by Eric Hansen
Merriem Webster offers a few definitions for the word suicide. At its core, each definition is rooted in “destruction of oneself.” When people decide to act on this, most write a letter in some fashion outlining what led them to the decision. Due to the sensitive topic this tends to be, I will preface this now with I am not looking to follow this action. But, on a personal and (more importantly) hopeful message for anyone who is dealing with such considerations, let me explain how the significance of not committing suicide physically led to me doing so spiritually.
While I was in high school, I went through a lot of depression. I experienced much of what adults call “cliché emo(tions)” as a teenager, however real they felt to me at the time. Many times I thought of committing suicide. I remember to this day the vivid hold that I was once under. Everything was planned out and perfect, but something also kept telling me not to. It was a matter of seconds between go and no-go.
I was far from a Christian then in 2004. I was reading the Satanic bible, and I was a strongly-proclaimed agnostic. So to me, it wasn’t God trying to love me til the literal very end.
The connection to that and the present day is staggering as I think about these things under a new light. I can sit here, filling my lungs with the air God blesses me with, and say I’m both dead and alive. I committed suicide in a very real and direct way back in 2018 when I committed my life to Christ, and yet I am living a whole different life. There are a lot of similarities between surrendering your life to Christ and the normal view of suicide, as you’ll see below.
Matthew 16:24-26 is a very popular passage when it comes to understanding surrender to Christ and stepping away from your own desires for the betterment of the Kingdom. But there is so much to unravel with just those 3 verses.
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.“
Back then, I didn’t want to deny myself. I’ll call a spade a spade and say I was egocentric in my thinking; I was only focused on my pain, hurt, and despair. I wanted to give in so much, yet at the same time I couldn’t. That was the most fearful part of the experience for me.
This is also one of the hardest parts of becoming a Christian for many, myself included, especially in the individualistic cultures such as America where it’s every person for themself. You have to learn to basically kill yourself; kill your desires to have control to really build that relationship with the Father.
That cross, no matter which scenario we’re talking about, is so unbearably heavy. I get why many people go through with it, but I also get why just as many don’t. Both of those nights, I slept the best in a long time. In both situations, no one knew any differently, that I was going through those thoughts, until I spoke about it.
“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
To lose your life via physical suicide is ultimate. There is no going back from it when successful. Yet when we become Christians, we tend to only lose part of our life – our old self. Many still compartmentalize their faith and “let” God see parts but not the whole.
Looking back at it, I believe that when I contemplated suicide as a teenager was the first time in my life I felt God’s love just tearing into me to shine His sanctifying light into my soul. I continued to ignore the light for years to come, but He never left me no matter how much I ran away.
Now, as a Christian, the view is a little bit different. I was okay with dying from my old self to become new, but I didn’t know what that looked like. As one not brought up in the church, I felt like no one really understood the confusion I had no matter how I tried to explain it. What it finally took was just reading the Bible and long-night prayers that caused me to literally cry out to the Father.
“For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
When you (try to) commit suicide, you’re forfeiting your soul to the reasoning of the action. For me, I was forfeiting to the thoughts that wouldn’t leave me.
When you surrender to Christ, you’re forfeiting your soul to Christ. For me, this is letting go of having control over everything.
I really wish I could say that the span of time between 2004 and 2018 was full of great discoveries, peace, etc., but very few moments come to mind. I went through some bad relationships before finding my soulmate and marrying her. The feelings of desertion from those who I thought were close to me only grew deeper. It truly wasn’t until 2018 when I started realizing what unconditional love meant. Yet it took even longer for me to realize what grace really is. It’s important to realize that Christ is so close to us that not only did He die and resurrect for us, but He did so to bring us in such a deep relationship with the Father. He took our sins upon himself on that cross, bleeding out in agony with his bones slowly breaking, out of love for the Father and us.
I saved my teenage life to continue living in a hell that had marginal improvements throughout, to end my old life and live anew. It wasn’t until I realized I needed saving that I also realized I already had a savior. Have you committed spiritual suicide through dying to yourself and allowing Jesus to save you?
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The first king of the northern kingdom of Israel once the nation divided was named Jeroboam, and he was instrumental in causing the nation to split. That Jeroboam, sometimes referred to as Jeroboam I, had a legacy of being very evil through idolatry and disobedience to God. He was referenced in the descriptions of many of the kings of Israel who followed him – they continued in the ways of Jeroboam, or they did evil in the eyes of the Lord as Jeroboam did.
