Prominent Evangelical pollster George Barna says that most Americans blend their beliefs to create “a customized worldview” that is far from biblical as the country is in a spiritual “crisis.” The founder of The Barna Group, who now leads the Cultural Research Centre of Arizona Christian University, spoke recently at the Family Research Council’s (FRC) Pray Vote Stand Summit, a Christian conservative voting rally held in Atlanta. Barna told those gathered that he believes one of the “brilliant strategies of the evil one” is luring people into believing that they can combine and adopt as many worldviews as they want. Barna warned that “America is a nation in crisis” because its citizens do not hold a biblical worldview and will instead add their own “worldly ideas.”
He said, only 2% of U.S. parents with children under the age of 13 have a biblical worldview. “Why does that matter?” Barna said. “Because you can’t give what you don’t have. And here we have 98 out of every 100 parents in America who cannot give their children a biblical worldview because they don’t have one.
Barna cited research conducted by the Cultural Research Centre showing that there are seven major worldviews that Americans are most influenced by: biblical theism, Eastern mysticism, Marxism, moralistic therapeutic deism, nihilism, postmodernism and secular humanism. “As we look at America today, we know that there are a number of competing worldviews competing for the heart and the soul of the nation,” Barna said. “Each has a different understanding of everything that takes place in the world, a different explanation for why things are happening, a different concept of how you might best live your life.” The most common worldview isn’t any of the eight main adopted ones, according to Barna, who noted that the primary worldview dominating America is “syncretism,” or varying combinations of all eight worldviews into one belief system.
Australia is not much different from America in the speed with which it is moving away from a Biblical worldview. As mentioned, Barna believes one of the “brilliant strategies of the evil one” is luring people into believing that they can combine and adopt as many worldviews as they want. The way Satan has done that is by getting the teaching institutions, schools, and universities, to teach evolution, not creation, is how this world came into existence. The Bible’s account of Creation, the Fall, and the worldwide flood of Noah’s day is all myth, hence Genesis the foundational book of the Bible is not true so why should any of the Bible be true.
God has raised up many ministries to correct the attacks on God’s Word. One that was birthed in my country but now worldwide is Creation Ministries International: http://www.creation.com. One of the two founders of this ministry Ken Ham also birthed Answers in Genesis in the USA: http://www.answersingenesis.org.
The real general theory of evolution teaches that “all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form (non-living).” The inorganic chemicals ultimately came from hydrogen, itself produced from the Big Bang, where nothing exploded and became everything.
This is the true position of atheistic evolutionists and when considered in the light of recent scientific discoveries revealing the incredible complexity of life and the amazing design in nature it is inconceivable they are still arguing against intelligent design and teaching evolution as capable of producing it all.
The ENCODE (Encyclopedia of DNA Elements) project has now published some 30 papers of phase two, revealing that most of our DNA is functional and effectively killing the evolutionary idea that nearly all our DNA is ‘junk’. This work was completed in 2007, and the results of more recent studies show levels of even more complexity.
The major international ENCODE research project junks the idea of ‘junk’ DNA
The 2007 research involved over 440 scientists in 32 institutes performing over 1,600 experiments. They found that over 80% of the human DNA does something, although the details of what it does mostly remain to be determined. Less than 2% of the DNA codes for proteins; the rest turns out to be like a huge control panel, with millions of switches that turn protein-producing genes on or off. And different cells have different switch settings because they need different parts of the DNA to be active. The complexity is mind-boggling and can only be the result of a mind of indescribable intelligence. Certainly chaos and random chance is not an option.
We need to understand that in the case of atheistic evolutionists, they have been blinded by the god of this world, Satan. They, like most people, do not consider the spiritual realm which God’s Word reveals is where the true battle for people’s souls is taking place.
“In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.“2 Corinthians 4:4
Jesus and God’s Word have revealed the truth about the spiritual battle that is being waged by Satan and the fallen angels (demons). The following scriptures reveal that God has provided all we need to be overcomers in this battle.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12
“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” Ephesians 6:13-18
Our children need to be taught the truth about God and His creation. Only the Bible reveals the true history of this fallen world so it is foundational to educating our children. Religious Education (RE) was once considered an essential part of the school curriculum. This is no longer the case in most States of Australia.
