It's good to be with you today.
I want to talk about understanding Genesis, and that is something that's very
close to my heart because it's very important.
And few people really appreciate how important that is, so that's what I want
to talk about.
The importance of Genesis, understanding it, because, you know, we live in a world
where people have become increasingly skeptical of the Bible as God's infallible
word.
I mean, it used to be because of our culture in the United States of America,
because of our Christian heritage, people had a degree of respect for the
Bible, even if they didn't profess Christianity.
Times are changing.
And one of the main ways that the Bible is attacked today is in Genesis.
Isn't that the case?
If you consider the United States, we have the most churches and seminaries,
Christian colleges, Christian bookstores, Christian radio of any nation,
all these different resources available.
And yet for all of these Christian resources, it seems like we're becoming
less Christian every day.
Doesn't it feel that way in our nation?
It seems like it's just astonishing.
But how can that be?
We're a nation founded primarily by Christians, certainly on Christian
principles, with all of these Christian resources, and yet we're becoming a pagan
nation.
What is going on?
And does this have anything to do with Genesis?
And I suggest it does.
If you think about it, every problem in our society can be traced back to a broken
law of God, where people have decided that we're not going to do what the Bible says,
we're going to do it this other way, and that causes problems.
And why is it that people say, well, we're not going to do what the Bible
says?
On some level, they don't believe it.
On some level, they've been convinced that the Bible is just fairy tales.
And that really begins in Genesis.
That's where people have placed their attacks on Scripture, those who deny God's
Word.
You see, the real issue behind all of these problems in society is the same
issue as the creation versus evolution debate.
It's really God's Word versus man's Word.
That's really what it comes down to.
You've got God's Word that teaches us about creation.
It also teaches us how we are to live.
And then you've got man's Word, which teaches something else, teaches us a
different way to live.
And which one are you going to trust?
When there's a conflict between the two, who are you going to go with?
Who are you going to ultimately place your faith in?
In the Word of God or in the words of man?
Those are really your two options.
And this has been a problem since the beginning, because when God created Adam
and Eve, He gave them some instructions.
One of them was, if you eat from that tree, you will surely die.
And their response effectively was, we're not going to listen to your word,
we're going to determine truth for ourselves.
And they ate from that tree and they died.
Ultimately, God was right, they were wrong.
But my point is, they decided that they were going to trust in man's Word rather
than God's Word.
And we have inherited that nature, that sin nature, from our forefathers.
We have inherited that.
And so I want to suggest to you that the loss of biblical authority is the root of
the decline of Christian America.
And that loss of biblical authority, where people say, we're not going to do
what the Bible says because it's just nonsense, that begins in Genesis.
That's the place where people have said, no, we know from science that that's
wrong.
And so you see, it used to be you could say, in the United States of America,
you'd say things like abortion is wrong and homosexual behavior is wrong,
adultery is wrong.
And people say, of course, I get that because we had that Christian heritage.
But today, well, the culture shifted.
Today, you say abortion is wrong, homosexual behavior is wrong, adultery is
wrong.
People say, not according to my rules, because they have a different standard.
That standard is not the Bible.
It's not God's Word.
It's been replaced with another idea that stems from evolutionary thinking.
And by evolution, I'm referring to this idea that single-celled organisms
eventually, through mutations and natural selection, diversified into all the
different kinds of life we see today.
You're related to broccoli in the evolutionary worldview.
As I mentioned to a group of atheists one time, they didn't like that, but it's true
in their worldview.
I don't believe I'm related to broccoli.
I believe we're related to each other because we're all descended from Adam and
Eve.
And that will have an impact on the way you think about other things.
Your origins will have an impact on the way you think about other things.
If God's Word is true from the beginning, then we have creation.
We have a Creator, and so we would expect to have laws because there's a lawgiver.
We're made in God's image.
Where do we learn that?
Oh, that's in Genesis, isn't it?
Where do we learn that God's the Creator?
Oh, that's in Genesis.
Now, this is reiterated throughout the rest of the Scriptures, but it begins in
Genesis.
And where do we find the first laws given?
In Genesis, where God gives His first commands to Adam and Eve, and where we
learn about consequences for disobedience to those laws.
Laws go back to creation.
They're based on a Creator who has the right to make the rules because He's
Creator, and we're the created.
Marriage... where do we get this idea of marriage, one man and one woman united by
God for life?
Well, that goes back to Genesis, doesn't it?
God created Adam and Eve.
He instituted marriage in the beginning, and therefore, He gets to define marriage
because He's the Creator.
God defines marriage.
Not the Supreme Court, by the way.
God defines marriage.
Standards, standards of behavior, standards of clothing.
I noticed you're all wearing clothes today.
I appreciate that.
I'm sure you do too.
There's a reason for that.
It wasn't originally that way, right?
But where do we learn about why we wear clothes?
That's in Genesis, isn't it?
That's the origin of clothing for human beings.
Meaning of life... why is it that human life is valuable and is objectively
valuable?
It doesn't just say, well, I don't like that person, therefore, he has no value.
No, he has value whether you like him or not, because he's made the image of God.
And where do we learn that people are made in the image of God?
That's in Genesis.
Christian doctrines have their basis in Genesis, folks.
All these things that we teach, these good moral principles that
Christians teach, have their basis in Genesis, in creation.
And by the way, Jesus understood this.
He often, in his earthly ministry, alluded back to Genesis in some fashion
when the Pharisees and Sadducees would challenge him.
In Matthew 19, when the religious leaders asked Jesus about divorce, trying to trap
him, he went back and quoted Genesis 1 and 2 as the foundation for marriage.
He understood that.
But you see, what's happened in our culture is there's been another set of
standards that have come about because there's another foundation, evolution.
We don't need God to explain life.
We don't need that.
We know millions of years of evolution is the way it happened.
Well, they don't know that, but that's what they say.
And if that's the case, why would you have laws, right?
I mean, laws are all about protecting the weak from the strong, and yet evolution is
about the strong dominating over the weak.
That's how it's supposed to proceed.
So why would you have laws in an evolutionary worldview?
Why not do what you want with sex in an evolutionary worldview?
If we're just animals, animals do what they want, right?
Or why not abort babies, get rid of spare cats, get rid of spare kids?
Same difference, if we're just animals, if we're just chemical accidents.
What's wrong with getting rid of a chemical accident, right?
I mean, you can see that, how that way of thinking could be justified.
I'm not suggesting that evolution is the cause of all these problems that we have
in society.
Sin is the cause of those problems.
I'm just suggesting that evolution gives people a try and justify that sin in their
minds.
Because these standards over here, these Christian standards, do not make
sense on that foundation, because these are based on creation.
They're based on the fact that we have a Creator, and that He has given us laws
that we are to obey, and that there are consequences for disobedience.
We see that in Genesis.
So what's happened in our culture, that foundation and creation has eroded in
the minds of people.
They think, well, yeah, well, nobody believes that anymore.
Nobody believes that God created.
We know that evolution is the way life came about.
Well, then why would you have moral laws?
Why would marriage be one man and one woman for life, if there really wasn't an
Adam and Eve?
If that's just a fairy tale, what's the foundation of marriage?
Well, marriage is a cultural trend then.
And the culture changes, so why shouldn't the definition of marriage change?