So when another Jeroboam comes along, we would expect him to continue in the evil ways of his namesake, and that is exactly what he did. Jeroboam II was the son of Jehoash, the previous king of Israel, and he took the throne when his father passed away. Jeroboam II’s reign is recorded in just 7 verses of Scripture, 2 Kings 13:23-29.
Jeroboam II began his reign during the reign of King Amaziah of Judah, and he reigned for 41 years. His namesake Jeroboam I is referred to in the general description of his reign: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD and did not turn away from any of the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit” (verse 24).
But in spite of that evil, God still caused a time of prosperity for the nation of Israel. In verse 25, we read how Israel regained territory that it had lost and expanded the boundaries of the nation. This indicates that while Jeroboam II was not great at following God, he was clearly a strong military and political leader, and God allowed Jeroboam II to use his skills to take over additional territory that the nation had previously lost.
Verses 26-27 are a great summary of God’s grace on the nation of Israel: “The LORD had seen how bitterly everyone in Israel, whether slave or free, was suffering; there was no one to help them. And since the LORD had not said he would blot out the name of Israel from under heaven, he saved them by the hand of Jeroboam son of Jehoash.” Their actions deserved punishment, but God saw that they were suffering enough and decided to use the reign of Jeroboam II to relieve them of some of that suffering.
God still cared for Israel and showed mercy to them, even though they were His wayward child so to speak. The Arameans had been oppressing Israel, so God sent the Assyrian army to defeat the Arameans and provide relief for Israel. Israel had previously had some victories over the Arameans under King Jehoash, but this time God provided them with a full victory over the Arameans.
The people of Israel did well from a military perspective during this time period, but their spirituality suffered greatly. God sent 4 prophets to the nation during Jeroboam II’s reign to try and turn the people back toward worshiping Him and Him alone – Amos, Hosea, Jonah, and Micah.
The prophet Amos lived near the border of Israel and Judah, and technically he lived in Judah, though his message was directed toward both kingdoms. Amos 1-2 contains his messages to surrounding nations, including Judah. Amos 3-6 contains messages to Israel’s leaders. Amos 7-9 contains his prophetic vision for the Israel. We don’t know much about Amos himself, but his message to Israel is clear: Israel will be punished for their wrongdoing. Israel had a great calling and they had great responsibility representing God to the surrounding nations, so there will be great consequences for their unfaithfulness to Him. God desires to restore them rather than destroy them, so He gives the people plenty of warning.
The prophet Hosea lived around the same time as Amos, and his main message is to showcase Israel’s lack of faithfulness to God. Hosea 1-3 focuses on Hosea’s marriage as an example of God’s relationship with Israel, and Hosea 4-14 provides warnings to the nation. God told Hosea to marry Gomer, knowing that Gomer will be unfaithful to him. God commands Hosea to remain faithful to her in spite of her unfaithfulness. That’s the message that Israel needed to hear from God – God kinew that Israel would be unfaithful to Him, but God would remain faithful to Israel anyway. Much of Hosea’s recorded prophecy is essentially doom and gloom for the nation, but there is some hope in it as well.
The prophet Jonah is, of course, most well known for his message to the people of Nineveh and for being swallowed up by the great fish when he tried to run away from that calling. The book of Jonah is dedicated to that part of Jonah’s life. We don’t know what message specifically that Jonah gave to King Jeroboam II, but he is specifically mentioned by name in 2 Kings 14:25.
Micah was a prophet who lived in Judah during this time frame, the same time as Isaiah was a prophet in Judah as well. But Micah’s warning message is directed to both Israel and Judah. His message, like the other prophets, is one of warning that God’s judgment is coming. The people and their leaders have continued to sin, so God’s patience is running out.
That’s just how evil King Jeroboam II was – it took not one, not two, not three, but four prophets during his 41-year reign to try and turn the people back to God! Sadly, none of these warnings appear to have had much success, though God did not yet bring His judgment of exile onto the people for another 30 or so years after Jeroboam II’s reign ended.
What can we learn from Jeroboam II’s reign? We can be thankful for the grace that God gives us, and the fact that He often gives us multiple warnings before we’ll experience His punishment for our actions that disobey Him. God’s grace is evident in each of the prophets that God sent during Jeroboam II’s time. God kept giving warning after warning through multiple prophets rather than simply destroying the people. Even though Israel was very disobedient to God, God still loved His chosen people and tried to help them make good choices.
