by Steve Risner
In 2005, a paleontologist from North Carolina State University found soft, flexible tissue in a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone that was supposedly 68 million years old. Dr. Mary Schweitzer rocked the scientific world with this find, at first not believing it herself. This is because scientific research has shown that the degradation of soft organic matter is very quick, relatively speaking. In ideal conditions, it has been determined that soft tissue may last tens of thousands of years or, in extreme cases, maybe one hundred thousand years. This is not even close to 68 million years. But that’s not even the biggest deal in the story. Dr. Schweitzer also found soft tissue in fossils allegedly almost 200 million years old. Other have found soft tissue from tube worms that they believe are over 500 million years old! And we’re supposed to not think this creates an issue for deep time proponents?
I’ve been looking through things Dr. Schweitzer has said on the subject in interviews and the like. She seems like a very nice person and is a believer. In her interviews, she seems genuine and kind-hearted. She says that she grew up as a “conservative Christian” but turned to being a theistic evolutionist while in college. The story basically looks like she wasn’t prepared. Her parents didn’t talk to her about what the secular world was going to try to convince her of before she went to school. They probably should have. I hope to make sure my children are well prepared for whatever might be out there to challenge their faith. Not that I want my children to be brainwashed; of course, no one wants that. But I want them to know how to analyze data and how to look at arguments and be capable of seeing what the data might say and how those arguments may be either strong or weak and what they’re based on.
The previous thing we looked at that Dr. Schweitzer said was, “[God] is under no obligation to meet our expectations. He is bigger than that.” This is in response to her believing that God did not create in six days as His Word says but did so as fallen human beings have determined He must have—over eons of time. What I find ironic here is that this statement doesn’t really apply to Biblical creationists at all, or not much anyway, but it does apply to those who come to His Word believing that what the humanist origins myth says as they force it to fit their preconceived ideas. It’s bizarre, really, that she would try to apply this to people who read the Bible and believe God is big enough to do exactly what He said and that He’s capable of explaining it to us. Coming to the Bible believing things that are clearly contrary to it and then trying to force the Bible to be in line with those contrary teachings is exactly what it seems like she’s talking about. They force God to mean what they want Him to mean and say what they want Him to say. That’s not how Biblical interpretation works at all.
However, Dr. Schweitzer says some things I very much appreciate and agree with. Things like “God is so multidimensional,” she says. “I see a sense of humor. I see His compassion in the world around me. It makes me curious, because the creator is revealed in the creation.” I think this is beautiful and right on. I believe God is far more complex than most of us give Him credit for. In fact, I don’t think we can accurately understand His character and all His complexities. He’s way too big for a human brain to process. That God is revealed in His creation is awesome! Paul says in Romans 1:19-20, “What may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.” As previously discussed, this passage is a reminder to us that the fact that there is a Creator is clear to us all. There are many who are hostile toward God that reject Him and claim there is no evidence for His existence. They deny what we all know to be true.
Psalm 19 also beautifully explains God’s revelation in nature this way: “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 display knowledge. There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard. Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course. It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other; nothing is hidden from its heat.” This is another passage we recently looked at because someone informed me that this passage was either supportive of theistic evolution or difficult for Biblical creationists. Neither was true, but I was told this nonetheless. David, the writer of this psalm, was a great worshipper of the Lord and this psalm is a great reflection of that. Nature does reflect the greatness and character of God. But let’s not confuse the humanist origins myth and its version of how to interpret data with what nature is showing us.
Nature doesn’t say these fossils are millions of years old. Nature says these animals were alive once and are now dead. Nature says there is a detectable amount of certain radioisotopes within the fossils. What that means is completely up in the air. We don’t know if these findings necessarily indicate that a sample is millions of years old. All we know is if we apply a principle to the data, the fossil should be a certain age. But we have no idea if that principle, which cannot be calibrated or verified at all, is correct or not. So, nature doesn’t say life developed over millions of years from simple to more complex organisms. Nature doesn’t say fossils are millions of years old. Nature doesn’t say the earth is 4.5 billion years old. Nature tells us that a certain fossil was found in a certain layer in a certain area. What we gather beyond that is imagined by the observer; it’s not what nature tells us. The philosophical or religious beliefs of the person looking at it might say these things. This is not the same as nature saying them. Interpretation of the data is a big piece in this puzzle. But the greatest piece to the puzzle of origins is the Bible. A solid understanding of what it says on origins is critical in understanding anything we see in nature.
We’ll cover a little more next time. Thank you for reading. Keep the faith, my friends.
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Just as we encountered previously with kings of Israel Elah, Zimri, Tibni, and Omri, sometimes we get to a section in the nation’s history where there are a few kings who all had relatively short reigns that we don’t know much about, though their stories do intertwine with one another. Today we’ll look at the next 3 kings of Israel – Zechariah, Shallum, and Menahem. The narratives about these three kings are all found in 2 Kings 15:8-22.