And you see, that's not just a hypothetical issue, is it?
That's happening.
That's what we're seeing in the world today.
We're seeing these doctrines being challenged because their foundation has
been removed in the minds of people.
We need to understand our foundations are under attack, and if the foundations are
destroyed, what can the righteous do?
Even a lot of Christians, unfortunately, have kind of bought into this,
and they've said, well, maybe, you know, God used evolution somehow,
because there's a lot of smart people that believe in evolution and so on.
We get intimidated by the world.
But if God used evolution, then that means Genesis isn't really history, is it?
It's not literal history, because Genesis gives us a different account of origins
than the Darwinian evolution version.
And so a lot of people have said, well, maybe Genesis is just, you know,
it's kind of a poetic section of the Bible.
It's true spiritually, but it's not literally true.
Genesis isn't written that way.
It's not written as poetry.
You know those verses that you love to read before you go to bed, and so-and-so
begets so-and-so, and they beget so-and-so?
Those genealogies like you find in Genesis 5?
Well, those verses are there for a reason.
They're there to tell us these are real people that lived.
It tells us their names, the names of at least one of their children, sometimes how
long they lived before the first child, sometimes the age afterwards, and so on.
Very specific details.
That is not what you would include in a poem.
That would be ridiculous.
Or some people have said, well, maybe Genesis is like a parable.
It's just a fictional story to illustrate a spiritual truth.
Well, Jesus often used parables, right?
But parables aren't written that way.
Parables usually don't have specific names anyway.
It's usually there was a certain man, or there was a king, or whatever.
And you certainly wouldn't have a detailed genealogy in a parable.
That would be pointless if you're trying to illustrate a spiritual truth.
You want to keep it as succinct as possible.
So no, this is not written in that style.
It's not written in a poetic style.
By the way, poetry is easy to recognize in the Bible.
In English, we tend to focus more on rhyme and meter, but in the Hebrew language,
they focused on parallelism.
And so you would have a statement, and then you'd have a parallel statement,
like the heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands.
Kind of says the same thing using two different ways of saying it.
That is the key identifier of Hebrew poetry.
And you do not find that in Genesis.
It's not there.
Genesis bears all the distinctives of history.
If you think about it, this would be a terrible poem, wouldn't it?
So and so begets so...
No, that's not poetry.
It's history.
And Jesus referred to it as such.
And by the way, those genealogies lead up to Jesus, and you can read about them in
Matthew and in Luke.
Yes.
And so here's my question, then, for Christians who say, but I don't think
Adam is a real person.
But you're a Christian?
Oh, yeah, I'm a Christian.
I believe in Jesus.
But wait a minute, Jesus is descended from Adam.
You think Adam's just a metaphor?
How do you have Jesus being descended from a metaphor?
You don't have to be an expert on genetics to know a real person can't be descended
from a metaphorical one, right?
That's not going to work.
That doesn't even make sense.
It's important that Jesus is descended from a real, literal Adam, and so are we
all.
Why is that important?
Well, it makes Jesus our relative.
You are related to Jesus Christ.
He is your brother.
He is your relative.
And you say, why is that important?
Because according to biblical law, only a relative can redeem you.
There's an important concept in the Bible, the concept of the kinsman redeemer.
It's only a relative who can take your place on the cross.
It's because we're all of one blood, the Bible says in Acts 17, meaning we're
all descended from Adam, that Jesus' blood counts for us on the cross.
It's because we're related to him.
Unless, of course, Genesis is myth, in which case you might not be related to
Jesus, and then you're not eligible for salvation.
That's a problem.
People don't think these issues through.
Why is it the blood of bulls and goats can't take away sins?
Hebrews 10-4 tells us that.
Now, they were used symbolically in the Old Testament, the animal sacrifices to
point forward to Christ so the Jews would know what to expect.
They understood substitutionary atonement.
That was just symbolic, though.
The animals don't take away sins.
Why?
Because we're not related to them.
Unless, of course, evolution is true, in which case that doctrine is gone,
isn't it?
You see, Christian doctrines go back to Genesis.
Even the gospel itself goes back to Genesis.
Where do we learn that death is the penalty for sin?
It's in Genesis, isn't it?
Now, that's reiterated throughout the rest of the Scriptures, but it's in Genesis we
learn that the penalty for disobedience to God, who is life, naturally would be
death.
That makes sense.
It's logical.
Putting it another way, which Adam is non-essential to the gospel?
We've got the first Adam that made it necessary for us to be saved, and we've
got Jesus Christ, whom the Bible calls the last Adam, who made it possible for us to
be saved.
My point is that without the first Adam, why do we need salvation?
And by the way, that's an issue.
If you go around saying, trust in Jesus to be saved, a lot of times people in the
world will say, saved from what?
I'm basically a good person.
Now, there's someone who doesn't understand Genesis or doesn't believe it.
Because if you understand Genesis, you get a taste of the holiness of God.
How many sins did it take to ruin the world?
One.
Have you sinned once?
Yes, more than once maybe?
You've got a problem then.
God can't let you into the restored, the new earth, otherwise you'd ruin it
just like you ruined the original.
That's a problem for us because we've all sinned.
See, that's a Genesis concept, isn't it?
It's because of Adam.
We inherited a sin nature from Adam.
When he sinned, he became a sinner, and sinners beget sinners.
And as a result, we're born into the world sinning, rebelling against God,
needing salvation.
It's the first Adam that makes sense of why we need a Savior, the last Adam,
Jesus Christ.
See, the Bible really is the history book of the universe.
It begins in the beginning, God created, and it tells us the important events that
have happened throughout history in terms of our relationship with God.
And I find that a lot of people like the morality the Bible teaches, but they want
to reject the history.
Isn't that true?
Even atheists like some of the morality the Bible teaches.
They read, thou shalt not murder.
Oh, yeah, that's a good one.
They like that one.
They don't want to be murdered.
Thou shalt not steal.
Yeah, the Bible got that one right.
But those moral concepts come out of the history.
Why is it wrong to murder?
Because people have been made in the image of God.
That's an historical fact, you see.
And why is it wrong to steal?
Because God is sovereign over everything, and he's apportioned to people as he
wills, and he's commanded us not to do that.
And so you see, the morality comes out of the history.
It wouldn't make sense apart from it.
If we're just rearranged pond scum, if we're just chemical accidents,
chemicals do what chemicals do.
There's no right or wrong about it, right?
You mix the vinegar and the baking soda, and it fizzes up.
That's just what happens.
You don't get mad at it and say, bad baking soda, you shouldn't have fizzed
up that way, right?
That would be ridiculous.
Chemicals just do what chemicals do.
There's no morality if we're just chemicals.
It's in the Christian worldview where historically we've been made in the image
of God, and where God has given us freedom to obey or disobey, and we, because of our
sin nature, we disobey.
Jesus put it this way.
He's speaking of Nicodemus.
He said, if I've told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you
believe if I tell you heavenly things?
That's a pretty good question, isn't it?
Jesus was masterful at asking probing questions to get people to think.
You see, the Bible does talk about earthly things, history, science even.
Yes, the Bible touches on science.
It talks about the days of creation.
It talks about Noah's flood.
It talks about the confusion of tongues at Babel, matters of history, things that
happened in time.
And it talks about spiritual issues, morality, salvation.