Even though we are often very disobedient to God and worship other things than Him with our lives, God still loves us! He gives us plenty of warnings through His Word and through other Christ followers around us to help us make better choices so we don’t receive punishment for our disobedience. God continues to show us His grace, especially through the sacrifice of Jesus for us so that by faith in Him, we will never experience the true punishment of eternal death that we deserve. Even if we’re as evil as Jeroboam I or Jeroboam II, God still gives us warnings and opportunities to escape His wrath by making the choice to follow Jesus.
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This post will wrap up my series on what is going on with our culture for the time being, but there is far more to be said about these issues. We need to face some facts. The fact remains that our culture here in the U.S. is not Christian and is in fact quite hostile towards Christianity. We aren’t bleeding for our faith yet, but we are fast approaching that, and there are people who intend to harm us as much as possible in high positions. This is simply fact.
The fact also remains that American Christendom has long departed the tenants of the faith. While many of us long to go back to the good old days when there actually was morality, to be honest, I do not believe there is any going back for this country. I do believe we have crossed the point of no return. That’s as a country. But what about us as individuals?
One thing we have to remember is that we are not of this world. The United States is not our home. While we should cherish what is left of this once-great country and praise God for the little freedom we have left, the U.S. is not paradise. It is not our final destination. Eternity with God in the New Earth is our ultimate destination.
That said, when God judges a nation, the one thing He says to all who may believe is to come out from among them. While that sometimes means actually physically leave the country, sometimes that is not an option. What is does mean in every situation is to come out of that culture. Do not partake in that culture any longer. The church needs to actually obey this. We’ve heard it, but few are listening. The world has so deeply infiltrated the church that it is nearly impossible to identify a genuine sheep anymore. And even when there are genuine sheep, there is no power behind them. Why? Because the world has gotten so deep into our roots that we cannot comprehend what to do apart from it. Need an example? “Youth ministry.” I am not against churches ministering to youth, but how are we doing it. It is exactly as the world does it in our schools: age segregation and be “youth focused” instead of “Gospel focused.”
The church is dead. It has a reputation for being alive, but it’s dead. There is no life in it. Where is the church in which people are genuinely getting saved, holiness is sought, the world is being shunned, and spiritual eyes and ears are being opened? It’s hard to find. Why? The answer is because we have followed the world and left the narrow path.
We have departed the path for so long that we cannot just stop and leap over to the narrow path. We actually have to go backwards and repent of our departing the path. One thing I’ve greatly enjoyed in my pastor’s teachings on Exodus is that God didn’t merely take Israel out of Egypt from bondage to slavery. He took them through the wilderness so He could get Egypt out of Israel. Israel was still hooked to Egypt’s gods, Egypt’s “luxury living,” and Egypt’s authority. The wilderness was scary, and not even the promise of their own land could keep them believing. God had to strip that all away so only teenagers were those alive during the Plagues and the Red Sea Crossing who remembered it when they finally entered in, in their 50s.
Over and over again, we see the same central message: Go back to the ways God taught us from the beginning. To do so, we have to backtrack and pull away from the direction we are going. We cannot simply steer this ship back onto the right course. We made a wrong turn in the maze of life and there is no route out except turning around and going back.
Israel did this during the time of the Judges. They would sin, then God would hand them over to enemies, then they’d cry and go back to God, and then God would send a deliverer. But Israel kept going back to their sin because they really weren’t sorry for their sin. They were sorry they were being oppressed. They went back to just get the difficulty over with, but they never actually went back to their roots and what God established from the start.
The American home departed the path of the Biblical home at late as the Industrial Revolution. Which homes today are actually following the Biblical mandates and the parents can point to which Scriptures they are using for their decisions? Can we find anyone giving examples? We will follow the Bible’s moral standards, but how have we followed Biblical principles for home decisions, job decisions, kid decisions, what we watch and read, who we hang out with, and all that stuff? Is the Bible playing a role in any of it? I’ll be honest: it may be difficult for me to actually say “I do this, this, and that, because Scripture commands me according to this, this, and that passage.” There are things that are there in general principle, but have I actually directed and guided my life according to Biblical principles or just modern “Christian” home traditions? One thing I have been chewing on is to really get a set of “advisors,” a board of directors, good friends who can give me a whopping when necessary. I’ve never had any real mentors in my life with whom I can talk face-to-face. I am so grateful for my current church because they see that need too, and steps are being made to get some kind of mentorship going again. We need to get back to the Biblical principles of Christian living, not American culture living with Christian flavors.
