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We arrived at our guest house in Addis Ababa around 4:30 AM, Bagdad, KY time (about 11:30 AM Addis time). We were both glad to stretch our legs after that last flight – around 16 hours from Dulles to Addis.
We landed at 8:20 AM and took about two hours to secure our visas, exchange money, get through customs and collect our bags. We were greeted at the airport by someone from the guest house. She was a very nice young lady who works at the guest house. Her mother had tagged along for the ride – I assume to keep her daughter company. As Divine providence would have it, her mother owns and operates a local coffee and pastry shop. After they saw our excitement and interest in coffee (and pastries) she insisted that we stop and sample some of their family’s fare. We, of course, obliged.
It was amazing! She brought out a couple of homemade pastries to sample. One was a light, white cake with a thin, creamy icing sprinkled with cake crumbs. The other was very similar to the texture and look of tiramisu – a layer of chocolate cake, moist and creamy icing (like Bavarian cream) in the middle and a baklava type crust. She brought us macchiato to accompany the pastries. It appeared to be about two espresso shots marked with some frothed milk very, very good!
We are very tired but think we will try to go do a little shopping and possibly see the Addis Ababa’s Natural History Museum. This is the museum where the famed “Lucy” fossil is displayed because it was discovered here in Ethiopia. We are in hopes that a good night’s rest will find us much more alert and ready to tackle the tasks ahead.
We will try to make contact with the orphanage later today to arrange our first visit – which we assume will be tomorrow. Stay tuned for updates; we’ll try to post at least once a day. Love you all and are grateful for the prayers!
Bert & Michelle (a.k.a. for Autumn & Eli as Dad & Mom)
Most of you know my passion for Creation Science. It began as my father fed my early attraction to the life sciences with solid material from the Institute for Creation Research. They are a ministry and school dedicated first to the sufficiency and inerrancey of Scripture and secondly to the interpretation of true science through that framework. Ken Ham, of Answers in Genesis, began his U.S. ministry with ICR.
I can remember reading the books, “Dinosaurs, Those Terrible Lizards” and “The Fossils Say No” in the lunchroom during my junior high years. Dr. Duane Gish, now retired from ICR, is the author of both books and the updated version of the latter is still available: “The Fossils Still Say, NO!”
It is from Dr. Gish that I first learned of the Bombardier Beetle. It is an amazing specimen when it comes to the evidence of design. Irreducible complexity is a term you should become familiar with as one who rejects life arising from gradual change over time. As the term indicates, when you reduce a system down to its most simple form and still have it function, it has become irreducibly complex. It is irreducible because if you remove any aspect of the system, it ceases to function. It is still complex because in every scenario there are multiple independent processes and/or mechanisms that are still involved.
There are a seemingly endless number of examples of this even within our own body’s. Many organs, like the eye, have many intricate aspects, all of which are absolutely necessary for function. Remove any one of these intricate parts and you are left with a useless mass of flesh. Another fantastic example is this beetle. Its defence mechanism is made of several absolutely vital parts. These parts individually are not merely useless or benign, they are deadly if not working in harmony with the others.
Below is a great video clip that explains this much better than I could. It is an excerpt from a series by Dr. Jobe Martin entitled “Incredible Creatures that Defy Evolution.” I own the series and can highly recommend it.
The major issue here from a Creationist perspective is simple. We realize it is very unlikely for any one of these individual elements to “evolve” independently. Furthermore, it is infinitely less likely that they evolved simultaneously to culminate into a fully functioning organ or system that is irreducibly complex. Please comment on this with questions or observations. Thanks!
Hickory Horned Devil in Autumns Hand
Have you ever held a Hickory Horned Devil in your hand? I have – granted, it was a gloved hand.
This is a rather fascinating creation that brilliantly displays the attention to detail and creativity of Jesus Christ, the author of the Creation event! Jesus, the Word, was not only with God in the beginning, but as John 1 and Colossians 1 tells us “all things came into being through Him,” and “all things have been created through Him and for Him.” (John 1:2 & Col 1:16)
Cedarmore never fails to provide natural entertainment. This caterpillar helped our family pass a couple of hours the past two nights. We played with it, observed it and researched it.
Here is a link to some more detailed scientific information. Unfortunately, this type of caterpillar doesn’t form a cocoon (or chrysalis) in the open so we can’t observe the metamorphosis. This type burrows into the ground to do its business. You can see a picture of what the moth counterpart looks like here.
We also discussed the clear evidence of God’s desgin in such a creature. It never ceases to amaze me how eager some are to ignore the lack of evidence for the gradual change over time to produce such a beautiful, complex and unique creature. It’s also interesting that at the root of the word “creature” we find the word “create.”
