by Steve Risner
Recently, I found some statements made by an evolutionist, likely a secular humanist, that I thought were worth looking at. I found this in a Facebook group called “Creationism” which I believe is most accurately described as an atheist troll den, but it has some good stuff posted from time to time. Let’s take a look at some of the statements this person makes and see if they hold water.
He began by explaining to “creationists” how they should discuss things in the group. He says creationists should not preach, use circular reasoning, use ad hominem arguments (arguments that are based on character assassination rather than the merits of the facts), or use strawman arguments. I thought this was amazing because I find more often than not that these very things are what I’ll call non-creationists have been doing in this group and others for years. I’ll admit that creationists, myself included, may participate in such things on occasion. However, I find it astounding that someone would make statements like this when they must know they are as guilty as anyone else for doing these very things.
He said in regard to things to avoid:
PREACHING: A discussion is much more persuasive; no one will be convinced by repeated unsupported assertions
I believe this is very true to a point. “Preaching” means to publicly proclaim or teach. It means to try to convince someone of a position or to advocate for a particular belief. Everyone does this to a degree —theist or atheist, Biblical creationist or evolutionist, or whatever persuasion you might be in this discussion. I don’t think “preaching” per se is a bad thing since that implies teaching. But I see his point, sort of.
His argument is that creationists, and apparently no one else, make unsupported claims in debates over origins. But this is crazy talk. He may not like the evidence presented or what kind of evidence is presented, but this in no way means a claim is unsupported. I’m sure he wants all claims to be “scientific” in their backing and nature, but this is impossible in a debate over origins. The debate over origins is not and never has been a scientific discussion. It’s about things science cannot ever answer. It’s about one-time past events that no one (save God Himself) witnessed or understands the conditions surrounding them. Science may be employed to give us some clues about some things, but it can hardly answer these questions with any degree of certainty. If you disagree, you’d likely enter into a preaching session and would violate this evolutionist’s first rule of engagement.
Science is very useful, obviously. It gives us things like microwaves, jet fuel, GPS, and cell phones as well as medical marvels and new, stronger, lighter metals. It allows for us to communicate around the world in a matter of a few seconds. However, origins and the discussion around it has nothing to do with any useful science. I know immediately that those who believe in universal common descent will say things like, “If it weren’t for evolution, we wouldn’t have modern medicines or antibiotics and we wouldn’t have used pig heart valves to do valve replacement in humans.” Other such statements, I’m sure, can be made. However, these statements are based on a classic bait-and-switch type argument known as the motte-and-bailey fallacy. What that means is a person mentions one idea and then proceeds to describe a different idea that may have similar details but is not at all the same thing. In this case, we would be confusing “evolution” meaning similarities and slight modifications over time with “evolution” meaning all life arose and diversified through purely natural means over billions of years and all life on earth is related through a single common ancestor.
To be sure, there are certainly similarities between a great number of organisms. We see this as evidence for design rather than random but lucky mistakes in copying genetic material. To suggest that an error (or, in reality, a billion consecutive errors that all work together) can lead to the immense complexity we see in the biosphere is silly. It’s just naivety, in my humble opinion, and wishful thinking based on a failure to understand or appreciate even the slightest bit of complexity we see in biology.
But, yes, we shouldn’t just preach at people. However, I feel it’s likely that when one person believes another is “preaching” at them, it often times means the other person is telling them something they don’t like or don’t want to hear. It’s easy to dismiss someone with a hand wave and exclaim, “Stop preaching at me.” In reality, that person is just expressing their opinion on a given subject, and often times this can be peppered with facts as well. If the conversation is strictly one-sided and the person “preaching” is talking down to another person as they preach, then yes, this should be avoided. I find this is often happening in groups like the one I mentioned above, but it’s almost always directed toward the Biblical creationist and not the other way around. We creationists can be snarky on occasion, but we understand that our message is important, and we want it to be heard. “Preaching” the way I’ve described here—talking down and that sort of thing—does nothing to promote good dialogue or in getting someone to understand our position. Of course, the eventual hope is for the other person to accept our position. But belittling and talking down will not produce such a transition. I regret that I can stoop to such levels when agitated enough. I don’t like that and I try to avoid it, but it does happen. God’s been working on me in this regard.
God wants us to preach (as in teach) and proclaim His Good News. Jesus told us to proclaim the Gospel everywhere. In Mark 16:15 He says, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” Paul tells Timothy, “Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching.” An unbeliever may decide your statements have no support because you’re using the Bible to defend your position, but they reject the Bible, and this is no reason to not stand on it. Paul tells Timothy that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. This means the Bible is the foundation of Truth and cannot be abandoned regardless of who we are talking with. Paul goes further in 2 Timothy to tell him to preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. This is important enough for the Lord to repeat it in His Word from the pen of several different writers. We are expected to preach when necessary.