How do we get there? There is one word to describe it all: repentance. We need to completely abandon the world’s way of doing things, turn around, and go back to the basics. There is a reason I keep harping about origins, and a key reason why is that is where most of the departure has taken place. While not a universal statement, if you trace the demise of a church, a seminary, an educational institution, a denomination, etc., many times you will find a caving on origins at or near the beginning of that path towards death. There are other issues such as morality, but when origins go, Biblical authority goes, and everything else spirals. This is a key point of the Romans 1 spiral to depravity. If we want to truly go forward in our walk of faith, we have to go back and return to the very spot where we departed. We cannot just look for a path back to the good path. We have to completely backtrack. And that may include destroying and abolishing “traditional” ministries that have long lost their purpose and have now become institutionalized. We need to cut off and prune the dead branches that are no longer producing fruit or multiplying and get our resources to branches that are producing.
So, as I conclude this series on what has gone wrong with the home and getting back to a Biblical-based home, we need to abandon modern psychology; we need to abandon the American culture of consumerism; and we need to return to the Bible, strip away all that theology and tradition and reset God’s way. The nations want a “Great Reset.” We need one, too. The way forward is back: back to the basics, back to the foundations. And let me warn you what Jesus warned us all: if we do not reset things ourselves, God will do the resetting for us, and He will strip us down to nothing so there is nothing of self or the world dominating our lives.
How can we reset? How can we go back so we can truly go forward? This was not intended as I wrote this series, but my next one is on how to understand the Bible. We have so drifted away from Biblical truth and Biblical foundations that religion is just a matter of interpretations. And it has gotten so bad that in order to justify unfounded positions, people actually turn to hide behind illiteracy. So likely to end 2022, I will do a study on how to read and understand the Bible, and there will be no need to go to seminary to follow up with it.
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by Steve Risner
This week is the last in a series of posts focusing on Scriptures that a theistic evolutionist gave me, telling me they were 1) supportive of deep time and universal common descent and 2) that they were difficult for “young-earthers” to explain. We’ve looked at several passages and found that not one is remotely supportive of deep time or universal common descent. We’ve also found that, while none of them poses any sort of issue for a Bible-believing creationist, some were actually passages commonly used by creationists to support their position. It’s been bizarre to say the least.
Last week, I looked at a series of Scriptures, most from Psalms, that used figures of speech and/or poetic language to make their statements. I guess this was supposed to be tough for creationists because we read Genesis “literally.” But we don’t read every word of the Bible literally. That would be silly, and no one does this. For instance, if it says, “God has pitched a tent for the sun,” we don’t believe the sun has a tent around it that God built. If the Word says, “The skies proclaim the work of Your hands,” we don’t believe that the sky actually speaks or that God used His hands, getting them dirty and blistered, to make the universe. I think any elementary school aged child could determine these things without an issue. We read the Bible naturally, allowing it to be read as it was intended. We sometimes call this the plain reading of Scripture. Read poetry as such. Read figures of speech as such. Read narrative as such. You get the idea. As with so much of Biblical reading, context is critical to understanding what the text is trying to say. There are very often clues within the text or within other parts of the Bible that will tell us how the passage was intended to be read.
Today, we’ll start with Acts 1:7 which reads, “He said to them: ‘It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority.’”
I have no idea how this is supportive of theistic evolution or problematic for Biblical creationists. No explanation was offered, so I have to figure it out on my own. The only connection I can make is perhaps that he’s suggesting this means we aren’t supposed to know when events happened in Scripture. But, really, that seems to be a ridiculous claim. God seems very interested in us knowing when events happened and remembering them. There are numerous holidays that He prescribed for the Jews, and there is a day of the week He commanded the Jews to set aside to remember His creative works. All of these days are set aside to remember something—usually an event. But the creation, one of the most important events in all of history, is one God not only told the Jews to remember with a holiday—He told them to remember it every week! If you are curious how Biblical creationists calculate the approximate time of creation, you can read about that in the blog post I wrote in March of 2019 called “Is Young-earthism New?”
