EDUCATION IS NOT NEUTRAL: IT INSTILLS A WORLDVIEW

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Education is a matter of eternal consequence, and the stakes are too high to take the issue lightly. We need more universities like The Masters University that seeks to teach the lordship of Christ.

“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.” 2 Corinthians 5:10

An education that honours the Lord should prepare us for all that He will hold us accountable to when we stand before Him. We must learn how to discern all of life under the lordship of Christ.

This assumes an absolute commitment to Christ and Scripture. Without this, education will teach the wrong worldview and will fail to equip one to please Christ or make an eternal difference. Any erosion to Christ and Scripture causes education to fall dangerously short of its intended purpose.

One way to think about this commitment is through the phrase “Christ in all things,” derived from Ephesians 1:23. This emphasizes that Christ is not only lord over some things but everything. Every assertion within any subject or discipline must be taken captive to the lordship of Christ.

“For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ” 2 Corinthians 10:4-5

What does this mean for The Master’s University?

It demands that we take everything on campus, put it under the microscope, and see how Scripture determines every single thing be defined and done as an act of worship to Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 10:31).

There is a reason that the symbol of The Master’s University is a shield. The church is the pillar and grounds of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15) — and at TMU, we believe our role is to shield this sacred trust by faithfully educating the next generation of the church, ensuring that the truth is not distorted but upheld as the authoritative definer of all things (cf. Gal. 2:5; 2 Cor. 10:3-5).

Have we been perfect in our endeavor? No. But we know and pursue the standard we must hold ourselves to.

We know we cannot just teach a variety of subjects with Christ on the side.

We know we cannot just have certain things look Christian on our campus.

We know we cannot use human observations to define Christ and Scripture.

Rather, the standard is nothing less than Christ in all things. This is what makes for a true education — one that gives the whole truth and true wisdom, one that prepares for all of life, one that makes an eternal difference, and one that pleases the God who ordained it (Prov. 8:22; Col. 1:9-11; 2:8). That has been our commitment for almost 100 years, and we pray that by God’s good grace, it will be our resolve for many more.

HOW DID YOU COME TO YOUR WORLDVIEW?

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Our worldview informs our personal, social, and political lives. It helps us understand our purpose. Further, our worldview determines our ethics, our values, and our capacity for happiness. It helps us answer the big questions of life: How did I get here? How am I to live? Where do I find meaning in life? What is my ultimate destiny? It is more telling than any other aspect of our lives.

In forming our worldviews, Harvard psychiatrist, Dr. Armand Nicholi says, that we make one of two assumptions about life. The first is that we live in a godless universe; we are a product of nature that has evolved over time. This is a secular worldview that emphasizes scientific knowledge and its motto is “What do science and nature have to say?” The second assumption is that there is a supernatural intelligence who gives the universe order and life meaning. This is a spiritual worldview that is rooted in Biblical revelations. It places emphasis on spiritual truth and wisdom and its motto is: “What does God have to say about this?”

It is reasonable to conclude that every person has an opinion on God and spiritual reality, even if it is a belief that He is non-existent. We all have a faith view of reality and it trickles down into our lives and influences the choices we make. One of the great flaws in our human character is we stubbornly hold on to our beliefs because they generally reflect how we want life to be rather than how life actually is.
For this reason, evidence does not seem to matter.

A great example of this is Dr. Francis Collins. He is most noted for having been chosen to chair the Human Genome Project, ENCODE where, in 2003, he led an international collaboration of two thousand scientists in sequencing the human genome. More recently, he was appointed by President Obama to be the Director of the National Institutes of Health. Clearly, he is a prominent scientist, but what is perhaps even more interesting is his spiritual journey.

