THE AUTHORITY AND INERRANCY OF SCRIPTURE


The Christian church has historically supported ‘young-earth creation’, however, around ad 1800, long age theories crept into secular geology. They denied the global Flood of Genesis a priori by restricting causes to processes happening now. That meant it would take millions of years to form the rocks and fossils. In response, many churches essentially replaced the authority of Scripture with the authority of secular geology.

As a result, God raised up ministries like Creation Ministries International (CMI), http://www.creation.com. The ‘young earth’ position is not their axiom, or starting assumption. Rather, it is a theorem, i.e., something logically deduced from their real axiom: the authority of Scripture. Throughout most of its history, the Church accepted that Scripture was the last word on origins. Thus no Church Father or Reformer taught that Earth was older than a few thousand years.

Sadly, the liberal wing of the church rejected the authority of Scripture outright. They agreed that Scripture really does teach a young earth, but it was wrong. Many conservatives wanted to keep biblical authority but were intimidated by the secular long-age claims. So they invented various schemes to pretzelize the Bible to accommodate long-age thinking. For example, concepts like the gap and day-age theories appeared in the 19th century. The ‘framework hypothesis’ was a 20th-century novelty. (See creation.com/history-interpretation.)

But it was clear that they had really made secular ‘science’ their final authority. If these views were really taught in the text, then why did the Church Fathers, Reformers, and other Christian scholars miss them before about 1800? And if we abandon biblical authority on history, then why not on morality and doctrine as well (creation.com/useful-dupes)?

Other pushbacks are claims that the Bible is not clear on the topic. But this goes to another important issue: whether the main teachings of the Bible are understandable or perspicuous.  After all, Jesus often said, “it is written”. Paul said, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” and makes us “complete” and “equipped” (2 Timothy 3:15–17). This could not be, if the Bible were as difficult as some claim.

Some make hyper-pious claims that ‘God’s days are not man’s days’. But God wrote Scripture to teach us. Therefore, God’s meanings must be the same as ours; otherwise, communication is broken. And for us to apply His teachings, God’s logic must be the same as ours. The difference is that God knows all true premises and commits no logical fallacies (see creation.com/logic).

This is the 48th year of Creation magazine, affirming both the authority and understandability of Scripture, plus ample supporting evidence. The latest issue contains much more of the same. For instance, hard blue-gray rocks forming in decades show there is no need for millions of years.

Biblical authority and understandability have historically been a fruitful foundation for science. On p. 24, CMI interview a molecular biologist who firmly defends biblical creation, while challenges the supposed evolution of the whale. The biblical Creation/Fall/ Flood/dispersion framework explains the wide variety of animals around the world, including the bowerbird. Plus, the Bible’s design implication explains why some animals will sacrifice themselves for their groups. And their p. 40 article explains how and why Scripture clearly teaches the foundational doctrine of creation out of nothing.

This article is taken from the latest issue of Creation Magazine Vol 48, Issue 1 2026. I have been a subscriber for 48 years.

EVIDENCE FOR THE WORLDWIDE FLOOD OF NOAH’S DAY AND A YOUNG EARTH

Hugh Ross is trying to rewrite the biblical account of the flood. In this episode of Answers News, the hosts, Bryan Osborne, Avery Foley, and Dr. Terry Mortenson, share their perspectives on this topic as Bible-believing Christians.

Answers in Genesis is an apologetics (Christianity-defending) ministry dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ effectively.

Progressive creationists’ like Dr Hugh Ross,2 who insist on interpreting Genesis in the light of man’s theories like the ‘big bang’, and the supposed ‘proof’ of an old earth (billions of years), insist that those who teach a young earth and literal Genesis 1–11 are the ones putting a stumbling block in the way of scientists and others accepting the Gospel message. However, time and time again, we have found that the opposite is true. Compromising Genesis with man’s ideas from outside of Scripture opens the door to this ‘slippery slide of unbelief’. It becomes a major stumbling block to people being receptive to God’s Word and the Gospel. Unbelievers are generally unimpressed when they see Christians clearly evading the obvious meaning of the beginning of God’s Word.

Your faith will be strengthened by listening to Dr Terry Mortenson defend a young earth by presenting the evidence for Noah’s worldwide flood and the billions of dead things buried all over the world including fossil fuels formed from all the vegetation that was buried.