The next time someone says, “Stop preaching to me,” realize they may be right—you haven’t earned the right yet in your relationship with them or you may be talking down at them rather than trying to lovingly teach them something. However, you could also get this response because you’re hitting the Truth and this person is uncomfortable and they wish for you to stop shining a light in those dark places. At that point, it’s up to the leading of the Holy Spirit if you should continue or not. Be open. We’ll take a look further into these statements by this unbeliever next time.
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.
As we continue digging into the Lord’s prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, we now move into verse 10 with today’s phrase: “Your kingdom come.” But whose kingdom are we talking about, and where do we want it to come?
To discover whose kingdom it is we’re talking about, we need to look at the context of the rest of the prayer up to this point. Jesus is telling His disciples how they should pray, and before this phrase, He begins by saying, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” The “your” in “hallowed be your name” refers to our Father in heaven (God), and the “your” in “your kingdom come” does too. So, the kingdom that we want to come is the kingdom of God.
But what is the kingdom of God? I’m glad you asked - and in fact, I’ve already written about that here. To summarize that post, the kingdom of God is not a specific place or realm with a person who reigns over it as we would think of a kingdom, but it’s a lifestyle. The kingdom of God is not someplace we go but how we can live our lives. As Jason DeZurik says, “The Kingdom of God is not a place. It is a spiritual awakening. It is a mindset. It is a lifestyle.”
But if the kingdom of God is something that we’re already living, why would we pray for it to come? It’s a concept that’s both “already” and “not yet.” We are able to live out God’s kingdom here on earth, but at the same time, we not fully able to do so while we’re still living in this sinful world. We will not be perfect at living out this mindset here on earth. It’s already here that we can live out God’s kingdom, but we’re living it out imperfectly, so it is not yet fully here.
The kingdom of God can also refer to God ruling over the world in absolute sovereignty. While God is fully sovereign now, we will not yet see the full extent of His kingship until He comes again at the end of time. Praying for God’s kingdom to come is also asking for God to come again to fulfill everything about His kingdom - we’re praying for the “not yet” to become the “now.” It’s similar to when Paul says, “Come, Lord!” in 1 Corinthians 16:22.
What will it look like when God’s kingdom comes? One idea is portrayed in Revelation 11:15-19 in the Seventh Trumpet, though it should be noted that whether this will happen literally or not is up to God (see more on eschatology here). As verse 15 says, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.” Whenever God decides that the time has come for this world to end, then His kingdom will fully come into our lives on this earth. Until then, we pray for His kingdom to come.
The Kingdom of God was not a new concept when Jesus spoke this Lord’s prayer. In Mark 1:15, Jesus began proclaiming His coming kingdom: “‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!’”
A bit later in His ministry, Jesus spoke these words in Mark 9:1: “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” These words came right after Jesus taught about the difficult life of discipleship and following Him in Mark 8:34-38.
Being a disciple of Jesus and following Him with our lives is how we live out the kingdom of God here on earth. His Kingdom is not fully here, but we can still participate in it by living our lives for Jesus Christ and proclaiming the good news of salvation through Him.
Mark 15:43 says, “Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Council, who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body.” Joseph was a member of the Jewish council, so he would have been waiting for the Messiah to come - that was the form of God’s Kingdom that he was waiting for. It was a bold move for him to ask for Jesus’ body, but perhaps we can see from this verse that Joseph recognized that Jesus would be the fulfillment of all the Old Testament prophecies that told of the coming Messiah.
The Jewish perspective has been to wait and pray for the coming Messiah; the Messiah would usher in the coming of God’s kingdom. Jews would recite an ancient prayer called “Qaddish” (which means sanctification, or making something holy) in Aramaic at the end of each service at the synagogue. The oldest form of this prayer states, “Exalted and hallowed be his great name in the world which he created according to his will. May he let his kingdom rule in your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of the whole house of Israel, speedily and soon. And to this, say: amen” (quoted from the Expositor’s Bible Commentary entry on Matthew 6:10).
Do you see any similarities between that and the opening phrases of the Lord’s Prayer? The Jews looked forward to God’s kingdom coming in the form of the Messiah, whereas we as Christians know that the Messiah has already come in the person of Jesus Christ! Instead of looking forward to the savior who is yet to come, we look forward to that savior coming again to fully establish His kingdom here on earth.
What are you doing in your life to show that you’re living out God’s kingdom here on earth? And what are you doing to look forward to when Jesus will come again to fully establish His eternal kingdom?
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.
