Billy Graham and Creation Science

Not the best example to use to to support your point. Billy Graham was an apostate who thought that there were many paths to God, Jesus and many others.

Typical Graham - a compromiser of the lowest order

The first place to start on that one — is with the “authority” that we use, which is the Word of God...

I present the following for as about an official statement on the matter of how to take the Bible as you’ll probably see today...

CHICAGO STATEMENT ON BIBLICAL INERRANCY WITH EXPOSITION

Background

The “Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy” was produced at an international Summit Conference of evangelical leaders, held at the Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago in the fall of 1978. This congress was sponsored by the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy. The Chicago Statement was signed by nearly 300 noted evangelical scholars, including James Boice, Norman L. Geisler, John Gerstner, Carl F. H. Henry, Kenneth Kantzer, Harold Lindsell, John Warwick Montgomery, Roger Nicole, J. I. Packer, Robert Preus, Earl Radmacher, Francis Schaeffer, R. C. Sproul, and John Wenham.

The ICBI disbanded in 1988 after producing three major statements: one on biblical inerrancy in 1978, one on biblical hermeneutics in 1982, and one on biblical application in 1986. The following text, containing the “Preface” by the ICBI draft committee, plus the “Short Statement,” “Articles of Affirmation and Denial,” and an accompanying “Exposition,” was published in toto by Carl F. H. Henry in God, Revelation And Authority, vol. 4 (Waco, Tx.: Word Books, 1979), on pp. 211-219. The nineteen Articles of Affirmation and Denial, with a brief introduction, also appear in A General Introduction to the Bible, by Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix (Chicago: Moody Press, rev. 1986), at pp. 181-185. An official commentary on these articles was written by R. C. Sproul in Explaining Inerrancy: A Commentary (Oakland, Calif.: ICBI, 1980), and Norman Geisler edited the major addresses from the 1978 conference, in Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980).

Clarification of some of the language used in this Statement may be found in the 1982 Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics [ http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago2.html ]

—

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy

Preface

The authority of Scripture is a key issue for the Christian church in this and every age. Those who profess faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are called to show the reality of their discipleship by humbly and faithfully obeying God’s written Word. To stray from Scripture in faith or conduct is disloyalty to our Master. Recognition of the total truth and trustworthiness of Holy Scripture is essential to a full grasp and adequate confession of its authority.

The following Statement affirms this inerrancy of Scripture afresh, making clear our understanding of it and warning against its denial. We are persuaded that to deny it is to set aside the witness of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Spirit and to refuse that submission to the claims of God’s own Word which marks true Christian faith. We see it as our timely duty to make this affirmation in the face of current lapses from the truth of inerrancy among our fellow Christians and misunderstandings of this doctrine in the world at large.

This Statement consists of three parts: a Summary Statement, Articles of Affirmation and Denial, and an accompanying Exposition. It has been prepared in the course of a three-day consultation in Chicago. Those who have signed the Summary Statement and the Articles wish to affirm their own conviction as to the inerrancy of Scripture and to encourage and challenge one another and all Christians to growing appreciation and understanding of this doctrine. We acknowledge the limitations of a document prepared in a brief, intensive conference and do not propose that this Statement be given creedal weight. Yet we rejoice in the deepening of our own convictions through our discussions together, and we pray that the Statement we have signed may be used to the glory of our God toward a new reformation of the Church in its faith, life, and mission.

We offer this Statement in a spirit, not of contention, but of humility and love, which we purpose by God’s grace to maintain in any future dialogue arising out of what we have said. We gladly acknowledge that many who deny the inerrancy of Scripture do not display the consequences of this denial in the rest of their belief and behavior, and we are conscious that we who confess this doctrine often deny it in life by failing to bring our thoughts and deeds, our traditions and habits, into true subjection to the divine Word.

We invite response to this statement from any who see reason to amend its affirmations about Scripture by the light of Scripture itself, under whose infallible authority we stand as we speak. We claim no personal infallibility for the witness we bear, and for any help which enables us to strengthen this testimony to God’s Word we shall be grateful.

