This ministry is called Worldview Warriors. Our goal and our vision are to train and equip this generation to know and understand the Biblical worldview and be ready to stand upon it when the world comes with its challenges. So why did I spend the last five weeks writing about a personal trip? The answer is simple: because the Grand Canyon has been a weapon used in the hands of secular “scientists” to dismantle and destroy the faith of millions of people. It is not proper scientists that the Grand Canyon refers to in order to teach the 6 million+ visitors each year about how the canyon formed. It is the priests of the pagan religion of secular/natural humanism. If they were actual scientists being referenced, they would be open and considering of the different ideas of how it all formed, and they would not be so set against any model that resembled Noah’s Flood. Russ Miller, one of our speakers, teaches that the Grand Canyon is one of the pillars of the secular/humanistic religion because of how well it “shows” the long ages of the past. Yet, when actual Bible-believing scientists finally got on their feet to give an answer to these false teachings, they began making waves and the secularists and old earthers in the churches are threatened by this.
Russ Miller often states that he is blocked by 90% of churches from being able to present information that has a history of piercing through the fog of millions of years and would equip the churches to teach their children to be able to stand on the Word of God. Yet, because of tares sown among the churches, usually in the form of a pastor, elder, deacon, or a big tither, if a pastor were to bring Miller to his church to present, it would offend these old earthers and create division. But I will stand with Miller and state that the ones causing division are not those who present the truth firmly and adamantly, but those who bring in another gospel. When taken to its full logical conclusion, Old Earth Creation models are a different gospel, with a different creator and as a result a different “Jesus.” There are authentic born-again believers who are old-earthers, but they are not consistent with it and most don’t actually believe it. They have little choice because they haven’t heard the other side of the story. The old earthers love to cite Proverbs 18:17 to try to counter the young earth creationist claims, but they never like having this verse used on them because it always exposes their teachings as false teachings.
What make origins so important? Don’t you just have to believe in Jesus, that He died for your sins and rose from the dead for you to be saved? Well, why do you need to be saved? What are being saved from? What are you being saved to? What does salvation even mean? If this debate was ONLY about the age of the earth, the old earthers would have a point that it is a secondary issue. However, it’s not about the age of the earth. It’s actually about Adam and sin. It’s about what Adam’s sin did and when death entered the world. In every old earth model, there is death before sin, and that is a fatal, damnable heresy. If death (of any kind) preceded sin, then death cannot be the penalty for sin. If the world prior to Adam has operated precisely as we observe today, then we have a creation that started out cursed. There is an origins model that has this as a principal teaching: the Gnostics’ teaching that the Demiurge created with the corrupted “essence” of the “True God.”
When I point this out, I have old-earthers go ballistic over it, and they will argue anything and everything EXCEPT this point I’m making. There is one I confronted by showing him how his geologic models show human death prior to Adam, and he questioned everything from the interpretation of Scripture to whether the fossils were human or not, everything except the dating methods. His response when I pointed this out was, “I just have to figure out the theology.” In Old Earth theology, notice this: “modern science” is “god” and “Divine Scripture” is “a matter of interpretation.” While some individuals do not believe this, this is the practice of the majority of them. Keep them talking and they’ll prove and even admit it.
I love how Russ Miller puts the issue so simply and succinctly. The secular community seeks to destroy the faith of unsuspecting youth by teaching them of long ages that put death before Adam and sin, which separates us from God and calls for a Savior in Jesus Christ. This is the summary of his book COST which I got to help edit and critique for its current edition. There are countless people in churches who have bought into these lies and instead of seeking the truth, they seek to block the truth from being spoken. The battle over origins is not about the age of the earth, but about all that comes with it. It is over the principal problem for mankind: when sin and death entered the world. It is about the problem for which Jesus is the solution. When one rejects the problem from being a problem, then why would one proudly boast about the solution from said problem? One fruit of Old Earth teachings is found in the Progressive Christianity movement (formerly Emergent Church) where there is hot debate about the problem of evil and why Jesus had to die. Now, not all old earthers are Progressive Christians, but all Progressive Christians are Old Earthers. Rob Bell and Brian McLaren both question the necessity of the virgin birth as they question the age of the earth and as they question the doctrines of hell and morality. They aren’t the only ones.