And if you say, yes, but I don't think that those details in Genesis are exactly
right.
I think that's just a metaphor.
If God didn't get the details right in Genesis, how can you trust that he got the
details right on how to inherit eternal life?
That's what I want to know.
Does God know how to write a book or doesn't he?
Really, that's the issue, isn't it?
I think anybody who can speak the universe into existence can probably write a book.
I've written books.
It's not that hard, right?
I think God can write a good book, a book that can be understood by the
creatures that he made in his image.
God's not the author of confusion.
He's not going to write in a way that's confusing and perplexing, where you need a
PhD to understand it.
Not at all.
He writes clearly.
Now, that's not to say there aren't difficult passages in the Bible,
but my point is the main themes of the Bible are meant to be understood,
and God knows how to write a book.
But we get intimidated, right?
You got God's infallible word, man's fallible word.
Why is it that when people...
why is it people change the infallible one to agree with what they want, when they
want these two things to agree?
We want to be academically respectable, so we want to believe in evolution like
all the scientists.
Not that all of them do, but a majority of them probably do.
We want to be accepted by that, so we modify the Bible.
The Bible doesn't really mean that God created, not literally.
It's just a metaphor for evolution and what have you.
The one that you modify is the one you don't really have your faith in,
by the way.
That's something to think about, right?
Your ultimate standard, you don't modify it because you'd need a greater standard
to tell you how to modify it, in which case it wouldn't be ultimate.
So that's very revealing about the way that we think in the world today.
And this is not new.
Oh, the religious leaders at the time of Christ's earthly ministry, oh,
they were masterful at reinterpreting God's Word to match their traditions.
And how did Jesus respond to that?
How did he respond to the religious leaders?
With modern political correctness?
Well, that's not my personal opinion, but if you want to believe that,
that's okay.
He didn't respond that way, or, you know, it's not a salvation issue,
so let's just agree to disagree.
Let's all just hold hands and sing kumbaya, right?
That is not the way Jesus responded in his earthly ministry.
He responded with, it is written.
Have you not read?
Jesus stood authoritatively on the Word of God, and when people challenged that,
when people had distorted God's Word, like the Pharisees and Sadducees often
did, he would point them back to it.
Haven't you read?
Have you not read?
And you do realize Jesus is using sarcasm there.
Of course they'd read it.
He's pointing out they hadn't applied it.
They weren't thinking through the issues rationally.
We don't think about Jesus using sarcasm, but he did on occasion, and he did it
masterfully.
You can think of the war that's going on today a bit like these two cities.
You have the city of God, creation.
Creation is truth.
God's Word is true from the beginning.
And you have the city of man, evolution, secular humanism based on evolution.
Man, independent from God, determines truth.
And how are we fighting this war?
Perhaps not as effectively as we could be.
We're arguing over issues that maybe aren't so important.
We're shooting billboards, which is okay.
I mean, you can point out that abortion is wrong and racism is wrong.
That's okay.
We should do that.
We should.
But my point is, if that's all we're doing, those issues are going to keep
coming up because we haven't dealt with the root of the problem, the secular
thinking based on evolution.
Man, independent from God, determines truth.
And of course, the worst thing we could be doing is shooting our own foundation,
representing Christians who say, well, yeah, you don't have to believe in
Genesis, zap.
And that's not wise.
It's not wise, folks.
The secular humanists are smart.
They're aiming at our foundation.
They're saying you can't trust in the Bible because you can't trust in Genesis.
God didn't even get that first chapter right.
That's what they claim.
Well, what's the solution then?
It's fine to zap some billboards.
We should do some of that.
But we need to defend ourselves against these arguments for evolution that are not
good arguments, by the way.
I have yet to hear a logically cogent argument for evolution in the Darwinian
sense.
Yes, animals change a bit, but they don't change from one kind to another.
They don't change on that fundamental level.
We need to do some damage ourselves and point out that evolution is a bankrupt
conjecture, scientifically bankrupt.
It's not something that's well supported by evidence, not at all.
We saw that if you were able to attend the men's conference, you saw evidence for
that.
It's how science confirms biblical creation.
We want to repair the damage that's been done, show you you can trust in creation.
You can trust in the Bible from the beginning.
It's all the Word of God and it's all true.
Everything the Bible affirms is true.
And I like how this is illustrated, too, because you notice we're not aiming
at the people.
We don't want to destroy the people.
We want the people to be saved.
We want to destroy that idea, that imagination that exalts itself against the
knowledge of God, secular humanism.
That's what we want to cast out because that is false thinking and it leads to
destruction.
We want the people to be saved.
We want them to jump off, swim over, and join us on the city of God.
We want them to be Christians.
And we're not bashful about that.
Some people try to sort of cover up their Christian bias because they want to be
neutral and unbiased.
But, you know, we can talk about, I'll just show you that there's a God from
science or whatever.
We can leave the Bible out of it.
But, well, I'm sorry, but the demons believe in God and tremble.
It doesn't save them.
And a creationist will end up in hell the same as an atheistic evolutionist if they
haven't trusted in Christ as their Savior.
We want people to be saved.
And so I'm very upfront about my conviction that the Bible is true.
You say, but what if so-and-so, what if the person I'm talking with
doesn't believe the Bible?
Well, that's their problem, right?
They should.
The Bible has been historically vindicated time and time again.
It's the Word of God.
They should believe it.
And God has written His law in people's hearts.
So when we read God's Word, bells ring, and we recognize that as the Word of our
Creator, right?
Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice.
I know them, they follow me.
So we're very upfront about that.
We want people to be saved.
Getting people to trust in God's Word, that's the means by which people are
saved, you see.
So it's not an academic game.
It's not just, I'm not out here just because I like science.
I mean, I like science a lot, don't get me wrong.
It's fascinating.
I think it glorifies God, but I want to see people saved.
And science is one method we can use to show people that God's Word is true from
the beginning because science confirms it, it lines up with it.
What about the timescale of creation?
There's some controversy there, although there really shouldn't be.
The Bible tells us that God created in six days.
It tells us what He did on each of those days of creation.
Human beings are made on the sixth day.
And from those genealogies that you love to read before you go to bed, so-and-so
begets so-and-so, you add up the ages and you find something like a few thousand
years, something like four thousand years between creation and Christ's earthly
ministry, and that was about two thousand years ago, so something like six thousand
years for the age of the earth, the age of the universe.
And boy, that rubs people the wrong way because we've been taught in the secular
world, the secular media, most public schools teach that the earth is 4.5
billion years old, the universe is 13.8 billion years old.
The numbers change a little bit from year to year, but something like that.
And boy, that's what the science indicates, right?
Because we find fossils, and the fossils were laid down over millions of years,
right?
Because you'll find it in the textbooks.
See, there it is, millions of years.
It's got to be true.
It's in the book, right?
I confirmed it on the internet.
It's got to be true.
Well, just because something's in a book doesn't necessarily make it true.
And by the way, when you dig up a fossil, it doesn't come with a label telling you
how old it is.
It's just a fossil.
You don't know the age of it automatically.
People think scientists are sort of like magicians, you know, they take the fossil,
they scan it with their tricorder and measure the ageicals, and it just tells
them the age.
That's not the way it works.
There are all kinds of assumptions that go into age-dating rocks and so on.