While Uzziah was the king of Judah, Zechariah became king after his father King Jeroboam II died. Zechariah only reigned for 6 months! But, in those 6 months, he continued the evil that all previous kings of Israel before him had done. He did not turn away from idolatry, and neither did the people of the nation of Israel.
The only other piece of information that is recorded about King Zechariah is that he was assassinated. His assassin, Shallum, then became the next king. But one other additional item is that when King Zechariah died, God’s promise to King Jehu back in 2 Kings 10:30 was fulfilled: “Because you have done well in accomplishing what is right in my eyes and have done to the house of Ahab all I had in mind to do, your descendants will sit on the throne of Israel to the fourth generation.”
After King Jehu, the first generation was his son King Jehoahaz, then King Jehoash, then King Jeroboam II, then finally King Zechariah – all of those reigns were handed down along biological lines from father to son. King Zechariah was the fourth generation, and he was the last descendent of that family line to sit on the throne, just as God had promised.
So, King Shallum became the next king after assassinating King Zechariah. He was from a different family line, and he was the only one in his family to serve as king. While King Zechariah had a very short reign of only 6 months, King Shallum broke that record – his reign was only one month long! King Shallum was identified as “son of Jabesh,” which may be his family name, or it may be that he was a leader of a group of Gileadites that were protesting the previous line of kings.
There is a note in verse 15 that King Shallum led a conspiracy of some sort, but we do not have any additional details of what that was. There is no reference to Kings Zechariah, Shallum, or Menahem in the book of 2 Chronicles, so wherever that was implied to have been written down has been lost to time.
King Shallum is a great example that what you do to others will be done to you. He assassinated the king before him, and a man named Menahem assassinated King Shallum and then succeeded him as king.
It is believed that Menahem was a military commander under King Zechariah. Menahem and his forces went from Tirzah to Samaria where King Shallum was reigning to perform the assassination. Then, Menahem went on a rampage to the city of Tiphsah. He attacked everyone there and in the surrounding area, and Scripture also records that he “ripped open all the pregnant women” (verse 16).
King Menahem did have longer reigns than both King Zechariah and King Shallum; he reigned for 10 years. But, not surprisingly, “he did evil in the eyes of the Lord” and he did not turn away from the evil that all the kings before him committed (verse 18). Not only did King Menahem continue to disobey God by worshiping idols, but he also sold out to the Assyrians.
King Pul of Assyria invaded Israel. Rather than accepting defeat, King Menahem did some bargaining with the Assyrians to form an alliance. He did not do this out of pride or out of concern for his nation’s welfare, but so that he personally could stay on the throne longer. Israel gave Assyria a thousand talents of silver (which equates to around 38 tons!). Where did that money come from? The king made the people pay up through a tax system; every wealthy person was forced to give what equates to 1.25 pounds of silver.
The king of Assyria was successfully bought by this offer, and they withdrew their troops and did not continue to occupy the land. King Menahem therefore successfully bought more time on the throne for himself, and it kept the nation from being occupied by the Assyrians, at least for now. He bought Israel some time, but this moment is considered by scholars to be the beginning of the end for Israel’s independence as a nation.
King Menahem is believed to have died by natural causes, as there is no record in Scripture of him being killed in any other way. But his legacy lived on in that King Menahem’s name is even recorded in the histories of the Assyrians.
What can we learn from these three kings? First, God’s promises will always come true. We don’t know if King Zechariah remembered the promise from God to King Jehu that he would be the last generation of his family line to reign on the throne, but that is exactly how things always worked out. Whether God’s promises are for good or for ill, they will always come true.
Second, evil is often repaid for evil, such as how King Shallum was the assassin and then was assassinated himself. Any evil deeds that we do deserve evil as punishment. That is why the grace that we receive through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is so amazing! We all deserve death because of all the ways we disobey God (even if they don’t seem as extreme as physically killing another person). But unlike King Shallum, we do not receive the punishment that we deserve, all because of our faith in Jesus and what He did for us.
Finally, decisions that may seem good at the moment may end up having long-term negative consequences. King Menahem thought he was doing the right thing (though for selfish motives) by paying off the Assyrians, but generations later, that ended up coming back to haunt the nation of Israel when Assyria would invade again and decimate the land, basically destroying Israel as a nation.
