a little more loving to others that may not agree with them.

 Have a great day!

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means. --George Bernard Shaw

I have lots of people around me saying God doesn’t exist and science is proving it!

 

While this is not very important, it is rather insulting in the way that many people approach it! I don’t like insulting, or being insulted, so let’s see what we can do about this.

 

Many people say God is a man made construction put together by weak people to help them comfort themselves.

 

Let’s investigate this as well!

 

Firstly, before we start, let us throw out the concept that science disproves God! It’s such a weak and poor argument today. Mainly people who live in the past, or don’t follow mainstream science believe that this is true!

 

To get it straight, every true and honest scientist has to admit it is possible, but not provable, that God exists!

To say anything else raises science to the level of a religion and starts to express scientific statements as faith statements! Good scientists don’t do this! It’s good that the world is full of good scientists!

 

If I say, “Evolution disproves God” or even “Evolution proves God”, I have made a faith statement, not a scientific statement, right?  True scientists should not be doing that!

 

Science over the last few years has proved more concepts that support God existing, than to disprove these concepts!

 

We know that not everyone knows about these advances, so let’s start by taking a brief look at a few areas where these changes have occurred before we dive into details.

 

Up to a few years ago, scientists of the past could point to the fact that there was no beginning to time. Since the Bible says the universe started at a point in time, many scientists of that day openly mocked the sacred texts.

 

This bible bashing binge got to be quite popular with the media of the day who enjoyed the upset it caused. (It sold more newspapers!)

Then along came sophisticated telescopes, and suddenly the scientists themselves discovered the universe was expanding out from the point from which it began.

 

Wow! This was a bit of a setback since the scientists were smart enough to be able to figure out that if you go backwards in time, it means that everything comes together at a single point in space and time.

 

Then, the calculations showed that if this was the case, then the weight of all that matter would compress in on itself to the extent that it would simply disappear into a single point in space.

Black holes are about the closest we can come to this type of thinking. Normal rules of time and space change at this point. Today the currently accepted view is that everything we know as time, space and matter comes out of this single pinhole of nothing that created space.
 
Science says there was a beginning and that it had to come from outside our known universe!

 

This is a scientific viewpoint, not a religious one! Science states we come from “nothing” in the known universe!

 

One of the first writings in the bible says exactly this! For years people mocked the people for saying the universe had a beginning. Now scientists have proved that! By the way, that sacred writing was written about three and a half thousand years (give or take a few hundred) before the scientists discovered it was true.

 

Interesting! I think it would be good to quote a respected scientist.
 

 

They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do
 evil.”

 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?

1 Peter 3:11-13 [NIV]

  Today I want to deconstruct what Paul said in Athens in the first century as recorded in Acts 17.

 He was totally upset when he talked to the Athenian people it says he was “greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols.”

 So what does he do? He starts with God's people “So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks” Obviously they were not good enough to clear this problem so he then goes to discuss it with others “in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there”.

 There were two main groups there, believers in supernatural, Stoics, and believers in pleasure who didn’t believe in the supernatural. These were the Epicurians.

 These guys set him up to fail when they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus. (That’s similar to how Socrates ended up getting killed years earlier).  

 So what does he do? Paul looks for point of agreement with them and once he connects he puts things into their perspective.

He aligns it with their beliefs by quoting these Greek beliefs to give clarity
 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.
From the Cretan philosopher Epimenides

 As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
From the Cilician Stoic philosopher Aratus

 Paul, speaking of God, us quoting the fifth line of Aratus's Phaenomena
“Everywhere everyone is indebted to Zeus.
For we are indeed his offspring... (Phaenomena 1-5).”

 IN SO DOING HE IS ALIGNING GOD WITH ZEUS !

 

Would Christians today consider this heresy?

 Paul makes his point succinctly

 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.

 He then aligns his message  to Jesus

 

For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

 

What is the response?

 some of them sneered [REJECTION]
others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” [INTEREST]
Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. [acceptance]

 That’s how people respond to messages they don’t want to hear. God gave us free will and we use it. Let’s not get upset if people don’t agree. It’s their God given right!