In this Sept. 8, 2018, file photo, a drag performer by the name of Champagne Monroe reads the children’s book “Rainbow Fish” to a group of kids and parents at the Mobile Public Library for Drag Queen Story Hour in Mobile, Ala. The Drag Queen Story Hour is coming to northern Nevada. Two drag queens plan to read stories to children at the Sparks Library on July 20, 2019, according to the Reno Gazette Journal. (AP Photo/Dan Anderson, File)
If your child attends almost any university in America (or Canada or anywhere else in the English-speaking world), the odds are that your child’s decency, intellectual acuity, faculty of reason, character, and moral compass will be damaged, perhaps permanently. A good example is the teaching of evolution as fact and banning the teaching of intelligent design despite many leading Ph.D. scientists like Dean Kenyon former Professor of Biochemistry at Stanford University and author of the evolutionary textbook Biochemical Predestination are now saying that the breathtaking complexity of the information on DNA (instruction manual) and the micro machinery of a single cell can only be explained by intelligent design and therefore a Creator.
The worse news is that sending your child to almost any elementary school or high school — public or private — is fast becoming equally toxic. More and more schools are being taken over by left-wing ideologues and by non ideologues who lack the courage to confront the ideologues.
Once infected with leftism, these schools teach children to hate reason, tradition, Christianity, whites, excellence, freedom, and masculinity. To cite one example, thanks to a million-dollar grant from Bill Gates through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Oregon Education Department has announced that teaching there is “one right answer” in math — yes, in math — is an expression of white supremacy. Why, then, would an Oregon parent who cares about his or her child’s mind, send that child to an Oregon school?
God commands us to call out stupidity. This is especially the case if it is stupidity that is divisive to the faith delivered, once and for all, and to human flourishing in general. Moreover, without judging, how can we expect to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission to disciple the nations?” (Matthew 28:16-20). Moreover, if mankind is to be governed at all, then it must be through the basic precepts of the Christian religion and not in accordance with his own wild speculations and base desires.
The stupidity I am speaking about has to be distinguished from raw intelligence or the lack thereof. Dietrich Bonhoeffer identified in the German people of his day (including the church’s leaders), a kind of stupidity that is independent of raw intelligence. Nevertheless, it is a stupidity that supports evil and, in doing so, is itself a kind of evil. This stupidity is, in one sense, worse than the malice spawned by those at the top of society’s food chain. It is not evil in its essence but in its effect.
Konrad Kellen, writing the introduction to Jaques Ellul’s classic treatise on propaganda, confirms Bonhoeffer’s understanding of the stupid person, who is often quite intellectual. It is the educated intellectual who becomes the primary target for and vehicle of propaganda:
A related point, central in Ellul’s thesis, is that modern propaganda cannot work without “education”; he thus reverses the widespread notion that education is the best prophylactic against propaganda. On the contrary he says, education, or what usually goes by that word in the modern world, is the absolute prerequisite for propaganda.
Ellul is clear in his analysis: the “intellectual” is the most vulnerable in society to modern propaganda. Kellen summarizes Ellul’s reasons for thinking so:
1) they [intellectuals] absorb the largest amount of secondhand, unverifiable information; 2) they feel a compelling need to have an opinion on every important question of our time, and thus easily succumb to opinions offered to them by propaganda on all such indigestible pieces of information; 3) they consider themselves capable of ‘judging for themselves.’
Thomas Sowell, in an interview on his book, Intellectuals and Society, corroborates Ellul’s analysis, coming roughly to the same conclusions as the Frenchman. Sowell presses the issue of intellectuals and the unrecognized errors of their ways, arguing that it is their public role as “intellectuals” that forces them into so many mistakes in judgment. Sowell points out that these public intellectuals have a “huge ego stake” in their theories. Being confident in their own powers of intellection, and desiring to safeguard their societal roles, they are unwilling to entertain evidence that contradicts their views. Further, as “public intellectuals,” (a relatively recent social category in the history of human affairs), they feel they must pronounce on every domain of human life. This is how they stay relevant and powerful in the eyes of the culture they claim to serve. Finally, this intellectual class is driven by novelty. They are progressives in character and disposition because to acquiesce to something like past wisdom or prior modes of thought would be to diminish their identity as the truly smart ones in society.