For the past few months, I’ve been addressing idolatry and expressing just how wicked it really is. Let’s be real and face the facts: we’ve all done it. We’ve all committed idolatry. We have all replaced God with something or someone else and given it an image. We’ve all taken God’s name lightly and disregarded it, nor remembered Him on our “Sabbath” day. We’ve all dishonored our parents. We’ve all hated someone to the point we would murder them if we knew we’d get away with it. We’ve all lusted after others who aren’t our spouse. We’ve all stolen, all lied, and all lusted after something that isn’t ours. We are all guilty of breaking all Ten Commandments and I do not believe I am off-base to suggest we did all this because of following a god or serving an idea, person, or thing that isn’t God. We are lost and without hope on our own, because God is going to make us face Him on Judgment Day when the books will be opened.
Idolatry is like a prison. It deceives us to think we are being free to do what we want, but in actuality it is slavery and the further we go, the tighter the chains get. It’s like any addiction. The moment you want to put it away, you find out you can’t. It won’t let you. You have made a covenant bond with it, and it won’t let you go. But there is hope! That bond can be severed. Those chains can be broken. There is one Man who did it: Jesus Christ. Jesus came and lived on this earth as a man. He was temped in every way known to man and beat it.
There was no point in Jesus’ life when He put another god, person, idea, or thing before God. He submitted completely to the Father. The very notion of going against His Father’s will was anathema to Him. There was no physical object He served to give Him hope or direction. It was only the Father. He never took His Father’s name in vain, even when He identified Himself as being one with the Father. Everyone else thought it was blasphemous, but they didn’t understand the Scriptures. It was not wrong for Jesus to identify Himself with God because He was God. He was and still is part of the Trinity.
Jesus honored the Sabbath. He understood its point and purpose: to rest the body and remember God. He dismissed the strict regulations of the Pharisees, who frequently were violators of their own laws themselves. He honored His mother and father. He submitted to them, when even at 12 years old and was teaching in the temple, He went home with His parents and submitted to their authority.
He was firm and at times fierce, but He never committed murder nor hated even those who rejected His message. He wept over the Pharisees and how they missed the mark with Him, and He rebuked James and John who in their anger sought to call fire down from heaven. He never lusted after another. There are false ‘gospels’ that suggest Jesus married Mary Magdalene, and I could only slightly agree with the idea that there may have been a temptation there, but not one Jesus would have given a second thought. I can only suggest this because Scripture says he was tempted in every way known to man, and if Jesus didn’t overcome sexual temptation, what hope do we have? Jesus never stole anything that wasn’t His, including the name of God. He never claimed anything that wasn’t His. He never lied, nor spoke even half-truths, nor hid the truth. He only spoke that which was true. And He never lusted after anything that didn’t belong to Him. He never coveted after anyone’s home, their clothes, their lifestyle, anything. He only asked His Father to meet His needs and was willing to go without anything His Father needed Him to go without. Jesus fulfilled every single commandment, perfectly. Nothing led Him astray.
That gives us hope. And because Jesus perfectly lived out a perfect life, He could offer Himself to the Father to satisfy the Wrath of God against sin. If Jesus has sinned just once, His death would only be able to cover His own sin, not that of another. That’s why none of us could die in the place of another. We have our own debt to pay, and our death can only pay for our own sins. Jesus could do it instead. And on that cross, a scandalous substitution took place. Jesus became sin and took on the full wrath of God in one go. He then traded His righteous perfection to us so that we do not carry our own righteousness but His. The debt is paid. The wrath of God is satisfied. But we would still be dead and so would Christ, so there was one more thing: the Resurrection.
It is the Resurrection that changes everything. It is the Resurrection that transforms a person and restores life. In the Resurrection of Christ, there is no more sin, death, disease, or even sadness. That has not yet been fully realized, but as the Old Testament saints looked forward to our day where Christ has come and done His work, we look forward to the day where we will finally be delivered from the very presence of sin. How does this happen? While the entire work is done by Christ so we have no means or ability to boast, we still have a response to make. The response Jesus taught in His ministry was, “Repent and believe.” We must renounce the old way of life, turning away from it. We no longer want that old life, and we forsake it. We must nail it to the cross, too, so that Jesus’ work can be accomplished. Then we must believe. It’s trust and dependence upon Christ, ultimately letting Him do His work in and through us. The real secret to Christianity is Jesus living His life in and through us, not us trying to live out Christianity. If we are willing to forsake our idols, destroy them, tear down the “altars” where we worship them, and replace them with the only True God, we will see true freedom and the idol’s hold on our lives will be broken. It’s a continual journey and we’ll never exhaust the end of it on this earth, but those who have done this have never regretted it. Once you know and taste the freedom God gives, you will never want to return to idols that can’t do what only God can do.