And ultimately, they're making a guess about the age based on certain
assumptions.
But people get intimidated, and they think, but, you know, that most of the
scientists believe in the millions of years.
Well, they have to if they're going to believe in evolution.
You need that, because even they would recognize that evolution is ridiculous on
a thousands of years time scale.
So they get intimidated, and we want to try to fit the millions of years into the
Bible then, so that we can believe both, right?
Well, where are you going to fit the millions of years?
If you're convinced that the world's millions of years old or billions of years
old, where are you going to fit the millions of years?
You can't put it in between Adam and Christ, because that would destroy those
genealogies, right?
And some people say, well, maybe there's a, you know, few gaps in there.
By the way, there's no evidence for that in the Old Testament anyway, for gaps in
the genealogies.
But even if there were, it wouldn't be millions of years.
That doesn't make any sense.
So people try to put the millions of years in the creation week, because that's the
only place they can think to do it.
And there's a few different ways they try to fit the millions of years into creation
week.
Some people have said, well, maybe the millions of years happens before the
beginning.
And that's pretty easy to refute, because if the millions of years happened
before the beginning, then the beginning wouldn't be the beginning, right?
It would be the much later.
And that's not what the Bible teaches.
The Bible teaches it's in the beginning that God created the heaven and the earth.
And they say, well, maybe the millions of years happens before Genesis 1,
1 and 1, or between Genesis 1, 1 and 1, 2.
They get so-called gap theory.
We'll come back to that.
One of the most common is the idea that, well, maybe the days weren't really days
at all.
Maybe they were actually hundreds of millions of years.
Maybe God meant to say in six ages He made the heavens and the earth, but for some
reason He used the word day and hoped we'd figure it out.
Well, I'm sorry, but the Bible just doesn't teach that.
The Bible says six days, and it uses the regular Hebrew word for day.
But some people said, oh, but maybe, you know, days are maybe different to God,
right?
Because the Bible says in 2 Peter 3, 8 that one day is what the Lord is a
thousand years.
So maybe those days were really long, right?
I think it's funny, though, that they only quote the first part of the verse.
What does the rest of the verse say?
One day is what the Lord is a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.
Cancels that right out, you see.
I find people only take the first part of the verse out of context to try and make
biblical time longer.
They never take the second part out of context to try and make biblical time
shorter, right?
Ever heard anybody say, well, the Bible indicates about 2,000 years between
Abraham and Christ, but a thousand years is a day.
It's really only 48 hours.
Nobody argues that.
It's not a conversion formula to convert from God's time to man's time.
By the way, God is beyond time, and that really is the meaning of this
verse.
When you read it in context, it's explaining God's patience, why He's
delaying judgment, at least delaying it from a human perspective, so that many,
many people can be saved.
All the people that God wants to save will be saved.
He's delaying judgment, and He's able to do that because He's beyond time.
He's patient because He's beyond time.
God created time, and so He does understand how it works.
He understands how to keep time.
God doesn't need a clock.
We need clocks.
And so God made...
that's one of the purposes of the universe is to keep time, to be for signs,
seasons, days, and years.
God does understand time.
This is not giving you permission to take the word day everywhere you see it in
Scripture and make it a thousand years.
And by the way, that would make the earth 12,000 years old instead of 6,000.
It wouldn't get you anywhere close to the millions of years that people think they
need to add to Scripture.
The Hebrew word for day is yom, and it's used over 2,000 times in the Old
Testament of the Bible in singular and plural form.
The plural form is yamim.
And I find the only place people question what does day mean is in Genesis.
Isn't that true?
For some reason, people don't seem to have a problem understanding what day means in
other books of the Bible, right?
Have you ever had any discussions on, now, how long was Jonah really in the
belly of the great fish?
Oh, I think those were ordinary days.
Oh, I think those might have been thousands of years.
He might have been in there a very long time, right?
You just don't have those kinds of discussions.
Of course not.
No wonder he repented, right?
He was in there 3,000 years.
How long did Joshua really take to march around the walls of Jericho?
Oh, I think those were ordinary days.
Oh, I think they might have been thousands of years each, right?
He might have been marching for a long time.
No, of course not.
We understand what a day is.
So does God.
So do the men that God used to write His Word.
And people say, oh, but Dr. Lyle, the Hebrew word for day can mean a period
of time longer than 24 hours.
Well, yes, when it's used poetically, yes, it can.
But the main meaning of day is day, surprisingly.
That's the main definition of yom.
When it's used literally, it's a day.
It can be used poetically.
So can the English word for day.
You might say, back in my father's day.
That's a non-literal use of the word day.
You do mean a period of time longer than 24 hours.
I get that.
But that doesn't mean day always means a long period of time, right?
Back in my father's day, it took three days to drive across Texas during the day.
So you got the word day used three times.
And I'll bet you didn't have any trouble understanding it because you used context.
You used the surrounding words to constrain the meaning.
So back in my father's day, yeah, okay, that's a non-literal use.
That would be a longer period of time.
It took three days.
One of those would be ordinary days because it's got a number with it.
Three days.
Wouldn't be three long periods of time.
You wouldn't use the word in that sense.
To drive across Texas during the day, that would be the light portion of an
ordinary day.
So that's how we understand.
Most words have more than one meaning.
And you use context to figure out which meaning is relevant in the given sentence,
in the given paragraphs, and so on.
It's the same way with Hebrew.
It's the same way with any language.
Words, the surrounding words, constrain the meaning.
And so let's take a look at the Hebrew word for day, yom.
Outside of Genesis 1, where we all agree what it means, we find, for example,
that when day is used in context with a number, as in an ordered list,
the first day, the second day, the third day, the fourth day,
it always means an ordinary day.
It's always translated that way.
Of course, if I said, he went up to his city on the third day, you'd understand
I'm talking about an ordinary day.
It's got a number with it.
Of course, that's an ordinary day.
And people don't bother to argue it outside of Genesis 1 in all the historical
narrative sections of Scripture.
Evening and morning.
Even if the word day isn't there, what's an evening plus a morning?
It's a day.
Those are the boundaries of a day.
And so, if I said there was evening and morning, you'd know I'm talking about an
ordinary day.
That happens 38 times outside of Genesis 1.
We all agree that's an ordinary day.
If I said there was evening that day, you'd understand I'm talking about an
ordinary day.
Evening with day.
Or morning with day.
You'd understand I'm talking about an ordinary day.
Morning with day.
23 times each outside Genesis 1.
We all agree that's an ordinary day.
If I contrasted day and night, if I said there was day, then there was
night.
You'd know I'm We're talking about an ordinary day, an ordinary night.
They constrain each other.
So these are contextual clues that tell us that we're dealing with ordinary days and
not the poetic figure of speech.
So day with a number, evening and morning together, evening with day or morning with
day, or day contrasted with night.
So let's apply these contextual clues to Genesis 1 and see if we can figure out
what God meant when He said He created in six days.
Genesis 1, verse 5, and God called the light day.
So there He's defining it for you.
Day is when it's light out, that would be an ordinary day, right?
He's defined it.
And the darkness He called night, so you have night contrasted with day,
that's got to be an ordinary day.
And the evening, you've got evening associated with day, that's got to be an
ordinary day.
You've got morning associated with day, that's got to be an ordinary day.