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To be dead honest, I think to have to write a post about “how to read the Bible” shows just how far we have fallen both academically and intellectually. I will save the details for next week because I need to use this post to explain why such a post needs to be written. The way people try to read the Bible to get it to say something other than what it says really demonstrates both the pride of humanity and the determination to look religious while disbelieving the very text these people proclaim to believe. Intellectualism has truly become the prime idol of our nation today. It is in the universities and the churches. The liberals in secular schools of thought profess all this science and knowledge that is direct rebellion against God. And in the intellectual reformed circles, there is a level of pride that has not been seen in years. I am wired intellectually, yet what I am seeing around us today in the name of education is truly insulting to an actual education.
Mixed with all the hubris and pride of education, theories, ideas, etc. is a New Age mystic approach where everything is about feelings, emotions, and personal opinions. The deception we have going on today is actually a mix of these. But keep in mind, it’s not new. It’s the same recycled theories of Epicureans, Stoics, and other philosophies of ancient Greece/Rome. Different flavors and different colorings, but same core meal.
Along with this is an ever-present teaching that, “You cannot understand anything unless you have been properly educated.” In today’s world, you cannot understand “Evolution” unless you have been thoroughly trained in Evolution by universities and embrace it. Go online and present an argument against Evolution and someone, PhD or not, will give you the standard reply of, “You don’t understand Evolution.” I hear that so often I seriously have to wonder how many of them understand Evolution. I suspect the answer is few because they can only parrot what they were taught.
This is a problem with the Bible today, too. Some believe that no one can be a pastor unless he’s been to seminary and learned all the theories and man’s ideas about the Bible. No one can actually understand the Bible unless you speak fluent ancient Greek and Hebrew. No one can actually understand the Bible because it wasn’t written to a 21st century audience, but to a dumb, uneducated Ancient Near East audience, so in order to understand the Bible, you have to understand all the pagan cultures around Israel. While knowing your Greek and Hebrew and knowing the context in which the books were original written is very useful, can you not hear the pride in such arguments? I can.
In his book The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton tries to paint a picture that Genesis 1 is a “temple inauguration text,” not a description of the creation of the natural world. When asked why no one else had seen that before, he defends his position by saying that the rest of church history didn’t have access to all the Ancient Near East documents we have today. There is such pride in thinking, “No one else understood this, but because of my education, I do.” I am immediately turned off by such thinking, and I hope you are too.
So let me make this simple: you don’t need ANY of that to be able to read the Bible, to understand the Bible, or to believe the Bible. God wrote the Bible to be timeless and simple enough that the uneducated layman can understand its primary messages. Yes, there are passages that are hard to understand. They do exist. But most of it is not difficult. Jesus does not require an “educated” faith; He calls for a child-like faith. The simplest and best approach to any passage we do not understand should be: “Father, this is your word. I don’t get it, but because it is your word, I receive and believe it. Help me in my unbelief.” Instead, what many do is come up with their intellectual theories and systems to try to explain both God and the passage to audiences to make them look smart. We have to get rid of such ideas.
The Bible is a very complex book because no scholar is ever going to exhaust the depths of it. But it is also a very simple book. A child can read it and get the main message. “But a child doesn’t have all the knowledge that we have,” says the skeptic. Yes, but a child also doesn’t have his brain washed with man’s ideologies either and is able to believe it with simple child-like faith. While I am an intellectual type, and while many people praise my ability to write and my ability to explain things, really what I have is that child-like faith. The Bible says it; I believe it. There’s nothing more to it. All I seek to do is showcase what is there for all to see. I don’t need anyone looking at me as some guru. I’m not a guru or an expert; I’m simply a proclaimer. I have no special knowledge that is not accessible to anyone else who simply believes God at His word.
But that said, the Bible is also a living document in the sense that its Author is still alive and still around. The Bible’s openness is towards believers with that childlike faith. To the intellectually proud and to the unbeliever, God is going to shut off understanding of His word and to them the Bible is just dead text. The real power and the life of Scripture comes from those who believe it and submit to it. Leonard Ravenhill said this:
One of these days some simple soul will pick up the Book of God, read it, and believe it. Then the rest of us will be embarrassed...
The fact beats ceaselessly into my brain these days that there is a world of difference between knowing the Word of God and knowing the God of the Word. Is it not true that with the coming round of Bible conferences we hear only old things repeated, and most likely come away without any increase of faith? Perhaps God never had such a set of unbelieving believers as this present crop of Christians. How humiliating!
~Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries, page 71
While God can use the intellectual, He does not require them. Only one of the Apostles was an intellectual – Paul, and he was the last one chosen. Paul also knew where academia belonged – to be subservient to simply preaching the Word, if not discarded. Paul never came with eloquence of speech but through the foolish method of preaching. Today, we have apologists who are very eloquent, and some have declared that their mission is to “remove any intellectual barriers between an unbeliever and the Gospel.” There is a valuable place for that, but what it has become is a pure intellectual game that ultimately has no power. I love apologetics and I love being able to defend and proclaim the faith in a rational way, but something is drastically missing and a lot of it is a total lack of belief in the power of God to actually do the work through His word and instead relying on man’s wisdom and man’s intellect. Do we really believe the Bible or not? And how can we believe it if we have forgotten how to read? Next week, I’ll go into how to read the Bible. It will be simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.