He began this journey as an atheist. In his third year of medical school, while he was working in the hospital, he was attending a woman who had exhausted her options for treatment. She suffered from a heart condition and was going to die soon. Collins was moved by this kind and faithful woman. She had a
strong faith, and she shared it with him. She said, “You know, I’m ready to go. Don’t worry about me.”
And then she said, “Dr. Collins, you’ve been so kind to listen to me and care for me and listen to me share with you about my faith. Tell me about your faith. Tell me what you believe.”
Collins later wrote:
“Nobody had ever asked me that question before, not like that, not in such a simple, sincere way. I realized I didn’t know the answer. I felt uneasy. I could feel my face flushing. I wanted to get out of there. The ice was cracking under my feet. All of a sudden, by this simple question, everything was a muddle. Collin’s began to wonder if he was an atheist because he had chosen the position of reason or because it was the answer he wanted. Finally, it came to him: “As a scientist, I had always insisted on collecting rigorous data before drawing a conclusion. And yet, in matters of faith, I had never collected any data at all. I didn’t know what I had rejected. So, I decided that I should be a little better grounded in my atheism. I better find out what this is all about. So, I challenged a patient of mine who was a Methodist minister. And, after listening to my questions and realizing that I was not dealing with a very full deck of information, he suggested that I read the Gospel of John, which I did…I found the scripture to be interesting, puzzling, and not at all what I had thought faith was about… then I began to read C.S. Lewis and realized there was a great depth of thinking and reasoning that could be applied to the question
of God.” Lewis convinced him that reason and faith go hand in hand, though faith has the added component of revelation—the Bible. Collins had previously believed that Jesus and the stories of the
Bible were nothing more than mere myths. Again, as he studied the historical evidence, he was stunned at how well documented and how historically accurate the Bible is. He also saw a surprising fidelity of the transmission of the manuscripts that were passed down over the centuries. And, over time, Francis Collins,
based on the accumulation of the evidence that he observed, concluded that God exists, and that Jesus is the Son of God. He also concluded that most of the religious skeptics that he knew and that he meets today are just like he was. That is to say, they didn’t want to think about these things and never looked at any evidence, never drawing conclusions from the real evidence that was available. This is what Dr. Dallas Willard, former professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California, believed was a major problem with individuals who considered themselves to be agnostic or atheist. Willard found that so many of the students and scholars he encountered on campus and in the world were guilty of what he called “irresponsible disbelief.” These bright men and women would often choose to disbelieve in something without any significant commitment to an investigation of that disbelief by way of sound reasoning and careful examination of the evidence.

Do you believe the Bible is inerrant? The revealed word of God. If you do then you need to reject evolution and its billions of years and hold to to the Biblical history and the worldwide flood of Noah’s day. It produced the billions of fossils and fossil fuels, oil and gas that evolutionists tell us took billions of years to form. The Bible tells us that to initiate the flood God broke the mantle of the earth “all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened.” The whole topography of the Earth was changed when God poured out His wrath upon the Earth the first time when He judged the wicked Nephilim (hybrid angel/humans) and mankind. The subsequent Ice Age was a single, rapid event triggered by post-Flood conditions. These included massive volcanic activity releasing aerosols that cooled the continents, combined with warm oceans from Flood-related heating, leading to heavy snowfall and glacier formation. The duration is typically estimated as several hundred years, with glaciers building up over the first few centuries and melting during the latter half as volcanic activity waned. This fits within the post-Flood timeline, allowing for human and animal dispersal (e.g., via land bridges from lower sea levels) before the rise of early civilizations like those in Mesopotamia around 4,000 years ago. The Tower of Babel event that formed the nations with new God given languages occurred just 200 to 300 years after the Flood and was the reason people dispersed across the world.

God has been active in His world with these dramatic events. The apostle Peter told us 2000 years ago that in the last days before Jesus returns that the world would reject God and His account of creation and Noah’s Flood as myths and suffer God’s judgement just as the ungodly did before the worldwide flood. The many fulfilled Biblical prophecies are proof God exists and His Word is truth.

“Knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 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, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.” 2Peter 3: 3-7

TRUE TRUTH BRINGS JOY UNSPEAKABLE

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  1. Truth exists and is knowable.
  2. Truth upheld brings blessings.
  3. Truth disregarded brings consequences

I am more convinced than ever that embracing a biblically informed worldview of “true truth” brings “joy unspeakable” (1 Pet.1:8) and “abundant life” (John 10:10) as Jesus promised to obedient followers.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:8-9

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” John 10:10

Erroneous thinking and anti-biblical worldviews have consequences. For many, it leads to addictions, health problems, and even premature death or suicide. For everyone serious about aligning with the radical and amazing plan God ordained for your life, let me strongly encourage you to fulfil your destiny by embracing a biblical worldview.

More than 30% of the Bible is Biblical prophecy, and much of it is now fulfilled, which proves that the rest of the prophecies—there are about 2000 of them—are about Jesus’ second coming to Earth, to defeat the Antichrist and his army at the battle of Armageddon, and to initiate His Millennial reign with the glorified Saints.

Have you read my recent post – Will you escape the wrath of God? If not, I urge you to do so.