You've got evening and morning together, that constitutes an ordinary day.
And you've got a number with it, got to be an ordinary day.
That's pretty clear, isn't it?
God used about every contextual indicator He could possibly have used to indicate
that those were ordinary days, at least that first day.
What about the other days of creation?
Let's see if we can figure out what God meant here.
Evening, morning, number, day.
That's pretty clear, isn't it?
It's kind of like God saying, see, they're ordinary days.
In case you still don't get it, they're ordinary days.
In case you're a little thick, they're ordinary days.
In case you're really intellectually challenged, they're ordinary days.
It's pretty clear.
People say, oh, but the sun wasn't made until the fourth day, and that's true,
but it's also irrelevant.
It's primarily the rotation of the earth that controls the length of the day.
The sun doesn't have much to do with it.
The sun just provides a source of light.
As long as you have a source of light and a rotating planet, you're going to have
ordinary day and night.
Did we have a source of light for the first three days?
And God said, let there be light, and there was light.
Yeah, we had a source of light, and God divided the light from the
darkness.
God called the light day, the darkness He called night.
Of course we had... did you have a rotating planet?
Yeah, we had evening and morning the first day.
Of course.
So there's no problem there.
You know, all the other units of time have a basis in astronomy, but not a week.
Where do we get the idea of a week?
Seven days.
Where does that idea come from?
A day is a rotation of earth on its axis.
A month is the amount of time it takes the moon to go through its phases.
That's where we get the word month.
It is a month.
And of course, a year is the amount of time it takes the earth to go around the
sun.
Where do we get the idea of seven days in a week?
That's how long it took for God to create and rest.
And He tells us that explicitly in Exodus 20.
You know Exodus 20, that's the Ten Commandments.
We like to memorize that chapter or sections of it.
Verse 8, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
Then He gives the explanation.
In six days you'll do all your labor, the seventh is the Lord's, etc.,
etc.
Verse 11 is the explanation for why we have a seven-day week.
Why do you work six days and rest one?
Because that's what God did.
God worked six days and He rested one.
And by the way, He uses the same word for day there in the plural form, yamim,
which is only literal.
It's never used in a long time sense.
So my point is, if God really had created over millions of years, you would have an
awfully long work week.
You'd never make it to the weekend, literally.
Back in Martin Luther's time, there were some people who were trying to squeeze the
days of creation into one day for various philosophical reasons.
They thought God made in an instant, or in one day anyway.
And I want to show you how Martin Luther responds to this.
I think it's a great quote.
He says, how long did the work of creation take?
When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six
days, then let this period continue to have been six days and do not venture to
devise any comment according to which six days were one day.
I love this last part.
He says, but if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days,
then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are.
He's spot on.
If you don't understand how God could have created in six days, that's okay.
He's smarter than you are.
It's not a problem.
What about a gap?
People have said, well, yeah, there's no doubt the days are ordinary days,
but maybe we can stick millions of years in between two of them, right?
And so in the beginning God created heaven and the earth, and then there's a gap of
millions of years.
Maybe that's when Lucifer fell, maybe there was a Lucifer's flood and all
kinds of things, and the world became ruined.
And they'd like to translate verse 2, and the earth became without form and
void.
You really can't translate it that way in that context.
But you actually can't put a gap of time in between verse 1 and verse 2 based on
the way it's worded in Hebrew.
This is Genesis 1 in Hebrew, and Hebrew reads right to left.
So now verse 2 uses a grammatical construction in Hebrew called evolved
disjunctive, and that's where you have and followed by a non-verb like the earth.
The earth is a non-verb because it's a noun, right?
So when you have and the earth, that means you have evolved disjunctive.
And what's evolved disjunctive?
Well, basically, it's kind of like what we'd use parentheses for in English.
It indicates that that is a clarification or explanation of what came before it.
And so you can't put a gap of time between verse 1 and verse 2 because verse 2 is not
intended to follow in time.
Verse 2 is an explanation of verse 1.
So in the beginning God created heaven and the earth, parentheses, and the earth was
without form and void, etc.
Verse 2 is describing the conditions that existed when God first created the heavens
and the earth, and it's explaining that the earth was empty and formless because
God had not yet shaped it and filled it.
It makes perfect sense.
Now the rest of Genesis is evolved consecutive where you have and followed by
a verb, and said God, in the original Hebrew word order.
And that does follow in time.
But my point is people want to put the millions of years into a place where it's
grammatically impossible.
You can't do that.
And really there's no basis for that because Exodus 20 says in six days the
Lord made the heaven, the earth, the sea and all that's in them.
So that means in the span of six days.
Now there's a lot of science that goes along with this, and if you were able to
attend the conference we covered a lot of these.
I'll just mention one briefly, the fact that we find carbon-14 in just
about everything that has carbon in it.
Even things that evolutionists believe to be billions of years old have C-14 in
them, and that's significant because C-14 has a half-life of 5,700 years.
It cannot last millions of years.
And yet we find it in diamonds.
They say, well there's some kind of contamination.
Somehow new C-14 got in there.
But how?
It's a diamond.
It's the hardest substance.
You can't get new C-14 in there.
It's unrealistic.
It must have been in there when it formed, and they must have formed recently.
Lots of stuff like that.
Fossils, when you use carbon dating, and yes you can use carbon dating
sometimes on fossils if they have enough carbon in them, if they haven't fully
permineralized.
But every one we've tested has C-14 in it, which means they're not millions of years
old.
They're not.
There's lots of stuff like that.
But my question is, does it matter?
Because historically what happened is the secular scientists came along and said,
the Bible's not true.
We know these rock layers are millions of years old, and you've got to trust me.
And a lot of the theologians, not all of them, but a lot of them thought,
well, maybe we can allow for that.
I mean, these are smart people, and we don't want this to be a stumbling
block to salvation.
I think they're well-meaning.
But they thought, well, maybe we can allow reinterpretations of God's Word to
accommodate what these secularists believe.
And that's a problem.
People say, is it really important?
Is it a salvation issue?
Is the recent creation timescale really a salvation issue?
Not in the sense that you are required to believe in six days to be saved.
I know that.
The Bible tells us we're saved by grace received through faith in Christ,
and we don't want to add to that.
God fortunately doesn't require us to have perfect theology to be saved, because then
we'd all fall short, wouldn't we?
But nonetheless, out of gratitude for our salvation, we ought to get our theology as
correct as possible.
We ought to submit to God's Word.
And so I would argue that it's maybe not a salvation issue in the sense of essential
for salvation, but it is an important issue.
The age of the earth is an important issue.
It's kind of like gravity.
Gravity is not a salvation issue, but it's an important issue.
Would you not agree?
Right?
You can not believe in gravity and you'll still go to heaven.
You'll probably get there a lot quicker that way, right?
It's not a salvation issue, but it's an important issue.
And it's the same way with the age of the earth.
It's important for two reasons that I'm going to give you today, and perhaps many
more.
First of all, it matters, because it's what the Bible teaches.
Yes, the Bible does teach that God created in six days.
And it does give us the ages of the patriarchs, such that you can add it up
and you find a few thousand years.
Maybe you can't get an exact date, but it's not going to be millions of
years.
The Bible tells us that.
In fact, the section of the Bible that says, in six days God created,
that's part of the Ten Commandments.
