![]() Psalm 119:73 “Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments.” Genes carry the biological information to make specific living things. Evolution says that simpler living things evolved first, and more complex life evolved later. This would lead us to believe that more complex living things would have developed more genes. The creation approach suggests that each creature was designed with the genetic material necessary for its survival in its intended environment. As a result, the genetic complexity of living things would be related to the way it lives, not to its place in a supposed evolutionary hierarchy. Evolutionary scientists today are puzzled with the publication of the completed genome of the common fruit fly. The fruit fly has a nervous system, complex body plan and even an immune system and is the first animal to have its genome mapped. The puzzle arises with the discovery that the fruit fly has between 13,000 and 14,000 genes. The lowly roundworm, said by evolution to be among the first land creatures, should be genetically simple-yet, it has over 18,000 genes. The genetic differences between the worm and the fly speak of design. The sightless worm relies on smell to make its living, so it has about 1,000 genes involved in its olfactory system. The sighted fly relies much less on smell and has less than 100 genes for detecting scents. This simply illustrates that truly scientific findings will never contradict the Bible by supporting evolution. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/fly-genome-puzzles-evolutionary-scientists-3/ ![]() After a transgender “woman,” won a world-championship cycling race for women, the third-place winner, a real woman, complained that it isn’t fair. The forum was the 2018 Masters Track Cycling World Championship in Los Angeles, and the event was the women’s 35-39 bracket. The winner, Rachel McKinnon, “identifies” as a woman but is a biological male (“Biological Male Wins World Championship Event,” Daily Signal, Oct. 14, 2018). Third place winner, Jennifer Wagner, tweeted, “It’s definitely NOT fair” (her emphasis). Four days later, Wagner apologized to McKinnon, saying “I apologize for not properly congratulating you on race day. I hope you accept it a few days later.” But far from accepting the apology, McKinnon wrote, “This is why the apology is not accepted: she still thinks what she said.” So McKinnon doesn’t merely want the “right” to be whatever sex he wants to be, he wants to control the thinking of those who disagree with him. Seeking to end all debate on the subject, he labels all critics of his lifestyle “transphobic bigots.” This is the fruit of the unisex movement of the 1960s, and it is absolute confusion. Intimately associated with unisexuality are feminism and gay rights. This generation can rail against “nature” and do its best to change it, but it won’t work. God’s Word is true, even if the whole world disbelieves it. “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). That is both the first word on the subject, and the final word. (Friday Church News Notes, October 26, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Genesis 2:1-2 “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.” One of the most important reasons given by biblical creationists, such as myself, as to why we accept the creation week as six literal days of creation, is that the word yom – Hebrew for day – always means a regular 24-hour day when accompanied by a number. But there are some who raise an objection to this, stating that the word day is accompanied by a number in Hosea 6, but refers to an inexact period of time. The verse in question is Hosea 6:2. “After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.” The argument is put that this phrase is not exact because we do not know whether it refers to two days or three. This is an unusual construction in Hebrew, but it occurs elsewhere. For example, in Proverbs 6:16-17, we are told: “These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him.” In English, we similarly use exact numbers to mean something inexact. We might have referred to two or three days, six or seven things, and so on. Clearly, “six or seven” means more than “two or three”. Although these phrases are inexact in total, they only make sense because the portion referring to the day or the object must be exact. Two days is exact, three days is exact, two or three days inexact. So the rule that a day is always a 24-hour day when accompanied by a number still holds, and the creation week must be six literal days. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/exact-and-inexact-numbers/ ![]() “The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that an unborn baby is a ‘person’ under the law, and, consequently, the death of that person can be punished with execution. Further, in a special concurrence, Justice Tom Parker called on the U.S. Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that created a ‘right’ to abortion. ‘I write specially to expound upon the principles presented in the main opinion and to note the continued legal anomaly and logical fallacy that is Roe v. Wade,’ he said. ‘I urge the United States Supreme Court to overrule this increasingly isolated exception to the rights of unborn children.’ Parker affirmed the Alabama court’s rationale that ‘unborn children are persons entitled to the full and equal protection of the law.’ He asserted Roe v. Wade is ‘without historical or constitutional support, carved out an exception to the rights of unborn children and prohibited states from recognizing an unborn child’s inalienable right to life when that right conflicts with a woman’s ‘right’ to abortion.’ ‘This judicially created exception of Roe is an aberration to the natural law and common law of the states,’ Parker said. In August, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down an Alabama law banning the gruesome, second-trimester abortion procedure in which limbs are removed from a baby’s body in the womb. At the time, Chief Judge Ed Carnes lamented in his opinion that he was bound by U.S. Supreme Court precedent to rule against the state, writing that ‘dismemberment’ is the best description of the procedure, which clinically is known as dilation and extraction. ‘In our judicial system, there is only one Supreme Court, and we are not it,’ he wrote, calling the high court’s history of abortion rulings an ‘aberration’ of constitutional law. ‘There is a growing chorus of voices urging the Supreme Court to overrule its abortion decisions,’ said Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver. ‘The Supreme Court has created a constitutional aberration and caused incalculable harm by its abortion decisions. We applaud Justice Tom Parker in calling on the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision and once again protect precious children, women, and families. Abortion is simply a euphemism created by activists to soften what it really is: the murder of innocent unborn children. “We must stop this human genocide. We must demand that the Supreme Court undo the horrendous ruling and make the womb a safe place again in America. As we hear about the horrible descriptions of the dismemberment of Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi, every breathing person naturally shudders. Yet, every day in America, helpless, preborn children are dismembered while they are still alive. We too must shudder at this horrible act and stop it.’” “State Supreme Court: Roe v. Wade ‘patently illogical,’” WorldNetDaily, Oct. 19, 2018 ![]() Genesis 1:8 “And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.” We take the sky for granted. It is just there. Yet, whether it is covered with cloud, or clear, we do not consider the fact that, during the daytime, all of the sky is somewhat light. In particular, on a clear day, the sky appears blue. The blueness itself is remarkable, given that the sun is yellow, but why is the sky any color at all? Having seen photographs from the Moon, taken by the Apollo Astronauts, we know that even when the sun is out, the rest of the sky is black. Sunlight comes from the Sun, so the blueness of the sky on Earth must be because of light coming from elsewhere. Of course, all the light is from the Sun originally. But that light has been scattered. So there is scattered light coming at us from many different directions when we look at the sky. The reason for this scattering of light is a phenomenon known as Raleigh scattering – named for British physicist Lord Raleigh. Sunlight is scattered by molecules and particles in the atmosphere. It turns out that the mix of molecules and particles that we have in Earth’s atmosphere scatters light more strongly at shorter wavelengths than at longer wavelengths. Of the colors of visible light, blue has a shorter wavelength than red. So it appears to us that blue light is coming to us from all directions of the sky because that light has been scattered. When we learn the mechanism for something, it should not spoil our wonder at it but should cause us all the more to praise our Creator. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/blue-sky-thinking/ ![]() Canada has become the second country to fully legalize recreational marijuana, after Uruguay. In Newfoundland, Canada’s easternmost province, marijuana shops opened at midnight on October 17 to serve queues of customers. Like the legalization of “same-sex marriage,” the legalization of marijuana is a reflection of a dramatic change in the moral and spiritual condition of a nation. Since 2012, ten states in the United States have legalized recreational marijuana and others have decriminalized the possession of small amounts of the drug. Proponents of recreational marijuana use typically ignore proven dangers such as addiction, psychosis, marijuana as a gate-way drug, long-term effects on learning, cognition, and personality, “amotivational syndrome” (lethargy and loss of interest in achievement), bronchitis and respiratory infections, and increased risk of cardiovascular disease. Earlier this year it was announced that a major new scientific study by Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, found that marijuana use is independently associated with a 26 percent increased risk of stroke and a 10 percent increase in heart failure (“Pot Smoking,” Newsmax, Mar. 16, 2018). Since the legalization of marijuana in Colorado in 2012, the number of drivers who tested positive for marijuana use jumped 145 percent (‘Traffic fatalities linked to marijuana,’ Denver Post, Aug. 25, 2017). Teen drug use in Colorado is the highest in the nation. Fatal, drug-related automobile accidents have skyrocketed (“The sad anniversary of Big Commercial Pot in Colorado,’ The Gazette, Nov. 21, 2017). We are convinced that the legalization of recreational marijuana is a foolish experiment that will have serious repercussions. The fact that marijuana use in modern culture can be traced to the lascivious world of jazz, blues, and rock & roll is warning enough for those who have ears to hear. I know this all too well, having been a drug user before I was saved, beginning with my time in Vietnam in the Army in 1970-71. After I was discharged, I was immersed in the hippy drug culture, joining many of my generation on the Beatles’ very stupid Magical Mystery Tour. Alcohol is a powerful drug, but marijuana changed my thinking more than alcohol. It is a psychoactive drug with hallucinogenic properties. It is not an innocent thing. It can mess with the depths of a man’s soul. Not everyone has bad experiences with the drug, but a lot do. It affects people differently, but depression, intense anxiety, and paranoia are common side effects, and acute psychosis is not infrequent. It was definitely a “gateway” drug for me and for a lot of my friends. And the marijuana of today is vastly more powerful than the marijuana of the 1960s and 1970s, typically containing 