The Bible clearly teaches that truth is objective, eternal, and inseparable from God’s character. Anything that contradicts the truth is a lie—but, of course, to call something a “lie” is to pass judgment. To call adultery or murder a sin is likewise to pass judgment—but it’s also to agree with God. When Jesus said not to judge others, He did not mean that no one can identify sin for what it is, based on God’s definition of sin. In the end, I am not really going after the person him or herself. Rather I am pointing out a noetic effect (how sin affects the mind) of sin that we all can manifest.
Stupidity, Bonhoeffer writes, in playing a supporting role to evil, “is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.” Malice, unlike stupidity, can “be protested against” and “exposed,” and, if need be, “prevented with force.” But one cannot protest, at least not much or very directly, the stupid person. One can try to expose the stupid in their dullness of mind, but the stupid have abandoned reason for the sake of a poetic narrative (or “poetic truth” as Shelby Steele calls it). They have exchanged reason for an emotional drama and, as such, they are irrational. The lie they have imbibed, which has consumed them, possesses an emotional appeal that overwhelms any lack of logical substance or factual basis. The stupid have jettisoned rationality for a cultural story, one which is essentially rhetorical and a blatant embellishment of the truth. Bonhoeffer says that when it comes to stupidity like this, “we are defenseless [against it].”
This stupidity, he goes on, does not necessarily have to do with intellect. There are many who are intellectual (high IQ) yet still stupid. This intellectually gifted yet stupid person acts like a drone, and no matter how many facts are presented to the contrary, he boldly holds on to the “slogans” or “catchwords” that have “taken possession of him.” This stupidity has more to do with human nature in general than with IQ. People are either “made stupid” or they “allow [stupidity] to happen to them.” In America, this making stupid comes mainly through education.
It is a particular form of the impact of historical circumstances on human beings, a psychological concomitant of certain external conditions. Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity.
It would even seem that this is virtually a sociological-psychological law. The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other.
The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence, and, more or less consciously go with the flow.
The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
Yet at this very point, it becomes quite clear that only an act of liberation, not instruction, can overcome stupidity. Here we must come to terms with the fact that in most cases a genuine internal liberation becomes possible only when external liberation has preceded it. Until then we must abandon all attempts to convince the stupid person.
This state of affairs explains why in such circumstances our attempts to know what ‘people’ really think are in vain and why, under these circumstances, this question is so irrelevant for the person who is thinking and acting responsibly. The word of the Bible that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom declares that the internal liberation of human beings to live a responsible life before God is the only genuine way to overcome stupidity.
But these thoughts about stupidity also offer consolation in that they utterly forbid us to consider the majority of people to be stupid in every circumstance. It really will depend on whether those in power expect more from people’s stupidity than from their inner independence and wisdom.
We are all familiar with the iconic ape-to-man image, which shows a smooth evolutionary progression from stooped ape to upright man. But what is the scientific evidence for the various transitional species in this evolutionary ‘march of progress’?
In this short video, you will find out. Contents: Introduction 00:34 Homo neanderthalensis (‘Neanderthal Man’) 01:01 Homo erectus 01:21 Australopithecus afarensis (e.g. ‘Lucy’) 02:02 Homo habilis 02:56 Summary.
Dr Catchpoole has a B.Ag.Sc. (Hons) from the University of Adelaide, and was awarded his Ph.D. by the University of New England (NSW).
“When did I realise that the earth could be no older than about 6,000 years.? The exact moment that turned my thinking around was when a simple image was put up, of Eden with layers of fossil bones in the earth beneath Adam and Eve. This showed the stark implications for Christianity if e.g. dinosaur fossils were millions of years old. That would mean there was not only death before the Fall; many fossils also show evidence of suffering, bloodshed and violence, and diseases like bone cancer. Yet after Adam and Eve were created, God called everything He had made “very good” (Genesis 1:31). I realised that it made no sense for God to have looked at tumorous dinosaur bones on Day 6, then call this very good, knowing that cancer would cause such enormous future human misery.