Like so many other verses this person has used in this series, he’s totally taken the verse out of context and given it an application that is not indicated or appropriate by the context (if my understanding for his use of it is correct). Why did Jesus say this to His disciples? In verses 4 through 6 of this chapter, we find the disciples are told by Jesus to wait in Jerusalem until they are baptized with the Holy Spirit. They replied with a question: “Will you restore the Kingdom at that time?” Jesus’ response begins in verse 7 where He tells them, essentially, that God has determined when that will happen and they don’t need to worry about it. He goes on to tell them they’ll be baptized in the Holy Spirit and will be empowered to go and tell everyone about Him.
I can find no way to connect this passage to a belief in deep time or universal common descent or to even suggest that knowing when creation took place is not for us to know. That is a complete misapplication of Scripture. However, I find that many times, this is exactly why theistic evolutionists (this person is no exception really) get their theology wrong. They come to the Bible already believing in deep time and universal common descent and try to pluck out verses that will support that. They fail miserably since there is no Scriptural support for deep time or universal common descent. But having a very weak understanding of what the Bible says and how to read and apply the Word of God is a major problem, in my experience, with those who reject the plain teaching of Scripture about creation.
The last passage for this series will be 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which reads, “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 is interesting because theistic evolutionists want to essentially omit or completely rewrite the first 11 chapters of Genesis, but we are told here that “all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching…” I believe that the whole of Scripture confirms that God created everything there is in 6 days about 6000 years ago and that He caused a Flood to happen about 4500 years ago that wiped out all animal life and humans on earth except a small portion that was saved on the Ark. There is no way around this if “all of Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching.”
As I rack my brain trying to figure out how this can apply to the argument to support theistic evolution, I realize I just can’t think about the Bible as these folks do. This list was given to me by one theistic evolutionist, but I don’t feel he is unique in his misapplication and misunderstanding of Scripture. Old earth creationists have similar issues but theirs are not so nearly magnificent. Scripture could hardly be clearer as to the creation account—what God did, the order He did it, when He did it, and why He did it. It could hardly be more specific when the Bible tells us He destroyed all land animals and humans except a few He allowed to go onto an Ark built by a man and his family that God chose to survive. There’s no wiggle room here. Any argument is either based on semantics or is just a terrible misapplication of Scripture from them. Not a single text I have gone over here with you is remotely supportive of theistic evolution. Not one little bit. And none of them are even sort of difficult for a creationist to explain and apply to their beliefs on origins.
I am reminded of something Martin Luther said: “When Moses writes that God created heaven and earth and whatever is in them in six days, then let this period continue to have been six days, and do not venture to devise any comment according to which six days were one day. But if you cannot understand how this could have been done in six days, then grant the Holy Spirit the honor of being more learned than you are. For you are to deal with Scripture in such a way that you bear in mind that God Himself says what is written. But since God is speaking, it is not fitting for you wantonly to turn His Word in the direction you wish to go.”
It comes down to this: Do you believe God Almighty or not?
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King Amaziah was the son of King Joash of Judah, who you may recall took the throne at the age of 7. Amaziah was 25 when he took over the throne after Joash was murdered. Joash had followed God for most of his reign, but after Jehoiada (the high priest who influenced him) passed away, Joash took the nation away from God and led the idol worship. Amaziah followed somewhat in his father’s footsteps, by worshiping God but also not removing the places of idol worship. Amaziah’s story is found in 2 Kings 14:1-22.
Amaziah’s reign is summarized by the author of Kings in verses 3-4: “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, but not as his father David had done. In everything he followed the example of his father Joash. The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.”
King Amaziah started out his reign by killing the people who killed his father King Joash (verse 5). But it is specifically noted in verse 6 that he did not also kill their children, as he may have wanted to do out of his anger. But it is specifically forbidden to kill children for the sins of their parents (and vice versa): “Parents are not to be put to death for their children, nor children put to death for their parents; each will die for their own sin” (Deuteronomy 24:16). So, King Amaziah did follow God’s law in that instance.