Hanging from a stick - click for larger image.
Autumn - click for larger image.Eli - click for larger image.
Eli - click for larger image.
In the creation account spelled out in Genesis, the word used for “day” is the Hebrew word “yom.” This is where Progressive Creationists first point in their arguments for long “ages.” Here’s the rub when it comes to the scrutiny of Genesis 1: there is only one real interpretation for the Hebrew word “yom” during the creation account. It either means long age or one rotation of the earth around its axis. Grammatically speaking, it could be either. However, if we were to read this chapter with no outside influence, even in the original language, we would naturally understand it as meaning a literal 24-hour “day”. The fact is the rest of Scripture views it that way. Even the Creator, Jesus, who was not only there but authored the creation event, obviously interprets Genesis 1 as a literal day. Consider the following:
- What does the Hebrew word “yom” mean? It is defined to mean a literal 24-day or to describe a longer, undetermined length of time. Genesis 35:3 for example, “the God who answers me in the “day” of my distress.” However, if the “yom” in Genesis 1 is supposed to be understood to mean something longer than a normal day with and evening and morning, it would be the only occurrence in Scripture that:
- Wasn’t in a defining or prepositional phrase (e.g., “in the day of” or “at the age of fifty”)
- Was accompanied by an ordinal (e.g., …evening and morning, the “first” day)
- At the end of the first day and at the end of every subsequent day of creation, God defines exactly what a day is: “and there was evening and morning, the first day.”
- On day four of creation we get further clarification for what a “day” constitutes: “the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night…and there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.”
- God spoke in Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God… For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh.” God himself is drawing a direct parallel between our workweek and his. With no distinction between the “yom” of creation and the “yom” of man’s workweek. God also wrote with his finger in Exodus 31:17, “It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.”
- Christ and the Apostles believed there were people on the earth from the beginning (not billions of years after the beginning):
- Jesus told the Pharisees in Mark 10:6, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female.” Not billions of years after the beginning of creation.
- Jesus says in Luke 11:50-51, “…so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, from the blood of Able to the blood of Zechariah…” Jesus obviously believed his first prophet, Able, was there at the beginning – the foundation of the world. Not billions of years after it had been set into motion.
- Jesus also said of Satan in John 8:44, “He was a murderer from the beginning,” making reference to Cain’s murder of his brother Able.
- Jesus prophesies about the tribulation in Mark 13:19, “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of creation that God created until now.” According to Jesus, there has been some measure of tribulation since the beginning. If man didn’t enter the picture until billions of years after the beginning, then what was the object of this tribulation?
- Paul writes to the Romans in 1:20, “For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world.” First, for the attributes to have been perceived from creation there must have been someone to perceive them. Secondly, this is another passage that supports the idea that the creation is there to point us to God. Why have it sit undergoing mindless processes for billions of years before man is on the scene to marvel at it?
- I Peter 1:20 and Revelation 13:8, 17:8 speak of the Lamb that was slain or the names that were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life from the foundation of the world. What purpose could God have in billions of years of death and decay before his redemptive plan for man was set into motion. The elect were obviously elected from the foundation, why wait?
In conclusion, if pagan philosophies since ancient Israel have battled against the God of the Bible with this idea of timeless matter and processes, don’t you think that Jesus and the Apostles would have been careful to not to misrepresent the creation account? In fact, they were very clear. By their own testimony they believed that man and the fall happened from the beginning of creation – not thousands of millions of years after it.
Any one of these evidences unaided presents a weak case for a young earth. However, combined as a body of evidence, it is difficult to ignore. If there is some other reason for the universe to have existed for billions of years it is perplexingly hidden from us in Scripture.
Other articles in this series:
Is Young Earth Doctrine Important?
Progressive creation is careful to identify its position as NOT involving a God-guided evolutionary creation mechanism. However, it still claims the geological ages and record as understood by secular science. In other words, the sedimentary layers containing the fossil record were laid down over 3 billion years (give or take 500 million).
This position requires two things to be true:
#1. Animals must have been living for around 3,000 million years (yes, that is another way of saying 3 billion – it just helps better illustrate that it is a really big number).
#2. Animals must have been dying for around 3,000 million years (as evidenced in the fossil record).
To straightforwardly embrace the geological ages, along with its record of millions of years of animals living/dying, also requires a reconciliation of the following:
- If the universe, earth, plants and animals had been around for thousands of millions of years before God created man, then what purpose did that creation have?
- If animals had been dying for three thousand million years before man was even created, then what of the earth’s bondage to death and decay as a result of man’s sin?
- If death and decay had been taking place for thousands of millions of years before man was created and sin entered the world, then what of God’s creation that He described as “good”?