15-20% THC (the psychoactive ingredient), and going as high as 37%, compared to 3 and 4 percent in the past. In 2013, the American Medical Association recommended against legalization, warning that “cannabis is a dangerous drug and as such is a public health concern. Heavy cannabis use in adolescence causes persistent impairments in neuro-cognitive performance and IQ, and use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood, and psychotic-thought disorders” (Ruth Marcus, “The perils of legalized pot,” The Washington Post, Jan. 2, 2014). Sir Robin Murray, a psychiatrist at King’s College in London, says, “Even I, 20 years ago, used to tell patients that cannabis is safe. It’s only after you see all the patients that go psychotic that you realize—it’s not so safe” (cited from Linda Nathan, The Cross and the Marijuana Leaf, available from LighthouseTrails.com). The rush to legalize marijuana is driven by the lascivious pop culture, the entertainment industry, an educational system devoted to moral relativism, a society that celebrates unrestrained self-expression, and the gross lack of wisdom typically reflected in mainstream media reporting. God’s command that His people be “sober” is repeated 12 times in the New Testament Epistles. It means to be in control of one’s mind and spirit so that nothing but God is in charge. “Sober” is the opposite of being under the influence of alcohol or drugs or anything else. One can be drunk on music, fashion, video games, professional sports, or anything that has captured the heart. “Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober” (1 Thessalonians 5:6). “But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer” (1 Peter 4:7). “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Because of the speed with which so many fundamental Baptist churches are spiraling toward a contemporary stance that is accompanied by a “don’t judge, let people live as they please” philosophy, I predict that it won’t be long before some accept the use of alcohol and marijuana. (Friday Church News Notes, October 26, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Genesis 2:4 “These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens,” Genesis appears to have been compiled, or edited, by Moses – under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – from inspired documents or family records attributed to various patriarchs in Genesis. For example, in Genesis 5:1, we read the beginning of the section ascribed to Adam, which continues until Genesis 6:8. Jonathan Sarfati has suggested that these account introductions could justifiably be read as “What followed from Adam”, etc. The first time the phrase, referring to “generations”, appears is in Genesis 2:4. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Unlike the other toledots, this one does not name a person as being responsible for it. But it is giving an account of what followed from the creation of the heavens and the earth. There are those who think that Genesis 2 gives a different creation account from that in Genesis 1. It does not. What we do see, however, from Genesis 2:4 onwards, is the creation from the perspective of the people living in it – the Garden in which God placed them, the temptation and their sin, and the subsequent multiplication of sin in chapter 4. Genesis 1, on the other hand, is not part of a toledot. That is because it follows from nothing. It is God’s record, given directly to us, of creation from nothing, and therefore following from nothing other than the creative mind of God. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/the-generations-of-the-heavens-and-the-earth/ ![]() Christof Koch, chief scientist and president of the Allen Institute for Brian Science, says, “The brain is by far the most complex piece of highly excitable matter in the known universe by any measure. We don’t even understand the brain of a worm” (The New York Times, Oct. 15, 2018, p. A3). The information in the brain equals that contained in 20 million separate books (George Cahill, Science Digest, Vol. 89, issue 3, 1981, p. 105). It has about 200 billion nerve cells with hundreds of trillions of connections called synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor “with both memory-storage and information-processing elements” (Cornelius Hunter, “More Switches Than the Internet,” Darwin’s God, Nov. 17, 2010). One synapse may contain 1,000 switches. In the cerebral cortex alone there are 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars would fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies. “The brain’s total number of connections rivals the stars of the universe in number, yet the connections follow an orderly plan” (Alan Gillen, Body by Design, p. 87). There are 100 billion glia cells which provide the biological “batteries” for brain activity (The Revelation of God and Nature). The brain receives signals from 137 million light receptors in the eyes, 100,000 hearing receptors in the ears, 10,000 taste buds, 5-6 million odor detecting cells, 30,000 heat sensors on the skin, 250,000 cold sensors, and 500,000 touch sensors (adapted from Bert Thompson, The Revelation of God and Nature). The hearing receptors alone send up to 25,000 auditory signals per second to the brain, which interprets them as voices, thunder, music, or a million other sounds (Jackson, The Human Body). The brain receives 20% of all of the blood pumped from the heart. The brain produces over 50 different complex drugs needed to control our body, emotions, and thoughts. For example, endorphin, the brain’s pain-killer, is three times more potent than morphine (A Closer Look at the Evidence). (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Genesis 5:1a “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” One of the problems that some people have with the book of Genesis is its authorship. The fact that Genesis is ascribed to Moses is well known. Nor is this merely tradition. Jesus, Himself, referred