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by Steve Risner
Recently, we’ve been exploring some very interesting findings by Dr. Mary Schweitzer and several others since. Dr. Schweitzer is a Christian and a paleontologist. In interviews she’s done, she has said she started college as a “YEC” (which should be labeled a Biblical creationist rather than a young-earth creationist) but later chose to reject that and became, I believe, a theistic evolutionist. This means she is a Christian that does not believe what the Bible says about creation but accepts what the secular version of creation says—that a pinpoint of all matter and energy rapidly began expanding 14 billion years ago and out of it came all the things we see in the universe including life on earth.
What findings of hers are we so excited to read about? About 20 years ago, she published that she had found soft tissue in a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone. This was remarkable because scientific studies have shown fairly conclusively that soft tissue might be able, under ideal conditions, to last a hundred thousand years or so but most likely much less. This Tyrannosaurus was allegedly 68 million years old. So, either the science that seemed fairly conclusive was off by nearly one thousand times or the leg bone of this dinosaur was not nearly 68 million years old. Later discoveries would mean the research on soft tissue breakdown was nearly ten thousand times off. That, or the fossils weren’t nearly as old as they believed. Unfortunately, when faced with a challenge brought by real science, evolutionists will often make up something out of thin air to explain the problem. That’s what has happened here.
Let’s continue to look at some of the things Dr. Schweitzer said about this topic. Last time we ended with this statement: “If you step back a little bit and let God be God, I don’t think there’s any contradiction at all between the Bible and what we see in nature. He is under no obligation to meet our expectations. He is bigger than that.”
As I stated, I think she’s right here. The Bible, which clearly teaches us that God made everything in a week in a mature form and He did this about 6000 or so years ago, and what we see in nature do not contradict each other. But when she says this, she means the Bible doesn’t say what it clearly says about creation. She means that her interpretation of the data, which coincides with the humanist origins myth, fits nicely with the Bible not saying God created everything maturely about 6000 years ago.
I find it interesting that she says that God is not obligated to meet our expectations when that is what evolutionists and Big Bang proponents do—they force God and His Word to squeeze into their tiny little box of human understanding. God is not obligated to do anything, but He is truthful and righteous. When He speaks, He speaks truth. The God of the Bible is unimaginably bigger than the god of theistic evolution. I agree with the prophet in Jeremiah 32:17 when he says, “Ah, Lord God! It is you who have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you.”
I believe God is big enough to create all that there is from nothing. They believe He took billions of years to figure out how to fashion the universe for life and that He had little if anything to do with life forming on earth. I find Him absolutely essential to the universe’s existence and for life to exist. They find Him to be a bystander—watching but not really doing much with it; He sort of wound up the universe like a watch and has just let it go to do its thing.
Dr. Schweitzer goes on to say in this interview: “Finding soft tissues that responded to our tests like modern materials in many ways suggested that after three hundred years of looking at this stuff, we don’t know as much as we thought.”
I like this and think it’s something lost on many today on both sides but more so on the side of deep time and universal common descent. What I’m talking about is our knowledge—what we actually know about any of this. It’s miniscule in reality. Sure, we know much more now than we did a decade ago or a century ago or 300 years ago. But I feel the comparison is like saying we had 4 drops of the ocean in a bucket and now we have a quart. Compared to the size of the ocean, while that quart is enormous compared to the first few drops, it’s nothing in reality. But man’s hubris makes him believe he’s gotten a lot figured out. Truly, we’ve figured some things out, at least partially. But in reality, we know so very little about the universe and about life and physics and chemistry. We know more all the time, but sometimes that means we know less—the old saying the more you learn the less you know applies here very well. We know so little about the universe that we employ a “fudge factor” into our calculations for things we see in deep space because without it, nothing adds up—literally. That “fudge factor” is dark matter and dark energy which, for the calculations to work, comprises over 95% of the universe! That’s right: we know about 5% of what’s going on out there, but we act like we’ve got it all figured out. Amazing, isn’t it?
Dr. Schweitzer then goes on, to finish this question of the interview, to say something that pains me to read. She said, “But I have no agenda, except to produce data.” This hurts because that’s not what she’s doing at all. Not even close. If she was just going to “produce data,” she wouldn’t be offended by people who interpret that data in a way that is different than hers. However, she is. A couple sentences before this she says, “…being a Christian evolutionary biologist…” We see that she does have an agenda, and she admits it while simultaneously saying she does not. Now, I’m okay with her having an agenda. All honest people will say they do in most cases. I have one. You do. We all do. But if she really thinks she’s just producing data with no agenda, it seems her understanding of how science works is a little lacking. Collecting data is one thing. Making that data tell a story is a completely different thing, and Dr. Schweitzer is apparently unaware of the difference. But this is extremely common in this discussion.
