Before the worldwide flood of Noah’s day, all people spoke one language. After the flood, God told Noah and his family that he wanted them to populate the entire earth. Once again, mankind was disobedient.
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there… Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”Genesis 11:1-2,4
“Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.” Genesis 11:7-8
All of the languages spoken today have been traced back to a group of language families that bear no relationship with each other—exactly what we would expect when we start with the biblical account of God giving different languages at the Tower of Babel. From an evolutionary perspective, all languages should be related—but they are not! It’s another reminder that the Bible’s history is true. Evolution is a fairy tale not supported by observational science.
The dispersion at Babel set the stage for the formation of different nations and cultures, all descending from Noah’s family. Nations were God’s idea, and from one man, Abraham, He established His own nation, Israel.
Even before they (Israel) went into the Promised Land Moses told them their entire checkered history, including their being cast out of the land and dispersed throughout the nations but also the end of the story when God would regather them and their Messiah will rule the nations. They will be a people, “holy to the Lord your God”.
Nations gathered together in Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernaclesas they will in Jesus’ soon coming Millennial Kingdom.
“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth.” Deuteronomy 28:1
“And the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you shall only go up and not down if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, being careful to do them,” Deuteronomy 28:13
“And the Lord has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as He has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments, and that He will set you in praise and in fame and in honour high above all nations that He has made, and that you shall be a people holy to the Lord your God, as He promised.”Deuteronomy 26:18-19
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the Lord your God has driven you, and return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and He will gather you again from all the peoples where the Lord your God has scattered you.“Deuteronomy 30:1-3
“And the Lord yourGod will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.” Deuteronomy 30:5-6
Prominent atheist Richard Dawkins was once asked what he would say to God if he encountered Him after he died. Dawkins quoted what Bertrand Russell is reputed to have said when asked the same question: “Sir, why did you take such pains to hide yourself?”
I think I can understand why some might echo that sentiment. After all, God is invisible; we can’t perceive Him directly with our physical senses. Yet the signs of His existence—indeed, of His goodness and greatness—are everywhere. The Apostle Paul was right when telling a first-century pagan audience that God has always given evidence of His existence through the good things He has done, such as “rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness.” (Acts 14:17). God has put up signposts everywhere to help us find our way to Him. Here are just a few of them.
The humblest believer in God as Creator must exercise far less credulity, and has far less explaining to do, than the most ardent evolutionist materialist.
Of course, fallen humanity has devised many increasingly sophisticated speculations of how nature could have made itself. Ministries like Creation Ministries International (http://www.creation.com) provide people with specific answers to such challenges. Even so, it pays to step back and contemplate the ‘big picture’ of what is claimed, and its affront to common sense.
Evidence of design
Flicking through a magazine one day as a child, I came across a photograph of Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, with the unmistakable likenesses of four American presidents carved into the rocks. Knowing nothing of how these came to be there, I remember thinking, “How strange! These can’t have happened by accident.”
Precisely! No one could seriously suggest that these shapes resulted from wind, or rain, or glacial erosion. These carved faces are clearly the result of creative design and effort.
Though not professing a commitment to anything like the God of the Bible, Paul Davies, former professor of theoretical physics at The University of Adelaide, writes in his book The Mind of God:
Through my scientific work, I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact … I cannot believe that our existence in this universe is a mere quirk of fate, an accident of history, an incidental blip in the great cosmic drama.2
The humblest believer in God as Creator must exercise far less credulity, and has far less explaining to do, than the most ardent evolutionist materialist.
Another signpost is human nature. We have been made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). Thus, we have spiritual capacities that cannot be explained apart from God. Language, reason, ambition, creativity, humour, wonder, worship—all these have no counterpart in the natural world. These qualities mark us out as different from the rest of God’s handiwork. This is another way of saying that our Creator has endowed us with the capacity to relate to Him at a personal level.