Origins has been the primary frontal attack on the authority and integrity of Scripture for the last 200 years. For the first 100 of those years, the Church was in such shock that they didn’t know how to respond and instead they caved on Scripture. They waived the white flag, and the moment the Church in general surrendered on origins to these predominately non-scientific and most certainly non-Christian Deists out of the Enlightenment, it lost the authority to speak on many different issues. The Bible was regulated to just being a religious book for the Christian religious, and not a book by which all man was expected to live. It didn’t take long in Europe for societies to start collapsing. It took the U.S. much longer to surrender its roots, but after about 100 years of teaching old earth ideas in the churches, the U.S. gave up the Bible entirely by removing prayer and the Bible from the public square in 1962-1963.
But God was ready to answer that and raised up men like Henry Morris and John Whitcomb to reclaim the Bible as the authority, not just in the church but also the nation, by answering the very place where it was surrendered: at origins. For many in churches, it’s brought revival back and currently with people like Russ Miller, we are rescuing people who were raised in churches, brainwashed by Marxist Evolutionists, and now have come back to the truth. But there are many churches who will not have it. I would question if the large percentage of those churches even qualify as being a church under God but are rather no more than a Sunday social club — a synagogue of Satan. Jesus is coming for a pure and spotless bride, and that includes on issues like origins. I, for one, want to be ready when He comes, and I will teach others to be ready for that, too. The origins debate is not just about origins; it’s about the Gospel. It’s about the correct worldview. It’s about the correct authority. Get those wrong, and you might have EVERYTHING wrong.
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by Steve Risner
This is it – the last strawman donated to us from an unbeliever in a group I’m in on Facebook. You can read the rest of the series here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Those last four links were to specific strawman arguments this unbeliever alleged that creationists use and should avoid. For the most part, he’s right. All strawman arguments should be avoided, though the insinuation from this person is that creationists are the only people who have a problem using them. Of course, this isn’t true at all. Everyone uses them at some point. What is beautiful in his statement, though, is that while his specified strawman might be a good example of something to avoid, he always followed with an explanation. These explanations were wonderful treasure troves of misinformation or just wrong thinking. That is what I’ve primarily focused on for the most part. Today’s strawman is an excellent one to end this series with. It goes like this (as I quote this unbeliever):
Evolution does not explain how life began (Abiogenesis).
Fair enough. We’ll see in a moment how the two concepts—how life began and how it diversified—cannot really be truly separated. But his explanation wants to make that separation. He says, “True, but it doesn’t pretend to. Evolution is an explanation of how life developed after it began.”
He’s in good company with this statement. Many evolutionists (people who believe in universal common descent) will say this. This is especially true of those evolutionists who are atheists. It’s a defense mechanism. It is a way to distract from the fact that, judging from everything we know about life and chemistry and natural laws, life cannot arise from non-living chemistry. Every single time we’ve ever seen a living thing, we’ve known its origin—something else that was alive. And every time we’ve tried to prove otherwise, we’ve failed. This is not the first time I’ve written on this subject, but I believe what I share here today will develop what I have previously written. You can see that first post on abiogenesis here.
The evolutionists are desperate. They need to avoid this conversation at all costs because it makes them look foolish and, obviously, we can’t have that. So, they’ll hand wave and act like you’re some sort of twit because you want to discuss abiogenesis with an evolutionist. “Evolution has nothing to do with life’s origins.” Who else believes in abiogenesis but evolutionists? Probably not a lot of folks out there. The two are married and inseparably so. Sure, diversification is not the same thing as origination, but you can’t have diversification if you don’t have a starting point. But evolutionists will want to limit the scope of any conversation about their beliefs on origins to AFTER life began because all evidence—all of it—is heavily stacked against them when it comes to abiogenesis. It’s literally impossible when we’re talking about natural means.
Are the two things so connected? What is the glue we might stumble upon to hold them together? According to some evolutionists who are fairly well spoken on the topic of universal common descent, they are connected.
From G.A. Kerkut: “…there is the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form. This theory can be called the ‘General Theory of Evolution’ and the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.”
To distinguish this from the Special Theory of Evolution, Kerkut says, “There is a theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed.” So we have “general” and “special” theories of evolution. The General Theory of Evolution begins with life coming from non-life. Every textbook on earth that mentions evolution (universal common descent from a single common ancestor) starts with abiogenesis. If the two ideas are not dependent on each other, someone should tell a lot of people who are in key positions to educate on the topic(s). Many prominent evolutionists seem to be in the dark here.
According to Britannica: “Abiogenesis proposes that the first life-forms generated were very simple and through a gradual process became increasingly complex.” Seems like they’re talking about life from non-life and then diversification, doesn’t it? How any person can expect to be trusted when they try to claim universal common descent is not intimately connected to abiogenesis is beyond me.