The Eden-on-bones scenario also raised a fundamental doctrinal issue. If we put the shedding of blood before sin, then why did God in Jesus shed blood because of sin? (Genesis 3:21, Hebrews 9:22, 10:4–10) I could see that my compromising of God’s Word by believing the secular millions of years completely destroyed the whole basis for the Atonement (1 Corinthians 15:21–22)1.
Evolutionary geneticists have themselves realised that mutations accumulate so quickly (about 60–100 per person per generation), that the human species should have become extinct at least ten times over. Evolutionary geneticist Alexey Kondrashov asks, “Why have we not died 100 times over?*
That presumes we’ve been here for the 100,000+ years of the evolutionary timeline. It’s not a problem in the Bible’s 6,000-year timeline, with only about 200 generations since Adam. We’re still going downhill fast (Romans 8:19–22), but it’s understandable we haven’t gone extinct—there simply hasn’t been enough time.
The importance of the age of the earth in presenting the gospel message is demonstrated by the following testimony of an aboriginal man.
“I’ve been locked up in every jail in Queensland, so I’ve had the Gospel preached to me more times than I can count. But I ain’t never heard the Gospel like this. Just think … we [Aboriginal people] haven’t been here 60,000 years like they tell us; we come from Noah just 4,500 years ago, and Adam 6,000 years ago—along with everyone else alive today— that’s powerful! So Christ died for everyone—whitefella and blackfella!“
*Kondrashov, A., Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? J. Theoretical Biology 175:583–594, 1995.
Extract from article in the latest Creation magazine from CMI (www.creation.com) Creation magazine interviews former CMI speaker/scientist Dr David Catchpoole
A rare look inside a fossilized dinosaur egg found in southern China has revealed an exquisitely preserved embryo—and evidence suggesting that some of these prehistoric creatures had even more in common with modern birds than previously thought.
Scientists said the embryo inside the egg, which was laid between 72 million to 66 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous period, was that of a two-legged, feathered carnivore known as an oviraptorid. They said, in a paper about the discovery published Tuesday in the journal iScience (interdisciplinary open-access journal), the embryo’s curled body position—with its back against the blunt end of the 7-inch-long egg and its head between its legs—resembles that of bird embryos.
For evolutionists, this find poses some difficult questions:
1. How could this fossilised embryo survive millions of years?
2. How come it resembles that of bird embryos today?
“God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth… And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.” Genesis 1:21-31
Why did God create the universe in six days? He tells us in His commandments: six days you shall work and the seventh day you will rest. It was a pattern for how He made man. We are to work as He did for six days and the seventh will be a rest and holy day which is used to remember, thank and praise our Creator.
“For in six days, the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.” Exodus 20:121
In the soon-coming Millennial Kingdom Jesus will reinstate this pattern for man.
If you believe in evolution as taught in our schools and universities (universe caused by Big Bang and evolved) then there is no basis for meaning or purpose in your life and there is no basis for the moral laws of right and wrong. In fact, without God there is no basis for the objective moral values that do exist.
Is it any wonder we are seeing “lawlessness abound” as the Christian basis for our society is being jettisoned.
According to evolution, this wonderfully designed Cosmos and more specifically this earth with its finely tuned attributes came into being by random chance. And yet, earth’s atmosphere contains all the ingredients for life. It possesses the exact cocoon conditions necessary for life on Earth. Design by an intelligent Creator is in fact the only plausible explanation but it cannot be considered by humanist scientists because it involves the supernatural.
Dr Scott Todd, a well known evolutionist professor (immunologist) stated in “Nature 401 (September 30, 1999) “Even if all the data points to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.“
Cosmic Constants: Stephen Hawking has admitted: “The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers [the constants of physics] seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.” (A Brief History of Time, p. 125)
Gravitational force constant
Electromagnetic force constant
Strong nuclear force constant
Weak nuclear force constant
Cosmological constant
picture of earth from space, the astronauts were struck by its beauty
What about humankind, where did our intelligence come from: matter and energy? Information requires an intelligent source and is ample proof for the existence of our Creator God who has made Himself known, ultimately through God, the Son, coming to earth to redeem us, to restore us back into a right relationship with our Heavenly Father, our Creator.