to the first five books of the Bible as being written by Moses. Yet, all the events contained in Genesis pre-date Moses – in some cases, by over a thousand years. Many explanations have been given to reconcile this problem. Some have suggested that the entire book could have been given to Moses by revelation, directly from God. Now, God is Sovereign and could certainly have given Genesis by this method. However, most scholars prefer the idea that Genesis is structured into units, called toledots, and that Moses was able to edit these into the finished inspired document. The Hebrew word toledot is found in phrases such as Genesis 5:1. “This is the book of the generations of Adam”, where the word “generations” is used to translate the Hebrew toledot. This phrase is used to separate what are probably the original family documents. It is likely that the phrase introduces the section compiled by the named person, though I should mention that some think the phrase actually concludes, or signs off, the section compiled by the named individual. Personally, I think the idea of the toledot as a heading is more likely, particularly when one looks at the toledot of Ishmael in Genesis 25. Either way, this toledot model neatly explains how Genesis can be at once inspired, contemporary, and part of the books of Moses. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/the-generations-in-genesis/ ![]() Duckduckgo.com is a good alternative to Google, and duckduckgo doesn’t track you and isn’t designed to take control of your life. The following is excerpted from “Google Admits They’re Moving towards Censorship,” Breitbart.com, Oct. 12, 2018: “In an interview with One America News Network host Jack Posobiec, Breitbart News Senior Tech reporter Allum Bokhari discussed the recent exclusive Breitbart leak of an 85-page internal Google document which states that the idea of free speech is a ‘utopian dream’ that is no longer possible, and outlines the growing crackdown of speech on social media. ‘Google said the document is just research and it doesn’t reflect company policy,’ said Bokhari. ‘That doesn’t make sense to me as an explanation because the briefing is a description of company policy, it says this is where things are going, this is the direction of travel, this is where things are moving, this is where we need to move if we want to accomplish certain things. The three top things that the briefing reveals, one: they admit they are shifting towards censorship and Silicon Valley as a whole is shifting towards censorship. Two: they admit that they, Twitter and Facebook now control the majority of online conversation and three: they make the business case for censorship. They say you need to censor in order to protect advertisers from controversy and you need to censor in order to maintain global expansion.’” (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Job 38:22 “Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,” As I write this particular Creation Moment, the weather in Washington state is very wintry. The falling snow has been a constant source of conversation. Are the roads going to be clear, or will they be dangerous for driving? Will outdoor faucets freeze, and what can we do to protect them? And are the schools closing today? Coupled with these conversations will be the usual comment that no two snowflakes are the same shape. Now, we cannot prove that this common assertion is true. Snowflakes frequently, though not always, grow in a hexagonal manner, and this is because of the hexagonal arrangement of water molecules in an ice crystal. But the great variation seen in snowflakes cannot be proved beyond doubt to be unique. Even if it is not unique, however, the chances of finding two identical snowflakes in any given fall of snow seems to be very remote, so uniqueness of design, while not absolute, is certainly sufficient to give pause for thought. Snowflakes are formed when tiny water droplets form crystals around particles of dust. The actual shape of the snowflake seems to depend on weather conditions, such as temperature and humidity. If the air is fairly humid, and above -40ºC (-40ºF), then the snowflake formation is at its best, as far as the attractiveness and variety of design is concerned. Whether or not snowflakes are unique, they certainly give us good reason to stop and consider the greatness of God, who has made everything so well. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/snowflakes/ ![]() On October 11, the Christian rock group MercyMe visited the White House to participate in President Trump’s signing of the Music Modernization Act. I found it interesting that the members of the group wore traditional suits and ties for the White House, whereas they typically dress casually for God’s House, in t-shirts, untucked shirts, jeans, cargo pants, tennis shoes, and such. I am not saying that proper church clothing is a western suit and tie; I am saying that if there is any occasion on earth for which we should “dress up” according to the standards of our particular culture, it would be the formal assembly of God’s people in the house of the living God, 1 Timothy 3:15. Why dress up in church? To honor God! Though American society has become casual and “sloppy” to the extreme in my lifetime (when I was born, people still wore suits and ties and modest dresses to ball games), Americans still know what it means to “dress up” in an honorable way. They dress up for formal weddings, meals at classy restaurants, and other occasions. The New York Philharmonic Orchestra still forbids pants on female players, and most people consider a formal concert by a major orchestra to be a special event and tend to dress up for the occasion. The West Wing White House tour “has a business casual dress code (no shorts, jeans, t-shirts, open toed shoes, etc.),” and when meeting with the president, “Men should wear a suit with a clean, fresh pressed shirt or khakis and a button