Evolutionists are slimy in this regard. They’ll need to avoid this topic and then claim it’s because the creationist is ignorant on what evolution is that they’re even bringing it up. Of course, this is nonsense. I, like many other creationists, understand all too well the interconnected nature of these two topics. Yes, again, they are not the same thing. One speaks of the evolution of non-living chemicals into simple living things while the other picks up the tale here and attempts to explain the evolution of these simpler organisms into more specialized creatures over eons of time. But they try to make it about your knowledge on the topic rather than their lack of support on the topic.
Why are these two ideas joined so strongly? Creation.com tells us there are three reasons in this article. I tend to agree with each of them, and I will summarize and paraphrase them below.
The first reason I’ve already implied above is that virtually every evolutionist believes in abiogenesis, and everyone who believes in abiogenesis is an evolutionist. The two are obviously intertwined remarkably well. This is especially true of atheists, but most theistic evolutionists start with abiogenesis as well. That’s too bad, but it’s true. Since most if not all evolutionists believe in abiogenesis, it’s a great point to discuss.
I’ve also alluded to the second reason above: abiogenesis is talked about so much by so many, especially in educational settings, when evolution is the primary topic that we can’t be expected to not see the two as related. Textbooks, television programs, and journals all reference abiogenesis at some point or another. This is most often when the topic is universal common descent. Why would that be if the two are not married?
The last reason Creation.com gives is also something I briefly mentioned above: prominent (and not so prominent) evolutionists have been caught repeatedly connecting the two in discussions. In some cases, they even refer to abiogenesis as evolution. That seems significant, doesn’t it? Dr. Eugenie Scott, who is a very vocal anti-creationist, has gone so far as to say that evolution isn’t just about living things. How’s that? I thought evolution was just about AFTER life sprang up from non-life and its diversification. I guess no one knows how this works.
Creation.com even quotes British biochemist J.B.S. Haldane as saying about the conditions necessary for abiogenesis (which is funny since we have no idea what conditions are required for this miracle to happen) that “a reducing atmosphere, one with no free oxygen, was a requirement for the evolution of life from non-living organic matter.” Weird, right, to use the word evolution there if they’re not connected? If these two topics are so vastly unconcerned with each other, why are they talked about in such an intimate fashion?
They finish this article with a great synopsis of what’s at stake here for the evolutionist and why they have to avoid talking about life’s origins: “In reality, the claim that abiogenesis is not part of evolution is often nothing more than a ploy to avoid having to deal with the issue. Life’s origin is an embarrassing problem for evolutionists, so it’s easier for them to banish the topic than to debate it. But if evolutionists can’t even get the process started, then surely their naturalistic narrative is in big trouble.”
I hope this further sheds light on why abiogenesis is a great point to push with people who have accepted on faith the humanist origins myth—a story where nature and her laws are the supreme rulers of all things. Don’t let them tell you the topic of abiogenesis is out of bounds when discussing evolution. It’s right on for a few reasons.
This concludes our series taken from an unbeliever who wanted to give us creationists some sage advice. I was happy he did. I pray you enjoyed it and were able to get useful information from it.
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“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:12).
The author of Hebrews has just quoted a portion of Psalm 95 that encourages the reader to follow the ways of God instead of falling into rebellion against God. He continues on that theme as we begin today’s passage of Hebrews 3:12-19.
This passage starts out with a command to see to it that we don’t have a heart that turns away from God. This verb translated here as “turns away” has the idea of a rebellion - purposefully and intentionally turning away from God and rebelling against Him as a lifestyle choice, not just an occasional mistake. It can also mean to abandon, leave, withdraw, or revolt. We are commanded not to abandon, leave, rebel, or revolt against God - but this is what we end up so often doing in our sin.
What should we do instead, to counter that rebellion? “But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness” (verse 13). The way to keep our hearts right and pointed toward God is to encourage one another every day. Note that it doesn’t say to encourage each other when you meet weekly on Sunday mornings; encourage one another daily.
The phrase “as long as it is called ‘Today’” adds a sense or urgency to this command. Each day often seems to go by very quickly, especially when looking back. Have you encouraged a fellow believer today? How about yesterday? Is this something we’re making a point to do every single day? This is the only way that we can fight against the natural inclination of our hearts to turn away from God and toward the sinful things of this world that seem to so easily draw us in and deceive us.
