TORNADO OF MORAL RELATIVISM

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How can we be sure our children won’t be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14)?

Our grandchildren are growing up in a whole different culture to us. They are going to have to deal with issues that we didn’t have to, what can we do?”

We need to first understand what happened. We need to deal with the foundational issue. It started 6,000 years ago in a garden. Satan said to Eve:

“Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:1-5

“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 11:3

Note what the apostle Paul says: The devil is using the same method on you, on your kids, on your grandkids, as he used on Eve to get you to a position of not believing the authority of God’s Word.

The Genesis 3 attack—“Did God really say?” And notice the next part, “And you will be like God.” You decide the truth for yourself. That is one of the problems we see through the whole Bible.

What is the method? To create doubt regarding the Word of God. It is an attack on the Word of God.

Here is the problem, our sinful nature leads us to trust man’s word rather than God’s Word. We want to be our own god and decide right and wrong for ourselves. Our churches need to be laying this foundation and teaching people about our sinful nature and understand the fact of what happened was this . . .

A battle began between two religions about 6,000 years ago, Man’s Word vs. God’s Word. It is the same battle today, the same in Luther’s day, and the same in Peter and Paul’s day. It is the same battle, and it hasn’t changed. The method by which that battle occurs does change through the years, but not the actual battle.

There is no neutral position Jesus makes it clear.

“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” Matthew 12:30

People have this idea that if you do not mention the Bible, when it comes to abortion or gay marriage and many other issues, then you are being neutral. But if you do not have the foundation of God’s Word, that means you only have the foundation of man’s word and that means you’ve already lost the battle.

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock... And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.” Matthew 7:24,26

If you reject God, you suppress the truth.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” Romans 1:18-20

Public education is not neutral. If the system is not for Christ, then it is against Him. So we send our kids there for five hours a day, all year long, and what do we do at home? What is the church doing? We need to be equipped to answer the following questions and God has raised up ministries to provide this information: Creation Ministries International http://www.creation.com and Answers in Genesis http://www.answersingenesis.org

Sadly, most Christians cannot answer even the basic questions. Test yourself with the following questions.

How do you know the Bible is God’s Word? Where did the Bible come from? Who put the Bible together? Why are there those books in the Bible and not other books? Do you believe in God? Where did God come from? You believe in an eternal God? How do you explain that? Who made God? Did someone make God?

Answers in Genesis have built a life-sized Noah’s Ark at Cinncinatti in the USA. They can provide you with all the evidence you need to show that the Biblical worldwide flood of Noah’s day occurred.

Stop trusting in man, put your trust in God. People love the praise of man rather than the praise of God.

HOW ACADEMIA GET IT WRONG WHEN THEY REJECT THE TRUTH OF GOD’S WORD

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The article in The Australian this weekend by Timothy J. Lynch, professor of American politics at the University of Melbourne, “The Assassin’s bullet shows why the left gets history all wrong” shows how academia and a society, that has rejected God as Creator, and His sovereignty over His Cosmos, will view events such as the recent assassination attempt on Donald Trump. He provides an analogy of the similarities of the assassination attempts on Trump and Hitler, to underscore not how similar Trump is to Hitler, but rather, how chance and luck – good and bad – often decide history.

Lynch’s assessment of where academia and society are at is strangely accurate: “We have built a culture on a misplaced sense of mastery, that we can control the weather, that gender is fluid, and that grand theories are better than simple explanations for the death of kings and survival of presidential candidates.

He says, “I’ve spent a career in the social sciences. We tend to favour big causes of things. The economic determinism of Karl Marx was an inescapable part of the humanities for 150 years. Today, class-based analysis has been eclipsed by research programs setting out to show the explanatory power of race and/or gender. Entire university careers can be spun out sifting data to fit a chosen structural theory. Critical race theory is in vogue, especially in the US.

Its proponents claim that all issues, from the everyday interactions of men and women to global inequalities, can (and must) be tied to the racism of white people. In the Anglophobe West, you would be hard-pressed to find a college campus or government department that does not pay some sort of homage to this theory. It is only a theory, after all.

Many disciplines do something similar with patriarchy. It has become a meta-cause of various social injustices. Patriarchy must be smashed. Ditto “toxic masculinity”. Again, a big cause can and must be moulded to fit the effect requiring one. Every modern social science has its bogeyperson – the big structural nemesis demanding defeat. 