It is important to remember that Jesus spoke of Noah’s flood when he was telling His disciples about His second coming to earth. He believed that Noah’s flood was worldwide killing all but the eight people on the Ark.

But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.Matthew 24:36-39

Moreover, many of the things Jesus said would occur at this time have played out already exactly as He said they would. After Jesus return to earth to rescue Israel at the battle of Armageddon, His Millennial Kingdom is next on God’s agenda for planet earth. Go to http://www.millennialkingdom.net to prepare to rule and reign with Jesus for the next 1,000 years.

AMERICAN STATS ON GOD’S WORD

An overwhelming majority of practicing Christians (88%) — those who say they are Christian, attend church at least once a month and consider their faith “very important” in their lives — believe in the total accuracy of the Bible, while 4% did not and the rest were unsure. 

I am pleasantly surprised at this percentage (88%) of practicing American Christians holding to the inerrancy of the Bible.

A not so good percentage is when 2,656 American adults were surveyed 36% of respondents answered in the affirmative to the accuracy of the Bible, while 39% disagreed. Prior to the teaching of evolution in schools and universities as fact the % was much higher.

Of interest, about 45% of casual Christians, those who go to church at least once a month but do not consider their faith “very important,” characterized the Bible as totally accurate, while 23% took the opposite view. The overwhelming majority of non-Christians (70%) did not agree that the Bible is totally accurate, while 12% embraced the opposite position.

John Farquhar Plake, chief innovation officer at the American Bible Society and editor-in-chief of the State of the Bible series said: “Our latest survey finds a mixture of belief and questioning in the American public,” Plake added. “It’s true that nearly one in five Americans think the Bible was written to control and manipulate, but twice that many trust the Bible as ‘totally accurate in all the principles it presents.‘”

A total of just over one-sixth (17%) of those surveyed reported having “no trust” in religion, with higher percentages expressing “no trust” in the government (22%) and the media (29%). Meanwhile, much smaller shares of Americans told pollsters they had “no trust” in families (3%), medicine (5%) and education (5%). 

STANDING ON THE TRUTH OF GOD’S WORD

Barna Group’s recent research reveals: only 4% of American adults and 6% of professing Christians hold a biblical worldview. Nearly half of American adults don’t believe the Bible is literally true — that is, according to a recent study highlighted by The Christian Post. The Ligonier State of Theology 2025 report, a separate study conducted by Lifeway Research, found a collective 48% of Americans believe “the Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true.” Similarly, 44% reject that “the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches.”

The State of Theology study revealed alarming trends: 47% of evangelicals believe God accepts the worship of all religions, 53% assert that most people are inherently good despite sinning occasionally, and 49% of U.S. adults view Jesus as a great teacher but not God. These findings, as Hibbs and Perkins emphasized, directly contradict biblical teachings, raising concerns about the doctrinal fidelity of many churches.

This should not come as a surprise as most church denominations have accepted gay marriage, homosexual pastors and even transgenderism. 

The Bible is God’s voice, His truth, alive and active. Every passion you’re wrestling with, every opinion you hold, Scripture speaks to it, directly or indirectly. Throw out any topic, and the Bible has the final say. It’s the lens that makes sense of everything. Every worldview outside the Bible crumbles under scrutiny. Only Scripture unveils who God is, what’s broken in the world, who we are, and where we’re headed. It’s the only lens that makes sense of a chaotic world.

When skeptics reject the Bible as God’s inspired, authoritative word, they’re left chasing fleeting wisdom from the “universe” — or worse, themselves — and they always come up empty.

I challenge you to find one person who’s genuinely content — not just pretending to be — and unshaken by life’s uncertainties, without a flicker of longing for something greater. I’ve yet to meet an unbeliever who isn’t, knowingly or not, trying to fill a God-shaped void with something, because we simply weren’t created from nothing, for nothing, only to die and fade back into nothing.

Dr. George Barna nailed it: “Understanding God — often referred to as ‘prime reality’ — is the cornerstone of worldview development. Without a biblical understanding of God, it is difficult to develop a coherent biblical worldview built on His truth.” There’s a simple truth we, as believers, must never forget: it’s not ultimately up to us to change minds and unharden hearts. Only God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, carries that ability. It’s easy to feel like a failure if a single conversation doesn’t spark a conversion, but that’s not the case.