How can we encourage each other in this way? “We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end” (verse 14). This sharing in Christ can also be translated as participating in Christ together. None of us should be trying to be a Christian alone; we’re all in this together! It is important to hold onto that conviction that we had when we first became followers of Jesus. For some people, that was a dramatic and transformational moment, and we need to keep that conviction in mind and encourage one another to not let it go. For others, like myself, coming to faith has been a gradual lifelong process without one defining moment. But God will still give us moments where we have greater confidence in our faith and what God is doing in and through us than in other moments, so we need to hold onto that conviction to get us through the times where we struggle more.
The author then goes back to a quote from Psalm 95:7-8 in verse 15, the beginning of the quote we looked at last week: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”
Perhaps he thought that quote needed some more explanation, which he then begins to discuss by asking questions in verses 16-18: “Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?” All of these questions relate to the people of Israel. They were in a great position and relationship with God, and then they chose to give all that up to rebel against God.
The first question is who were they who heard and rebelled? This is answered with a rhetorical question that gives us the answer - those who Moses led out of Egypt, the people of Israel. The second question is who was God angry with for 40 years? Again, the answer is Israel, but given in the form of a descriptive question - those who sinned and died in the wilderness. The third question asks about the ones who disobeyed, and again the answer is Israel, of course.
God did so much for the people of Israel, yet they still chose to go their own way and rebel against Him. The depressing conclusion of this passage is found in verse 19: “So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.” This is not just God overreacting and getting mad that they disobeyed Him; this is the inevitable outcome of not believing in God. This is true whether applied to the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness, to the first-century Church, to us today, and everyone in between.
This section of Hebrews is a warning for all followers of God for the consequences of falling away from our faith in Him into unbelief, disobedience, and rebellion. We need to continually be on our guard against this, as it is so easy to do! Our enemy, the devil, is constantly working to deceive us, so we need to be in fellowship with other believers so that we can be encouraged and fight that temptation to wilfully rebel against God.
What are you doing in your life to fight that temptation to rebel against God? How are you encouraging others as you walk in faith to keep fighting the good fight to stay obedient to God? I encourage you this week to work on even small ways to encourage yourself and others to stay on the path of faith and obedience.
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On the second day of our trip, we did an early morning guided raft tour of Glen Canyon. Page, Arizona is right on the Arizona/Utah border at Lake Powell (which extends into Utah) and is also where the Grand Canyon officially begins. In the 1930s, a 750-foot dam was in this canyon and the lake was formed as a result. This area is under the guard of Homeland Security. If this dam were to be breached, numerous towns and everything down river would be wiped out. In 1983, a “cavitation” event took place when the dam was filled to the brim and engineers were trying to drain as much water as possible without overflooding everything downstream. But in this event, giant chunks of concrete were being shot out of the overflow spillways about 150 feet. In this picture, you can see a piece of rebar sticking out of the river.
The Colorado River flows out of the Glen Dam at 47 degrees regularly into the Glen Canyon, which is the first 17-mile stretch of the 277-mile long Grand Canyon. A rafting tour company does raft tours along this stretch before the Glen Canyon levels out and Marble Canyon begins at Lees Ferry. Lees Ferry is the only place along the entire stretch of the Grand Canyon where vehicles can get in and out because the surrounding walls are only a couple hundred feet tall, and there is some leveling out on the north side. But there are severe warnings at Lees Ferry that once you pass their markers: there is no going back without either hiking the long way, going the 9- to14-day journey through the rest of the river, or helicoptering out. Marble Canyon begins at this point, which cuts straight through the valley (much like the Little Colorado River Canyon does) and then enters the main Grand Canyon.
Our group of 54 split up among two large rafts, able to hold 30 people each, and each with a raft guide. Our three speakers split up among the two rafts and at various points, our speakers would talk about different formations and observations that we saw. Our raft guides only pointed out several interesting things to note but didn’t say much about how they formed. I’m guessing they really didn’t know. But our speakers did, and they explained the processes that would be required to produce these canyon walls that on average were about 700-1100 feet tall. Keep in mind, this is the SMALLEST part of the Grand Canyon. We did pass through the famous “Horseshoe Bend” which is a 270-degree turning of the river (see picture immediately below).