Do you want freedom? Do you want to break away from worthless practices that never satisfy and never let you know if you did “enough”? Get ahold of any of us at Worldview Warriors: Jason DeZurik, Katie Erickson, Steve Risner, Chad Koons, Eric Hansen, or myself. We will gladly work with you and show you how to meet Jesus and get freedom. Our hope is in Jesus Christ and He can be your hope too. Even if you are already born again, Jesus can offer deliverance to any area of sin that you have not yet experienced victory over. But you have to let it go so He can. When we turn to Jesus, He has the answer to ALL of our problems, and we can rest with assurance and confidence that He will take care of us. It may not be the way we think, but He will take care of us and it will be worth it. Put your trust and your faith in Christ Jesus. Unlike any idol, Jesus does what He claims, and He never leads anyone astray. Follow Him. You won’t regret it.
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.
by Steve Risner
In this blog post we’ll wrap up what we began talking about here and here — how time is a major issue for the cosmology (the belief on how the universe came about and why it appears to us as it does at present) surrounding the Big Bang theory. This leads to chemical evolution (how elements formed) and stellar evolution (how stars formed and allegedly changed over time). This eventually leads to planets and nebulae and large amounts of cosmic debris. We’re going to explore a central part of Big Bang cosmology today on top of this: magic.
The universe is a lot of empty space, but it also has a great deal of stuff in it—over 100 billion galaxies that we’ve spotted with each having billions of stars. There are huge gas clouds called nebulae that can encompass millions of light years in space. They’re truly huge, although their density is less than any vacuum we can create here on earth. But, from earth, as far as we can see in this universe that is thought to be 93 billion light years across, we see things occupying space. There’s a great deal of empty space between objects, but there has had to be time for stars to form and die and spew out their contents and reform trillions of times and fill this universe that is about 6 x10ˆ23 miles across (a 6 with 23 zeros following it).
Last time, we looked at some difficulties with star formation. To be fair, those who believe in the Big Bang have made up some nice solutions to some of their major issues. Explanations like the inflationary period (which we can never verify happened, but it solves some issues) and dark matter and energy (which we can never verify exist but, again, they solve some major issues). But star formation, especially the first stars, is a challenge for physics. As with many other things, they’ll contend that the physics allows for star formation, but it really doesn’t. We need to allow for some very large assumptions and just give some passes in order to believe it. However, since it is vital to the Big Bang (there cannot be anything without star formation) they will fight tooth and nail over it. It’s interesting what lengths they’ll go to in order to hang on to their origins myth.
Why don’t we see any Population III stars—stars only consisting of hydrogen and helium? Maybe because they never existed. That doesn’t fly, so they have made up a number of reasons why we might not see them. One is they might have been too big. Bigger stars burn out faster; smaller stars exist longer. Now, as of the early 2000’s, nearly 3 out of 4 stars were 0.8 solar masses on the average. This means they are very small. If Pop III stars were this size, there would likely be some still out there. There are none. So, the solution is to claim that all of them were much, much larger than this so they’d burn out quickly. Convenient, right? Another is that they were Pop III stars at first, but over time they turned into Pop II stars. Also convenient, right?
As far as lacking evidence, there is no evidence at all that any primordial gas clouds that could birth these first stars existed. None. No evidence exists showing us that Pop III stars currently do or ever did exist. There is none. There is no evidence that dark matter and dark energy exist, but they claim these mysterious entities account for 95% of the substance of the universe. Not having evidence never stops the person who rejects the Bible from having second thoughts. These things are foundational to their beliefs, and yet there is no evidence of any kind that any of it is real.
Why do I bring up dark matter again? It’s directly connected to the story telling we hear about star formation. According to Dr. John Hartnett, a well-published research scientist (retired now), “‘Dark matter’ is an essential ingredient to form stars naturally given only standard known physics. ‘Dark matter’ is a hypothetical exotic form of matter, unknown to laboratory physics, which does not interact with or emit light in any way, hence it is invisible to all forms of detection within the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio-waves to gamma radiation. ‘Dark matter’ itself, therefore, is outside of standard known physics. It is made-up stuff that has been given one special property, which is that it gravitates, that is, unlike normal matter, it is a source of gravity only.”
“Magic” is what we can call this, really. Something with no explanation that happens outside of all known physical laws would be magic. This is not an appropriate way to describe Creation and things related to the supernatural when God is the source of such actions. He would be an explanation, so God’s works lie outside the realms of magic. Atheists have a monopoly on magic since much of what they believe hinges on processes and occurrences that are far beyond what nature and materialism can produce, and their worldview rejects anything related to God doing the supernatural.
In a 2014 New Scientist article, reporter Marcus Chown spoke with Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom and asked him, “Why is now a good time to take an alternative to dark matter seriously?”