That was written by the finger of God in stone.
I think that's interesting and significant.
Most of the places, God used men to write His Word.
It's inspired by God.
It's all true.
Everything the Bible affirms.
I think it's interesting the place that people most want to compromise is the
place where God didn't even use a human agent.
He wrote it with His own finger in stone.
And that's where you want to compromise.
See, the same Bible that teaches that God created in six days also teaches a virgin
birth of Christ, that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine,
calmed the storm, raised the dead, raised Himself from the dead.
Doesn't the same Bible teach all of those things?
And if you say, yes, but I don't think I'm going to believe in the six days,
because most scientists say that's not possible.
I think that's just... I'm going to reinterpret that section of the Bible.
Well, I've got news for you.
Most scientists would say virgin birth in human beings, not possible.
Turning water into wine, not possible.
Walking on water, not possible.
Resurrection from the dead, not possible.
You'd have to reinterpret those sections, too, to be consistent, right?
Are you going to allow people who don't believe in God's Word to tell you how you
ought to interpret God's Word?
That's the question.
Now, some people have said, oh, but wait a minute, Dr. Lyle, that list on
the right, those are miracles.
And so, you know, we don't have to apply the standards of science to those.
But I'm thinking, wasn't the creation of the universe a miracle?
If not, I'd like to see you do it, right?
Of course not.
We need to trust what God has said in His Word, even if it's contrary to our way of
thinking, because our way of thinking can be wrong.
God cannot be.
There's another reason why you don't want to add the millions of years in,
and that concerns these fossils that we find all over the earth.
And it's...
again, they don't come with labels telling you how old they are.
The labels... maybe you've seen fossils with labels in museums and the like,
but those are attached later.
They didn't come that way.
And they were attached by people who did not see the fossil form and therefore do
not know when the fossil formed, at least not on their own authority.
But people impose those ages on the fossils, and that leads to some
theological problems.
Because a fossil is a dead thing, right?
You've got dead organisms trapped in rock layers.
And if you have death, and you think that fossil is hundreds of millions of years
old, that means you got death before Adam sinned.
Because we all agree human beings don't go back hundreds of millions of years.
Even the evolutionists can see that human beings are recent, right?
But doesn't the Bible say that death came into the world as a result of Adam's sin?
Isn't death indeed the penalty for sin?
When Adam sinned, it brought death into the world, and because Adam was given
charge over the world, death even spread to the organisms that were under Adam's
control, under his dominion.
But see, if the fossils are millions of years old, that means it's not by man that
came death, it's by death came man.
Those are logically contrary positions, you can't have it both ways.
Is death the penalty for sin?
Or is it something that was already in the world for millions of years?
That's what I want to know.
So you have the Garden of Eden, Eve saying God's creation is perfect,
Adam saying God said it's very good, and he's right.
Something like that.
And by the way, it wasn't just the Garden of Eden, God saw everything he had made,
and behold, it was very good, the Bible says.
Now, if you believe in millions of years, if you believe the fossils are millions of
years old, then that means the world had been suffering with death, disease,
bloodshed, and so on for millions of years until God finally got around to finishing
creating Adam and Eve and then called it very good, in which case you've got the
Garden of Eden sitting on top of millions of years worth of death, suffering,
disease, bloodshed, and so on.
And God calling it very good?
Is disease very good?
Because we find fossils with evidence of disease in them, things like cancer,
arthritis, and so on, in these fossil layers that are deep down.
There's a whole field called paleopathology that studies disease in
fossils.
Now, were those diseases already in the world when God finished his creation and
said, oh, it's very good, in which case cancer and arthritis and so on are very
good, in which case why would you bother praying for your sick friend?
But see, Jesus reversed the curse in his earthly ministry, temporarily at least,
right?
He healed the sick, and of course, he'll permanently reverse the curse at the
second coming where death will be undone.
But my point is, death, suffering, disease, bloodshed, these are things that
are the result of disobedience to God, not obedience to God.
They're not very good.
They were introduced as a punishment for sin, and punishment by its nature is
unpleasant.
It's something that we don't desire, otherwise it wouldn't be punishment.
Now, some people have said, oh, but Dr. Lyle, I think it's just human
death that was introduced at the time of sin.
I think animals had been living and dying for millions of years.
But I don't think you can defend that scripturally, because if you think about
it, when Adam sinned and God confronted Adam and Eve, he then sacrificed an
animal, didn't he, to provide skins of clothing for Adam and Eve.
And those would be animal skins, which means God sacrificed an animal or
animals to provide clothing for Adam and Eve.
And I think that was a symbolic covering for their shame.
Of course, it's literal clothes, but it provided a covering for their
shame.
So God instituted animal death, animal death, when Adam and Eve sinned,
and we see that in Genesis.
And you say, why do animals have to suffer?
Because Adam had dominion over them.
That's the nature of authority.
We've all suffered when our government officials who have authority over us do
something stupid.
We suffer because we're under their authority.
That's the nature of dominion.
That's the nature of authority.
Now, some people have said, oh, but we got you here, Dr. Lyle,
because we know there were death of plants before Adam and Eve sinned, because they
would have been eating plants, or at least plant parts.
And the interesting thing about that is, biblically, plants are not considered
alive, and so they don't literally die.
Isn't that interesting?
The Hebrew word, nefesh, nefesh kai, or nefesh kaya, for living creature,
it's applied to human beings.
It's applied to animals.
It's never referred to as nefesh kai anywhere in Scripture.
They're not alive in the same way that we are, right?
And therefore, they don't literally die.
They're just recycled back into the environment.
Now, we use the term somewhat metaphorically when we talk about,
you know, a dead plant.
Well, even biologists, modern biologists might classify plants as living.
That's fine, but my point is the Bible is using different terminology.
In the biblical terminology, plants are not living.
They are food for living things.
Granted, they're self-replicating food, which is awesome that God has designed the
universe that way.
But they're not alive in the same way that we are.
And you know that, right?
You know that plants are in a different category.
We can talk about a dead plant, but it's different from a dead animal,
isn't it?
You can talk about a dead battery, but it's not really alive.
It was never really alive in the same way that a human being or an animal is.
And you know that.
You come across a so-called dead tree.
Well, that's nice.
I think I'll sit on that for a little while.
Let me take a picture of it, put it over my mantle.
That's nice.
If you come across a dead animal, you say, well, that's nice.
I think I'm going to sit on that for a little while, take a picture of it.
It's different, isn't it?
Yeah.
We recognize the difference between animal death, which is an intrusion into a world
that was once good, and plant death, which is just part of the normal cycle.
There'll be plant death in the eternal state, presumably, is that plant cycle.
So the Bible is very clear.
God made a very good world.
It's not going to be full of death and suffering, even of the animals.
God cares about the animals too, not to the same extent as those creatures
He's made in His image.
But nonetheless, He has a plan for them as well.
It was a very good world, not full of death and suffering.
We ruined it by rebelling against God.
And the world would be made perfect again in the future as a result of Christ's
obedience.
And we can be part of that only by Christ forgiving us of our sins and paying for
our penalty on the cross.
You see, if you believe God created over millions of years of death and suffering,
then death and suffering are God's fault.
And when somebody dies, you can blame God.
And people do, by the way.