We also passed by what appeared to be a former ox-bow lake (see picture immediately above). There are two chasms in the wall that circle back and are connected behind what we could see. It looked like another breached dam caused it to drain and from the pictures. You can see where rain would regularly run down and create waterfalls, staining the rocks. Just to get the scale here, that tiny vertical water stain on the left “side canyon” is this up close:
One thing I learned about this canyon is the rock layers this canyon carved through are about 1300 feet above the Kaibab Formation, which is the top layer at the Grand Canyon. So, in terms of the order of rocks, we were above even Red Butte and Cedar Butte, yet due to the huge upwarp, these buttes and the main Grand Canyon itself is higher in elevation except where the river flows through the inner gorge.
What caused Glen Canyon to form? The secular models proudly proclaim the Colorado River carved it. Yet, if that were the case, why don’t we see Glen Canyons, let alone Grand Canyons, in nearly every river? An honest geologist will ask this: “Did the river form the canyon? Or did the canyon form the river?” Water always takes the path of least resistance and flows downhill. It never flows uphill, and if it can go around an obstacle, it will go around it before cutting through it. This is a severe problem in the secular models because the Grand Canyon is carved through the Kaibab Upwarp, and it would easily redirect itself around the upwarp, rather than cutting through it. With Glen Canyon, did the Colorado River cut straight down leaving vertical walls with hardly any erosion debris? Or was the canyon already carved and the Colorado River took the path of least resistance into the canyon?
Horseshoe Bend is a valuable point of contention. Secular geologists will claim that if a dam breach caused the canyon, we should see a straight path. We should not see the bends and meandering that they claim would be the case if a river slowly carved it over millions of years. But is that so? I have seen firsthand that this is not the case. In 2006, El Paso had its “500-year flood.” We had 15 inches of rain in less than 48 hours. It carved up all sorts of stuff, and the west side of El Paso had it the worst, where a brand-new Blockbuster Video store was literally washed off its foundation. But out in the desert, there were canyons carved into the desert sand. They meandered and cut vertical walls, much like the scale of the Grand Canyon or at least Glen/Marble Canyon. It doesn’t take a little water and a lot of time. It takes a LOT of water at high speeds, and it happens in a very short time. So how did Horseshoe Bend form with a 1100-foot wall on the outer curve, and roughly only a 500-foot wall on the inner bend? The best explanation is fast-moving water carved through the path of least resistance. Cavities or cracks in the rocks, perhaps while still soft, would easily enable these twists and turns in the canyon to do its work.
There are two details in these canyons frequently missed by the secular geologists. 1) Lack of debris from erosion on the sides. We have some there, but not millions of years’ worth, and the walls are too vertical for that kind of time to play a role. 2) The side canyons. The secular geologists have no real clue for how the side canyons were cut WITHOUT regular rivers flowing through them. They will have their stories, but they’re pure speculation and frankly, they don’t work in the real world. The Bible give us a mechanism that can explain it all: Noah’s Flood and the aftermath of it. Does the Bible give us all these specific details? No. But it gives an event that fits everything that we see.
Next week, I’ll wrap up this series on why the Grand Canyon is an important item of discussion for Christians to get and understand, and even how the Grand Canyon can be used to either present the Gospel or destroy it. It all hinges on whether you accept Noah’s Flood or not. Stay tuned.
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by Eric Hansen
Bible journaling is both one of the best things we can do daily and it’s also very easy to stop without restarting. For me the value was definitely there, but the time and effort it took made it quite easy to give up. The same goes with journaling in general. While the resistance can vary from person to person, one very common reason people quit most things is they don't make time to exert much energy into it.
There's a type of journaling called "interstitial journaling" which is a fancy way of saying "timestamped journaling." So instead of writing prose (like this post) in a journal, you simply write the time and what you want to make note of, typically as a bullet point style list. For example: "06:27 - Writing article for Worldview Warriors about interstitial journaling.”
From the technical side of things, you don't need anything different than journaling by some other means, but this does lend itself toward a more essentialist approach to journaling. If you have paper and a writing tool, you're good to go. If you want to do this digitally then I would highly suggest an outliner like Notion, Obsidian, or Logseq. While it's not in the scope of this article to explain the why, how, etc., I will provide some screenshots of my current setup in Logseq. While some of this will only apply to doing this digitally, the overall concept can be used in any medium.
Set Up
While the basic approach was already given (timestamp - event) there are various ways to make the entries you jot down more useful if you so wish. If you're a visual person, this may be helpful. For paper journaling you can do symbols or some other mark (even highlighters), and for outliners I find the ones I mentioned effectively make hashtags a solid option for this. For example, I have a list of hashtags that I can see what the entry is about at a glance:
These can be placed anywhere in the entry but I tend to try to write entries that flow with the idea. So instead of "did my devotional #🙌Praise," I'll write something such as "did my devotional and the Spirit told me to #🙌Praise #🔥God." The reason I do this is if I want to look back on things I was praying for, it's always good to see how or if the prayer had been resolved. If so, then I can make a note in today's journal about it, and if not, then I remember it's something that requires more prayer.