ANSWERS TO THE LATEST SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION

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The videos being produced by both Creation Ministries International (CMI) http://www.creation.com and Answers in Genesis (AIG) http://www.answersingenesis.org are brilliant and they need to be promoted and used.

In the first video, Don Batten answers many of the common arguments used to criticize a Biblical worldview. Can I suggest you use this video clip when ministering to family and friends. CMI is producing many of these clips for use on social media: particularly YouTube and more recently TikTok.

The following video is one produced by AIG each Monday at 2 p.m. (ET) on YouTube or later that day on Answers TV for Answers News. It addresses current events from a Biblical worldview. For example, NBC is promoting in June (Pride Month in the USA), a video on Queer Animals suggesting that of all the animals only humans have a stigma towards being queer. After all, what can be more natural than following who you are? AIG does a great job showing the absurdity of this view.

MAN’S WORD VERSUS GOD’S WORD

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Churches need to teach foundationally, and Christians need to understand our thinking must start with God’s Word, Genesis chapters 1–11, the foundation for everything. Because so many Christian leaders have compromised Genesis 1–11 with evolution and millions of years, most Christians have not been taught the foundational doctrines and therefore a true biblical worldview.

Many Christians just look at what they perceive as the “problems” and try to figure out how to take these to the Bible to understand what to do. But those with a true biblical worldview know that God’s Word beginning in Genesis is the foundation for that worldview. They also know there are ultimately only two foundations for people’s worldviews—God’s Word or man’s word.

For those who build their thinking on man’s word (the foundation of the secular education system), a worldview of moral relativism results. Thus, marriage is how they define it. Because man is seen as just an animal, abortion is no different than killing an animal. People who are aged and infirm are seen as a drain on the health system and therefore euthanasia should be used to stop their suffering and costly care. Gender is plastic and one can (try to) change gender using drugs and surgery if they want.

When a person builds their thinking on God’s Word, their worldview is determined by God our Creator. Thus, God created marriage, so there’s only one marriage—one man and one woman. Humans are made in the image of God, so abortion (at any stage) is murder. God made only two genders of humans: male and female.

Two foundations with two very different worldviews. The clash we see happening in our culture is one between two totally opposite worldviews, and at a foundational level, it’s a battle between God’s Word and man’s word.

Once we understand the real battle is at the foundational level, we understand that to battle all the social issues (abortion, gender, gay “marriage,” racism, etc.), one must recognize them as symptoms of a foundational problem. The problem is that people have built their worldview on the wrong foundation of man’s word.

Now, if all those social issues are the same ultimate problem, they must have the same solution. And they do. The solution has always been the truth of God’s Word and the saving gospel. Many, though, have been indoctrinated to think the Bible is an outdated book of mythology and that science proves it can’t be trusted, particularly in its history in Genesis 1–11. That’s where apologetics answers the attacks on God’s Word and shows we can defend the Christian faith. That’s why Answers in Genesis provides scientific and biblical answers to the questions of our day that are used to attack and undermine God’s Word. So the solution to the social issues is to battle at a foundation level. To do that, we need to raise up generations who know how to think foundationally and are equipped with apologetics.

Go to http://www.answersingenesis.org and http://www.creation.com for resources to equip you with answers to young people’s questions on origins.

CONSEQUENCES OF AN EVOLUTIONARY WORLDVIEW

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As much as humanists would like to protest this fact, it was the rise of the evolutionary theory of natural selection, propagated by Charles Darwin and his acolytes, that first began to erode the foundational belief that all human life was inherently valuable. After all, if there is no God, then no one was created in His image. If there is no God, then some people were, by very definition, defective evolutionary accidents. If there is no God, then there is no reason whatsoever to assume that all human beings are valuable and equal. In fact, the very theory of evolutionary natural selection precludes the idea of equality. In the Darwinian view of the human race, equality as anything other than a feeble social construct cannot be possible.

If we’re just “rearranged pond scum,” just animals, just the result of random, chance processes, then why should human life be preserved and protected? Nature certainly wouldn’t protect the weak, vulnerable, and sick, so why should we?

It was exactly that thinking that eugenicists grabbed onto and applied in ways that shock us today. The idea of someone forcibly sterilizing a young couple because someone else decided they were not fit to have children based on their socio-economic status, ethnic background, disability, and so on, does indeed seem shocking. But is our culture today really much different?