People who have an evolutionary worldview, their friend dies, and they say,
some God of love you are, why did you allow this?
And there's a person who doesn't believe in Genesis or doesn't understand it.
Because if you understand Genesis, you realize, wait a minute, death is not
God's fault.
It is our fault.
We sinned against God.
And when that happened, the world became broken.
We live in a fallen world.
It's not very good anymore.
There's still a lot of good in the world.
Don't give me wrong.
God's still... His grace is still present in this world.
But it's not the very good world that it was when it began, because now there's
death and suffering in it.
There's the curse.
And so, if you understand that, and when somebody dies, you need to
remember, it's not God's fault.
It's our fault.
And the only reason that God did not look at all your sin as you were sleeping last
night and justly kill you in your sleep for your rebellion against Him is because
of His grace.
And so, when somebody dies, we need to remember, that's what I deserve,
and I deserve it a million times over because of all my sins against God.
I deserve an eternity of death.
And praise God that even though I'm going to die physically, He's going to resurrect
me, and I'm going to experience eternal life because of what Jesus did for me.
That's awesome.
That's what we should be thinking when a friend dies.
We need to recognize that this is the horrible effect of rebellion against God.
It's not God's fault.
It's our fault.
And the only reason I'm able to take my next breath is because of God's grace.
How many breaths have you taken today?
You don't deserve them.
We live in a very entitled society, right?
And I think that's because of evolutionary thinking.
I deserve free health care.
I deserve free education.
Understand, biblically, what you deserve is death and hell.
Anything you get that's better than that is by God's grace.
And that produces a different kind of attitude of the heart when you recognize
that.
You know, there's another thing, though, that people don't think about
often when considering the age of the earth and things of that nature,
and that's the extent of the flood.
The Bible talks about a worldwide flood, does it not?
In Genesis 6, 7, and 8, the flood where Noah took two of each kind on board the
ark and so on.
And it turns out you can't consistently believe in a worldwide flood in millions
of years because either the fossils were deposited primarily by that worldwide
flood.
A worldwide flood would deposit a lot of fossils.
It's going to kill organisms, bury them in sediment, and I believe that's what is
responsible for the majority of fossils.
A few of them afterwards, but most of them during that worldwide flood.
But if you believe in millions of years, if you believe that fossils were deposited
gradually over millions of years, then there's no room for a worldwide flood
because it would destroy any previous fossil record anyway.
Therefore, those people who believe in millions of years can't consistently
believe in a worldwide flood.
I'm thinking of one teacher in particular who goes around, he's a professing
Christian, but because he believes in the Big Bang and millions of years and so on,
he teaches that Noah's flood was a local event limited to the Mesopotamia Valley.
He just thinks all human beings were living in Mesopotamia at the time.
Well, what does the Bible have to say about this though?
What does the Bible have to say about the extent of the flood?
Well, let's take a look.
Genesis 6, 17, God says, and behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon
the earth to destroy... what, a few things here and there?
No, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life from... what, the local
Mesopotamia Valley?
No, from under heaven, that would be under the sky.
That would be pretty much all of the earth, wouldn't it?
It says, and everything that is in the earth shall die.
That sounds like a global flood, doesn't it?
Well, let's read on.
Genesis 7, 19-20, and the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth, and all the
high hills that were under the whole heaven were covered.
Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail.
The mountains were covered.
Folks, that's a global flood, isn't it?
A flood that covers the high hills, that's going to be a global flood.
All flesh died that moved upon the earth, every creeping thing, every man,
all in whose nostrils was of the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land
died.
Every living substance was destroyed.
God just goes on and on to explain, this is global.
Everything except those that were...
Noah only remained alive and they were with him on the ark.
The Bible is very clear, that was a global flood, one in which all the high hills
were covered.
By the way, you can't have high hills covered by a local flood.
Think about that, what would it look like?
It would look like this, right?
Water seeks its own level.
You can't have a local flood covering the high hills.
And what was the purpose of the rainbow?
God's promise never to send another local flood?
If it was a local flood, then God's broken His promise thousands of times because we
do have local floods, sometimes with a rainbow, reminding us that God brings His
promises?
No, God promised never to send another global flood and He hasn't and He won't
because God keeps His promises.
What was the purpose of the ark?
Why would you build an ark the size of an ocean liner and take two of every
air-breathing land animal, including birds by the way, for a local flood that you
knew was coming?
Why not just move?
Right?
That would be a lot easier, I would think.
I mean, you knew it was coming, had a hundred year warning.
I'm an astronomer, we have to do a little bit of astronomy here.
Here's a picture of the surface of Mars.
And we've actually sent a number of spacecraft to Mars that have gone around
and analyzed the rocks and so on.
It's pretty amazing we can do that sort of thing.
And they've actually, based on the types of rocks that they find here, they
actually believe that some of these are flood plains.
That's interesting.
In fact, a quote from a newspaper here says, a flood of biblical proportions
enough to fill the Mediterranean Sea gushed down from the highlands of Mars a
billion or so years ago.
The latest pictures from the Pathfinder confirmed Monday.
Now, the interesting thing about this is not that there was flooding on Mars,
because I think there is some evidence of that.
But I think it's funny that secular scientists are willing to believe in a
flood of biblical proportions, and yet Mars does not have any water on it
today.
It is dry.
It's got a little bit of water vapor, a little bit of frozen water.
And yet scientists are willing to believe in a flood of biblical proportions on a
planet that has no liquid water, and yet those same secular scientists will
say about the earth, which is currently 71% covered with water, oh, you can't have
a global flood on the earth.
That won't work.
Isn't that interesting and counterintuitive?
But they'll believe in a flood on Mars.
And this is exactly what the Bible predicted would happen.
It says that, knowing this first, that scoffers will come in the last days,
walking according to their own lessons, saying, Where is the promise of his
coming?
For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the
beginning of creation.
That's uniformitarianism.
Everything is today as it was before.
No worldwide flood.
It says, For this they willfully forget that by the word of God the heavens were
of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, by which the world
then existed perished, being flooded with water.
So it says they willingly forget, or they're deliberately ignorant of the
fact that the world was flooded by water, and that pre-flood civilization was
destroyed by water.
That's exactly what we're seeing today.
So it's funny, the people who try to critique the Bible and argue against it by
saying there was no worldwide flood prove the Bible is true because the Bible
predicted they would say that.
It's kind of interesting.
I want to sum it up with this cross series.
The church is preaching a message, Come to Jesus, come to the cross and be
saved.
That's the right message.
We want to be preaching that.
That's the gospel.
That's important.
That's what we're all about.
But there's been an attack in the form of, well, millions of years.
That's one of the attacks on God's Word.
And it impacts.
And most of us, you know what we think when we see that millions of years impact,
we say, well, that's a miss.
That didn't hit the cross.
Not a salvation issue.
I don't have to worry about millions of years.
And what we fail to recognize often is that millions of years is an attack on
Genesis.
Because if millions of years is true, then Genesis isn't literal history,
folks.
It can't be.
Satan's crafty.
If he were aiming at the cross and saying there was no resurrection, we understand
that's important.
That's a salvation issue.
You can't be saved apart from the resurrection.
There's no hope.
But Satan's crafty.
He aims at our foundation.
And we think it's just a side issue.