However, Trump’s narrow escape has no significant structural explanation. He was plain lucky. He moved his head, just as Hitler stood at the strongest part of the table, at just the right moment. 

Academics hate this stuff. We are uneasy with the unexpected, the contingent, and the accidental.

We dismiss it as too epiphenomenal – as too unrelated to the big structural pressures we need to see manifest. To have world history turn on the turning of Trump’s head is impossible to model, measure, and predict.

We are still too close to know how the events in Pennsylvania will be remembered. But already, like those in Dallas on November 22, 1963, large causes, even conspiracies, are being found for what was simply one insignificant young man choosing to kill his significant peer.

The real agents of history turn out to be men such as John Wilkes Booth (who killed President Abraham Lincoln), Gavrilo Princip (who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand), and Lee Harvey Oswald (who killed President John F. Kennedy).

The structure within which each man acted is a historical curiosity, incidental or irrelevant. Their skill, and certainly their luck, changed history. So why, in our explanations of events, do we grasp for structure over agency?

One important reason, I think, is ideological: agency as an explanation makes people accountable for their actions. Oppressed people cannot be responsible for, much less accountable, for their oppression. Intersectionality, the faux science of progressive academia, fits everyone onto an oppressor v oppressed scale.

This leads to a contemporary discourse where the individual is exculpated from the consequences of his poor decisions. George Floyd, for example, did not make dumb life choices leading to him to Minneapolis that 2020 day. His killing could not simply be a chance encounter with a bad cop. Rather, his fate was explicable wholly in terms of the racism of the city’s police, itself part of the “white supremacy” and “structural racism” of the wider system. For the left, his agency was irrelevant; he had none.

A second related reason is the need to condemn a “great man” theory, that the history of the world is but the biography of great men. The new left recoils at the notion that great white men are the engines of history – what about all the forgotten women and people of colour? – while claiming these individuals are the progenitors of contemporary injustice.

The irony is the left’s implicit faith in the diagnosis of history as an inescapable structural force by one of history’s greatest men: a 19th-century Jewish economic theorist called Marx. 

A third reason we prefer structure to agency is psychological. It is much more reassuring to blame society for what ails us than to admit that miscalculation and bad luck account for our lot. The popularity of psychology as an academic discipline, especially among young women, speaks to a deep-seated need for answers that religious faith used to provide. Instead of individual repentance for sin as a guarantor of salvation, we now encourage groups to find blame in structures they cannot control but must work to change.

Life and death do not work this way. I’d wager your greatest love and most profound tragedy will have more to do with chance and fate (the goddess worshipped by Romans as Fortuna) than with any systemic, structural, or social force.”

Lynch mentions that the once-held religious faith provided the answers to the big questions and what is required for salvation. But a world that has rejected God’s history of the world given to us by God in His Word, the Bible, is now facing the wrath of God. Fulfilled prophecy proves God’s Word provides the true history of the world. We should therefore believe the future end times prophecies of God’s coming Trumpet (Revelation 8;6-) and Bowl (Revelation 16:1-) judgements.

TIMING OF GOD’S COMING WRATH

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Imagine how the disciples felt when near the end of Jesus’ ministry He told them, three times, He was going to die and now He had just told them the temple would be destroyed. It was all bad news so the following conversation between Jesus and the disciples is understandable. Fortunately, Jesus gave them and us incredible details on what will take place before His second coming to Earth and it is not good news for believers because the world will be like it was before God poured out His wrath upon the Earth, the first time with Noah’s Flood.

“As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” And Jesus answered them, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” Matthew 24:3, 9-14

This is one of the reasons that for me the Bible is the word of God and therefore the true history of the world. It does not paint a “pretty picture” of the end as most “made-up” stories do.

GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG EARTH

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The surface features of limestone deposits have several puzzling aspects that have stymied uniformitarian (‘slow and gradual’) geologists for well over a century. Especially puzzling are tower karst and tall sharp pinnacles. Eminent uniformitarian geomorphologists Baker and Twidale stated:

Domical forms in limestone, sandstone, and granite are converted to steep-sided towers. Such steepening through time is contrary to the expectable consequences of any of the conventional models of landscape evolution. 