Journal Entry Example
While not the most profound example, and I'll expand on this in the next section, here is one example of what it looked like at the beginning for me:
All the blank-looking "#" are actual hashtags, just technical issues out of my experience to resolve. The "[[...]]" text is also more for linking ideas and again out of scope of this, but I wanted to explain in brief the differences here.
The idea here is still the same. I just make note of what the current time is of writing my thoughts down and what the thought is. If there are things to expand on, my preference is to sub-point it so my thoughts don't turn into run-on sentences. It also helps me keep my point clear on why I'm writing the event.
Highs and Lows
Now the point of Bible journaling, regardless of how, is to keep a record of how God works in your life. This looks different for everyone as each of our walks is also different. As much as I would love to say that this made me an expert Bible journaler, it is not the case. Each medium has its pros and cons, but I'll focus on the ones that I feel are equal regardless of how you may do this.
Highs
It was very simple, and any complexity that occurred was because of me. I also didn't feel punished for not writing a whole page of praise. If I had an off day or didn't feel like I could write much, then I just made a note of that when the thought came to me.
Seeing the flow of events made me realize the peaks and valleys of my days with emotions, thoughts, productivity, etc. This helped me better plan when I will start my day, learn Korean, read the Bible, and whatever else I wanted to do within the day.
Lows
It's still very easy to complicate things. The more friction we add into something (like visual identifiers), the more taxing it is to follow through on things. This is one thing I will probably stop doing except for possibly the most important. It's nice to be able to see links, correlations, etc., but the more we try to fluff up a simple process, the more convoluted it becomes. This is much like how the moral law from God went from 10 statements to hundreds.
If you don't enjoy journaling now, there's no guarantee this will make journaling fun for you. I’m not saying you shouldn't try it, regardless of how you feel about journaling in a journal. But it should be said that it's not a silver bullet to make recording your adventures with God any more appealing.
It can interrupt your already-structured Bible journaling. If you already have a system that works for you, then this may hurt that. But it could also help it as well. I always err on the side of caution so I put this here instead of as a high.
While I enjoy doing it digitally, I would say it can be a lot more difficult to keep up as well. Even if you are someone with their phone glued to their hip all day, usually it's easier to pull out some paper and a pen to write things down. If you are like me, though, and moving toward a purely digital way of life, then this could just be a small hill for major gain.
Lastly, while not specifically a high or low, I often found it difficult to keep track of any actual answered prayer. I feel if I had discovered this 1-2 years ago when I was in a season of God really working on me, there would be much more to highlight. But, the season I'm in now is actually quite relaxed in the grand scheme.
This isn't something I will stop, as I think the realization of how God impacts my life is important to see in retrospect. It also helps a bit to remember the important details of an event and not just that something happened. I do struggle, though, with writing full paragraphs, which makes the outlining approach this leans toward more suitable for me as well. None of the highs nor lows really sway me to either side of suggesting this style of journaling, though. It offers the ability to have greater insight and more un-fluffed thoughts jotted down, but finding that niche of making it work for you in an effective way is definitely trial and error.
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“So, as the Holy Spirit says: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’’” -Hebrews 3:7-11
The previous section of chapter 3 discussed Jesus as compared to Moses, and it ended with the phrase: “And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory” (verse 6). This section ties into that firm foundation, with an Old Testament Scriptural quotation.
The section of Hebrews is basically all a quote from Psalm 95:7-11. For more on the context of Psalm 95, check out this post. While that post focuses more on the first 6 verses of this psalm, here I’ll focus on the last half, which is quoted here by the author of Hebrews. This quote is referring to the time in the nation of Israel’s life when they did not walk in fellowship with God but were disobedient to Him.
This quotation is attributed to the Holy Spirit at this location; later, in Hebrews 4:7, the author of Hebrews mentions it again and attributes it to David. The psalm itself does not have an author’s name attached to it, but considering David wrote so many of the psalms, his authorship is very plausible. Attributing this quote to the Spirit also shows the divine authorship of all of Scripture; human hands wrote the words, but they were inspired by the Holy Spirit (2 Timothy 3:16-17).