- If animals had been living and becoming extinct (as evidenced in the fossil record) for millions of years before man was created, then what of the Dominion Mandate?
To hold to an old earth position, one must now reconcile the requirements the Progressive Creation position demands with these core doctrine (this is what was meant by the implications of how embracing one doctrine can affect others).
Point #1: God created us ultimately for his glory (Isaiah 43:7, 21; Jeremiah 13:11). That is a core doctrine. What purpose would there have been in thousands of millions of years of death and decay before God created man? Genesis 1:14 explains the reason for the stars, sun and moon: “And let them be for appointing time and for seasons, and for days and years.” Why have the universe exist for fifteen thousand million years just to act as a clock for us for a few thousand years – a mere blip on the radar? Yes, “the heavens declare” God’s glory too – but declares to who? Us!
Point #2: From a Progressive Creation point of view, death, decay and mindless geological processes have been taking place for billions of years before the fall. As a church, we cling tightly to the doctrine of man’s inherited sin nature and the earth’s bondage to death and decay (began in Gen 3:16-19 and described in Rom 5:12; 8:19-23). A large part of the theology surrounding salvation hangs on it. The theology of sin nature, death and decay are core doctrine to our Christian beliefs. They are clearly presented in Scripture. If death and decay were already taking place, then how impotent was the sentence issued to man and the earth because of the fall? We also anticipate a day when the earth will return, as in Eden, to an absence of death and decay as foretold in Isaiah 11:6-9. “The wolf will lie down with the lamb, and the leopard with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together. The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”
Point #3: Progressive Creation also must explain how God could call the thousands of millions of years of a cold, cruel process of geological upheaval and death, “good.” What of God’s creation that He described as “good” at the end of each creation day? What did God mean by his comments on the end of the sixth day recorded in Genesis 1:31, “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”? Death, extinction, pointless processes, catastrophic volcanic events… doesn’t sound too “good.”
Point #4: The Dominion Mandate spelled out in Genesis 1:26-30 and clarified again in Psalms 8:4-8 clearly sets man over creation. He was to name it, subdue it, populate it and live off of it. It would have been anarchy to issue such a stewardship mandate over a system that had been created and set into motion billions of years earlier. In this scenario, what purpose was served by the animals that had become extinct before man was created?
Note that Progressive Creation still holds to a special creation of Adam and Eve, fully formed (Gen 1:26; 2:7) with an appearance of age within the same timeframe young earth advocates propose for the creation of the earth. Why wouldn’t God create everything with an appearance of age – not to deceive us, but to give us a working useful creation from the start? If he created eggs and embryos first, who would have cared for them? If he created stars without creating the light between them and the earth, we wouldn’t have been able to see them. For the sake of clarification, God did not create the fossil record to make the earth appear “old” – that would be deception. The geological table and the corresponding fossil record were laid during the flood of Noah.
Other articles in this series:
Is Young Earth Doctrine Important?
Historical Reasons for a Young Earth
Theological Reasons for A Young Earth
Many assume that “old earth biblical doctrine” was a direct response to Darwinian Evolution. According to Henry Morris, as he explains in his book “The History of Modern Creationism,” this idea of space, time and matter being around “forever” has been a “core doctrine” of every pagan philosophy of antiquity. Consequently, it has plagued monotheistic religions all along the way.
This inevitably happens when we begin to feel the need to view the Bible through the lens of our culture instead of viewing our culture through the lens of the Bible. According to Morris both ancient Israel and the early Christian Church “repeatedly resorted to various allegorical interpretations of Scripture, involving some form of long-stretched-out creation, seeking to combine creationist/redemptionist theology with pagan humanistic philosophy. Almost inevitably, however, such compromises ended in complete apostasy on the part of the compromisers.”
It is interesting to note that a majority of the founders of modern science (including Isaac Newton) held to a literal biblical chronology. Even Charles Darwin himself began his career as a biblical creationist. According to his writings, he then slipped into a form of progressive creation, then to a form of theistic evolution and finally into a totally atheistic/naturalistic mechanism for evolutionism.
Morris also chronicles a brief rebirth of creationism in the early 1900’s. This resurgence, however, was compromised by an attempt to integrate “modern” science into the biblical record. The result was the eventual fading of all of these movements and organizations, including: the Religious and Science Association, The Creation Deluge Society, the Evolution Protest Movement and the American Scientific Affiliation. All of these organizations attempted to compromise the biblical record by accepting old earth doctrine as core to their beliefs.