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Tower karst consists of isolated, steep-sided limestone hills surrounded by a generally flat surface. There are a number of types of tower karst ranging from tall vertical-sided towers to cones and hemispheres. Tower karst commonly protrudes above a flat or nearly flat planation surface produced by erosion, and capped by gravel. Some towers are isolated while others are in groups rising from a common base.

Tower karst is said to be many millions of years old. Based on fossils, the top of the tower karst in southwest China has been assigned an age of 75 million years. But such old dates defy present erosion rates that show the towers could not last more than tens of thousands of years. They also demonstrate that the dating methods that give such old ages are unreliable. Distinguished Chinese hydrogeologist Yuan Daoxian stated it is inconceivable how they could have survived.

According to Michael Oard, karst pinnacles provide strong evidence that they formed underwater from tower karst while the waters of Noah’s Flood were still covering the area. However, it would have occurred in locations where the velocity of the floodwater was relatively low.

Article TOWER KARST AND SHARP PINNACLES – Fascinating Flood-formed Limestone Structures by Michael Oard in Creation magazine Vol 46 issue 3

EVIDENCE FOR WORLDWIDE FLOOD OF NOAH’S DAY

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Dinosaur fossils show strong evidence that they were formed by Noah’s Flood. A worldwide flood best explains their formation processes, their death postures, and the surrounding sediments.

There are many dinosaur mass graveyards, which show that the rock layers involved were laid down quickly. The bones in them are frequently mixed with marine fossils, showing that something brought the remains of sea and land creatures together.

The ‘dinosaur death pose’, with necks and tails bent backward, is evidence of water submersion around the time of death.

Armoured dinosaur fossils found upside-down indicate that, shortly after death, the carcasses were floating, capsized (heavy side down), and were abruptly buried in that position. Dinosaurs petrified in fighting poses also point to a cataclysmic watery burial. Also, these rock layers are often very wide, even spanning continents. Therefore, the cause of these layers was worldwide.

Enlightment philosophers began to take over the earth sciences beginning in the late 1700’s. They established naturalism as the basis of knowledge. The supernatural was excluded from science. Uniformitarianism became the axiom for earth sciences and creation and Noah’s Flood were relegated to the category: myths and legends. Fortunately in the 1960’s, Drs John Whitcomb (1924-2020) and Henry Morris (1918-2006), as well as many other scientists, began seriously looking to see if scientific obseervations realy did contradict the Bible. They discovered much data supporting the straightforward reading of Scripture, epecially the Creation, Flood, and Babel accounts in Genesis 1-11.

Biblical scientists realise that the assumptions of evolution and creation are based on the scientists worldview and are examples of historical science. Using the Biblical Flood Model they made many exciting discoveries about what the earth was like before the Flood, what the Flood accomplished, and the long-term results of the Flood. A creation scientist would say that the Bible is the key to the past, and they would have a lot of material to back that up. Can I suggest the book Biblical Geology 101 by Michael Oard and Dr Robert Carter. It is an easy to read book with many pictures. You will learn how rocks are formed, how they change over time, and how Noah’s Flood impacted the world.

The beginning of wisdom is to fear God so hopefully the reality of Noah’s Flood when God destroyed all of mankind except one family will make you reconsider your worldview.

ANCIENT SUMERIANS RECORDED THE DIVIDE OF HEAVEN AND EARTH IN ACCORD WITH THE BIBLE

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Before Adam ate the forbidden fruit, the heavenly (spiritual) dimension, and the earthly dimension were one realm— one domain, one plane of existence in which God, angels, and man had open communication and relationship; There was no separation between the spiritual realm, and the physical realm. There was perfect compatibility and agreement between them, an idea also found in Mesopotamian literature: “Heaven talked with Earth. Earth talked with Heaven.” (The Xianhua Wang Metamorphosis of Enlil (Satan) in Early Mesopotamia Pg. 152)

“Anu (the creator god) carried off heaven while Enlil carried off the earth and assumed most of An’s powers.” (Kramer, Samuel Noah The Sumerians The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963. Pg. 37-41)

“Enlil … was at about the same time cosmologically considered the deity who separated Heaven from Earth and Earth from Heaven.” (Xianhua Wang The Metamorphosis of Enlil in Early Mesopotamia. Pg. 100.)