down, also clean and pressed; guys, make sure your shoes are shined.” The same goes for an audience with the pope: “modest dress covering the shoulders and the décolleté (cleavage), falling below the knee; men dark suit coat and solid tie.” The contemporary crowd can laugh if they please, but I agree with the following: “Style is the meaning. The music, dress, and trendy look of the contemporary Independent Baptists tell us less about their view of style and so much more about their view of God. The same can be said for most events. The way we dress tells more about the way we view the event than it does about the way we view style” (Dave Mallinak, “Gone Contemporary”). (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Luke 24:27 “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." In a previous Creation Moment, we discussed how some modern theistic evolutionists, such as those represented on the BioLogos website, maintain that Genesis would have been understood by its original readers as being an allegory of the expulsion of Israel from the Promised Land, reflected in the expulsion of Adam from the Garden. This interpretation presupposes that the original readers of Genesis would have been exiled Jews living in Babylon. However, as biblical creationists, we deny this presupposition. Taking the view that Scripture is best interpreted by Scripture, we notice that Jesus had something important to say about Genesis. He believed Genesis was written by Moses. For example, after His resurrection, Jesus, speaking to those disciples on the road to Emmaus, said “Beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” So the original readers of the entire book of Genesis would have been contemporaries of Moses – long before the Exile. In fact, the original readers of portions of Genesis could have been even earlier. Many scholars suggest that Moses edited Genesis from a series of so-called Toledoths handed down. These are the sections in Genesis, beginning with the words “these are the generations of…” – in Hebrew, the Toledoth of Adam, Seth, etc. Genesis should not, therefore, be interpreted as a Babylonian myth, as the earliest readers predated even the Tower of Babel. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/original-readers-of-genesis-part-two/ ![]() “The UK’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of Northern Irish Christian bakers who declined to bake and decorate a cake with a pro-gay marriage message, with owners heralding the decision as a victory for free speech. Britain’s highest court ruled Wednesday morning that it was not discriminatory for Ashers Bakery, run by Daniel and Amy McArthur, to refuse to produce the cake with the slogan ‘Support Gay Marriage’ because it was the message of the case that they objected to, not the sexual orientation of the customer, the BBC reports. President of the Supreme Court Lady Hale said of the decision arrived at by the five justices that the McArthurs ‘would have refused to make such a cake for any customer, irrespective of their sexual orientation.’ ‘We are grateful to the judges and especially to God. We are particularly pleased the Supreme Court judges emphatically accepted what we’ve said all along. We did not turn down the order because of the person who made it but because of the message itself,’ Mr. McArthur said outside of London’s High Court following the ruling. ‘The judges gave a clear message today that couldn’t be clearer: family businesses like ours are free to focus on giving our customers the best service they can without being forced to promote their campaigns. This ruling protects freedom of speech and freedom of conscience for everyone,’ he added. The Christian Institute, which supported the couple, hailed the decision as ‘a landmark judgment for free speech.’ The case reflects that of a similar ruling in the United States in June where the country’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who declined to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his Christian beliefs on traditional marriage, with the justices ruling that to force or punish Jack Phillips for refusing to bake the cake contravened the first amendment which protects freedom of expression.” “Gay Marriage Cake,” Breitbart.com, Oct. 10, 2018 ![]() Evolutionists are rightly famous for their ability to spin mythological “just so” stories that explain their beliefs. (In 1902, Rudyard Kipling published Just So Stories for Little Children containing imaginative explanations for how animals got their attributes.) A new fossil on display at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta is an example. The fossilized Borealopelta, which is supposedly 110 million years old, is called “one of the most spectacular fossil finds of all time.” This is because it is preserved intact: skin, soft tissue, bones. It looks like a stuffed animal. It is a “heavy-set, low-slung, tank-like dinosaur” that weighed 1.5 tons and was 20 feet long (“A Dinosaur So Well Preserved,” The Atlantic, Aug. 3, 2017). The fossil was discovered in 2011 by a heavy-equipment operator working the Millennium Mine oil sand quarry in northern Alberta. After years of tedious work to extract the fossil from a 15,000-pound block that was removed from the mine, it recently went on display at the Royal Tyrrell, a museum with world-class fossils accompanied by world-class “just so” stories. Consider the explanation of how this creature was fossilized: “Somehow, this particular individual ended up at sea. Perhaps it got careless on a shoreline. Perhaps it drowned in a flood and was washed out to sea. Either way, gases started building up in its body, causing it to float belly-up. As those gases released, the dead dinosaur sank, and hit the ocean floor hard enough to leave a small crater. Before sharks had a chance to nibble it, or worms had a chance to bury into its bones, it was quickly smothered by fine sediment and sealed off from the outside world. There it remained