It's a foundational issue.
Is the Bible really true from the very first verse?
Is it really the authoritative Word of God?
If it is the Word of God, it would have to be true from the first verse.
God doesn't lie.
He doesn't deny Himself.
These different attacks came historically, naturalism, evolution, eight millions of
years, no global flood, and they impact.
And we think it's a miss, when it's really a direct hit.
It's a question of authority.
Who are you going to trust, God's Word or man's?
And then these different symptoms happen.
Newsflash, prayers outlawed in schools.
We say, trust in Jesus, which we should do, but we're not necessarily doing what
He's commanded us to do.
Newsflash, creation outlawed in schools.
And we say, well, Jesus is going to return.
Yes, He is, but He's told us to do some things in the meantime, like make
disciples of all nations, like be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks a reason
of the hope that's in you.
The Bible is outlawed in schools.
And we say, well, let's get the Bible back into schools.
And don't get me wrong, I'm all for doing politically what can be done, but my point
is our nation won't be won back politically.
If it's going to be won back at all, it will be by the proclamation of the
gospel.
And that will only make sense to people if they understand that God's Word is true
from the beginning.
Newsflash, Ten Commandments outlawed in schools.
Well, let's concentrate on worship.
And the church can be doing lots of good things, but in our culture what's happened
is the gospel message has become obscured by unbelief because people no longer
believe in the Bible starting with the Genesis, which is the foundation of the
gospel.
That's where we learn that that's the penalty for sin.
That's where we learn that we need a Savior.
That's where we learn that we're born sinners rebelling against God because of
the sin of our parents and their sins and so on.
Well, this problem, this is why I founded the Biblical Science Institute.
We want to come alongside the church.
We want to repair the damage that's been done, show you you can trust in the Bible
from the beginning.
You can trust Genesis.
And when these different attacks come, we want to warn you that these are attacks
on the Christian faith.
They're not just irrelevant side issues.
They're not just matters of science.
There are spiritual issues at play here.
And then we show you how to defend the faith against all those different attacks
with the various resources that we produce at the Biblical Science Institute.
And ultimately, we'd like to be in the background.
We'd like everybody in the church to recognize that these are attacks on the
Christian faith and be able to defend the faith against these issues.
And it's not something you have to go out and get a Ph.D.
to be able to do.
God calls a few of us, very few of us, to go out and get a Ph.D.
and specialize in a particular field and then bring the information back and show
the rest of His people how science confirms the Bible.
But He's called all of us to be ready to give an answer.
Everybody needs to do that.
And then the church can say, come to Jesus, come to the cross and be saved.
And people say, oh, I get it now.
I understand.
It's because of what Adam did.
Adam rebelled against God.
Death is the penalty for sin.
We live in a world that's fallen.
I need a Savior.
I would ruin the new earth the same way Adam ruined the original if I were let
into there in my sinful state.
I need a Savior.
That's what it comes down to, folks.
Now the message of the gospel makes sense.
And to help people make sense of it, we produce a number of resources.
We have some out in the lobby.
I hope you'll check that out.
A number of resources you can get.
The book that best covers what I talked about today is called Understanding
Genesis.
And it's going to show you that, yes, the Bible really does mean what it
says in Genesis.
It really is history.
And I'll deal with some of the arguments that, you know, theistic evolution and
millions of years and things like that are dealt with in that book.
This presentation, you can get it on DVD if you like.
We have a little different title for it, Relevance of Genesis, but it's the same
presentation.
Some other resources, The Ultimate Proof of Creation.
People have said, can I get one bulletproof argument that just refutes
everything?
And this is it.
There is an argument that absolutely is irrefutable that demonstrates biblical
creation.
It's very different from the kind of argument that most people have heard.
This book is going to train you to think and debate the way that Jesus did in his
earthly ministry.
And Jesus was not the sort of person you wanted to debate against.
He was pretty good at it.
And we won't be as good as he is, but we can get pretty close as our
thinking becomes more and more biblical.
We have DVDs on this topic as well, Nuclear Strength Apologetics, showing you
how to give a bulletproof argument for biblical creation.
That's a two-volume set.
Discerning Truth, How to Spot Logical Fallacies and Arguments that Evolutionists
Make.
Stargazer's Guide to the Night Sky.
I'm going to talk about this evening.
If you come back to the session, we're going to see how astronomy reveals
God and the mind of God and so on.
This is really just how to better enjoy the night sky from a Christian
perspective.
If you've ever wanted to know about the constellations and what you can see and
when's the next meteor shower and when's the next eclipse and things like that,
this book will tell you how to do that.
If you want to get a telescope, what kind you might want to get,
how to use it, what you can see in it.
But even stuff you can see in binoculars like Saturn, it'll show you how to find
that.
Taking Back Astronomy, this one's more of the apologetic resource.
This one's going to show you how the universe confirms the Bible and not a Big
Bang or billions of years.
Keeping Faith in an Age of Reason answers 420 alleged Bible contradictions.
That's kind of interesting.
Physics of Einstein, it's exactly what you think it is.
It's a layman's level book on how to better understand things like black holes
and time dilation and things of that nature.
It's really interesting and it's glorifying to God when it's done properly.
Very recently, we've produced a new curriculum called Introduction to Logic,
and it's designed for homeschoolers, but you could use it at a Christian school
as well.
And it shows how logic is rooted in the Christian worldview.
It teaches logic from a Christian perspective.
Very valuable resource.
And there's also a teacher's guide that you can get with it as well, or you can
just get the book separately, whatever you like.
We have a number of DVDs.
Created Cosmos takes you on a tour through the universe.
That's pretty neat.
Creation Science Confirms the Bible is True.
We did that at the conference.
If you weren't able to attend or if you'd like to get the DVD, we have that there.
Creation Evangelism, how to use creation to better teach people about the gospel,
and so on.
We've even got one on dinosaurs in the Bible, and kids love that one.
That's a neat way to get them excited about the Bible, because the Bible does
have some things to say about dinosaurs, interestingly.
You can get all the DVDs together for a discounted price.
You can get all the books together for a discounted price.
You can get all the DVDs and the books for an even better discounted price that will
probably put me out of business, but that's okay.
We want to get the information out there.
And by the way, we do have a free electronic newsletter.
You want to sign up for that?
That's what the sheet looks like.
It is totally free, so please take advantage of that, because there's not too
many things free in this world, right?
Just salvation and our newsletter.
So please check that out.
It is electronic.
You'll get it in your email.
If you don't put in an email address, you will get nothing, because that's what
it is for the moment.
Later we might do paper versions.
Check us out on the web as well, biblicalscienceinstitute.com.
That is a free resource for you.
I'd encourage you to check that out.
We're donation funded.
If any of you guys have a couple million dollars you'd like to give us,
we'd sure appreciate that.
I always ask, because you never know.
The Bible says you have not because you ask not, right?
So there you go.
But actually most of our partners contribute like twenty dollars a month,
and that's what keeps us going.
And the Lord is able to bless that.
The Lord can do a lot with a little.
He really can.
Remember how Jesus divided the fish into loaves?
It's pretty neat.
And I've seen that in this ministry.
We're very small, but God doesn't mind using small ministries and small people to
do wonderful things.
So I want to thank you very much for having me out to speak.
I really appreciate it.