 I will illustrate how we should come across to others this with a short discussion on the purpose of pain. I call it the pain and healing trap. It goes like this :

 

“If you pray God will heal you”

 James 5:13 is the verse quoted
 “Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”

 This makes me totally upset!

 My Heart hurts since we too easily lead searching people into thinking God is a push button God that we can  push with prayer when we want to avoid pain for ourselves and others!

 The set up the atheists and others do is this :

 If God is real then person X would have been healed by prayer !

 In so doing the trap is
·         Evil tries to get us to respond far to easily
·         Simplistically we response

 For example we may answer to quickly and simplistically with

 ·         Matthew 7:7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. [This is often misquoted to deal with illness and healing instead of salvation]

 ·         Matthew 17:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” This is a discussion on Faith not healing!

  ·         Mark 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours..” Hmmm What if I ask for Satan to rule the world? We need to be careful of being too literal I think, don't you?

 ·         Matthew 18:19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.  (Same prayer for Satan…..by two people?) Maybe there are other preconditions as well that are not mentioned here? How about
o        righteousness
o        alignment with God's purpose
o        etc?

 ·         James 5:15 And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up.”
o        Raise him up? (Greek meaning! Original Word: ἐγείρω
means I wake, arouse, raise up) 2 ways that occurs right? Getting well, or dying and going to heaven rigfht! Does it discuss when this will occur either? NO!

 

Lets look at agreement points that connected establish reality on this subject aligning our beliefs.

 

Let’s not fail to know the overall facts of our bible

!

 

• PAIN is central to Christians lives :       Rom 8:18 “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

  

• Physical pain is not always cleared by asking God : 2 Cor 12:7 Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”. It obviously hurt and he wanted it removed. Paul prayed and asked it be removed. It was not removed! This shows there is no evil in asking but we must be ready to accept the answer – like Paul did!

   

• True response to pain is revealed in Isaiah 50 which says :
  • The Lord and King has taught me what to say.
  •       He has taught me how to help those who are tired.
  •    He wakes me up every morning.
  •       He makes me want to listen like a good student.
  •    The Lord and King has unplugged my ears.
  •       I've always obeyed him.
  •       I haven't turned away from him.
  •    I let my enemies beat me on my bare back.
  •       I let them pull the hair out of my beard. We know of the cross
  • I didn't turn my face away       when they made fun of me and spit on me.
  •    The Lord and King helps me.
  •       He won't let me be dishonored.
  •    So I've made up my mind to keep on serving him.
  •       I know he won't let me be put to shame.
  •    He is near. He will prove I haven't done anything wrong.

 

• Great men of God died of illness. Most of us know Elisha was a very powerful man of God but it says  2 ki 13:14 “Now Elisha was suffering from the illness from which he died. Jehoash king of Israel went down to see him and wept over him. Even after death Elisha's body was powerfully used by God : 2 Kings 13:21, Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.

  

• God sometimes makes people ill : 2 sam 12:5. David had an affair and got Bathsheba pregnant. A prophet comes to him and the bible records “After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill.” David’s baby died of the illness! We must no try and put God in a box. He is God! We may not like the fact he can do anything, but we have to respect that fact! We know God loved David dearly so somehow in his eternal will, this was right for David and the baby!

  

• Jesus healed to show he was God : Matt 4:24 

   

• We are told to pray for healing : James 5:13  Raise him up? Remember the two meaning to that word :Healthy again, and Heavens healing!

  Now my personal experiences of healing and lack there of…

 

• Prayer for back pain : not healed conclusively!
• Prayer for coeliac disease : not healable even today but I was healed miraculously by prayer and laying on of hands. Like happened in the old testament times. So it does happen today as well!
• Prayer for my father who was dying of mad cow disease : God took him to heaven!

 What can we learn from this?

 God uses pain to mould us into his character. We are important to God and he moulds us into perfect communicators but it sometimes is a painful process.

 We are a work in progress let’s thank God he is making us into better communicators every day.

   1 Peter 3:11-13

 11 They must turn from evil and do good;
they must seek peace and pursue it.
12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous
and his ears are attentive to their prayer,
but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

 13 Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good?