To which Dr. Milgrom replied:
“A host of experiments searching for dark matter, including the Large Hadron Collider, many underground experiments and several space missions, have failed to see anything convincing. This comes on top of increasing realization that the leading dark matter model has its failings. Among other things, it predicts that we should see many more dwarf galaxies orbiting our Milky Way than we actually do.”
He seems to drive home rather well the idea that dark matter is an excuse for us to be ignorant. Often times, I’ve been told or have read that creationism, especially Biblical creation or what has been called “Young Earth creationism” can lead us to not being inquisitive enough or stunting the growth of scientific research. Dark matter seems to be the height of this as it screams to us of ignorance, yet many will hang their hats on it and proclaim we actually understand how the universe works. Obviously, we don’t understand if we need to employ matter and energy that have no evidence for their existence that acts like magic on the universe so our calculations work. This accounts for 95% of the universe and we can’t find it anywhere! The irony is hopefully very clear and shocking.
You see, dark matter is critical to star and even galaxy formation but there’s no reason at all to believe it exists. In this creation article, you can read how Professor Carlos Frenk points out that dark matter is essential to making the universe look like it does in computer simulations. Without dark matter, there is no way to understand much about the universe as we see it. Stars cannot form, period. Galaxies cannot form, period. What Professor Frenk is saying is that there are no known ways for nature to produce stars or galaxies without invoking a material we have no way of detecting. If this isn’t invoking magic, I’m not sure what is.
Dr. Hartnett goes on in the above cited creation.com article to say, “Nowadays, dark matter is added as an essential ingredient to all simulations on star formation because once any hypothesized cloud of hydrogen gas condenses to a certain size it comes into hydrodynamic equilibrium. This means the outward force on the cloud, caused by the accumulated pressure due to heating of the compressed cloud, equals the inward force on the cloud due to the mutual gravitational attraction of all matter in the cloud. At this point no further contraction can occur, unless something else is introduced to overcome this limitation.”
That’s a lot of jargon but to paraphrase, he’s saying that as gas molecules accumulate due to their gravitational attraction, they begin to compress and heat up. As they heat up, they want to expand. This gets to a point where no more contraction can occur, and this huge ball of gas will never become a star. It just sits in equilibrium, in balance. This is physics. The laws of physics make star formation an impossibility, at least as we know them currently.
This is explained by those who adhere to the belief in the Big Bang by claiming that a nearby supernova could compress the gas further, overcoming the equilibrium of outward and inward pressures. That seems fine, but there are a few issues here. 1) We have no idea if it actually will do this. 2) Since there are billions of trillions of stars in the known universe, this process had to happen perfectly an astounding number of times. 3) This has no explanatory power for the first stars since a supernova is an exploding star. You cannot have stars go through a life cycle and explode before the first stars existed.
The storytelling is amazing and, frankly, a little insulting. We are told with confidence how the universe began and how stars originally formed and then how younger stars formed as well as planets and other debris we find in space. But the truth is, this is nothing more than telling stories without much factual basis at all.
I trust in the Word of God. It has explanatory power, and it’s sent to us from the One who created the heavens and the earth—who breathed the stars. I put my trust in Him to accurately and articulately explain what He did and, since He seems to have left us easy-to-follow clues as to when He did this, I accept that as well. Trust in the Lord and always view the world through the lens of the Bible. You won’t be disappointed. We can join with the Levites who sang the praises of our God as they returned from exile and had rebuilt Jerusalem when they said, “You alone are the LORD. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.”
The heavens truly declare His glory and greatness!
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.
After discussing last week how we are praying to “Our Father in heaven,” the next phrase we come to is “Hallowed be your name.” Let’s dig into what that phrase means.
That phrase is translated in the same way in many common English Bible versions. However, some do give a bit more explanation of the word “hallowed” in their translations. For example, the Holman Christian Standard Bible translates this phrase as “Your name be honored as holy,” and the New Living Translation renders it as “may your name be kept holy.”
So what’s the deal with that word “hallowed”? I’m guessing that you don’t often use that in your everyday conversation; I know I don’t. The Greek root word there can be translated as sanctify, set apart, make holy, or the act of regarding or honoring as holy. It’s a passive imperative verb in this usage, which means it’s a command that we should regard God’s name as holy.
But why does Jesus use “your name” here instead of actually saying God’s name? That was actually a common Jewish practice. The Jews considered the name of God to be the holiest of words, so much so that they would not actually read His name when they came across it in the Old Testament. Instead, they would say “Adonai” (meaning lord or master) or “Hashem” (which literally means ‘the name’ in Hebrew). The name of God was considered too holy to even pronounce with our sinful human lips.