— The Draft Committee

—

A Short Statement

1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God’s witness to Himself.

2. Holy Scripture, being God’s own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture’s divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.

4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God’s acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God’s saving grace in individual lives.

5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible’s own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

—

Articles of Affirmation and Denial

— Article I.

WE AFFIRM that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God.

WE DENY that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source.

-

— Article II.

WE AFFIRM that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture.

WE DENY that Church creeds, councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.

-

— Article III.

WE AFFIRM that the written Word in its entirety is revelation given by God.

WE DENY that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of men for its validity.

-

— Article IV.

WE AFFIRM that God who made mankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.

WE DENY that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation. We further deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God’s work of inspiration.

-

— Article V.

WE AFFIRM that God’s revelation within the Holy Scriptures was progressive.

WE DENY that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it. We further deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.

-

— Article VI.

WE AFFIRM that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.

WE DENY that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.

-

— Article VII.

WE AFFIRM that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His Word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.

WE DENY that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.

-

— Article VIII.

WE AFFIRM that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.

WE DENY that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.

-

— Article IX.

WE AFFIRM that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the Biblical authors were moved to speak and write.

WE DENY that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God’s Word.

-

— Article X.

WE AFFIRM that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.

WE DENY that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs. We further deny that this absence renders the assertion of Biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.

-

— Article XI.

WE AFFIRM that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.

WE DENY that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.

-

— Article XII.

WE AFFIRM that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.

WE DENY that Biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science. We further deny that scientific hypotheses about earth history may properly be used to overturn the teaching of Scripture on creation and the flood.

-

— Article XIII.

WE AFFIRM the propriety of using inerrancy as a theological term with reference to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.

WE DENY that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose. We further deny that inerrancy is negated by Biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.

-

— Article XIV.

WE AFFIRM the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.

WE DENY that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.

-

— Article XV.

WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.

WE DENY that Jesus’ teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.

-

— Article XVI.

WE AFFIRM that the doctrine of inerrancy has been integral to the Church’s faith throughout its history.

WE DENY that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.

-

— Article XVII.

WE AFFIRM that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God’s written Word.

WE DENY that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.

-

— Article XVIII.

WE AFFIRM that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.

WE DENY the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.

-

— Article XIX.

WE AFFIRM that a confession of the full authority, infallibility, and inerrancy of Scripture is vital to a sound understanding of the whole of the Christian faith. We further affirm that such confession should lead to increasing conformity to the image of Christ.

WE DENY that such confession is necessary for salvation. However, we further deny that inerrancy can be rejected without grave consequences, both to the individual and to the Church.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Exposition

Our understanding of the doctrine of inerrancy must be set in the context of the broader teachings of the Scripture concerning itself. This exposition gives an account of the outline of doctrine from which our summary statement and articles are drawn.

Creation, Revelation and Inspiration

The Triune God, who formed all things by his creative utterances and governs all things by His Word of decree, made mankind in His own image for a life of communion with Himself, on the model of the eternal fellowship of loving communication within the Godhead. As God’s image-bearer, man was to hear God’s Word addressed to him and to respond in the joy of adoring obedience. Over and above God’s self-disclosure in the created order and the sequence of events within it, human beings from Adam on have received verbal messages from Him, either directly, as stated in Scripture, or indirectly in the form of part or all of Scripture itself.