I’ll tell you where we’ve failed. We fail when we water down Scripture to appease skeptics. We fail when we stop quoting God’s word because it’s “unwelcome.” We fail when we dodge the hard truths — sin, Christ’s cross, repentance — to avoid ruffling feathers. We fail when fear of rejection or uncertainty silences our witness, or when cynicism tricks us into thinking humanity’s hope lies in ourselves, not in Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords.

If you’re a Christ-follower reading this, I pray it causes you to re-examine your own life. Do you shy away from tough talks? Do you let skeptics dictate what you can or cannot say? Or do you stand bold in biblical conviction? Do doubts shake you, or do you anchor yourself in Christ?

We are all called to trust and obey. Trust that “the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (Luke 12:12). Trust that God’s grace is enough, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Trust that “God will supply every need of yours according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). Trust Psalm 118:6: “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” Because “if God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31).

Then, with these promises written on your heart, obey Christ’s call in Matthew 28:19 to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” Obey Ephesians 4:15’s charge to “speak truth in love.” Trusting in God’s faithfulness, obey the call to be salt and light, even when the world mocks us for it.

PHARAOH’S CHARIOT WHEELS DISCOVERED

When a team of modern salvage divers recently plunged into the Red Sea, they weren’t chasing treasure. They were chasing a mystery nearly 50 years old – a legend that the chariot wheels that once belonged to a Pharaoh lay buried beneath the waves. What they found left them stunned. Scattered across the seabed were shocking discoveries of remains of chariots and many human bones that would confirm a Biblical story that a lot of people have dismissed as fiction. But here’s the thing: what the divers saw suggests that something shocking happened in the Red Sea, confirming the Biblical Exodus story.

This confirms what Ron Wyatt reported many years before. I met Ron Wyatt when I was Chairman of Ark Search, and Dr Alan Roberts of Australia was working with Ron Wyatt on a search for Noah’s Ark. Sadly, that search ended in failure; however, an article by Ken Griffiths and Darryl K White in the Journal of Creation, Volume 35, Issue 3, 2021, shows a credible site for Noah’s Ark on the Mountain Karaca Dag in Turkey.

While researching a Babel candidate site near Diyarbakir, Turkey, on 3 October 2019, they found a complex of sites on the mountain Karaca Dag that, upon further examination, seem to match the description of the landing site of Noah’s Ark, along with a tomb, possible altar, and much more. The tomb is a 60-m-square, rough stone mastaba, oriented to the winter solstice sunrise, with two extensions that make it into roughly a 160-m-long boat shape. The site is marked by six or more geoglyphs, situated along an arc 5 km distant on the northwest side of the mountain. The possible remains of the Ark appear to have had a modern school built on them, now collapsed.

We would expect to find the landing site of the Ark near the centre of the oldest post-diluvial distribution of humans and domesticated plants. The site presented in this paper lies upon a mountain between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers at the centre of the Pre‑Pottery Neolithic A (PPNA) Culture.

MORE EVIDENCE CONFIRMS DINOSAURS BURIED IN NOAH’S FLOOD ABOUT 4000 YEARS AGO

In 2005 the first popularized find of dinosaur soft tissue rocked the scientific world, and many refused to believe it was real, despite the evidence, because “soft tissue can’t last that long.” But subsequent studies, including a brand-new one, have confirmed that, yes, the soft tissue is original to the fossil.

In this new study, researchers used advanced mass spectrometry and protein sequencing to detect bone collagen in a well-preserved hip bone from an Edmontosaurus uncovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. This unexpected find is encouraging other researchers to pull fossils out of storage and look at them with these new technologies. And why? The experts hope they will uncover the biochemical pathways that enabled the preservation of organic compounds over millions of years. How these proteins could remain for millions of years is a big mystery. Evolutionists try as they might, have yet to be able to present a plausible explanation for the existence of soft tissue in supposedly ancient fossils.

A better interpretation starts with God’s Word. The fossils aren’t millions of years old—they are only about 4,350 years old. They are a stark reminder of God’s judgment on a sin-filled world but also of his mercy in preserving Noah, his family, and two of every kind of land animal (seven pairs of some) onboard the ark.