So, Matthew is able to refer to God without directly mentioning His name, even though it’s clear who he’s referring to - especially by the previous phrase, “our father in heaven.” This phrasing of referring to God’s name indicates how God has revealed Himself throughout history, and how He is present with His people. A person’s name is synonymous with their reputation, so when someone honors God’s name, they are honoring God Himself.
God’s name is a reflection of who He is. God is holy, therefore His name is to be considered holy. Earlier, I shared that this verb for “hallowed” can mean to set apart. God truly fulfills that in that He is set apart from the rest of the creation; He is God over all of it.
But when we pray “hallowed be your name,” what exactly are we saying? A person praying for God’s name to be holy won’t make God any more holy than He already is; God is totally and completely holy and perfect in all that He is and in all that He does. Praying “hallowed be your name” is to pray that God may be treated as holy. See the difference there?
God was, is, and will always be holy no matter what we do as His creation. But we often fail at treating God as holy. Recently, my fellow writer Charlie Wolcott has been writing on idolatry and how it relates to each of the Ten Commandments (here). Any form of idolatry is putting something else as more important, or more holy and revered, than God in your life. Anytime we commit idolatry, it’s because we are not treating God as the truly holy God that He is.
Notice the importance of God’s holy name in Ezekiel 36:22-23: “Therefore say to the Israelites, ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations where you have gone. I will show the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, the name you have profaned among them. Then the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Sovereign LORD, when I am proved holy through you before their eyes.” God is going to save Israel simply for the sake of His holy name, and it is because of God’s name that He will be proven to be holy before all of the nations. This is why we are commanded to honor God’s name as holy!
A person’s name is connected to their reputation. We say that we can “give someone a bad name” when we spread negative information about them. A person is known by their name, and that name is connected to their reputation. Many children are named after family members or famous people who have good reputations, but no one names their child after Adolf Hitler. A theme from the movie Office Space comes to mind with this idea (video clip; note there’s some inappropriate language). One of the main characters is named Michael Bolton, and during the movie, he’s mostly annoyed by having the same name as a singer who was popular in the 1980s. On one occasion he uses that to his advantage when he’s interacting with two men who will decide whether he keeps his job or not, and they happen to really like the singer Michael Bolton’s music.
Another aspect of keeping God’s name holy is that we do not misuse His name. That is one of the Ten Commandments, given in Exodus 20:7. For more on that, check out this blog post.
Whether you like your name or not, it is tied to your reputation. The same is true with God’s name. God is holy, and His name should also be honored as holy in all circumstances and all situations. We pray “hallowed be your name” not because there’s a chance God’s name could no longer be holy but so that we are encouraged to honor it as such in all our lives.
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.
We have all heard the phrase “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” That’s Paul writing in 1 Timothy 6:10. However, while it is not explicitly stated in Scripture as such, I do not believe I am off-base to suggest that idolatry is the root of all evil. Before I go into that claim, let me review the previous ten posts of this series.
Idolatry is the practice of putting anything before God, be it a person, place, thing, or idea. Any noun that we utilize to seek to supplant God, or replace God, or to get from that which only God can offer, can be or is an idol. As I have read the historical accounts and the prophets, idolatry is the primary sin that is marked above all sins. All the kings were judged by how they handled idolatry: by allowing it, by participating in it, or by shutting it down. The prophets were more interesting because they don’t just describe how the kings did it but also how the average family engaged in idolatry. Jeremiah 7:17-19 describes how a family would all participate in idolatry. Jeremiah 32:29 describes how the roofs of homes in Jerusalem were used to worship Baal. And get this, even while wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, after having received the Ten Commandments and after the Golden Calf incident, the Israelites carried the Tabernacle and also idol of Molech.
In the Old Testament, the idols were the gods of their neighbors and including Baal, Asherah, Molech, Dagan, and many others. The idols took indirect forms through kings and other leaders. And I would suggest that ancient Israel had also crafted their own image of God that they worshipped instead of the true God. Otherwise, the Psalmist would not have rebuked the people for thinking God was like them. Isaiah would not have had to say that God’s ways were higher than our ways, His thoughts higher than our thoughts. And the Jews would have been ready for the Messiah when He came instead of expecting a military leader who would rescue them from Rome.
It was idolatry that made Israel misrepresent the name of God, taking His name in vain. It was in idolatry that they ignored the Sabbath’s purposes and led to dishonoring of parents. Idolatrous practices involved the intentional murder of children, sexual depravity, stealing from God and giving to another, lying about God, and greedily coveting what the other gods had to offer.