When Adam fell, the Creator did not abandon mankind to final judgment but promised salvation and began to reveal Himself as Redeemer in a sequence of historical events centering on Abraham’s family and culminating in the life, death, resurrection, present heavenly ministry, and promised return of Jesus Christ. Within this frame God has from time to time spoken specific words of judgment and mercy, promise and command, to sinful human beings so drawing them into a covenant relation of mutual commitment between Him and them in which He blesses them with gifts of grace and they bless Him in responsive adoration. Moses, whom God used as mediator to carry His words to His people at the time of the Exodus, stands at the head of a long line of prophets in whose mouths and writings God put His words for delivery to Israel. God’s purpose in this succession of messages was to maintain His covenant by causing His people to know His Name—that is, His nature—and His will both of precept and purpose in the present and for the future. This line of prophetic spokesmen from God came to completion in Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Word, who was Himself a prophet—more than a prophet, but not less—and in the apostles and prophets of the first Christian generation. When God’s final and climactic message, His word to the world concerning Jesus Christ, had been spoken and elucidated by those in the apostolic circle, the sequence of revealed messages ceased. Henceforth the Church was to live and know God by what He had already said, and said for all time.

At Sinai God wrote the terms of His covenant on tables of stone, as His enduring witness and for lasting accessibility, and throughout the period of prophetic and apostolic revelation He prompted men to write the messages given to and through them, along with celebratory records of His dealings with His people, plus moral reflections on covenant life and forms of praise and prayer for covenant mercy. The theological reality of inspiration in the producing of Biblical documents corresponds to that of spoken prophecies: although the human writers’ personalities were expressed in what they wrote, the words were divinely constituted. Thus, what Scripture says, God says; its authority is His authority, for He is its ultimate Author, having given it through the minds and words of chosen and prepared men who in freedom and faithfulness “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (1 Pet. 1:21). Holy Scripture must be acknowledged as the Word of God by virtue of its divine origin.

Authority: Christ and the Bible

Jesus Christ, the Son of God who is the Word made flesh, our Prophet, Priest, and King, is the ultimate Mediator of God’s communication to man, as He is of all God’s gifts of grace. The revelation He gave was more than verbal; He revealed the Father by His presence and His deeds as well. Yet His words were crucially important; for He was God, He spoke from the Father, and His words will judge all men at the last day.

As the prophesied Messiah, Jesus Christ is the central theme of Scripture. The Old Testament looked ahead to Him; the New Testament looks back to His first coming and on to His second. Canonical Scripture is the divinely inspired and therefore normative witness to Christ. No hermeneutic, therefore, of which the historical Christ is not the focal point is acceptable. Holy Scripture must be treated as what it essentially is—the witness of the Father to the Incarnate Son.

It appears that the Old Testament canon had been fixed by the time of Jesus. The New Testament canon is likewise now closed inasmuch as no new apostolic witness to the historical Christ can now be borne. No new revelation (as distinct from Spirit-given understanding of existing revelation) will be given until Christ comes again. The canon was created in principle by divine inspiration. The Church’s part was to discern the canon which God had created, not to devise one of its own.

The word canon, signifying a rule or standard, is a pointer to authority, which means the right to rule and control. Authority in Christianity belongs to God in His revelation, which means, on the one hand, Jesus Christ, the living Word, and, on the other hand, Holy Scripture, the written Word. But the authority of Christ and that of Scripture are one. As our Prophet, Christ testified that Scripture cannot be broken. As our Priest and King, He devoted His earthly life to fulfilling the law and the prophets, even dying in obedience to the words of Messianic prophecy. Thus, as He saw Scripture attesting Him and His authority, so by His own submission to Scripture He attested its authority. As He bowed to His Father’s instruction given in His Bible (our Old Testament), so He requires His disciples to do—not, however, in isolation but in conjunction with the apostolic witness to Himself which He undertook to inspire by His gift of the Holy Spirit. So Christians show themselves faithful servants of their Lord by bowing to the divine instruction given in the prophetic and apostolic writings which together make up our Bible.

By authenticating each other’s authority, Christ and Scripture coalesce into a single fount of authority. The Biblically-interpreted Christ and the Christ-centered, Christ-proclaiming Bible are from this standpoint one. As from the fact of inspiration we infer that what Scripture says, God says, so from the revealed relation between Jesus Christ and Scripture we may equally declare that what Scripture says, Christ says.