We live in a culture saturated with naturalistic, evolutionary thinking—there is no god, we set the rules (determine right from wrong), and we’re just animals. Since this thinking still dominates the West, it’s no surprise that the eugenicist thinking of past generations hasn’t really gone away (even though it became unpopular after Nazi Germany’s atrocities became public)—it’s just morphed into different forms.

Think about it. What is abortion? Well, it’s ascribing less value to a human being based on their level of development and location. It’s applying the idea that we’re just animals and we get to set the rules as there is no ultimate right and wrong. Consider that genetic screening for various chromosomal abnormalities results in the deaths of many children who receive a potential diagnosis (with many doctors pressuring parents in that direction). It’s just eugenics applied to who should be born! Indeed, Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger, who pushed eugenics based on Darwin’s evolutionary ideas.

Or consider the screenings of babies created in a lab to be implanted in a womb (IVF). These babies in the embryonic stage of development may go through intense screening before a select few are chosen to either be implanted or frozen for potential later use. They can be screened for genetic and chromosomal abnormalities, sex, viability, and more. It’s eugenics applied to reproductive technologies.

Or what about euthanasia? Allowing those who are terminally ill or (in some places) mentally ill, chronically ill, disabled, elderly, etc., to choose to end their own lives is a form of euthanasia—“These people deserve to live; these don’t.” And it doesn’t take long for “can end their own lives” to become “should end their own lives” to become “must end their own lives.”

Apart from God and his Word, there is no foundation for human uniqueness or the sanctity of life. The result of such a low view of human life is always deadly. Worldview matters!

This post was adapted from a blog post, What’s the Connection Between Eugenics and Evolution? on http://www.answersingenesis.org. Ken Ham adapted his post from an article in Life Site News, How atheistic Darwinism Led the West into a Dark Age of Eugenics

HOLDING A TRUE WORLDVIEW

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The Cultural Research Center (CRC) at Arizona Christian University recently released data from a survey of 400 children. This survey sought to examine “the prominence of belief in the ‘Seven Cornerstones of a Biblical Worldview’ among adolescents” (children ages 8–12). The seven cornerstones are the following:

  • God exists and is the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect Creator and ruler of the universe.
  • As a sinner, the only solution to the consequences of sin is to acknowledge your sins, ask God to forgive you through Jesus Christ and rely on Him to save you from those consequences.
  • Sin is real and significant; we are all sinners, by choice.
  • Your most important reason for living is to do what God wants.
  • You trust the Bible because it is completely true and personally relevant to your life.
  • The Bible provides a complete and reliable understanding of right and wrong.
  • Success is consistently doing what the Bible teaches.

For me, an important cornerstone is missing, 8. Biblical history clearly teaches a young earth and a worldwide flood of Noah’s day that caused billions of dead things to be buried all over the world including fossil fuels from buried plant life. God ordained 6,000 years of man’s rule with Satan, god of this world, next will be Jesus ruling with the glorified Saints for 1,000 years (Satan bound in the Abyss) from a newly created Jerusalem. Israel will be the ruling nation on this Earth for Jesus’ Millennial reign. In 7,000 years this Earth’s history will be complete. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away… ” Revelation 21:1

The CRC survey found that just 3% of children embraced all seven of these cornerstones. The majority only agreed with one or two, rejecting or stating they were unsure about the others. As the survey report states, “That does not bode well for adolescents building a stable foundation that will lead to a robust and biblical worldview.”

So what worldview are these children forming? Researcher George Barna says it’s a worldview of syncretism—the dominant worldview in the West today as people combine a little bit of this and a little bit of that into a religion of their own making. Barna says:

They are following in the footsteps of their parents, only 2% of whom have a biblical worldview, and 96% of whom are Syncretists. That mindset and lifestyle is modeled for their children every day and has become the comfortable default position among most adults, teens, and children who call themselves Christian.

Every person has a worldview. The question is whether it is the right worldview. The answer to that is this: “The only correct worldview is the one grounded on God’s Word.” Every other worldview is ultimately founded in man’s opinion (man’s word) and is therefore subjective and arbitrary. The only absolute worldview is the one that comes from God’s Word.

Parents, these survey results should be sobering. They should make you stop and consider what kind of priority teaching your children the things of the Lord has in your home. And that doesn’t just mean teaching children good morals from God’s Word so they do what is right. It means teaching them the theology and doctrine of God’s Word so they can look at the world through the right lens. It means teaching them the gospel so they understand what Jesus did for them and how they can be saved. It means always taking everything back to Scripture as the ultimate authority.