Within human nature, conscience is another sign pointing to God. Proverbs 20:27 says of the human spirit that it is “the lamp of the Lord, searching all [man’s] innermost parts.”. Our conscience is responsible for our intuitive knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. The Apostle Paul states that even those who don’t have God’s law in written form still have a conscience that commends them when they instinctively do what it commands and accuses them when they don’t (Romans 2:14–15).
Even without a ‘book of rules,’ we know it’s wrong to lie, steal, covet, and murder. Conscience ‘puts a pebble in our shoe’ whenever we violate it. The standard it sets and the guilt it inflicts point us to God—the Source of all good and the Judge of all evil.
Eternity in our hearts
Our longing for eternity is another pointer to God. Somehow, we know and feel that this life is not all that there is. Archaeologists have discovered how carefully and elaborately the ancient Egyptians prepared for the afterlife, and they had no Bible to tell them about a life to come. Where does this longing for eternity come from? Everything on Earth is subject to change and decay:
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end (Psalm 102:25–27).
These ‘immortality longings’ we all feel at various moments are pointers to the God who created us in His own image.
Hunger of the soul
Another signpost to God is our longing for meaning and purpose. We always knew when our cat Simba was hungry and wanted to be fed. (Any cat owner knows that dogs have masters, but cats have staff!) He would eat his prescription dry food and go away content; his next meal seemed to be the limit of his horizon. But we can’t live at that bare, subsistence level—at least, not for long. We crave meaning and purpose in our lives; we long to enjoy significant and satisfying relationships.
This sense of longing is often called ‘the homesickness of the soul’—and rightly so, for that’s precisely what it is. The true object of our longing is God. The words of the psalmist reflect this truth:
As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? (Psalm 42:1–2)
Illuminating the way
Of all the signposts pointing to God, the Bible is by far the clearest. When a British monarch is crowned, he or she is given a copy of the Bible, and told, “This Book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. This is the royal law; these are the lively oracles of God.” When we read the Bible with a humble and teachable attitude, we find it to be a source of supernatural wisdom and power. The psalmist prayed: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). Paul reminded his young associate Timothy that Scripture provides the wisdom and instruction that leads to “salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15).
Scripture’s major theme is Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. As the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), Jesus is the clearest and most compelling witness to the existence and greatness of God the Father. Jesus Himself said: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). He is the perfect transcript of what God is like.
But the supreme demonstration of God’s love and care is the sending of His Son into the world to suffer death on the cross, to save us from our sins, and to reclaim us for Himself. The Cross is more than enough to convince us that God loves and cares for lost people (Romans 5:8). Jesus Himself said that He came “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10).
There are signposts everywhere to help us find our way to God, but the most vital one is Jesus. He said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
The former prime minister, Paul Keating has never done an interview quite like this one with Troy Bramston, bestselling/award-winning author and biographer of Prime Ministers Paul Keating, RG Menzies, Bob Hawke, Gough Whitlam.
Paul Keating is seated on a chair in the middle of his office in Potts Point, Sydney. It is not just any chair. It is from the Palace of the Tuileries in Paris, in the period when Napoleon Bonaparte was the First Consul of France. His arms rest on carved wooden griffons with lion heads and he relaxes into a soft cushion of horsehair. Keating purchased the chair last year. (The French Government’s Mobilier National, attached to the Ministry of Culture, had an option to acquire the chair but didn’t exercise it). When I arrived at the office with photographer Nick Cubbin, the chair was already in place, isolated from everything else, set against a red-walled backdrop. It is a striking example of French neoclassicism, which draws on ancient Greek, Roman, and Egyptian design, and expresses a philosophy of human progress with a moral and an aesthetic order, and the quest for innate beauty.
When talking about the chair and why he purchased it, Keating made the following statement which reveals a great deal about what motivates him:
“The Directoire and to a greater extent the Consulat are the periods of consolidation of the French Revolution – the event that changed all civil life going forward. The lives we all lead today, our liberty and equality, come from that time, that moment. This has always anchored my interest in the period. Otherwise, you would have been subservient to some monarch ‘appointed by God’ and by a Church that serviced God by collaborating with the monarch.Had you been an ordinary person, your life would have been wickedly subordinate, the next thing to being a non-person.”