Idolatry is practiced today, too, and you can see my posts in this series for those details. But here, I am going to make the claim that ALL sins come out of a root of idolatry. That claim goes back all the way to Genesis 3 and the Fall of Man. One of the lies that Satan used to get Eve to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil was that in doing so, she would be like God. This was the tipping point. This was the clincher. You could be like God. You could be the judge of right and wrong. You could rule your own life. You could live as you please. You could live submitting to no one. Eve took the bait, and Adam who was with her let her do a test run before joining her in it. They believed the lie and turned themselves into idols. One of the great sins of original sin was the worship of self.
So, what about the love of money? Actually, that makes money an idol. Jesus said you cannot serve both God and mammon. Mammon was the Greek god of money. What about pride? God hates pride more than idolatry, doesn’t he? Actually, pride is simply the worship of self. The idol of pride is you. The proud and arrogant worships self.
But there is another form of this idolatry of the worship of self: the god of your own making. This one is very subtle, but it’s still the worship of self. Brian McLaren in A Generous Orthodoxy showcases this issue. On pages 84-85, he describes “God A” and begins to list all the attributes of a god he doesn’t like: wrath, anger, vengeance, jealousy, etc. Then he says we should imagine “God B” which has all these lovely and fluffy attributes: love, mercy, kindness, gentleness, etc. Then he says, “I'm not sure which comes first--the kind of universe you see or the kind of God you believe in, but as a Christian who believes in Jesus as the Son of God, I find myself in universe B, getting to know God B.” This is blasphemy. McLaren has sought to redefine God as he would like him to be, while claiming to be a Christian. This is not Christianity. This is an entirely different religion altogether (and I believe he’s gotten a lot of other things very wrong too).
This comes out of post-modern thinking where truth cannot be known and is constantly changing (thanks to Evolutionary thinking). It is a purposeful rejection of truth being defined outside of self. Post-modern thinking is simply the modern version of: “In those days there was no king, and each man did that which is right in his own eyes.” We expect this kind of thing in the world, where sin runs rampant anyway. But it’s gotten into the church and Satan has made it his business to deceive the church to keep us from knowing the truth, let alone speak it.
One of the clearest places I’ve seen this kind of idolatry is through the origins debate. How one views their origins is a reflection of how they view God. If we have a high view of God, we’ll have a high view of the record God gave on origins. If we have a high view of Scripture, we’ll have a correct view of God. But the reverse is also true. If Scripture is “malleable” and “unclear” about one of the fundamental questions about life, and we can basically just “fill in the gaps” with whatever “historical” claims are made by the secularists claiming to be scientists that do not reflect a worship of the True God but a worship of a god that does what we think he should do.
One thing you will notice about “Old Earth” models is that as the “science” changes, so do their models, and so does the account and description of God with it. The “Young Earth” position does not have this issue. While our specific scientific models may change, the core history has never changed because the text of Scripture nor its meaning has changed. When one takes a method of interpretation that changes with the times, one has a god in his mind that changes with the times too. I describe such a god this way: “He likes what they like, dislikes what they dislike, does what they think should be done, does not do what they disprove of, and overall looks a lot like them.” Now, I’m not making this as a blanket statement, but I would suggest it represents a large majority of those in churches today. They don’t worship God on Sunday mornings; they worship their own ideas about God.
The more I study idolatry, the more I see how it is the root of all sin. Sin is by definition a violation of God’s moral character or God’s intended purpose for something. Idolatry is the practice of replacing God with something else or seeking something else to give you what only God can give. So, since idolatry is a rejection of God, it is at the core of every sin. It is the root of all evil. I hope by now we can see why God takes such things so seriously. But there is still hope! God seeks that we break free from our idols. Next week, I will wrap up this series to talk about the One who did not commit idolatry in any way and kept all of God’s Commandments: Jesus Christ.
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.
by Steve Risner
Last time, we discussed some of the processes that are believed to have occurred in order for our 93 billion light year wide universe to appear as it does today. We reviewed how after the Big Bang, there were no elements for a brief moment. Then, as protons and neutrons formed and electrons found themselves around these guys, we had the elements of hydrogen, helium, and a little lithium. These somehow condensed into huge balls of gas which ignited. Over time, they burned out and spewed the newly forged elements they had created out into space. These Population III stars have never been seen but are critical to the Big Bang origins myth. The new elements generated by these stars would condense and form Population II stars—stars with small amounts of metals in them. These would, over time, burn out and spew their contents out and stars with even higher metal content would be born. These are Population I stars. Our sun is a Pop I star.
We also touched on how quickly it seems, according to the story they tell, that galaxies formed after the Big Bang and how this contradicts the evidence they bring to the table. This really becomes a problem when we consider what some have claimed to have found in deep space—13-billion-year-old galaxies! Although some suggest as much as 100 million to a billion years went by before Pop III stars were formed, we have entire galaxies of Pop II and Pop I stars that would have allegedly formed before their predecessors were even formed. Some galaxies are over 13 billion years old. This means there was enough time for elements to form, then Pop III stars to form, burn, die, explode, and coalesce into other stars, then a huge gathering of stars to be connected gravitationally in less than a billion years, although some say it took a billion years for the process to even start! It’s inconceivable.
