1 Peter 3:15 - But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fearThis was the message delivered at BCM tonight. We had a guest speaker, Mr. Robert Carter, who talked about basic Biblical truths that support creationism over evolution. My notes are in bullet format, so that's what I'm going to do here. I will try to elaborate on everything as much as I can.
~Scientists tell us that the world is billions of years old. They use the layers of rock (1 layer = 1 year theory) to trick people into believing that the world is much older than it is. This way they can explain evolution as a slow and gradual process and they can leave out God and His miracle creation of our planet.
~John 3:12 - If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things?~If we can't believe what God tells us about creating the earth, how can we grasp concepts like the Trinity and his plan of salvation for us?
~According to Biblical scientists, the world is approximately 6000 years old. Not billions of years.
~6 C's have happened since the beginning of time --> Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, and Cross. The last C has yet to happen --> Consummation
~Genesis gives us explanations for a lot of historical happenings.
~Romans 5:12 - Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned (Death through Adam, Life through Christ)
~Death and suffering are punishments for SIN. There is a reason for them.
~Genesis 2:15-17 - And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.~Non-creationists will try to use this against Christians. They'll say, "God told Adam that if he ate off that tree that he'd die. But God didn't kill him right when he ate the fruit, so therefore God must have been lying." But God didn't say that Adam would die immediately. Rather, after Adam ate the fruit, and introduced sin into the world, God was forced to introduce death to the world. We believe that before the sin, there was no death. There was no reason for death. God had created this world and called it "very good."
~1 Corinthian 15:26 - The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.~The spirit is eternal and everlasting, but the body is finite and will pass away.
~Genesis 3:17 - And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life
~Romans 8:22 (NIV) - We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.~God plainly tells us that humankind suffers and dies because of Adam and his sin.
~Revelation 21:4 - And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.~Revelation gives us hope that one day, after Christ returns, there will be no more death, pain, or suffering. Isn't that an amazing promise? Can you even imagine what your life would be like without those things?
~Out of the people that call themselves Christians, 70% will stop claiming Christianity by the time they graduate from college. Much of this is attributable to the teachings of evolution in science classes.
~There are 2 kinds of science: Operational (experimental) and Historical
~Operational Science is observable, testable, repeatable, and doable in the present day. (Keep in mind that most branches of science were originally founded by Bible believing Christians)
~Historical Science - no observers, not repeatable, only found in the past.
~Something that you might be taught goes like this --> "Here is a dinosaur bone. It is hard, physical evidence that something lived here. I interpret that it is 70,000,000 years old. This interpretation is completely based on assumption and plausible information that has been taught. (Remember, there are no age tags on dinosaur bones and fossils)
~Genesis 1:31 - And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.~God created the entire universe in six days. He did not slowly and gradually create.
~Genesis 6:11-13 - The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked up on the earth, and behold, it is corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.~God saw that the earth was filled with corruption and sin and therefore told Noah that He was going to destroy it with a great flood.
~Genesis 7:11-12;21-22 - In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth for forty days and forty nights. And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man: All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.~God describes, with great detail, the events of the great flood throughout Genesis chapters 7, 8, and 9. This writing is historical and true because God cannot lie. He gives us a lot of description about what happened, just like you would find in a history textbook.
~Remember, Noah's flood destroyed the earth. It was not a gentle rain. It was tumultuous and crashing.
~Noah was in the ark. It was a huge (about 140 meters long) and extremely stable structure. It did not look like the modern day, story book description. He was saved because he listened to God's instructions.
~But how does this fit in with our earth's history?
~"Polystrate fossils are formed by rapid sedimentation. These fossils are of structures and creatures in their upright positions. If the fossils were formed over hundreds of years, the structures and animals would have fallen over in death, but since they are found upright and standing, it is correct to believe that they were buried rapidly. Likely, there were buried in mud. Mud that was the product of a fantastic amount of rain.