Newly researched documentation on the bloodthirsty Reign of Terror that swept through France in 1793-1794, personified by Robespierre and the Angel of Terror, Saint Just, clearly indicates the high price paid by France for a revolution that brought havoc and thousands of deaths to the French nation. Perhaps one of the best examples is the massacre, better called the genocide, of La Vendée. General François Westerman of the revolutionary army claimed with pride that, in his efforts to crush the rebellion of the Vendéens, carried out against the abuses and crimes of the Convention, he ordered, by the decree of August 2, 1793, the systematic destruction and burning of the entire countryside, including all crops and the mass assassination of all rebels in sight.
Can we call the massacre at La Vendée a genocide? The term was used in 1944 to describe the horrors of the holocaust and the drama experienced by the Jews under Nazism. If we relate the number of men women and children slaughtered by the revolutionary army under the banner of liberté, égalité, and fraternité with the total population of France’s western provinces, the number is even higher than what the Jews had to suffer under the inhuman policy of Hitler’s National Socialism. In both cases, there was a deliberate will of extermination.
The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil. Among the first targets of the fury of the revolutionaries, following the dictates of many of the so-called philosophes, were the contemplative religious communities. The blood of innocent people lost in the years 1792-1794 staggers the imagination. The campaign against the Church was as much diabolical as cruel.
The Church before the French Revolution is often represented as having failed to produce the goodness and holiness that is preached in the Gospel. It cannot be denied that there were serious failures among the Catholic bishops and high hierarchical leaders. However, it is also true that many devoted priests and nuns were totally dedicated to a life of prayer and works of charity, who gave up their lives for the faith they professed.
Keating believes that the French Revolution was the greatest event in human history as did Voltaire, Diderot and Baroon de Hobach.
“Every sensible man, every honorable man must hold the Christian religion in horror.” –Voltaire
“Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” –Diderot
“Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness and kept him in ignorance of the real duties of true interests. It is only by dispelling these clouds and phantoms of religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evil, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies and perpetuates them.” –Baron de Holbach
What does Keating say about himself? “I’m definitely an aesthete,” Keating says. “That’s my whole thing. I’ve been an aesthete since I was a boy.” (aesthete: a person who has or affects a highly developed appreciation of beauty, especially in poetry and the visual arts). It shaped his conception of “big picture” style leadership and the attendant dreams of audacious statecraft. He often says leadership is founded on imagination and must be matched with courage. “You must have the imagination,” he insists. “Imagination is everything.” To envision a better future, you need a nourishment of the mind.
“Where does the spiritual uplift come from?” Keating asks. “Well,I thinkit comes from the inner life … you need the bubbling cauldron.Without the bubbling cauldron, you can never get the rise. Without the rise, you just do ordinary stuff. But then who wants to do ordinary stuff?”
What does he mean “without the bubbling cauldron you never get the rise”. What nonsense, perhaps he should have gone to university after all. “Not going to university, Keating argues, freed his mind. He sought intellectual nourishment by indulging personal interests“
Keating explained that the task of the reformer is to combine imagination with indignation. It demands political battle. “What others would call the warrior statesman,” Keating explains. “Most of these people in history, whether it’s Alexander the Great or whoever were in the business of blood and gore, you know? And in politics, I was in the blood and gore business, fundamentally. But with big ideas always running it.” Winning debates in parliament, putting the blowtorch to opponents in interviews, and slashing attacks on the campaign trail – it was about establishing political hegemony and policy authority. “Why do you throw Liberals around like rag dolls?” he asks. “Apart from the fun of it, the importance of it is for the betterment of the economy and society.”