Yes, this is hard work, but it’s the task the Lord has called parents (and especially fathers!) to, and it has eternal consequences (life or death). Don’t delegate your children’s worldview training to the church, a Christian school, or the world. Open the Word of God with your children and teach them diligently so that they may proclaim the works of God to a generation yet unborn (Psalm 78).

Helpful resources available from Answers in Genesis

Truth for Toddlers

The Answers Books for Kids.

NO GOD LEADS TO NO HOPE: YOUR WORLDVIEW MATTERS

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Testimony of Michael (‘Mike’) Dooley, pianist, composer, song and hymn writer, producer, and music teacher, who studied at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Canberra Institute of Technology (AdvDipMusA, AMusA).

Pursuing music as a career, Mike’s acceptance into the elite Sydney Conservatorium was exciting. However, his enthusiasm was short-lived. He explained: I became quite disillusioned; the music we were studying was very depressing. There was no sense of hope. It was basically reflecting the very grim state of the world … I was led into a sense of real despair.

Mike continued: Something very significant happened when I went to a concert of J.S. Bach’s St John Passion. I was reading along with the English translation of the associated German text. The music was profoundly beautiful, but also, the story of the Crucifixion deeply touched my heart.

Mike walked into that concert as an atheist but he walked out saying under his breath, “I believe”, without really knowing what or why.

Music and worldview

At the time, he was studying with one of Australia’s most prominent composers. I asked him, “Why did Bach create such beautiful, harmonious, and meaningful music? And why do we today create this very dissonant-sounding avant-garde music?” He looked at me, I think somewhat sadly, and said, “You know, they had God in those days, but we don’t have God anymore.” That was his answer! To me, that was like a bit of a light going on.

This led him to a further realization: Your worldview influences the music. So, someone with a worldview that has no hope—we came from nothing and we’re going nowhere—will write despairing, hopeless music. Someone with a hopeful, positive worldview about a purposeful Creator will create purposeful and hopeful music. And that is what you see in the great Christian composers. There would always be triumph and hope at the end because that’s reflective of their worldview.

Sometime after the Bach episode, Mike said, his best friend from high school told him he had become a Christian. I was rather shocked, because we’d been on this journey to find out the truth together. He shared the Gospel with me, and very quickly, I took the step of to Jesus—a very big change for me.

Mike recalls the incredible, unforgettable joy he felt at that moment. He no longer thought of himself as a random assortment of molecules caused by a series of cosmic accidents. Instead, he realized that he was a loved creation of a purposeful and living Creator:

But then a couple of days later, he said, “So, do you believe in the theory of evolution?” and I said, “Well, yeah.’ He replied, “Well, I’ve got something to read to you”, and he read from one of the very early creation books, before there was the sort of high quality apologetics we have now in creationist ministries. But there was enough good science in there, and enough truth from the Word, that I completely accepted the Genesis creation account as being true. And I completely rejected evolution at that point.

It was an incredible life-changer for me, and at that point I said, “I want to serve this God.”

So, that’s what he did. He spent around thirty years overseas doing humanitarian missions work while performing—a fascinating experience for him:

Music opened doors to travel to various countries that would normally be quite closed to the Gospel. Doing music allowed us to bring a message to people and personally share the Gospel with them in closed and difficult situations.

Believing that music is a gift from God has also presented opportunities to tear down evolutionary, anti- Christian thinking. Mike noted that music is a uniquely human ability and doesn’t really make sense within evolutionary theory:

What would be the survival advantage of being able to play a harmonic and melodic instrument? If you think about how musical ability supposedly evolved, or look up the literature on it, evolutionists are really clutching at straws. They try to explain why and how we would develop such fine acoustic appreciation, and the motor skills to be able to perform music.

Amazingly, researchers are uncovering how the design of our inner ear ‘receiver’ coupled with the brain’s computational ability allows humans to distinguish the pitch and timing of notes in a way that greatly exceeds a theoretical mathematical limit. It is bordering on absurd to think that such advanced technology could come about from the selection of random but somehow advantageous mutations.