~See where we're going with this?
~Scientists have found fossilized trees that were upright. Trees that had no branches or limbs. It is believe that these trees were ripped out of the ground and thrown about before being buried quickly (upright because the base of the trunk is the heaviest) in mud.
~Psalm 104:7-9 (NIV) - But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.~This is a description of erosion. Massive amounts of erosion. Enough erosion and sedimentation to cause enough mud to rapidly bury things. It is scientific fact that there are miles of sediment at the bottom of oceans and gulfs. Much of that was probably washed down there as the flood waters receded andland began to dry out again.
~Evolutionary scientists try to tell us that millions of rock layers have built up over millions of years. It is obvious, however, that erosion is eating away these rocks. So we can correctly conclude that something besides natural and common erosion caused all these rocks to form. Something else had to happen to form these rock structures.
~A good operational science example of the forming of large rock masses is the 1980 eruption of Mt. Saint Helen. Within 2 years giant rock structures were formed from the falling and settling of volcanic rock and ash. This did not happen over millions of years. It happened in 2.
~There is an attraction here called "The Little Grand Canyon of Georgia." It was formed by water erosion. Can you imagine what kind of landscape changes the flood made?
~Still having a hard time wrapping your head around this? Okay. Let's look at how fossils are made. Fossils only form under special conditions. In order for a complete fossil to be formed, the thing being fossilized must be buried rapidly.
~Many fossilized animals are found in a position where their head is back and their chests are bowed forward. This is the classic suffocation pose. These animals were buried in mud very rapidly and suffocated to death in a lot of cases.
~ There are even fossils of octopi and jellyfish (soft animals). It is also interesting to see that the fossilized octopi and jellyfish are exactly the same or startlingly similar to today's octopi and jellyfish. There is no evidence of evolution in the fossil record.
~What about "cave men?"
~If you look at the picture of a "cave man," you will find that his skeleton will look A LOT like a human skeleton. Many times, cave men are positioned with their knees bent and their shoulders hunched to make them look more like monkeys, but you can't walk or function in a position like that and neither could they. Cave men were completely human. They were a bit taller and larger than average humans today, but they were more conditioned to live in their time period. They needed to be strong and fast to survive. There is no evidence that "cave men" were not fully human. They weren't primitive beings. They were just early.
~Neanderthals are human and are related to people living in Eurasia. They are Eurasian ancestors, and therefore most of our ancestors as well. Reconstructions have been done on neanderthal skulls and with the DNA processing that we have now, it has been found that some neanderthals had green eyes and even freckles.
~So why are there different races in humans today?
~The answer is simply genetics. We all came from Adam and Eve. They are the parents of the earth. Farther down the line, we all stemmed from Noah, since everyone was killed except for him, his wife, and his children. If you'll notice, every human being is a shade of brown. We don't come in red or purple or blue. Different shades of brown are very easy to explain with simple genetics.
~Let's assume Adam and Eve had skin color genes of AaBb (the lower case letters being code for lighter skin and the upper case letters being code for darker skin). If they had 4 children, they could have looked like this --> #1) aabb (very light skin), #2) aaBb (medium light skin), #3) AaBb (medium dark skin), #4) AABB (very dark skin).
~Even though these 4 children had the same parents, they all had different skin colors. Therefore we can conclude that even though humans can look radically different, there is only one true race, since we all stemmed from a common ancestor. Also, it is important to note that according to Bible scholars, Noah was only about 150 generations ago. All the different skin colors branched out from him and his family.
~Need more proof? Check this out. http://creation.com/two-tone-twins
~I think that it's pretty obvious that we don't need to make up billions of years to explain the earth's history.
I hope that this has opened your eyes to an alternative perspective to the evolution that it taught in a lot of school settings, or maybe that it has reinforced what you already believe. If there is anything that is unclear, or that you would like more of an explanation on, please don't hesitate to comment. =)
God Bless,
Taylor