Our ability to recognise beauty, to communicate, to create and utilise technology to make computers, the internet, artificial intelligence, robots is evidence for design of the highest order. In fact, God tells us we are made in His image so it makes sense we have the ability to create and make and do all of these amazing things.
You can know the truth about this world. God has revealed it to us through the design in His created world, through His prophets (inspired Word of God, Bible), through the nation He established, Israel and ultimately, through God, the Son, Jesus, coming to earth to redeem us from the curse of SIN and through God, the Holy Spirit coming to indwell all who repent and put their trust in Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.
It is the Holy Spirit indwelling believers that truly reveals the truth about this world. You cannot live the Christian life without the Holy Spirit as your Counsellor, Teacher and Comforter.
Have you been born again and have the Holy Spirit indwelling your Spirit? He is the one that produces the fruit of the Spirit in the lives of all believers: love, joy, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness, kindness, patience and self control. He is also the one that provides the gifts of the spirit for ministry, gifts of faith, words of knowledge, words of wisdom, words of prophecy, gifts of tongues, interpretation of tongues, gifts of healing , miracles, gift of discernment of spirits. If the fruit of the Spirit is not evident in your life and you are not operating in some of the gifts of the Spirit then you need to seek out believers that are, so you can repent and they will baptise you (total immersion) so you can come up a new person totally forgiven of your past sins and if needed demons cast out.
Justin L. Barret’s bookBorn Believersreveals some extraordinary facts about the ability and the capacity for very young children to believe and have faith. His work as a noted developmental psychologist and anthropologist at Oxford University, about the value of religious faith, has found that we are all predisposed to believe in God from birth. This is consistent with Scripture.
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart… “ Ecclesiastes 3:11
Belief begins in the brain. Under the sway of powerful internal and external influences, children understand their environments by imagining at least one creative and intelligent agent, a grand creator and controller that brings order and purpose to the world. Further, these beliefs in unseen super beings help organize children’s intuitions about morality and surprising life events, making life meaningful.
Summarizing scientific experiments conducted with children across the globe, Professor Barrett illustrates the ways human beings have come to develop complex belief systems about God’s omniscience, the afterlife, and the immortality of deities. He shows how the science of childhood religiosity reveals, across humanity, a “natural religion,” the organization of those beliefs that humans gravitate to organically, and how it underlies all of the world’s major religions, uniting them under one common source.
For believers and nonbelievers alike, Barrett offers a compelling argument for the human instinct for religion, as he guides all parents in how to effectively encourage children in developing a healthy constellation of beliefs about the world around them.
Surely, this is compelling evidence for creation and that evolution is a failed theory.
“Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness...” Genesis 1″26a
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Genesis 1:27
According to the American Worldview Inventory 2021, nearly half of the millennials surveyed said they either don’t know, don’t care, or don’t believe that God exists. Only 26% of Gen X, and a mere 16% of millennials, understand and believe the basics of the Gospel. In addition, 31% of teens and young adults “strongly agree” that what is “morally right and wrong changes over time, based on society.”
Almost half of Americans consider abortion to be “morally acceptable,” the highest percentage to think so in the past 20 years of surveying the question, according to a new report by Gallup.
The health of the Christian worldview appears increasingly bleak. According to the American Worldview Inventory 2021, Only 26% of Gen X, and a mere 16% of millennials, understand and believe the basics of the Gospel.
Acceptance of and teaching of evolution and an earths history of billions of years in our schools and universities has relegated the Bible to the book category of myths and fables. And yet the scientific evidence of the universe points unequivocally to intelligent design. Particularly since the discovery of DNA which demonstrates that complex information controls the functioning of all the cells in the body. What is the origin of this complex information? It can only come from a mind that is beyond our comprehension. It cannot come from matter and energy by random chance this is nonsense of the highest order and yet this is what is taught in our institutes of highest learning.
Amazing facts about DNA
Fortunately, what has emerged is a new program for scientific research known as Intelligent Design. Within biology, Intelligent Design is a theory of biological origins and development. Its fundamental claim is that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology such as DNA, and that these causes are empirically detectable.
The Intelligent Design movement is growing and because it does not talk about God, in other words the mind behind the intelligence, it is harder for the establishment to attack it on the grounds that it is religion and not science.