for millions of years, until March 11, 2011, when an excavator bit into it” (Ibid.). This is an impossible explanation of the type of fossilization exhibited in the Borealopelta. Creatures don’t fossilize like this naturally. When a creature dies and sinks into the ocean, it is devoured by sea creatures, bacteria, and worms, long before it can be covered with sediment and sealed off. In fact, the fossilization exhibited in the Borealopelta is the result of an ultra-rapid, extraordinary event that happened in an ocean that once covered Alberta. That sounds exactly like the biblical flood, but evolutionary scientists would rather make up an unscientific story than give any credence to the Bible. One fine day, as prophesied in Scripture, the museums of this world will be filled with truth rather than lies. “For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). The myth of evolution and the scoffers who promote it unwittingly prove that the Bible is God’s Word, because they were prophesied in the Bible 2,000 years ago. “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:3-7). (Friday Church News Notes, October 19, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Genesis 3:23-24 “Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” One common tactic that is currently used by theistic evolutionists in their quest to marry Genesis with evolutionism is to ask “How did the original readers of Genesis understand the book?” The former Bishop of Durham, Dr. NT Wright, uses this question in a number of videos on the BioLogos website. In one, he suggests that early readers of Genesis, in captivity in Babylon, would have recognized the story of Adam as their story; that Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden would be recognized as Israel’s expulsion from the Promised Land. Deborah Haarsma, the President of BioLogos, adopts this approach as she analyzes the different approaches to interpreting Genesis. In her essay, entitled Comparing Interpretations of Genesis 1, she lists the biblical 6 x 24-hour day reading as merely an interpretation, alongside, for example, the Day-Age theory, whereas biblical creationists point to the fact that the six-day creation view is not an interpretation at all; just an acceptance of what God says. Haarsma, like Wright, favors the Ancient Near East mythology approach. She says “a combination of the Ancient Near East Cosmology, Kingdom and Covenant, and Creation Poem Interpretations come closest to what the original audience would have heard.” What we need to assert is that the BioLogos opinion is based on the belief that the original readers of Genesis were the Jews in Exile. But this is not the case. The original readers of portions of Genesis would have been contemporaries of the patriarchs, and close to the events being truthfully described. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/original-readers-of-genesis-part-one/ ![]() Psalm 119:160 “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever.” I always find it a little depressing when I read about Christians who claim that they started by believing the truth of the Bible and then were persuaded otherwise by the evidence. A few years ago, an entire book of such testimonies was published under the title How I Changed My Mind about Evolution. One chapter that caught my eye was entitled Learning to Praise God for His Work in Evolution, by Dr. Deborah Haarsma, President of BioLogos. She relates how she grew up as a creationist. Everyone at church and at home thought that the earth was young and evolution never happened. This view wasn’t presented in a dogmatic way, but what other Christian view could there be? That second sentence says it all. The adjective dogmatic tends to be used in a pejorative manner these days, but its root, dogma, simply refers to teaching. So biblical teaching was not strongly emphasized in Dr. Haarsma’s childhood. Later in the chapter, she comments: After reading what Christian biologists had to say, I realized that the evidence for evolution was as strong as the evidence for an old earth. In my own spiritual journey, I found the evidence for evolution and for an old earth to be equally weak. But, as we have discussed many times, the evidence is not the issue. In fact, evidence can be used to say anything that you want it to say because evidence is always interpreted according to your worldview. What actually matters, then, is what God actually says that He did, in His word, not what opinions misguided Christians, however intelligent, might fondly hold to. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/praise-god-for-evolution/ ![]() From 2011 to 2017, at least 259 people died while taking selfies, and those are only the ones reported in English-language news reports. This is the finding of a comprehensive investigation by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The average age was 23 years, and 72.5% were men. Most of the deaths were the result of drowning (70), falls (48), fire (48), and vehicles (51). The Bible prophesied the selfie generation 2,000 years ago. “This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves...” (2 Timothy 3:1-2). (By the way, a photo of two people is not a selfie; perhaps it is an we-sie.) (Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2018, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Romans 5:17 “For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” It was in late 1986 that I traveled to Leeds, in Yorkshire, England, to listen to a lecture by legendary evangelical preacher John Stott. That cold, wet, and windy November evening made for dangerous driving over the Pennine hills from Stalybridge, but my friends and I – all members of Mottram Congregational Church – were looking forward to warm fellowship and, we hoped, sound exposition. In his lecture, he commented that it was essential for Christians to believe that there had been a real, historical man called Adam; otherwise, passages such