King Amaziah is also remembered for being the one to defeat the Edomites (verse 7). There is more detail of this battle given in 2 Chronicles 25:5-24. Amaziah found 300,000 men fit for battle within Judah, and he also hired 100,000 additional troops from Israel to bolster their army against Edom. A prophet came to King Amaziah and questioned the use of troops from Israel, saying that God would not give them victory because of the Godlessness of Israel. Even if they fought courageously, God would make sure they’d lose the battle if the troops from Israel were involved. King Amaziah brought up the fact that he had paid money for those troops, and the prophet replied that God would give him much more than that in return. So King Amaziah sent away the troops from Israel, who were furious about the situation.
King Amaziah and the nation of Judah were victorious in their battle against Edom. They killed 20,000 Edomites; 10,000 in the battle, then they captured 10,000 more alive but threw them off a cliff and killed them. But, while they were in battle, the rejected and disgruntled Israelite socliers plundered some towns in Judah and killed 3,000 people!
After the victory, King Amaziah brought back the gods of the Edomites and set up them up for worship in Judah. God sent another prophet to the king to warn him of God’s displeasure with that act. But King Amaziah wouldn’t listen to the prophet; he shot him down, saying that he was not in the position to advise the king. The prophet gave Amaziah one final warning that God would strike them down because of their worship of idols and not listening to God.
Then, King Amaziah and his advisors got the idea to fight against Israel, so they sent word to Jehoash, King of Israel. Amaziah was caught up in the pride of having defeated the Edomites, so he thought he could take on the larger and stronger nation of Israel as well. King Jehoash of Israel replied to Amaziah of Judah, “You say to yourself that you have defeated Edom, and now you are arrogant and proud. But stay at home! Why ask for trouble and cause your own downfall and that of Judah also?” (2 Chronicles 25:19).
Did King Amaziah listen to this warning? Nope! Israel and Judah engaged in battle, and Judah was basically wiped out. The army basically retreated to their homes, King Jehoash captured King Amaziah, Israel broke down parts of the wall around Jerusalem, and they took all of the valuables out of the temple and brought them back to Israel. This battle is recounted in both 2 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 25, so it was significant for Judah that they disobeyed God in this way and got defeated by their sister nation.
King Amaziah’s biggest downfall was not listening to God, including not listening to the people that God had placed in his life. Even though it was reported that King Amaziah “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” (2 Kings 14:3a), the end of his reign does not agree with that. He did listen to the prophet who instructed him to send away the extra men he had hired from Israel in the battle of Edom, and God granted him victory because of that. But then, he chose to turn on Israel and fight them, which God clearly did not condone, so therefore Judah suffered heavy losses in that battle.
The message here seems clear for the people of Judah: listen to God, and you’ll be blessed; don’t listen to God, and you’ll get destruction. The same is true for us today. Things may not happen in our lives with that clear cause and effect as is reported for King Amaziah and the nation of Judah, but that principle still holds true. The blessings we receive from God may not be what we expect or desire, but we know that God is still sovereign and working to bless us in the way that is best for us when we are obedient to Him. But when we turn away from God and do our own thing, we should expect to have disastrous consequences in our lives.
Are you listening to God and the people who He has placed in your life? Or are you doing your own thing and turning away from God? Examine your life to see which way you are headed, and call out to God to help you correct your direction if needed.
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My church is aptly named The Old Paths Christian Church based on Jeremiah 6:16. The vision of this church is to seek the ways that historical Christianity has used to remain strong and alive and recapture what the real thing is. God established His pattern early on for how man is to live, and He expects us to live and obey by it. One of Leonard Ravenhill’s famous quotes is, “The world is not looking for a new definition of Christianity. It’s looking for a new demonstration of Christianity.” We need to go back and rediscover what it really is, because here in America, it is practically gone.
I love Alicia Childer’s testimony, as shared in American Gospel: Christ Crucified. She was a church girl and an artist in a Christian girl band, but she never knew what Christianity actually was. She ended up in a liberal church where basically her faith was completely destroyed. However, before abandoning Christianity completely as many had, she decided to make sure that she actually understood what she was leaving. In the end, she discovered what real Christianity was and that what she had thought it was all along was simply a fake. She has now come to the real faith. She still has much to learn, as we all do, and has become an active apologist to give answers for this faith that she never got early on. She had to go back and learn the old paths – what historic Christianity actually taught.
Several years ago, I wrote a post titled Ancient Landmarks. It was based on Proverbs 22:28, which tells us not to remove the ancient landmarks. For the ancient Hebrews, the landmarks defined the inherited property that was to be passed on the family line. When the landmarks were moved, it changed everything. The same concept applies to doctrine. When we move the doctrines, we change the entire entity of the faith. This is no small matter.