It’s almost ironic, I suppose, that some people in this debate will look at me and point at how I see the Scriptures telling us about creation and the Flood and they’ll say, “That’s just your interpretation!” Which is weird because my “interpretation” is exactly what the Biblical text actually says—literally. But then I’ll look at data, which is not a clear communication from a Divine Being but is just information collected and interpret it in way that makes sense and flows well but is contrary to their way of doing the same. While they scream “That’s your interpretation!” when it comes to a clear communication from God, they will simultaneously yell, “Liar! Stop lying!” when I choose to interpret the information differently than they do. It’s quite bizarre and a little silly, but it’s what they do around the clock.
We’ve gone over it a hundred times, but if we have a clear communication from the Lord and we have fallen man’s skewed interpretation of a cursed creation (keeping in mind that man has been at war with God since shortly after creation) and the two do not coincide, I’m going to have to choose to accept the clear written Word of God over a rebellious man’s view of nature which will likely change tomorrow after more information is gathered.
To wrap up this week, we’ll end with this statement from Dr. Schweitzer concerning how she felt about publishing her discovery. She waited a year to do so because she was “terrified” of the consequences. But she goes on to say, “…a scientist’s job is not to prove things but to question them.” While I agree that this should be true, we find even in her own experience that it is not. She questioned the status quo and received a great deal of backlash for it. And she’s not truly questioning the consensus because she forced her data to fit into the preconceived ideas that were popular at the time. Rather than really question the consensus and say, “Maybe these fossils aren’t as old as we all thought,” she said, “Hmm. This data doesn’t reflect what everyone else thinks, so I’ll have to create a rescuing device to find a solution to this problem.” The data was in stark contrast to the well-established scientific research that says soft tissue can last, if conditions are perfect, for maybe a hundred thousand years. This sample was believed to be 68 million years old. Other samples have been taken of soft tissue from finds believed to be 200 million years old and even 550 million years old. I feel like she didn’t really question much at all.
We’ll continue this saga next time. Thank you for reading.
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The reign of King Jotham in Judah is an interesting one. Although he was technically king for 16 years, his reign was overlapped fairly significantly by his father King Uzziah before him.
King Uzziah stopped serving as king of Judah before he actually died because he was suddenly afflicted with leprosy after directly disobeying God. While he was forced to quarantine due to his disease, his son Jotham took over to fulfill the duties of the king. It’s debated whether Jotham was actually considered to be the king while Uzziah was still alive. In 2 Chronicles 26:21, we read that “Jotham his son had charge of the palace and governed the people of the land.” Then in verse 23, we read, “Uzziah rested with his ancestors and was buried near them in a cemetery that belonged to the kings, for people said, ‘He had leprosy.’ And Jotham his son succeeded him as king.”
So, the first years of Jotham’s reign as king were overshadowed by the fact that his father was still alive. There is little significant written about him in his account in 2 Kings 15:32-38, so we’ll look at the passage about him in 2 Chronicles 27:1-9 for a few more details.
King Jotham was considered a good thing in that he followed God. The first part of 2 Chronicles 27:2 tells us, “He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father Uzziah had done, but unlike him he did not enter the temple of the LORD.” The author clearly notes the distinction between King Uzziah and his son King Jotham. While King Uzziah’s reign started out good and obeying God, it ended in great disobedience to God; King Jotham’s reign was good and he mostly obeyed God throughout.
But, the second half of verse 2 notes that, “The people, however, continued their corrupt practices.” Second Kings 15:35 elaborates on that a bit more: “The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.” Even though King Jotham himself did not worship idols, he still allowed idolatry and the worship of pagan gods to happen among the people by not getting rid of the high places where they would conduct such sacrifices.
Overall, King Jotham’s reign was a good and prosperous time for the people of Israel. King Jotham rebuilt one of the gates of the temple and he also worked on the wall of Jerusalem that needed repairs. He also built towns, forts, and towers in various areas of Judah, all of which demonstrated the nation’s prosperity during this time (verses 3-4).
The other main thing that King Jotham is known for was the war with the Ammonites, as described in verse 5: “Jotham waged war against the king of the Ammonites and conquered them. That year the Ammonites paid him a hundred talents of silver, ten thousand cors of wheat and ten thousand cors of barley. The Ammonites brought him the same amount also in the second and third years.” King Jotham and the nation of Judah had victory over the Ammonites because the king was following God, and because of that, Judah was rewarded with material wealth from the Ammonites.