God walked in the Garden, and man could look at his face and endure God’s fire and lightning. Man’s transgression brought decay, degeneration, and death. God’s perfection and the fallen physical, earthly realm became incompatible. Now God’s fiery presence would scorch the ground like when He descended on Mt. Sinai (The mountains melt like wax before the LORD, before the Lord of all the earth. Psalms 97: 5). Now man could no longer see God’s face and live. The Garden of Eden, where God, angels, and man could commune together was gone. Open, unveiled fellowship became impossible. This divide of heaven and Earth caused by Satan (Enlil) was recorded by the ancient Sumerians ( Kramer, Samuel Noah The Sumerians The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963. Pg. 37-41).

After The Fall, when God came into the Garden in the cool of the evening, Adam and Eve were compelled to hide themselves. Why? The first sign of disconnect was when they realised they were naked. They had been clothed with light like God covers himself “with light as with a garment” (Psalms 104: 2). They observed the glow in which they had previously been clothed was fading. This reality was displayed after Moses spent forty days with God and upon coming down the mountain, he “did not know that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him” (Exodus 34: 29). When the congregation saw him, “The skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him” (Exodus 34: 30).

After God announced the consequences of man’s actions, God had to remove Himself from his own creation, lest His fire destroy it. This removal is what the Scriptures call the veil. It is what marks the boundary between our earthly, physical domain and the spiritual domain. Isaiah first spoke of its removal: “And He will destroy on this mountain the surface of the covering cast over all people and the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces” (Isaiah 25: 7– 8). The prophet Isaiah also pined: “Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64: 1). Whatever the veil is, it can be torn and removed.

There are four other distinct places where the veil (heavens) was opened: “I saw the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1: 1). “Jesus came up … and the heavens were opened to Him” (Matthew 3: 16). Stephen: “I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7: 55– 56). John: “I saw heaven opened … Jesus was on a white horse” (Revelation 19: 11).

Since The Fall the cosmos exists as two realms— the one in which we live, and the other where spirit-based beings live and where God’s presence is manifest. The one realm was split into two: the earthly dimension is what Satan rules, he is the god of this world; the heavenly or spiritual dimension is where God rules. (God rules all, of course, but Satan has authority in the earthly realm.)

God did not curse the ground because of Adam; rather, like a reporter, He simply presented the consequence of the degenerative decay-death reaction that Adam triggered (Genesis 2: 17). God said, “Cursed is the ground for your sake” (Genesis 3: 17).

God created Adam from the adamáh (earth); Adam was the earth-man, the federal head of creation. Adam and the adamáh were linked physically and hence their fates were linked. When Adam ate from the fruit, death, degeneration, and decay happened upon Adam and upon the Earth and material cosmos as well. Decay permeated the entire creation from the invisible world of cells and DNA to all the animals, birds, and fish that God had formed out of the adamáh. Degeneration began within all living and non-living matter; the atoms of every tree, flower, blade of grass, rock, mountain, planet, and star. The complete composition of all physical creation became incompatible with God’s fiery presence.

I have found it liberating to understand the true history of God and His Cosmos and that the ancient world like the Sumerians recorded it in accord with God’s Word. I hope you find it liberating as well.

The information in this post has been extracted from Douglas Hamp’s book, Corrupting the Image 2: Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection. Eskaton Media Group. There is a third book in the series: Corrupting the Image 3: Singularity, Superhumans, and The Second Coming of Jesus. I have not read it as yet but I am sure I will find some gems in it.

WHEN DID SATAN REBEL AGAINST GOD?

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The Scripture Ezekiel 28:12-15 (below) indicates Satan was in the garden of Eden when He first sinned against God. The three major passages that deal with the fall of Satan: Genesis 3, Isaiah 14, and Ezekiel 28, in all three, Satan is in the Garden of Eden, and God pronounced the immediate judgment of being cast to the ground and the future consequence of his slander.

His rebellion was prompted by God giving sovereignty over the Cosmos to Adam. Satan became enraged by the notion that he, the great Angel, must be a servant to Adam, made of dust. So the root of jealousy and bitterness began festering within him.

Satan came to Adam and Eve as God’s chief steward, prime minister, and high priest who oversaw everything and was charged with protecting the sacred place they occupied. They had no reason to question his motives. They had known him since the day of their creation. Therefore, Satan could come to them in his unfallen, glorious state and they listened.