Noting he is “fundamentally a romantic”, led him to an exploration of romanticism in culture. I always inhabited both camps, neoclassicism, and romanticism. Neoclassicism with and for its enlightenment ideals, its devotion to reason and perfectionism – much of which informed my calibrated approach to economic policy. [And] romanticism opened the yawning vistas of life replete with emotions that cram the human experience – which music goes out of its way to both join and to satisfy. I think I can claim, without refute, that you are much better with both. The culture of reason vying with the culture of feeling. Nevertheless, both share a common ideal: beauty. For as Stendhal said, ‘beauty is the promise of happiness’. I believe this to be true and have believed so always.”
Nowhere in the interview do they get into our origins, religion, meaning, and purpose of life.
Article by Andrew Sibley i Creation Magazine Vol 46, Issue 3
Most stars in the universe are in huge galaxies. Our Milky Way is estimated to contain 100–400 billion stars. It is so wide that even light would take some 90,000 years (under today’s conditions) to travel from one side to the other.. Galaxies are mostly found in groups of galaxies. Above a certain numerical size, these are called galaxy clusters. These clusters can be found within a cluster of clusters, called superclusters. The observable universe is thought to contain some 10 million of these.
There are truly gigantic, unique structures, containing all of the above and dwarfing them in size. Sometimes described as ‘cosmic megastructures’, they are so vast that they seriously challenge standard cosmological theories about the origin and evolution of the universe.
These discoveries run counter to the cosmological principle—the expectation that space would be smooth at the large scale. This principle is a central plank and foundational assumption of all modern secular cosmology, including all versions of the Big Bang. Under standard Big Bang cosmology, including ‘inflation’, the largest structures should be only 0.4 Gly across.
The deputy director of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr Robert Massey, says it is leading to a major rethink: If these structures are real, then it’s definitely food for thought for cosmologists and the accepted thinking on how the universe has evolved over time.
Cosmologist Jenny Wagner is not yet ready to abandon the cosmological principle. But she agrees it is under threat, stating: Personally, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have to abandon the cosmological principle after future discoveries.
Creationist astronomers and physicists have long pointed out that cosmology involves many untestable assumptions, so that the favoured model leads to the preferred interpretation of the data. Instead of the big bang theory, the Bible tells us that the earth was formed out of water, with God stretching out the heavens in a vast expanse (Genesis 1:6-8, Jeremiah 10:12,) 2 Peter 3:5).
“And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.”Genesis 1 :6-8
“For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God,” 2 Peter 3:5
“It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens,“
Dr Russell Humphreys in the early 1980’s based a theory about the origin of planetary magnetic fields on the basis that the earth and other bodies in the solar system were originally created as pure water. The theory was remarkably successful. Dr Humphrey correctly predicted the Voyager space probe’s measurements of the magnetic fields of the planets Uranus and Neptune. He was the only scientist to do so. The theory could not work with the present elements composing the solar system bodies, but only with water as the original material.
Dr Humphrey proposes that the heavens and earth that God created consisted of 1. a large, mostly empty space, and 2. a ball of water more than two light-years in diameter. This ball of water contained within itself what would become (a) the waters above the expanse, (b) another heavens called the expanse and the stars within it, and (c) the Earth.
Fifty-three years back, in 1971, 87 percent of Australians identified as religious, and overwhelmingly as Christian. Now it’s just 54 percent. It is a similar decline as in the U.S.A.