Mike said he found the writing of creationsit Professor Stuart Burgess on engineering and design particularly helpful, especially on human design in relation to creativity:

A quarter of our brain’s cortex, the surface where most of the processing is done, is devoted just to the hands, which are such an important part of our creative equipment. But hands would be useless if it wasn’t for the complex software controlling them.
Spreading biblical truth
Composing is something Mike especially loves doing. He spoke of Perpetua, his recent classical choral work about the Christian martyr of that name. He called it one of the favourite things he has done, because of the strong messages he was able to give: It’s about standing up for faith in difficult times and living for heavenly values rather than worldly success or values— and about supporting the persecuted church.
A piece Mike wrote for string quintet and piano was used as the theme for the graduation ceremony of a large Australian university, and is called One Human Family. Mike said:
It was inspired by Creation Ministries International’s (CMI’s) book of the same name. I actually made a melodic line from a section of the human genome and arranged it in the styles of different cultures.
Mike is currently working on a large classical choral work called The Redemption which tells the story of creation, the Fall, Jesus’ redemptive act on the Cross, and the coming restored creation. Well aware of the importance of the creation message in today’s world, since 2013 he has been part of a volunteer CMI ‘Friends Group’—people supporting the ministry’s speakers at events. Mike said:
What it’s really about for me is the authority of Scripture. It’s the fact that when God says what He says, He means it and He is able to communicate that to us. God can create the universe in six days. We humans can wonder how that could be possible, or doubt that God could do it, but He is omnipotent—all-powerful.
We read Genesis Chapter 1, and read the genealogies in Chapter 5, there’s a clear history there. God is a clear communicator: He told us what was true, and when Jesus came, He said to His Father “..your word is truth” (John 17:17b).
If you start eroding either the efficacy of God as a communicator, or the historicity of the Bible, you start losing many Christian convictions. These include the key facts that we are depraved sinners and need the Cross—we need Jesus as our Saviour.
That’s one major thing I love about CMI—that it kindles that reverence for God’s Word, and its authority in our lives.
Asked for a final word to readers, Mike said: To me, humanity’s musical ability is a witness to the genius of the Creator. We should use that music to glorify and thank Him for His gifts, and to spread His message of salvation far and wide.

Extract from the article Music Man Declares His Masterful Maker in Creation Magazine, 2023, volume, 45, issue 4.

BUILDING A RIGHT WORLDVIEW

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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.

Ken Ham’s talk is based on his book, Divided Nation: Cultures in Chaos and a Conflicted Church. The good news is that there is a link to download Ken’s slides (in four different formats) so you can use them to help get this message of biblical authority out to more believers! He also includes notes with each slide. You can find that resource on the Answers in Genesis online bookstore.

WHAT IS YOUR WORLDVIEW BASED ON?

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Armand Nicholi, the Harvard psychiatrist and the author of The Question of God says that our worldview informs our personal, social, and political lives. It helps us understand our purpose. Further, he said that our worldview determines our ethics, our values, and our capacity for happiness. It helps us answer the big questions of life: How did I get here? How am I to live? Where do I find meaning in life? What is my ultimate destiny? Basically, Nicholi is telling us that our worldview is more telling than perhaps any other
aspect of our lives.

Another way to understand our worldview is to see it as a map, a mental map that helps us navigate life effectively. As author Nancy Pearcey says, “…we need some creed to live by; some map by which we chart our course.” This is a worldview. In forming our worldviews, Dr. Nicholi says that we make one of two assumptions about life. The first is that we live in a godless universe; we are a product of nature that has evolved over time. This is a secular worldview that emphasizes scientific knowledge and its motto is “What do science and nature have to say?”
The second assumption is that there is a supernatural intelligence (God). He gives the universe order and life meaning. This is a spiritual worldview that is rooted in Biblical revelations. It places emphasis on spiritual truth and wisdom and its motto is: “What does God have to say about this?”

I have concluded that every person has an opinion on God and spiritual reality, even if it is a belief that He is non-existent. We all have a faith view of reality and it trickles down into our lives and influences the choices we make.

Author Tim Keller says, “How we relate to God is the foundation of our thinking because it determines the way we view the world. Whether you believe God exists or not, this belief is the foundation on which all of your reasoning proceeds. For instance, if you do not believe that God exists, it is a belief taken by faith and it becomes your faith view of reality. Whether you realize it or not, all your reasoning proceeds from this belief. You end up screening out all that does not fit with this view of life.”

Your worldview will ultimately explain where life originated, what life means, and what we are supposed to be doing with the years we are given. English mathematician John Lennox says: “What divides us is not science . . . but our worldviews. No one wants to base their life on a delusion, but which is the delusion? Christianity or atheism? This is what God has to say about the issue.

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. 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. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Romans 1:19-23