Adam and Eve were childlike in understanding the great cosmos, and their wisdom could not compare to Satan’s. Satan was charged with watching over the creatures made of dust, guiding and serving them in any way needed. This obviously brought out the worst in him.

Adam and Eve ejected from the Garden of Eden

Satan’s deadly, slanderous weapon was a simple question: “Has God indeed said? (Genesis 3: 1). This tiny question was an insidious, but subtle slander of God’s character. He was asking, can you really trust what God said? Next, he lied about the consequence of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3: 4), and then proceeded to truthfully tell the purpose of the tree: to be like God.

Satan subtly slandered God in the Garden of Eden because he did not want to serve anyone, but instead wanted all to serve him. He persuaded Adam and Eve to curse themselves. He used slander to incite Adam to eat the fruit God forbade, knowing Adam would “surely die” (Genesis 2: 17), and he would subsequently commit all his progeny to perpetual death (Romans 5: 12; 1 Corinthians 15: 21– 22). Adam’s transgression caused an imbalance, a debt, a legal lien upon the Earth which must be balanced or paid.

“You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings.
On the day that you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.” Ezekiel 28:12-15

“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’” Isaiah 14:12-14

DEFENDING THE BIBLICAL WORLDWIDE FLOOD

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How Large Was Noah’s Ark? The length of the ark 300 cubits, its breadth 50 cubits, and its height 30 cubits. (Genesis 6:15) Unlike many whimsical drawings that depict the ark as some kind of overgrown houseboat (with giraffes sticking out the top), the ark described in the Bible was a huge vessel. Not until the late 1800s was a ship built that exceeded the capacity of Noah’s ark.

The dimensions of the ark are convincing for two reasons: the proportions are like that of a modern cargo ship, and it is about as large as a wooden ship can be built. The cubit gives us a good indication of size.1 Using the most likely cubit length, an ancient royal cubit of at least 20.4 inches (0.518 m), we know that the ark must have been no less than 510 feet (155 m) long, 85 feet (26 m) wide, and 51 feet (16 m) high. In the Western world, wooden sailing ships never got much longer than about 330 feet (100 m), yet the ancient Greeks built vessels at least this size 2,000 years earlier. China built huge wooden ships in the 1400s that may have been as large as the ark. The biblical ark is one of the largest wooden ships of all time—a mid-size cargo ship by today’s standards.

A Korean study was performed at the world-class ship research center (KRISO) in 1992. The team of nine KRISO researchers was led by Dr. Hong, now the research center’s director-general. The study confirmed that the ark could handle waves as high as 98 feet (30 m) and that the proportions of the biblical ark are near-optimal—an interesting admission from Dr. Hong, who believed in evolutionary ideas. The study combined analysis, model wave testing, and ship standards, yet the concept was simple: compare the biblical ark with 12 other vessels of the same volume but modified in length, width, or depth. Three qualities were measured—stability, hull strength, and comfort.

The Biblical verse below tells us Noah didn’t have to search or travel to faraway places to bring the animals on board. The world map was completely different before the flood, and based on Genesis 1, there may have been only one continent. The animals arrived at the ark as if called by a “homing instinct” (a behavior implanted in the animals by their Creator) and marched up the ramp themselves.

“But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons’ wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground, according to its kind, two of every sort shall come in to you to keep them alive.” Genesis 6:18-20

Juveniles of even the largest land animals do not present a size problem, and, being young, they have their full breeding life ahead of them. Even most dinosaurs were not very large — some were the size of a chicken (although absolutely no relation to birds, as many evolutionists are now saying). Most scientists agree that the average size of a dinosaur is actually the size of a bison. As far as the number of different types of dinosaurs, it should be recognized that, although there are hundreds of names for different varieties (species) of dinosaurs that have been discovered, there are probably only 60–80 different kinds.

Was Noah’s Flood Global? “And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.” Genesis 7:19–20

Noah’s flood was much more destructive than any 40-day rainstorm ever could be. Scripture says that the “fountains of the great deep” broke open. In other words, earthquakes, volcanoes, and geysers of molten lava and scalding water were squeezed out of the earth’s crust in a violent, explosive upheaval. These fountains were not stopped until 150 days into the flood—so the earth was literally churning underneath the waters for about five months! The duration of the flood was extensive, and Noah and his family were
aboard the ark for around a year.