And here’s the really striking feature: only five years ago, 52 percent of us identified as Christian. Now it’s just 44 percent. That’s an almost 20 percent decline in Christian belief in just five years. Some of that will be people who don’t worship regularly anymore and feel fraudulent in ticking the religion box even though their faith is still with them. For others, it represents a clear rejection of organised religion. Five years back, only 30 percent of Australians identified as having no religion. Now it’s 39 percent. That’s a 30 percent leap in just five years, making no religion the fastest-growing “creed” in the country. Why does that matter? It may not be fashionable to say so but in reality, our culture is built on a Christian foundation. Our democracy, for instance, rests on the notion that everyone is equal in rights and dignity, something that’s come down to us through the Christian gospels. Elsewhere in our culture, our justice system rests on the notion that we should treat others as we’d be treated; again that comes from Christian teaching. Our sense of community too rests on the notion that we should “love our neighbours as we love ourselves”. It’s a commandment at the heart of our volunteerism and philanthropy. Then there’s the significant matter of what religious organisations contribute to social uplift. Beyond a values-based education, they run many health and community services. To reference the largest Christian denomination, the Catholic Church, as an example, there are 80 Catholic hospitals across the country and 25,000-plus aged-care beds in Catholic nursing homes, as well as social welfare bodies and charities with a broader Christian inspiration – from the Salvation Army to the St Vincent de Paul Society, to Anglicare, to Lifeline, and Alcoholics Anonymous – all organisations that are generally thought to be serving Australians well, however, discredited the zeitgeist might find the faith which inspires their good works.
When people believe there is no God then of course they make up their own rules. It is survival of the fittest and truth is what you make it. Your truth may not be my truth. Gay marriage, homosexuality, and transgenderism are just the start. The only true reality is built on the first sentence of the Bible: “In the beginning God created”. Our Creator has given us the truth about the origins of our Cosmos and humankind. If you want answers to the big questions: Who Am I? then there is only one place to go God’s Word. Can I also suggest Martyn Isles book Who Am I?
Evolution and billions of years is the God of this World, Satan’s, greatest strategy. He has convinced even our learned scholars, our educators that the Cosmos did not need a Creator. It is absurd as nothing comes from nothing. This highly complex universe with its laws and interconnectedness had to have an omnipotent designer but, our learned scholars cannot countenance the supernatural yet, it is the obvious, in fact, the only possible solution.
When the world’s most powerful space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021, its “primary aim” was to “shed light on our cosmic origins”. Its findings have been eagerly anticipated.
The images coming back contradict secular expectations … Very early in the Big Bang, we should not see highly structured galaxies at the edge of the universe. Yet, that is what the James Webb Space Telescope is showing us.
You will be glad you watched this video with Dr. Mark Harwood as he explains the consequences of what the James Webb Space Telescope reveals.
The author of this article is Marlon De Blasio. He is a cultural apologist, Christian writer, and the author of Discerning Culture: Knowing the Depths of Scriptural Christianity in a Culture of Scriptural Indifference.
The Christian faith claims “The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth … his understanding is unsearchable” (Isaiah 40:28). How can this be verified to the satisfaction of an inquiring mind? Even committed Christian thinkers know that the cliches, “by faith,” “by experience” or “by biblical analyses,” do not necessarily satisfy questioners. Nevertheless, I believe the Eternal God can be known personally and intellectually to satisfy rational thought.
Perhaps some expect me to provide a concrete reference that explains God’s origin. I must genuinely submit that this expectation is not reasonable. Even if I were to prove indisputably that “A” brought God into existence, the skeptic would then ask who/what created “A”? These demands could continue ad infinitum into absurdity. They lead to a fallacious line of thinking.
Knowledge does not require an explanation for its explanations to be true. For example, aviators know how much fuel is required to reach a destination and this workable knowledge is true without an explanation of where the computational values originated. We could attempt to investigate the origins, but only after we have acknowledged the computational values.
Likewise, a questioner must acknowledge God’s existence before asking where He came from. If God does not exist, the question is senseless. “Where did God come from?” is a question that is committed to His existence. In other words, a sincere questioner seeks an answer that informs about God and not about whether or not He exists. The question does have a correct answer, and even if one were to reject it that would not negate the actual existence of God.
Further, the Design Argument is often challenged by the question, who designed the Designer? Note that this question does not refute the argument. The argument is compelling and so the question is an attempt to avoid the conclusion by conflating the issue into confusion. The explanation that something is designed can be true regardless of what we know about the designer. I can understand why such an irrelevant question is asked because the questioner doesn’t like where the conversation is going.