The quotation from Psalm 95 starts with the word “today” in verse 7, which is important. The content of this passage is applicable a few thousand years ago when the psalm was written, in the first century when the book of Hebrews was written, and every single day this passage is read. Immediate action is necessary - we must hear God’s voice each and every day!
We must also not harden our hearts. A person having a hardened heart means they are not following God. They are acting in disobedience to Him and following their own ways and desires, just like what Israel did in the wilderness. They rebelled against God often, but this reference in verse 8 is likely a specific reference to the incident in Exodus 17:1-7 where they tested God by demanding water in the wilderness.
The idea of testing God in the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness continues in verse 9. Israel should have trusted God’s works that they could see, including His deliverance of them out of slavery in Egypt. God is always faithful no matter what, but the Israelites rejected Him for 40 years for that time period. At the time of the writing of the book of Hebrews, it was likely about 40 years since many of the descendants of those first Israelites rejected Jesus when He came to earth as their Messiah.
We often tend to think of God as simply loving, but it is clear from verse 10 that God does get angry. He does not just passively let us sin and become indifferent to it; because His nature is completely opposed to all types of sin, He must get angry at it. In this case, the passage specifically calls out His anger toward the generation of Israelites that was wandering in the wilderness. Their hearts were constantly going astray. The use of “heart” here refers to the whole inner being, the person’s thoughts, feelings, and will. If they really knew God’s ways and really understood His faithfulness and care for them, they would not have acted in such rebellion toward God.
Because of all of that, we see God’s judgment on them in verse 11. The reference to an oath here refers to when the spies returned from their survey into the Promised Land (Numbers 14). It is significant that the Psalmist brings together an incident from early in the wilderness period and one from late in that period. The Israelites rebelled and caused God to be angry at the beginning of the exodus, at the end of the exodus, and often in between.
God made a binding oath out of His wrath at their sin that they should “never enter my rest.” God actively opposes their sin, so He has to do something about it. The word used here is a stronger one than simply saying anger or even wrath, but we don’t really have a stronger word in English for that kind of anger. God is that passionately opposed to sins against Him.
But what does it mean that they should never enter God’s rest? The idea of rest here is a place of blessing where there is no more struggle; there is only relaxation in God’s presence and there is no fear about anything. Some believe this rest in the psalm refers to a physical place, such as entering the Promised Land, or the idea of living under the rule of the Messiah - as Israel had often thought would be political. But, it is more likely that the author intends this rest to refer to a spiritual sense - being in complete peace with God as we will be able to spend eternity.
These words of Psalm 95 were written many centuries before even Jesus walked the earth, but they were still true in the first century and they are still true today. We are commanded to not harden our hearts and rebel against God, but to hear God’s voice. We can look back to Israel’s history and see how their disobedience worked out for them; we are urged not to follow their disobedient example. We are to instead know God’s ways and strive to follow Him with all our hearts.
What are you doing in your life to help you follow the ways of God instead of falling into rebellion against Him? Are you surrounding yourself with people that will encourage you in this struggle that we all face? Or are you giving in to rebellion and letting sin run your life? I encourage you to examine your life this week and determine if you’re listening to God’s voice or hardening your heart to Him.
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The Grand Canyon is an utterly breathtaking and amazing sight. But there is something even more amazing than that: the Grand Staircase. As you travel about 150 miles north from the Grand Canyon, you see a much more extensive climb of plateau to plateau than climbing the Grand Canyon itself. From the Vermillion Cliffs in Utah into Zion Canyon and further up to Bryce Canyon, we have a total about 9-11 thousand feet of layers to climb once you get out and away from the Grand Canyon. But it gets much more interesting than that.
The Grand Canyon’s depth is over 5000 feet. There is another 10,000+ feet of layers that should be on top of the canyon. So take twice the depth of the Canyon and add that to the top of the rim. We can’t imagine that. But this butte in the picture above is evidence that these layers extended from Utah to far south beyond the Grand Canyon. Another butte, Red Butte, which is south of the main entrance (my only picture from the bus of that butte is not very good, so I’m not going to share that here) is also evidence of the extension of these layers. I did not get a picture of it, but I noticed while at Desert Point, where Cedar Butte is clearly visible, that far to the north is another butte that takes a good eye to spot.