Scientists once understood the fossils buried in water-carried sediments of mud and sand—to be mostly the result of the great flood. Wanting to debunk the Bible and the worldwide flood of Noah’s day, Charles Lyell of Darwin’s era introduced the ideal of slow gradual change over millions, now billions of years. Geologists now realise the evidence for catastrophism is everywhere. It can be seen all over the earth, from seabeds to mountaintops. Whether you travel by car, train, or plane, the physical features of the earth’s terrain clearly indicate a catastrophic past, from canyons and craters to coal beds and caverns. Some layers of strata extend across continents, revealing the effects of a huge catastrophe. The earth’s crust has massive amounts of layered sedimentary rock, sometimes miles (kilometers) deep! These layers of sand, soil, and material—mostly laid down by water—were once soft like mud, but they are now hard stone. Encased in these sedimentary layers are billions of dead things (fossils of plants and animals) buried very quickly. The evidence all over the earth is staring everyone in the face.

There are hundreds of stories and legends about a worldwide flood. Why do diverse cultures share a strikingly similar story?
Did you know that stories about a worldwide flood are found in historic records all over the world? According to Dr. Duane Gish in his popular book Dinosaurs by Design, there are more than 270 such stories, most of which share a common theme and similar characters. So many flood stories with such similarities surely come from the flood of Noah’s day.

Stories of the flood—distorted though they may be—exist in practically
all nations, from ancient Babylon onward. This evidence must not be lightly dismissed. If there never was a worldwide flood, why are there so many stories about it?

The reason for these flood stories is not difficult to understand. When we turn to the history book of the universe, the Bible, we learn that Noah’s descendants stayed together for approximately 100 years until God confused their languages at Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). As these people moved away from Babel, their descendants formed nations based on the languages they were given by God. Through those languages, the story of the flood was shared until it became embedded in their cultural history.

The Bible declares that the earth-covering cataclysm of Noah’s day is an obvious fact of history. People “deliberately overlook this fact, that . . . the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished” (2 Peter 3:5–6). The flood left much evidence—from the fact that over 70% of the rocks on continents were laid down by water and contain fossils to the widespread flood legends. Both of these evidences provide compelling support for this historical event.

God clearly sent a worldwide flood to punish humankind for their evil and corrupt ways (Genesis 6:5, 11). Even though flood-affirming evidence from geology and other areas of study is abundant, we don’t need this evidence to know what happened. Starting with the Bible and the history that God faithfully recorded there, Christians have a tool to interpret the evidence that evolutionists and non-Christians do not. We have the record of what happened from the one who was there.

Get all this information and more in a free booklet, Noah’s Ark – A Biblical and Scientific look at the Genesis account produced by Answers in Genesis (www.answersingenesis.org)


DON’T MESS WITH GOD

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Nations that are talking about Israel giving up land to re-establish a nation of Palestine do so at enormous peril. Biblical prophecy shows us that God has judged nations down through history: e.g. Egypt, Canaan, Ammon, Moab, Bashan, Heshbon, Midian, Babylon, Persia, Rome, and the 20th century, Germany, UK, and now America in the 21st century.

“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it.” Jeremiah 18:7-8

Even God’s chosen people were not exempt from His judgment if they rebelled against Him.  God instructed Moses to warn the people of the nation of Israel that He would rain down judgment on them if they were disobedient (Deuteronomy 29:24-26). He has used the Babylonians, Persians, Romans, and even Germans for that purpose.

This recent video by Nelson Walters shows us how in control God is of the events that are taking place in our world.

HOW DISTANT STARLIGHT CAN REACH EARTH IN 6000 YEARS

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by Mark Harwood

Recent developments in creationist cosmology offer an elegant explanation of the distant starlight question which is consistent with the Genesis account of creation and is based on recent astronomical observations and Einstein’s General Relativity equations. Whilst a detailed explanation of this new cosmology is beyond the scope of this Feedback article, it is explained more fully in Harnett’s article “Has dark matter really been proven?” http://www.creation.com

This article provides a framework for understanding the answer to the distant starlight question. The key elements are time dilation, the recent observations showing that we live in a galactocentric universe, and the Scriptural references to God ‘stretching out the heavens’ on Day 4 of the Creation Week.