Intelligent Design properly formulated is a theory of information. Within such a theory, information becomes a reliable indicator of intelligent causation as well as a proper object for scientific investigation. Intelligent Design thereby becomes a theory for detecting and measuring information, explaining its origin, and tracing its flow. Intelligent Design is therefore not the study of intelligent causes per se, but of informational pathways induced by intelligent causes.
As a result, Intelligent Design presupposes neither a creator nor miracles. Intelligent Design is theologically minimalist. It detects intelligence without speculating about the nature of the intelligence. Biochemist Michael Behe’s “irreducible complexity,” physicist David Bohm’s “active information,” mathematician Marcel Schützenberger’s “functional complexity,” and William Dembski’s “complex specified information” are alternate routes to the same reality.
Through this approach of critiquing Darwinism on the one hand and providing a positive alternative on the other, the Intelligent Design movement has rapidly gained adherents among the best and brightest in the academy. Already it is responsible for Darwinism losing its corner on the intellectual market. If fully successful, Intelligent Design will unseat not just Darwinism but also Darwinism’s cultural legacy. And since no aspect of western culture has escaped Darwinism’s influence, so no aspect of western culture will escape reevaluation in the light of Intelligent Design.
It is the empirical detectability of intelligent causes that renders Intelligent Design a fully scientific theory, and distinguishes it from the design arguments of philosophers, or what has traditionally been called “natural theology.” The world contains events, objects, and structures which exhaust the explanatory resources of undirected natural causes, and which can be adequately explained only by recourse to intelligent causes. Scientists are now in a position to demonstrate this rigorously. Thus what has been a long-standing philosophical intuition is now being cashed out as a scientific research program.
Where does this leave special creation? Logically speaking, Intelligent Design is compatible with the starkest creationism (i.e., God creating all species at the beginning with the potential for adaptation to the environment). For Intelligent Design the first question is not how organisms came to be (though this is a research question that needs to be addressed), but whether they demonstrate clear, empirically detectable marks of being intelligently caused.
However, the good news is that Intelligent design brings God back into existence. People must consider who is this Intelligent Designer who exists outside of His creation. Could He be the God of the Bible?
“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
The Creator who has gone to extraordinary lengths to make Himself known, even to sending His Son to pay the price for our redemption. His book the Bible demonstrates with fulfilled prophecy that it has been constructed by God to be His Story book of this Cosmos from its beginning to its prophesied end. We know the end of the story and the last one thousand years of this Cosmos will begin in the not too distant future.
The information on Intelligent Design is taken from the opening page of The Intelligent Design Movement, Discovery institute. http://www.discovery.org
The idea that there would be just 7,000 years of human history before God ended this time when death and suffering marred His creation is very old. We know from non-biblical sources that the Second Book of Enoch stated that there would be 7000 years of history and that the beginning of the 8,000th year would mark the start of the Eternal State (2 Enoch 33:1).
The idea the world is billions of years old is young. It gained acceptance along with the theory of Evolution which requires billions of years to go from “goo to you” without a creator and by unguided chance. At the same time, Noah’s flood which explains the alleged billions of years in the fossil record was relegated to the world of myths and legends despite the fact most people groups around the world have a flood story in their history and a catastrophic flood which buried animals and vegetation quickly is the best explanation for the fossils location and state of preservation.
Receding water of Noah’s Flood shapes the earth
The oldest existing Jewish reference to the Week of Millenniums is probably the one found in the Talmud which references a statement attributed to the prophetic school established by the prophet Elijah: Six thousand years is the duration of the world. Two thousand of the six thousand years are characterized by chaos ended by Noah’s Flood; two thousand years are characterized by Torah, from the era of the Patriarchs until the end of the mishnaic period; and two thousand years are the period of the coming of the Messiah (Sanhedrin 97a). This concept is echoed in a 10th Century AD midrash called Tanna D’vei Eliyahu. (A midrash is commentary on part of the Hebrew scriptures.) It reads as follows: The world is to exist 6,000 years. In the first 2,000, there was desolation (no Torah, from Adam to Abraham), 2,000 years the Torah flourished, and the next 2,000 years is the Messianic era (He should have come at the beginning of the last 2,000 years; the delay is due to our sins). Of course, we know Jesus did come as the “suffering servant of Isaiah 53.