as Romans 5 or 1 Corinthians 15 did not make sense. Now, I had one reservation about the great Dr. Stott, many of whose books I had read and enjoyed, because I had heard that he believed in the theory of evolution. So, when he had finished, I had the privilege of asking the first question. I asked how he could believe in Adam and in evolution. He replied that Adam must have been the first evolved ape, that God had breathed into him, and, therefore, “he became a kind of homo divinus”. This was probably the first occasion that the phrase was used, but I have heard it many times since from many evangelical preachers. With the greatest of respect to the great man, the idea of Adam as the first evolved ape will not do because the whole point of Romans 5 is that before Adam, there was no death of any sort in the world – not even the death of apes. We must believe not just in Adam but that he was exactly as the Bible states. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/homo-divinus/ ![]() Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed as a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 6 and was sworn in that evening. During the Senate confirmation, allegations were made that he committed improprieties many decades ago as a high school student, but the allegations were not substantiated and were contradicted by multiple testimonies. The following is excerpted from “Planned Parenthood Admits,” Oct. 5, 2018, LifeNews.com: “While much of the Kavanaugh opposition centered on unproven and unsubstantiated claims that Kavanaugh had engaged in misconduct decades ago, despite witnesses saying otherwise, Planned Parenthood executive vice president Dawn Laguens admitted it was about abortion ‘from the start. Immediately after Kavanaugh was nominated, pro-abortion groups came out against him--saying he would be the 5th voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and its allowance for virtually unlimited abortions throughout pregnancy. Now, the top abortion chain official is admitted what everyone has said for weeks--this character assassination campaign is really just about abortion: ‘Kavanaugh’s anti-abortion judicial record disqualified him from sitting on the Supreme Court from the start. We knew that Trump nominated him because Kavanaugh will cast the fifth and deciding vote to gut Roe v. Wade,’ Laguens admitted. During the first day of questioning, Judge Brett Kavanaugh refused to say that there is a so-called right to abortion. He declined to take the bait from pro-abortion Senator Dianne Feinstein who wanted to get him to commit to upholding Roe v Wade once he is confirmed to the Supreme Court. Also during the hearings, a new document was released showing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is possibly open to overturning the infamous Roe v Wade decision that allows virtually unlimited abortions up to birth.” (Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2018, www.wayoflife.org, [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Genesis 1:27 “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” What would it have been like walking with Lucy? Of course, I am not just referring to any girl called Lucy. I am referring to the iconic Lucy, whose fossilized skeletal remains are on show in London’s Natural History Museum, with replicas in many other museums around the world. Lucy, who is officially known as AL288-1, was found at Hadar, Ethiopia, in 1974. The bones would appear to be those of an adult creature that would stand about 3 feet 6 inches, if she could stand up straight. The famous bones, as well as all its replicas, are mounted in a particular way. Dr. Vij Sodera, who is a medical doctor, describes it thus: Curiously, the bones are always mounted in such a way as to give the impression of a creature looking much like a human being. However, this presentation is extremely deceptive since, apart from the shape of the pelvis, knee, and ankle joints, the bodily proportions are distinctly ape-like. Dr. Sodera has a lot of expert analysis of this figure in his book. We will comment on only one aspect – the creature’s feet. The reproduction traditionally displayed next to Lucy’s skeleton shows human-like feet. However, AL288-1 clearly had prehensile feet with a thumb-like big toe – in much the same way as does the orangutan, gorilla, and chimpanzee. Despite being represented as a humanoid ape, it is clear that Lucy was, in fact, fully ape and almost certainly spent a good deal of her time walking on her knuckles, like other apes. Genesis explains that humans are not evolved apes but separately created by God. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/walking-with-lucy/ ![]() A letter written by Albert Einstein in 1955 about his view of God is to be auctioned by Christie’s in New York in December and is expected to fetch $1 million to $1.5 million. In the letter to philosopher Erik Gutkind, Einstein said, “The word ‘God’ is for me nothing but the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of venerable but still rather primitive legends.” Einstein had a brilliant mind, but there is no evidence that he gave attention to studying the Bible for himself, so he had no proper basis on which to reject it as God’s Word. His “faith” that the Bible is a mythical book was blind faith, and he gambled his eternal soul on that faith. By his own testimony, he rejected Jesus as Lord and Saviour and died in his sins. His mind was open to the universe but closed to the God of the universe. The prophecy of 2 Peter 3 describes end-time scoffers who deny supernatural creation and the Bible’s teachings, such as the global flood. They are “willingly ignorant.” They scoff at the righteous God because they “walk after their own lusts” and reject His holy laws. Psalm 2 describes the same end-time rebellion. The high and mighty of the nations will “imagine a vain thing,” which is to cast away God’s law. It’s vain because it is impossible to successfully rebel against God’s authority. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27). “God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). (Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2018, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Joshua 4:21-22 “And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.” It is generally assumed by schoolteachers and the media that fossilization is a painfully slow process. In fact, there are many contemporary evolutionists who know that fossilization can be much more rapid, but the popular timescale suggests that the process requires millions of years. Yet, it defies logic to suppose that a large fossil could be stuck out of the ground for millions of years without rotting, while it gets slowly covered in sediment. If a large fossil is enclosed in a layer, then it is likely that the whole layer was formed rapidly; otherwise, the bones would have rotted away before any per-mineralization could take place. In the Mount St Helens Creation Center, we have a petrified teddy bear which was given to the Center. It came from Mother Shipton’s Well in Yorkshire, England. At this well-known mineralization cave, objects like teddy bears, hats, and ties are hung on threads, so that the calcite-rich cave water can drip on to them. A typical teddy bear takes six months to turn to stone in these conditions. Careful researcher, Dr. Vij Sodera, has catalogued many examples of rapid fossilization in his wonderful book, One Small Speck. In just half a dozen pages, we see fossils of exoskeletons, shed by arthropods, a human footprint, fossilized in the year 2000, and a tree trunk, whose rings show it was fossilized in less than 2,400 years. Dr. Sodera shows that such rapid fossilization is the norm, not the exception, and that the process is, therefore, a considerable problem for evolutionists, but not for those who understand the rapid burial of organisms that happened in the Flood. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/fossils-can-be-quick/ ![]() Tristan Harris spent three years with Google before founding Time Well Spent, a non-profit initiative that, among other things, aims to catalyze a change among technology companies through “policy recommendations to protect minds from nefarious manipulation.” Following is an excerpt from “How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds--from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist,” May 19, 2016, tristanharris.com: “I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked. When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want to show you where it might do the opposite. Where does technology exploit our mind’s weaknesses? I learned to think this way when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano. And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention. If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine. The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices? How often do you check your email per day? One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards. If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable. Does this effect really work on people? Yes. Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parks combined. Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get ‘problematically involved’ with slot machines 3-4x faster according to NYU professor Natasha Dow Shull, author of Addiction by Design. But here’s the unfortunate truth--several billion people have a slot machine in their pocket: When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machine to see what notifications we got: When we pull to refresh our email, we’re playing a slot machine to see what new email we got. When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’re playing a slot machine to see what photo comes next. When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we’re playing a slot machine to see if we got a match. When we tap the # of red notifications, we’re playing a slot machine to what’s underneath.” (Friday Church News Notes, October 12, 2018, www.wayoflife.org [email protected], 866-295-4143) ![]() Joshua 4:21-22 “And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? Then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land.” Fossils do not give us the lessons that many people suppose they will. It is commonly supposed that fossils provide frozen evidence of evolution. To the uninitiated, it is strongly implied that evolutionary bitwise changes can be seen captured in the fossil record, like a series of snapshots. Closer inspection, however, shows that this idea is a myth. There is no doubt that the vast majority of fossils found are marine invertebrates. Yet even these, in practice, show no signs of change. I was recently given a large collection of seashells and fossils, out of which I am making a display. Many of the fossils correspond exactly with modern seashells. In other words, the fossil record does not provide evidence of change. It provides evidence of stasis – the concept that many things remain the same. In his book, The Fossils Book, Gary Parker shows pictures of fossil clams. Anyone who has prepared seafood to eat knows that bivalve mollusks, like clams, open up when they die. That is why we usually pick out open clams and cockles to throw away before we cook them, as they are likely already dead and might be decaying. If a clam has been fossilized closed, it indicates that the fossilization process must have happened very quickly indeed. The clam was buried alive, with no chance of opening up in death. It is our assertion that the majority of the world’s fossils were formed during the global flood of Genesis. This would have killed and buried many creatures very rapidly indeed. Rapid burial by the flood is a better explanation of fossil formation than slow, evolutionary burial. www.creationmoments.com/sermons/lessons-from-fossils/ |
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