An experimentally verified prediction of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory is a phenomenon called gravitational time dilation. It has long been established that gravity affects the rate at which time flows in any particular location in the universe.

Another mechanism for time dilation is a rapid acceleration of the fabric of space in an expanding universe. This is explained more fully in Hartnett’s article referenced above.

We live in a galactocentric universe: Standard Big Bang theory has it that the universe has neither a centre nor an edge which is an assumption, called the Cosmological Principle, designed to avoid the earth being a special place. If the Earth was special in any way, it would imply design and thus a Designer which flies in the face of atheistic evolutionary belief. When Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift in the spectra of stars and galaxies and interpreted them as distance (known as the Hubble Law), he was horrified at the implication that the Earth could be in a special place. He wrote: ‘Such a condition [red shifts] would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe … But the unwelcome supposition of a favoured location must be avoided at all costs … [and] is intolerable … moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory because the theory postulates homogeneity.’1

Recent surveys3,4 have measured the galactic redshift for around 250,000 galaxies and have revealed an over abundance of galaxies at certain redshifts in which the data departs from the expected theoretical distribution in a series of large spikes. A straightforward interpretation of this data is that the galaxies are distributed with a spherical shell-like symmetry with the Milky Way galaxy at or near the centre! Such a result is entirely consistent with the biblical picture but is at odds with standard big bang beliefs and is not consistent with the Cosmological Principle.

In at least 11 places, the Scriptures speak of God ‘stretching out the heavens’ (e.g. Job 9:8, Isaiah 40:22 and 42:5, Jeremiah 10:12, Zechariah 12:1) and in Genesis 1:15 the words ‘And it was so.’ are recorded in connection with the events of Day 4 of Creation Week, implying the completion of the events described on that Day. It is a reasonable conclusion to draw that God stretched out the heavens to the vast extent of the observable universe in just one 24 hour day and then ceased the action of ‘stretching out’. This is more rational than the inflation fudge of big bangers discussed above. That is, where the universe just happened to expand much faster than light, although there is no known physical cause for starting or stopping this superluminal expansion.

We should also note that God created the Earth first before the sun, moon and stars (and by inference the planets etc) so it would seem reasonable to assume the universe was stretched out with the Earth at or very near its centre. Furthermore, Psalm 147:4 and Isaiah 40:26 imply that there is a finite number of stars in the universe. So, the Bible seems to teach that we live in a finite universe that has, at the very least, our Milky Way galaxy at its centre.

We now have the keys to understanding how starlight can reach us from such vast distances in just a few thousand years of Earth time. The days of the Creation Week were recorded from the point of view of an observer on the earth so the time reference in Genesis is Earth time. On Day 4, as God commenced stretching out the heavens, the mass of the universe (presumably including the ‘waters above’ which were separated out on Day 2) would have been confined to a much smaller volume of space than is the case today. Assuming the Hartnett–Carmeli theory is correct, the Universe rapidly expanded with massive time dilation as a result of very rapid acceleration of the fabric of space on Day 4. By the end of Day 4, when God completed his work of creating the sun, moon and stars, and had stretched out the heavens to their vast extent, billions of years of cosmic time could have elapsed at the outer edges of the cosmos in just one 24 hour earth day. There would have been more than enough time for the light from distant stars to have reached the earth so that when Adam gazed at the night sky on that sixth night he would have seen much the same as what we see today.

6,000 years have passed since the Creation Week. If the models outlined above are correct, the light we see today from any star that is greater than 6,000 light years away from the earth will have originated on Day 4 itself. This would include most of the visible stars, all of which are part of the Milky Way galaxy. We are effectively looking at God’s creative activity on Day 4 as we gaze into the universe!

So what do we make of supernova 1987A? At 170,000 light years away we are looking at an event that occurred on Day 4 but whose light did not reach us until 1987.

Is an exploding star consistent with a perfect creation? God said that the stars were created to be for signs and seasons (Genesis 1:14) and God foreknew all that would happen right from the very beginning. What to us seems to be destruction is actually just a physical process which does not necessarily denote any lack of perfection in the original creation. Importantly, there is no loss of biblical life involved (the creatures affected by death brought about by the Fall were those the Bible calls נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayyāh)).6

Another excellent resource on the light travel dilemma is previewed in the video below.