Knowledge of the Christian faith is always rigorously challenged. Unlike other knowledge, concessions to a tenet of Christianity could entail moral accountability. Christian thinkers offer explanations that are often compelling, and so a skeptic who wishes to escape accountability often spins the content. Confusion is then deemed as a warrant for unbelief.
In Christian theology, God is eternal. He is without beginning and without end. He is the ultimate ground of reality. That is why we refer to Him as God. The question of “Where did God come” from is purposeless unless it’s asked with theological curiosity. As a young Christian, I remember asking a pastor what God was doing before He created us and the universe. The pastor explained that we don’t know, and although it was a fair question it had no bearing on our relationship with Him as He has decided to reveal Himself to us. Since then, I have grown to understand that in a human lifetime, there is no way we could understand everything about God.
Limited knowledge of God does not equate to His non-existence. On the contrary, it means that our knowledge of God is finite as we are finite beings grappling with the One whose “understanding is unsearchable.” Theologically and philosophically, it’s reasonable to believe and conclude that reality has an ultimate ground. For a Christian, there is a consciousness of God’s presence within (Holy Spirit) that is also informed intellectually. We experience and understand God exactly as the biblical writers revealed: “Your throne is established from of old; you are from everlasting” (Psalms 93:2). What was understood and experienced of God thousands of years ago has been real to subsequent generations of believers, as well as to us today. We comprehend meaningfully that, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).
A questioner is sincere only if committed to exploring the attributes of God, and then making up one’s own mind about personal salvation in Christ. Isn’t it reasonable to consider that God is the ultimate ground of reality? It makes philosophical sense; otherwise, we regress into absurdity. All the evil, selfishness and ill will we encounter have a remedy in Jesus Christ. It’s a fact that throughout history the Gospel has transformed countless lives, and continues to do so today. Isn’t it intellectually honest to read and investigate this Good News for oneself? Questions are meaningful only when we are genuinely open to considering the answers.
I have a question for the skeptic who asks, who created God? That is, if you somehow discovered that the Christian faith is true would you become a Christian? If you were to answer, no, then you should shift focus on why you would answer, no. It will reveal a great deal about your own questions.
How can we build the right worldview? There is only one way and that is to start with the origins of this complex universe with its multitude of living things that require many scientific laws to make it function correctly. Those inter-related laws could not have constructed themselves. Science has discovered that DNA (complex information) controls all of the machinery in living cells instructing them what to do. Both the information and the machinery have to be complete and functional at the beginning. They cannot evolve. Moreover, information only comes from intelligence, not matter or energy, hence proof there is an Intelligent Designer. Even better still the Intelligent Designer has revealed Himself to us both by Word, and the person of Jesus Christ, God incarnate.
Down through the ages God has spoken to and worked with individuals so we know He created us in His image to be in a relationship with Him. As a result, we have His Word (Bible) most of which is now fulfilled prophecies so that we know it is God’s Word and that the many end times prophecies will also be fulfilled.
Why is church attendance decreasing SO drastically? In this presentation, Ken Ham discusses the mass exodus that churches are experiencing in Western society and what Christians can do about it.
‘Who created God?’ is an age-old question. Children sometimes ask it because they’re curious. But atheists more commonly ask it because they think it is a ‘gotcha’ question for Christians. So, is it really a ‘gotcha’ question? Does God—like everything else in the universe—need a cause? Or have atheists made an error in logic in assuming this? As Dr. Don Batten explains, ‘Who created God?’ has a simple, logical answer—so Christians have no need to be intimidated! On the other hand, atheists have some explaining of their own to do when it comes to first causes!
The cause of the universe cannot be material. It had to be an eternal cause and the Bible tells us that God is a spiritual, eternal being and that He made us in His image to be in relationship with Him. In fact, the Bible tells us that we are Spirit, Soul, and Body and that our Spirit is the lamp of the Lord and it needs to contain oil (Holy Spirit) to function as God intended. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God (SIN) the Holy Spirit departed their spirits and they died spiritually immediately and died bodily 900+ years later.