I harp on origins frequently because that is the field where the doctrines of the faith are being attacked and have so nearly fully been knocked down that now the enemy can come in and get more central doctrines once more. But we (the historical Church) chose not to fight on origins when it mattered the most, and now the enemy has been within our walls for 200 years, undermining and overthrowing moral standards and central doctrines. I fight for origins because we have to build the walls of the church again to protect the sheep from the wolves. Yes, that sounds mean spirited, but only to those who either are completely oblivious to wolves or are wolves themselves. We must return back to our origins. If we are to return to the old paths, if we are to return the ancient landmarks to where they used to be, we may as well start back at the beginning. I am not going to do that this post, though, because I need to emphasize the importance of this battle even more.
Sinful man is very adept at forgetting God and what He has done. My pastor is preaching through Exodus, and his sermon on Exodus 16 about how Israel whined about food and God’s provision of both quail and manna was a good one. It was primarily about the complaints of Israel against God. I mention this because of how selective Israel’s memory was. This was just a month and a half out of leaving Egypt. They wished that God had never actually delivered them at all, they wanted all the comfortable foods, and they blamed Moses and Aaron for making them suffer. They forgot the whips, the brutal labor, and the death that had surrounded them in Egypt. Why was God doing this? God didn’t merely take Israel out of Egypt; He needed to use the wilderness to get Egypt out of Israel before they could enjoy true freedom in the Promised Land. They still longed for the ways of Egypt. They did not know nor remember the old paths set up by Abraham – the paths of faith and trust in God.
Today is only slightly different. Again, within a few months past, Israel had seen the 10 plagues, the departure from Egypt, the Red Sea deliverance and crossing, and miraculous water. But they couldn’t trust God for food, even when they had cattle that provided milk, cheese, and meat. Today, we remember the things God did from yesteryear but have the attitude of, “God, what have you done for us lately?” Sports are like that. Who remembers who won the Super Bowl five years ago? Who did Lebron James beat or lose to in the NBA Finals six years ago? Who have been the last five Oscar winners? Only dedicated and loyal fans remember. A player has a bad year and is in danger of being traded or released despite being an All-Star the year before. Memories are so short these days. What about God? One thing my church elder mentioned was the depression that many men of God faced. Why? Because despite all their work, they were not seeing any results. Even when miracles were performed, it was as though they were not important. Jesus even lamented in wonder if anyone would believe when He returned.
This is why God gave us the Bible. This is why God told Moses to write about the battle over the Amalekites in a book. This is why Joshua set up a stone pile at the Jordan River. This is why God had Israel do all these extensive feasts and parties. All of that was so Israel would have the means to remember all the things He had done for them and so they would finally learn to actually trust Him. But it’s not just to remember what He did. We need to remember the boundaries, the landmarks, and the paths God prepared for us. We can’t just go off on our own and trailblaze our own thing. We have to go God’s way, and yes, that means going through wildernesses rather than taking shortcuts through enemy territory (Exodus 13:17-18).
One of our weapons in this spiritual battle is our testimony. What has God done for us? Do we know? Do we remember? If God came through in some situation in the past, why do we continue to struggle trusting Him in a similar situation now? Is God suddenly no longer reliable? When has God ever failed us? Answer: never. While we are to be good stewards, while we are given natural resources, do we actually trust God? Do we trust Him to use our resources correctly? Do we trust Him to come through when we need Him the most? We have to remember the paths God set out for us. I wrote another post titled Don’t Doubt in the Dark. When we are in dark times, let us not forget what God has told us in the light. We have to remember the old paths. We in this culture got off them a long time ago. So, in order to get back on to the right path, we not only have to remember the old paths, but we also have to go back to that path in order to go forward again. More on this next week.
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by Steve Risner
We’ve looked at Scriptures I was told support theistic evolution and create problems for Biblical creationists. Of the 6 references so far, not one even remotely connects to the topic of theistic evolution or deep time and, in fact, some of the passages of Scripture are quite supportive of the Biblical narrative on creation and the Flood. We’ve looked at 2 Peter 3:8, Psalm 90:4, Romans 1:20, Job 12:7-10, Genesis 1:11-12 and 1:24. None of these passages hints at universal common descent or deep time. It’s uncanny to me that a person would make a big deal about how they can use the Bible to support their position (which is anti-biblical) and then provide references such as these to do so.