In contrast, the Institute for Creation Research was founded in 1970 and has steadily grown to its present day influence as a training and research facility that has gained a worldwide audience of students and supporters. Additionally, many young earth organizations have begun to amass and grow over the past couple of decades including: Answers in Genesis, the Creation Research Society, the Center for Scientific Creation and many others. Over several decades now, these organizations have stood the scrutinizing test of both the Biblical Theology and scientific communities – and continue to gather a worldwide support and exercise an ever expanding influence in the Church.
You may be saying, “So what? All that was a long time ago and modern science has shown us much more today about the age of the earth.” Remember our number one rule? Let’s start with the Bible and not science. All that needs to be shown here is what happened historically when a non-literal interpretation of the Bible was embraced to try and make it fit what society was currently donning as the most fashionable paradigm. Historically, when biblical theology attempted to embrace an old earth doctrine, it led to less than lucrative Kingdom results.
Other articles in this series:
Below is the first of a series of articles I constructed about a year ago. I am reformatting them into a booklet form to distribute. I will be posting them here over the next few weeks. Please read and interact as you have time – this is a topic that I very much enjoy engaging in conversation over. Thanks!
Peace through Grace,
Bert
Have you ever found yourself in conversations concerning the age of the earth where you hear the phrase, “I believe it doesn’t really matter because it isn’t a fundamental doctrine”? In an effort to evade miscommunication, let us begin our discussion by clarifying that your conviction about the age of the earth is not an issue central to salvation. However embracing one doctrine almost always has implications for your interpretation of other doctrine. We could examine many cases of this, but our discussion of the age of the earth should prove quite adequate as an example.
Everyone in this discussion of the age of the earth makes certain assumptions. As a church that believes the Bible is the inerrant Word of God and the ultimate revealed authority for the Church, Harvest makes the following assumption in all of its views: the Bible is our first and final confidence in all matters. This includes all areas of life (spiritual, moral, scientific, social, etc.). Furthermore, in this discussion, as always, we will attempt:
1. To understand passages of scripture from their biblical and historical context.
2. To let scripture interpret scripture, where often it does.
3. To begin with scripture as our starting point (not science).
We need to clarify some basic definitions from the outset. Within evangelical circles, there exist two major views on creation and the age of the earth:
1. Old Earth: the universe is around 15 billion years old, the earth around 4.6 billion, life around 3.5 billion, and that the fossil record was laid over millions of years of animals dying and being fossilized in the sedimentary layers that make up the geological table embraced by modern science.
2. Young Earth: the universe, earth and life were all created in the six literal 24-hour days described in Genesis 1 between 6,000-15,000 years ago and the geological table we see is a result of Noah’s flood (flood geology).
For our discussion we will compare and contrast the two major doctrines embraced by conservative theologians on each side of this issue of the earth’s age: Progressive Creation and Scientific Creation.
Progressive Creation (formally known as the Day-Age theory) is the term most theologians use to describe their old earth doctrine. This is a clear distinction from the Theistic Evolutionists (who believe that God used evolution as his means to bring everything into existence) and Gap Theorists (who purport a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2). Theistic Evolution and the Gap Theory (as well as many other theories that attempt to include God into an old earth model) have slowly but steadily lost support over the last couple of decades due to biblical inconsistency and/or a lack of scientific support. While rejecting an evolutionary mechanism, progressionists claim that God “progressively” created and populated the earth over the course of billions of years. Their basic interpretation of Genesis 1 is that the “days” of creation represent long ages.
Progressive Creation’s most prominent advocate today is a Christian scientist named Dr. Hugh Ross. He has written many books on the topic such as: “The Creation and the Cosmos” and “Creation and Time.” Many respectable teachers, including Dr. Norman Geisler, Dr. Bill Bright, Dr. Dallas Willard and others, embrace this doctrine.
Scientific Creation is the term most used to describe those who embrace a young earth doctrine. Core to this position is a literal interpretation of the creation days and “flood geology.” Flood Geology in a nutshell is the idea that the sediments of the geological table were laid down during the catastrophic and worldwide flood of Noah.
Dr. Henry Morris has been called “the father of scientific creation.” He is the founder of the Institute for Creation Research and has written extensively on the subject in many technical as well as laymen’s books. I recommend “The Modern Creation Trilogy,” “The Genesis Record” and “Scientific Creationism.” Scientific Creation is embraced by many respected theologians such as: Dr. R.C. Sproul, Dr. John McArthur, Dr. Albert Mohler, and many others.
In the next few articles we will tackle this issue from four different angles. An attempt will be made to explain why we believe that Young Earth Doctrine is an important position due to:
1. Historical Reasons
2. Theological Reasons
3. Biblical Reasons (Biblical record)
4. Scientific Reasons
5. Appendix on Radiocarbon & Radiometric Dating
6. Appendix on Flood Geology
Other articles in this series:
Is Young Earth Doctrine Important?