There are references in other historical works outside of the Bible to other wars that King Jotham fought while leading the nation of Judah. But King Jotham’s reign is summarized in verse 6: “Jotham grew powerful because he walked steadfastly before the LORD his God.” Everything he did, whether mentioned in the Bible or not, was because he was obedient to God.
It is unclear from Scripture exactly when King Jotham’s reign ended. There are historical references that indicate that his son King Ahaz actually took over reigning before King Jotham died, though the language of verse 9 indicates that it was the usual progression of his death, then his son succeeded him. However, the cause of death is unknown; we know from verse 8 that he was 25 when he became king and he reigned for 16 years, so he would have only been 41 years old at the time when he stopped being king, whether by death or because he appointed his son to take over.
What can we learn from King Jotham of Judah? King Jotham was not remembered for much significance in Judah’s history, as evidenced by the fact that little was recorded about him. But it is clear that God blessed King Jotham and the nation of Judah because of the king’s obedience to God, even if the people were still worshiping idols at the high places.
When God calls us to follow Him in obedience and we do, that’s not always something that gets noticed or even remembered. We don’t follow God for the intent of being remembered for the amazing things we’ve done; we follow God and are obedient to Him simply for the sake of following the God who created us, redeemed us, and sustains us. King Jotham followed God and wasn’t remembered for much; we, too, may not be remembered for much by following God, and we need to be okay with that. The point of following God is not to receive recognition from others but to give glory to God.
What’s your motivation for following God? Are you looking for recognition for the things you do to follow God, or are you following God because of who He is?
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I have written about the topic of the Bible’s authority in multiple posts over the years, and one can never emphasize this point enough. The Bible has authority, and everyone knows it, believer or not. Whether people recognize it or not, nearly every decision must go through the Bible and God’s revealed moral statutes. Those who believe and follow the Bible will make their decision based on a particular command or principle established in Scripture. Those who reject the Bible may not think about it actively as they make their decision, but they categorically rejected the Bible a while back. To this day, I have never met a person who can truly demonstrate that he rejects the Bible for intellectual reasons. He hides behind such reasons, but that is not why they reject it. It is because of the moral standards and the ever-present condemnation that it brings to men who are not of Christ.
The Bible has authority. One thing I find fascinating is that everyone who holds to some teaching that goes against what the Bible said, even if they proclaim to be Christians, are constantly arguing and debating against people who do believe what the Bible says. Why would they? The answer is very simple: they need approval from those who know God to justify their own unbelief. They are very clever in their approach, but they are constantly looking for acceptance and approval from the genuine believer. They would not do this unless they knew the Bible actually has the authority on the matter and they knew that the believer was at the watch tower to let them in or not. If they really believed the Bible didn’t have such authority, they would not even bother with us and they would not seek to get us involved in their choices. But they can’t escape it. God won’t let them live in rebellion against Him that easily. So they come to us for the purpose of seeking to suppress the truth and justify their unbelief and sin.
The Bible has authority. If you pay attention to any of the creeds or confessions of the faith of church history, the Bible is always what they start with, because the Bible is the source of all their information and their statements. It is imperative that we give the Bible the position that God gave it. There are three positions of authority I am going to address in this post.
1) The Bible is our first authority. Many people tend to forget this one and leave the Bible as the last resort. However, the Bible should actually be our first authority. It should be the first authority that we turn to. The Bible should be our first filter to determine what we should do. Any time we are confronted with a decision our first question should be “What does the Bible say?” (Katie Erickson’s book is a good primer on this issue.) The Bible may not explicitly state what we should do in every situation. It does not tell us whether we should go to that football game or not, or whether we can watch that show or not, or which school we should go to. But it does give us the framework we should use in making said decisions. One question we should use in such cases is: “How will doing this thing or going to this place help me give glory to God?”
The Bible teaches us that our primary purpose is to glorify God and to worship and enjoy Him. When God rescued Israel from slavery in Egypt, He didn’t want to just get them out of slavery; He wanted them to be a people unto Him, to serve Him and to glorify Him. The same is true when Jesus delivers us from the slavery of sin. Our saved life is about glorifying and serving Christ. So, when we decide what job to take or what school to go to or whatever, our first authority should be to see what God says about such things.
2) The Bible is our final authority. Now, don’t get the wrong idea here; I am not talking about the Bible being our last authority after we have exhausted all others. There are severe dangers in that because we’ll start getting ideas from the bad sources and intentionally or not, we’ll start comparing the Bible to what we heard from the world or start mixing and matching what the world says with what the Bible says.
What I mean by the Bible should be our final authority is that we should start with the Bible, do our study and analysis, and then check our conclusion with the Bible. We build our framework for our question with the Bible, and then we confirm that our answer, our models, and our conclusions still agree with the Bible in case we got off track. Many people will build their models and ideas and they’ll use pieces of Scripture to build them, but they never check to see if their models actually agree with what the Bible says. That is why we must check our ideas out with the Bible as our final authority.