“The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all his innermost parts.”Proverbs 20:27
This is a great video. One that you can use in evangelism.
Origins science uses the principles of causality (everything that has a beginning has a cause) and analogy (e.g. we observe that intelligence is needed to generate complex coded information in the present, so we can reasonably assume the same for the past). And because there was no material intelligent designer for life, it is legitimate to invoke a non-material designer for life. Creationists invoke the miraculous only for origins science, and as shown, this does not mean they will invoke it for operational science.
Miracles are an addition to natural laws rather than a loophole within them. This is because natural laws are formulated in isolated systems. For example, Newton’s 1st Law of Motion states that objects will continue in a straight line at a constant speed — if no unbalanced force is acting. But there is nothing in the law to prohibit unbalanced forces acting—otherwise, nothing could ever change direction!
If God exists, there is no truly isolated system. Thus there is no basis for disallowing miracles unless you could prove that God doesn’t exist, but you can’t prove a universal negative. And if Jesus really were God Incarnate as I believe (see documentation), He could certainly bring other forces into play without violating science.
C.S. Lewis applied these concepts to the virginal conception of Christ: that is the zygote was made by the Holy Spirit’s action on Mary’s ovum, i.e. an addition to the system. But after that, the embryo developed in a normal manner.
Second, this comment treats natural laws as real entities. In reality, scientific laws are descriptive of what we observe happening regularly, just as the outline of a map describes the shape of a coastline. Treating scientific laws as prescriptive, i.e. the cause of the observed regularities, is like claiming that the drawing of the map is the cause of the shape of the coastline.
The Bible explains that: we are made in the image of a rational God (Genesis 1:26–27), God is a God of order not of confusion (1 Corinthians 14:33), God gave man dominion over creation (Genesis 1:28), and He commanded honesty (Exodus 20:16). Applying this, as well as a correct understanding of the nature of scientific laws as description, leads to a worldview that historically led to science without jettisoning miracles, as previously stated:
These [founders of modern science], like modern creationists, regarded ‘natural laws’ as descriptions of the way God upholds His creation in a regular and repeatable way (Col. 1:15–17), while miracles are God’s way of upholding His creation in a special way for special reasons. Because creation finished at the end of day 6 (Gen. 2:1–3), creationists following the Bible would expect that God has since mostly worked through ‘natural laws’ except where He has revealed in the Bible that He used a miracle. And since ‘natural laws’ are descriptive, they cannot prescribe what cannot happen, so they cannot rule out miracles. Scientific laws do not cause or forbid anything, any more than the outline of a map causes the shape of the coastline.
C.S. Lewis pointed out that arguing against miracles based on the alleged total uniformity of nature is actually circular reasoning (from Miracles):
No, of course we must agree with the empiricist, David Hume that if there is absolutely ‘uniform experience’ against miracles, in other words, they have never happened, why then they never have. Unfortunately, we know the experience against them to be uniform only if we know that all the reports of them are false. And we know all the reports are false only if we know already that miracles have never occurred. In fact, we are arguing in a circle.
Without a belief that the universe was made by a God of order and that we are made in the image of this God, the Logos, we have no basis for either an orderly universe or that our thoughts can be trusted. Atheists can treat these premises as axioms, i.e. accepted as true without proof, but they are theorems for Christians since they follow from the propositions of Scripture. Indeed, atheists can’t prove that the universe is orderly, because the proofs would have to suppose the order they are trying to prove. Similarly, they can’t prove that their thoughts are rational because the proofs would have to assume this very rationality. Yet evolution would select only for survival advantage, not rationality.
You cannot derive an orderly universe from the proposition ‘God does not exist’. Indeed, you need to accept an orderly universe as a ‘brute fact’, which ironically was actually plagiarized from the Christian world view.
This article has been adapted from an article by Jonathan Sarfati Miracles and Science on the website http://www.creation.com. First published 2/09/2006
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