“He (Jesus) was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”Isaiah 53:3-6
This concept of 6,000 years of human toil and conflict followed by 1,000 years of rest is still alive among Jewish rabbis and is being taught by them. Take, for example, Rabbi Baruch S. Davidson, of Brooklyn, NY who is a writer for Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic movement. When asked about the 7,000 year theory, he replied: The Talmud tells us that this world, as we know it, will last for six thousand years, with the seventh millennium ushering in the cosmic Sabbath, the Messianic Era. Six days a week we work, and on the Sabbath we rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor; the same is true with millenniums. The widespread acceptance of the 7,000 year concept among Jewish sages today is illustrated by the fact that the idea is accepted across the Ashkenazi-Sephardi divide, the Hasidim-Misnagdim divide, and across the rational Talmud and mystical Kabbalah perspectives.
The Jewish Millennial Day Theory was picked up by the earliest fathers of the Christian faith and espoused by them. For example, Justin Martyr (100-165 AD), in his Dialogue with Trypho, asserted his belief that the earth will last for 6,000 years followed by a Sabbath of rest lasting 1,000 years. But even earlier than this, the concept was expressed in detail in The Epistle of Barnabas, the complete text of which is preserved in the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus, where it appears immediately after the New Testament and before the Shepherd of Hermas. Scholars estimate it was written between 70 and 132 AD. The author describes the Millennial Day Theory in these words: “God made in six days the works of His hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it” (Gen. 2:2). Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, “He finished in six days.” This implies that the Lord will finish all things in 6,000 years, for a day is with Him a thousand years . . . Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in 6,000 years, all things will be finished. “And He rested on the seventh day.” This means: when His Son shall come, and shall abolish the time of the Lawless One, and shall judge the ungodly, and shall change the sun and the moon, and the stars, then shall He truly rest on the 7th day.” (Epistle of Barnabas, Chapter 15)
Late in the 2nd Century, Irenaeus (130-202 AD), the Bishop of Lyons, France, wrote: “For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded.” He then added that after the Antichrist has devastated the world, the Lord will return and provide the world rest on “the hallowed seventh day.” One of the most influential theologians of the 3rd Century, Hyppolytus of Rome (c. 170-235AD) asserted that “6,000 years must needs be accomplished in order that the Sabbath may come, the rest, the holy day on which God rested from all His works.” The widespread belief in the Millennial Day Theory among early Christians is attested to by Edward Gibbon in his history of the Roman Empire. He wrote: The ancient and popular doctrine of the Millennium was intimately connected with the second coming of Christ. As the works of the creation had been finished in six days, their duration in their present state, according to a tradition which was attributed to the prophet Elijah, was fixed to six thousand years. By the same analogy it was inferred that this long period of labor and contention, which was now almost elapsed, would be succeeded by a joyful Sabbath of a thousand years; and that Christ, with the triumphant band of the saints and the elect who had escaped death, or who had been miraculously revived, would reign upon earth till the time appointed for the last and general resurrection. But despite this early popularity of the concept, it fell out of acceptance after 400 AD when the Roman Catholic Church, under the influence of the spiritualizing nterpretations of Origen and Augustine, adopted the Amillennial viewpoint which argued that Jesus was never going to return to reign over this earth for a thousand years.
The Millennial Day Theory experienced a renaissance following the Reformation as people began to obtain copies of the Bible in their own languages. The Premillennial viewpoint of end-time events was revived and with it, the idea that 6,000 years of history would be followed by the 1,000 year reign of Jesus.
Distinguished Christian doctrinal expert, Mike Gendron, echoed the 7,000 year theory in an article he published in 2013 when he observed: The first 2,000 years of human history ended when the wrath of God was poured out on sin in the Flood. The second 2,000 years ended when the wrath of God was poured out on sin at the Cross. And the third 2,000 years will end with God pouring out His wrath on an unbelieving world following the tribulation during the 70th week of Daniel with the Trumpet and Bowl Judgements in The Scroll.
LIVING ETERNAL NOW 