3) The Bible is our ultimate authority. This is not popular today because this means that the Bible is above every other authority out there; yes, that includes all academics and modern “science” which has become its own religion. It does not matter how many physicists, geologists, astronomers, paleontologists, biologists, chemists, theologians, or whatnot support whatever model; if it does not agree with the framework of the Bible, namely the historical context of events it describes (6000 years of history, a global flood, and people dispersion from Babel), then it is not an accurate study. The skeptics hate the “statement of faith” that groups like Answers in Genesis or the Institute for Creation Research have in which any scientific statement that disagrees with the Bible must be wrong. At least AiG and ICR are up front about it. The same skeptics automatically dismiss any science that might agree with the Bible, so they are guilty of the same thing. But what many Christians have done, including some who are very good preachers otherwise, is surrendered the Bible in light of “modern science.” All the “old earth creation” models actively reject the authority of Scripture on this topic, whether anyone recognizes it or not, because in order to get “millions of years” into the picture, you have to reject Genesis’ account, even if you support pieces of it. It’s all or nothing.
A common argument I get is that “The Bible is silent on this issue; therefore, we are free to look to other sources.” Actually, no you are not. And you will find that the people who say the Bible is silent on the “age of the earth” have the exact same argument structure and style as those who say the Bible is silent on “loving, committed, homosexual relationships.” In fact, the Bible is quite clear on both of those topics. If old earthers had not brought such arguments into the Church, the Church would not be listening to it from the sexual immoral people trying to justify their lusts. Yet they are, because they no longer believe in the Bible as the ultimate authority, the supreme authority, and the superior authority. They didn’t go to it first. They went to their own models and own ideas. They did pull from some Scripture, attempting to justify their models by twisting Scriptures totally out of context. And they never went back to verify their models to compare them with what Scripture says.
If we are to actually believe the Bible as the inspired Word of God, as actually coming from God, we cannot allow any other authority to have a say. If we do allow them say, then they must be completely subservient to Scripture. Rank them. If the Bible is at authority #1, then science should actually be about #10 if not lower. In between with a full visible gap between the Bible and the next ranked authorities, pastors and commentaries should be next around authority #5 or 6. There should be no #2-4 in this case to just to showcase how far above and beyond the Bible is over any man and his sayings or writing. Even the man who fully believes the Bible should be put far below Scripture itself. Please, friends, don’t ever think that what I am writing here is actually remotely on par with Scripture itself. All I can do is point to it.
When we have the Bible in its rightful place with authority over all matters in which it speaks (hint: it speaks on every type of topic so there is no thing you can address in which the Bible does not have some say on the matter in concept, overview, or specifically), then we can make the wise and correct decision in any matter or situation. Over the next few weeks, we’ll look at how people are reading the Bible wrongly today and how it should be read instead.
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 week, we introduced Dr. Mary Schweitzer and her discovery that gained her a great deal of notoriety. Some 20 years ago, Dr. Schweitzer had found very well-preserved soft tissue remnants in a Tyrannosaurus leg bone. She and many others of the day refused to believe it due to the common understanding and scientifically verified reality that soft tissue will degrade into an unrecognizable form in several thousand or, in ideal conditions, perhaps a few hundred thousand years. These fossils were believed to be 68 million years old. Since that time, Dr. Schweitzer has discovered more soft tissue remains in fossils that are allegedly nearly 200 million years old. Others have found similar things in tube worm fossils that are believed to be over 500 million years old. Studies have confirmed that soft tissue will generally break down over a relatively short period of time, so these findings shocked the scientific community.
As I stated last time, Dr. Schweitzer is a believer. I’m happy that she has found her Savior and believe her sincere desire is to serve Him. I just believe, when it comes to her beliefs on origins, that she is wrong. This belief comes from my knowledge of the Bible which clearly teaches what she believes on origins is incorrect. I’d like to delve into some interviews she’s done to explore more of what she thought about what she had found.
In an interview, Dr. Schweitzer spoke with Emily Ruppel. I quoted her in my last blog post and wanted to finish discussing that before we moved on to her next statement. She said, “I think the thing that surprised me most about that class was that I had no idea, coming from a conservative Christian background, that scientists are not all trying to disprove God in whatever way they can.” I thought it was strange she was insinuating that conservative Christians are ignorant about things related to science. Some are, of course. Many different groups of people have smaller subsets within their groups that are not versed on a variety of topics. But to suggest that it’s normal for conservative Christians to be in the dark about science is preposterous, especially when we consider many of the greatest minds science has ever known were Bible believing Christians. I wrote briefly on that in this blog post. It’s a common misconception.