GN-z11 is a galaxy that’s supposed to be 13.4 billion years old and they have no issues with this huge galaxy being this old (keeping in mind it doesn’t have any Pop III stars, which means we had to go through all of the above mentioned processes before this galaxy could form). Describing stars in GN-z11, National Geographic says, “Those stars were very hot, very young, and very massive—the types of stars astronomers think existed in the early universe.” They are telling us about the stars in this galaxy like they know about them when they obviously don’t. You can see from this image of GN-z11 that, while information can be gleaned from it, they can hardly tell us with confidence what they are telling us.
A galaxy so large which existed so soon after the first stars began forming is a challenge to some current theoretical models of the formation of galaxies, according to spacetelescope.org on March 3, 2016. To further my point about Pop III stars not being found anywhere although they are the oldest type of star and necessary for the universe to exist in the Big Bang I will quote from Wikipedia: “The oldest observed stars, known as Population II, have very low metallicities; as subsequent generations of stars were born they became more metal-enriched, as the gaseous clouds from which they formed received the metal-rich dust manufactured by previous generations. As those stars died, they returned metal-enriched material to the interstellar medium via planetary nebulae and supernovae, enriching further the nebulae out of which the newer stars formed. These youngest stars, including the Sun, therefore have the highest metal content, and are known as Population I stars.”
I highlight this to show that, to date, no Pop III stars have been found. In fact, SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 is a star 13.6 billion years old and is a Pop II star. So this star was born out of the remnants of a Pop III (at best; possibly another Pop II star supernova remnant) star which didn’t exist until 100 million years or even a billion years after the Big Bang. It then took a million years or more for this star to form and, for some reason, it’s not burnt out yet. Our complex, spiral galaxy called the Milky Way is allegedly 13.6 billion years old. Isn’t that something? We can “look into the past” by seeing a 13.4-billion-year-old galaxy but we live in a galaxy that’s older than this.
All this star formation is still a thing of mystery to materialists (people who think nature and the material world is all there is and ever was). They will try to say it’s all been worked out, but adding in fudge factors and telling a story on paper is not the same as reality. Stars form, allegedly, from dust clouds. We see dust clouds in space. They are remarkably beautiful as you can see from the small sample below.
They frequently refer to some of these amazing places as “star nurseries” but this is story telling. The truth is, to a creationist like myself who builds their worldview and beliefs on origins on Scripture, whether stars can form in space is irrelevant. It makes no difference. But it’s critical to the humanist origins myth. Without star formation, they have nothing—quite literally. And we’ve never seen a star “turn on.” It’s wishful thinking at this point.
But nebulae are produced from star death—a supernova. They’re magnificent to look at but they cannot explain the origins of the first stars. In fact, they can’t really explain the origins of “young” stars either.
Some of the issues surrounding the birth of the original stars are discussed here at creation.com: “The process of star formation is assumed to begin with molecular gas clouds like those that are currently observed in the galaxies. The process is envisaged to be gradual, slow, and inefficient. However, present day molecular gas clouds have no relevance to the origin of the very first Population III stars because conditions soon after the big bang were greatly different from what exists now.”
Because they were first, Population III stars would not have formed by the same mechanisms that evolutionists use to explain the origin of Population I stars, which are observed today. There are a number of significant differences. First, evolutionists cannot invoke a supernova to trigger the gas cloud collapse. Supernovae did not occur until after Population III stars had formed and burned all their nuclear fuel. Second, there were no dust grains or heavy molecules in the primordial gas to assist with cloud condensation and cooling and form the first stars. (Evolutionists now believe that molecular hydrogen may have played a role, in spite of the fact that molecular hydrogen almost certainly requires a surface—i.e. dust grains—to form.) Thus, the story of star formation in stellar evolution theory begins with a process that astronomers cannot observe operating in nature today.
Once again, there is more to say on this, but I’ve run out of space for this installment. I hope it’s becoming clear that the story told by Big Bang believers isn’t as solid as we’re led to believe. In fact, it’s a great deal of guess work and storytelling with a fudge factor of 95% added in so the math works. And there simply hasn’t been enough time for all of this to happen. Not nearly.
God is the Star Breather. The Psalmist tells us the starry hosts were from the breath of God. These and the nebulae and all that we see in the heavens were created to proclaim His glory and, in truth, as wonderful and magnificent as the heavens appear to us and as great and vast as they are, they utterly fall short of the greatness of our Lord.
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.