SO CALLED CHRISTIAN PUBLISHING COMPANIES

Zondervan Publishing has just released a new study Bible, The Upside-Down Kingdom Bible, with notes, essays, and book introductions that, according to the Amazon listing, feature “a diverse set of trusted Christian voices and explores difficult issues facing Christians today, with features that are honest, nuanced, and filled with grace.”

Should Christians use this study Bible?

Rather than showing how God’s Word is unique, giving us a set of glasses through which to view the world that is “upside down” to the world’s way of thinking, the writers take the world’s lenses of feminism, Marxism, evolution, and CRT and read the Bible through them.

Many of the notes I read were sprinkled with references to man-made climate change, terms like “forced migration experiences” and “systemic injustice.” From what I saw, these terms weren’t really defined, but all such terms are routinely used by “woke” and progressive Christians the same way the world uses them, so I think it’s safe to assume that the world’s definition is how they’re likewise being used here.

Also, this study Bible is supposed to be “nuanced,” and it certainly is. It’s so “squishy” on most controversial topics (but not certain “woke” ones—on some of those, the authors took obvious positions) that the notes lose any authority, turning into, “some people say this, and some people say that, but we can’t really know.” But in many cases, we can really know. For example, in Genesis, we can know how and when God created! We know He created male and female and established marriage and family as the basis of society. Homosexuality and transgenderism are abominations to Him.

Hence, this Upside Down Kingdom Bible from what was once a trusted Christian publishing company is just another end-times sign. The fact that Zondervan was acquired by Harper and Row, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, may explain their departure from believing the Bible is inerrant.

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

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.

GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR A YOUNG EARTH

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

TRUE HISTORY OF THE COSMOS

The slide below is taken from a FREE PowerPoint presentation available from http://www.answersingenesis.org which addresses the issue of the decline in Christianity in the Western World due to the teaching of evolution and billions of years in our schools and universities.

Ken Ham calls it the Seven C’s of History: Creation – Perfect at the beginning. Corruption: Sin and death entered the world because Adam and Eve disobeyed God due to deception by an evil spirit being, Satan. Catastrophe: God judges an evil world with the worldwide flood of Noah’s day. Confusion: God confuses the language of the post-flood population resulting in the nations of the world speaking different languages. Christ: God’s Son steps into history as the Saviour of mankind. Cross: Jesus was prepared to pay the price for our rebellion against God. He rose from the dead and promised to raise to eternal life all of those who believe and submit to Him as Lord. Consummation: Jesus will return to earth to fulfill the covenants He made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for God’s nation, Israel to rule and reign over the nations of the world for 1000 years: Jesus Millennial Kingdom (www.millennialkingdom.net).

God has allowed Satan to rule this world for 6,000 years. When Jesus returns to Earth, Satan is bound in the Abyss for most of the 1000 years that Jesus rules the nations with the resurrected Saints. At the end of the 1000 years, Satan is released and he raises an enormous army to come against Jesus and the Saints. “And fire came down from God out of heaven and devoured them.” Revelation 20:9. God then destroys this world with fire. Next is the second resurrection and Jesus’ White Throne judgement. Then, John sees a new Jerusalem descending out of a new heaven onto a new Earth where only the righteous dwell.

When Darwin came up with the Theory of Evolution by natural selection, he did not know the incredible evidence for design in the Cosmos. As Dr. Dean Kenyon (former Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University and author of two Evolutionary Biochemistry textbooks) states the discovery of DNA and the electron microscope rang the death knell of evolution. Imagine how difficult it was for Dr. Kenyon to come out and say that what he had been teaching for many years was nonsense.

DNA is the complex information in every living cell that controls all the functions of the organism. Information is only derived from an Intelligent Designer who is separate from His creation.

The electron microscope reveals that inside each cell are manufacturing units making all the complex chemicals required for life and transport devices to take them to where they are needed.

The DNA, and the factories and functions that the DNA controls must be perfect on day one; they could not have evolved. They were created by an omnipotent designer just as the Bible, God’s Word states. The opening words of the Bible state “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

In other branches of science such as geology the paradigm of slow gradual change over billions of years is also being challenged as the evidence in the rocks is of catastrophe not slow gradual change. Billions of dead things all over the world including fossil fuels are evidence of a catastrophic global flood.

Make sure you are equipped to give an answer when you are asked about the faith you hold in Jesus Christ. You can get the resources you need from http://www.answersingenesis.org and http://www.creation.com.