Now here is what is very interesting of these buttes. They sit ON TOP of the layer I stood on when I took that photo. Yet, I was looking down upon those 900-foot-tall buttes. How is that possible? Simple: The ground we were standing on was uplifted by what we call the “Kaibab Uplift.” That is why the Colorado River starts at only 3000 feet of elevation, but the South Rim is at 7000+ feet and the North Rim is at 8000+ feet. We have a mile of “uplift” in the Colorado Plateau and the Grand Canyon cuts through this uplift, never actually dropping below the main valley surrounding it.
So why point out these buttes? If you have been to the Canyon, you may have noticed there is virtually no mention whatsoever of these two buttes, especially at Desert Point where this picture was taken. Instead of a plaque describing the Cedar Butte (the plaque faces it), there is a memorial of where two planes crashed into each other near that viewpoint. Why would this butte have no mention? Because they are evidence of these layers which we only start to see 70+ miles north extending at least as far as the Canyon and very possibly way south to past Flagstaff. With the exception of these buttes, the 9-11 thousand+ feet of layers are completely MISSING! The buttes are all we have left. The Grand Canyon, as massive as it is, only has about 900 cubic miles missing. The missing Grand Staircase layers account for over 130,000 cubic miles. That means the missing Grand Staircase layers have a volume of 140x that which is missing from the Grand Canyon. And the literature by the Grand Canyon Park makes no mention of these buttes or the missing two miles of layers from the top of the canyon.
There is a critical follow up question. Where are the layers? If the Colorado River carved it all, we can’t find the Grand Canyon debris downriver except for a few small places outside Phoenix or San Diego, but what we have there would hardly fill a dump truck (yes, I am exaggerating, but the fact remains the extreme bulk of the missing rocks are still missing). Let’s again examine the secular claims and the Biblical claims.
The secular claims argue that in the final stages of forming the layers, the entire Colorado Plateau uplifted while under the latest cycle of rising and falling seas. This time, the uplift was so big that it caused the ocean to run off and take off those two miles of sediments with it. This is a concept called “sheet erosion,” where a massive amount of water cleans out a whole sheet of rock layers. Now, what’s amazing is that this sounds exactly like the Flood models. Since the Grand Canyon media does NOT include any of this information, that means the secular models are just now coming to realize this (parks are like textbooks, they are way behind on actual facts). This makes me wonder if the secular and old earth geologists are actually trying to copy notes from the Flood geologists, all the while making mockery of the flood geologists. In the academic world, that’s called plagiarism (this would not be the first time they’ve done it either). The Flood models would call for the rising of the land towards the tail end of the flood and the ocean floors sinking producing the massive and extensive runoff that would carve out those layers and somehow leaving those buttes behind (this could have been a supernatural act). Again, the secularists would never have considered a “catastrophe” like this until Mt. St. Helens forced them to, and Flood Geologists were well on top of things at that point. So why are the secular models looking more and more like the Flood Geologist claims, except without the Flood?
What also stands out to me on these buttes is that they are flat. They’re completely planed off. What natural mechanism has the ability to shave off a mountain like that? Take notice that there are mountains all over the world that are shaved off like this. Only fast-moving water filled with rocks and grains could do that. And what kind of mechanism could produce such fast-moving water? Noah’s Flood. The secularists know this, but despite all the evidence and even the fact that their own models closely resemble what would happen if there was a global flood, they still reject it from being an option. Why is that? Why are so many scientists so hardened and so adamant that there could not be a global flood?
The answer is simple: 2 Peter 3:3-7. They are willingly ignorant of the Flood, proclaiming that all that is happening today is what has happened all in the past, forgetting that the world of Noah’s Day perished by water. It’s intentional. They refuse to recognize the Flood because the Flood was no mere water disaster. It was God’s judgment upon sinful, wicked men. This was a big point we emphasized on this trip. There is such a great beauty to the Grand Canyon, but it’s a monument not merely to catastrophe but to judgment. It was a judgment so severe that God only let one option for salvation to be present: Noah’s Ark. That judgment with one escape is the first clear picture of the Gospel and that our final judgment will not be a mere local event but universal. The entire population will face the final judgment just as the entire population (not just a localized area) faced the judgment of the Flood. If the idea of a global flood was not tied to the Bible and the Gospel, no one would dare question it. Scientists accept a global flood idea on Mars with no water present. Mars’ version of the Grand Canyon, which is far bigger, was obviously cut by water. Yet on earth when 70% of the planet is covered in water, it could not be a global flood? It’s obviously not the science that holding them back.
Next week, I’ll share about the river raft tour through Glen Canyon before I wrap up this series on why we need to understand the important of origins and the Flood.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