Because these references are so weak and because few if any are taken in context, I’ll just write a couple more posts on these. The bottom line is that there is not a single passage of Scripture that supports the theistic evolutionist in his belief in abiogenesis, deep time, and universal common descent among other things related to origins. Not one passage of Scripture. Conversely, the Biblical creationist’s entire basis for their beliefs on origins is founded in reading Genesis as well as other important portions of Scripture. Genesis 1-11 are critical to the origins beliefs of what some call young-earth creationists. I prefer the term Biblical creationist because that’s what we are—creationists who believe the Bible and gather information on origins from it.
This week, we’ll lump several Scripture passages together as they all seem to be suggesting the same sort of thing. However, please keep in mind I may not be applying these passages as the theistic evolutionist would like. I was not given an explanation at all for them, just a list. For most of these, the same one or two explanations will work, so we’ll list them and then talk about them.
Psalm 102:25: “At the beginning You founded the earth; The heavens are the work of Your hands.”
Psalm 19:1-4: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.”
Psalm 104:5: “He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”
Habakkuk 3:6: “He stood, and shook the earth; he looked, and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed—but he marches on forever.”
Deuteronomy 33:15: “With the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains and the fruitfulness of the everlasting hills.”
Ecclesiastes 1:4: “Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever.”
None of these verses are used to support universal common descent, but instead they are used to create issues for Biblical creationists. It’s a weird idea, really. We all know that “literalism” is a thing and I do not know of any person who adheres to it exclusively. Literalism simply means you take everything literally. So, if the Bible says, “The heavens are the work of Your hands” that HAS to literally mean God used His hands to build the heavens—though maybe with some large hammers, saws, and some good lumber. When the Bible says, “In the heavens, God has pitched a tent for the sun” this HAS to mean God built a tent to go over the sun. Obviously, no one believes these things so BAM! They think that Biblical creationism or YEC is destroyed by this.
Except no one believes this way. No one says every word in the Bible is 100% to be taken literally. It’s a silly idea, and if ever there was a strawman fallacy, this would be a great one! We choose to read the Bible “naturally” as Ken Ham is known to say. Let it be read the way it was intended. We allow for figures of speech and idioms and things like that. Often, poetic language and prophetic language are not to be taken exactly as they are written. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you can willy nilly pick what passages you want to read literally and which ones are to be read figuratively. That creates major issues, like the one we have in the Church today where so many have abandoned God’s Word, claiming it either says something it doesn’t say at all or claiming that even though it says something it really means something entirely different. Figures of speech are just that. Like, “It’s raining buckets” or “That’s as dangerous as forked lightening” or “They’re so good they’ll make you wanna slap your mama.” We don’t mean these things literally, and no one is ever confused by these things. But apparently, theistic evolutionists don’t get it. They think if you take Genesis 1-11 as a historical narrative, you are bound to take every written word in the Bible as a literal statement. It’s nonsense and no one that I know believes this. I find it hard to believe that they think we believe this way; perhaps it’s just a defense mechanism.
I’m not sure how else to explain this other than to say poetic language and figures of speech do not have to be taken literally. This is not inconsistency on the Biblical creationist’s part. It is understanding communication. Genesis is clearly written as a historical narrative. In fact, it is more consistent with that format that other texts in the Bible that no one argues about—like Samuel, Kings, or Chronicles. Its language and word usage demand a historical reading, and it is continuous with the rest of Genesis. There is no break or change of content between chapters 11 and 12. The entire book is written as historical narrative. It’s not poetry, although if it was it wouldn’t mean it’s not true. It’s not figurative, although elements of it can be applied to other areas of our lives.
There are nearly 2 dozen major doctrinal positions that come directly from a historical reading of Genesis. Few of these make sense if you read the Biblical text a different way.
To further understand the topic of how to understand Genesis and other passages of Scripture related to origins, you can read these blog posts:
What Is the Plain Reading of Scripture? and Part 2
Genesis: the Polemic and Part 2 and Part 3
The Genesis Myth and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4
Thanks for reading! Let’s stand on the Word of God and reject the humanist origins myth for what it is—a way to pull people from the Truth.
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.