I stated last time that I was prepared to hear the humanist origins myth when I went to school. I had read a variety of books on it, had teachers who loved to push it, and mused over it quite a lot. I tried to see if I could fit what I was being told in my college and doctorate level science courses (that were related in some way) with what I knew the Bible said. I tried for some time to do this. It doesn’t work. Anyone that tells you it does is fooling themselves and/or trying to fool you.
Immediately after the above statement in her interview, Dr. Schweitzer says, “What we were not told growing up is that there’s a lot of very rigorous, hard science that allows us to interpret the lives of organisms we’ve never seen—and knowing this made me rethink a few things, because I know God and God is not a deceiver.”
This is important for two reasons. The first reason is it goes back to exactly what I said earlier—that she wasn’t prepared. She admits she wasn’t told about how science works and what scientists do. Scripture tells us in Proverbs 22:6 and Ephesians 6:4 that we are to raise our children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord and when that child grows, he will not depart from the path he was set on. I think a proper education in this manner would include knowing what the world says and why it’s wrong. But the last thing she says is very important: “…I know God and God is not a deceiver.” This is profound and the implication is exactly the opposite she wants it to be.
God has clearly stated how and when He created in His Word. There could hardly be a more plainly given communication on the matter. Fallen man, who has been in rebellion against God since shortly after his creation, has invented a story based loosely on some data as he looks at a cursed creation. That story is told by many to replace the Creator—this is a fact. Many who adhere to the Big Bang and universal common descent do so because they want to explain existence without God. It’s the whole point for some of them! Far too many believers have decided it’s okay to follow these God-denying rebels down that path. They claim “God is not a deceiver” but fail to recognize that, while this is true, they make Him into a liar with their beliefs in the humanist origins myth. If I have to choose between accepting the clear teaching of the Bible on a topic or the ever-changing, currently popular story told by humans who know very little in reality, I’m going to choose the Word of God every time. How could you be a believer and not choose this way? Man is so arrogant to think he knows better than the Lord—the one who created it all. The hubris is astounding.
There is a long list of things where God says one thing and humans say another. I choose to believe God in those matters. The world says life is a just a chemical reaction and has no real meaning. God says humans are created in the image of God and He has a purpose for each of us. The world says a baby in the womb can be slaughtered up to the moment of birth; it’s just a glob of cells. God says He knew us before we developed in the womb and, again, humans are created special in His image. The world says do whatever you need to get ahead. God says don’t lie or cheat, and work hard. The world says men can have babies. God says that He created them male and female, and I find no other genders mentioned. The list goes on and on. I choose to accept and believe what God has told us rather than what humans have decided. Dr. Schweitzer was forced to choose between believing God Almighty and the creation narrative or believing humans and the humanist origins myth. I believe she chose poorly.
The good doctor goes on to say, “If you step back a little bit and let God be God, I don’t think there’s any contradiction at all between the Bible and what we see in nature. He is under no obligation to meet our expectations. He is bigger than that.”
How someone can read the Bible and say there is no contradiction between Genesis and universal common descent, I have no idea. I’ve been a student of the Bible my entire life. I’ve taken more science courses than I care to recall. I find the tale woven by evolutionists about abiogenesis and universal common descent has no place in the Word of God. There isn’t a single Scriptural reference to support it. Deep time is similar. There is a very clear timeline outlined in Scripture as to when God made Adam – day 6 of creation. Genesis says God called life out of the earth and seas and it was so—animals after their kind were there. There is no mention of universal common descent over eons of time.
A person who claims there is no contradiction between the Bible and universal common descent has no idea what they’re talking about, or they do know and are lying. No rational and honest person can read Genesis and make such a crazy claim. I don’t mean to be so harsh, but it’s preposterous to say such a thing. She’s right—there is nothing in nature that contradicts the Word of God. But the way humanists have chosen to interpret the data is in stark contrast to the Bible. We don’t see universal common descent in nature. We simply do not. We see life. We don’t see evolution (meaning universal common descent from single common ancestor). She’s swapped what we see—life coming from life and small changes taking place do to a variety of reasons—for what we’ve never seen either in real time or the fossil record—life slowly morphing from one type of organism into something different.
It's very common—far too common—for people to say “science” when they mean their interpretation of the data. Sometimes, I suppose, this works but in the case of universal common descent, it clearly does not. Universal common descent is something that cannot be confirmed and has never been observed either in real time or the fossil record. The common saying by evolutionists is, “Evolution (meaning universal common descent and not just change) happens too slowly for us to see here and now but too quickly for the fossil record to capture it.” If this isn’t special pleading, there is no such thing.
We’ll continue looking at Dr. Schweitzer’s findings and what she thinks about her discoveries and how others view them in our next blog post.
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.