Infallibility, Inerrancy, Interpretation

Holy Scripture, as the inspired Word of God witnessing authoritatively to Jesus Christ, may properly be called infallible and inerrant. These negative terms have a special value, for they explicitly safeguard crucial positive truths.

lnfallible signifies the quality of neither misleading nor being misled and so safeguards in categorical terms the truth that Holy Scripture is a sure, safe, and reliable rule and guide in all matters.

Similarly, inerrant signifies the quality of being free from all falsehood or mistake and so safeguards the truth that Holy Scripture is entirely true and trustworthy in all its assertions.

We affirm that canonical Scripture should always be interpreted on the basis that it is infallible and inerrant. However, in determining what the God-taught writer is asserting in each passage, we must pay the most careful attention to its claims and character as a human production. In inspiration, God utilized the culture and conventions of His penman’s milieu, a milieu that God controls in His sovereign providence; it is misinterpretation to imagine otherwise.

So history must be treated as history, poetry as poetry, hyperbole and metaphor as hyperbole and metaphor, generalization and approximation as what they are, and so forth. Differences between literary conventions in Bible times and in ours must also be observed: since, for instance, non-chronological narration and imprecise citation were conventional and acceptable and violated no expectations in those days, we must not regard these things as faults when we find them in Bible writers. When total precision of a particular kind was not expected nor aimed at, it is no error not to have achieved it. Scripture is inerrant, not in the sense of being absolutely precise by modern standards, but in the sense of making good its claims and achieving that measure of focused truth at which its authors aimed.

The truthfulness of Scripture is not negated by the appearance in it of irregularities of grammar or spelling, phenomenal descriptions of nature, reports of false statements (e.g., the lies of Satan), or seeming discrepancies between one passage and another. It is not right to set the so-called “phenomena” of Scripture against the teaching of Scripture about itself. Apparent inconsistencies should not be ignored. Solution of them, where this can be convincingly achieved, will encourage our faith, and where for the present no convincing solution is at hand we shall significantly honor God by trusting His assurance that His Word is true, despite these appearances, and by maintaining our confidence that one day they will be seen to have been illusions.

Inasmuch as all Scripture is the product of a single divine mind, interpretation must stay within the bounds of the analogy of Scripture and eschew hypotheses that would correct one Biblical passage by another, whether in the name of progressive revelation or of the imperfect enlightenment of the inspired writer’s mind.

Although Holy Scripture is nowhere culture-bound in the sense that its teaching lacks universal validity, it is sometimes culturally conditioned by the customs and conventional views of a particular period, so that the application of its principles today calls for a different sort of action.

Skepticism and Criticism

Since the Renaissance, and more particularly since the Enlightenment, world-views have been developed which involve skepticism about basic Christian tenets. Such are the agnosticism which denies that God is knowable, the rationalism which denies that He is incomprehensible, the idealism which denies that He is transcendent, and the existentialism which denies rationality in His relationships with us. When these un- and anti-biblical principles seep into men’s theologies at [a] presuppositional level, as today they frequently do, faithful interpretation of Holy Scripture becomes impossible.

Transmission and Translation

Since God has nowhere promised an inerrant transmission of Scripture, it is necessary to affirm that only the autographic text of the original documents was inspired and to maintain the need of textual criticism as a means of detecting any slips that may have crept into the text in the course of its transmission. The verdict of this science, however, is that the Hebrew and Greek text appear to be amazingly well preserved, so that we are amply justified in affirming, with the Westminster Confession, a singular providence of God in this matter and in declaring that the authority of Scripture is in no way jeopardized by the fact that the copies we possess are not entirely error-free.

Similarly, no translation is or can be perfect, and all translations are an additional step away from the autographa. Yet the verdict of linguistic science is that English-speaking Christians, at least, are exceedingly well served in these days with a host of excellent translations and have no cause for hesitating to conclude that the true Word of God is within their reach. Indeed, in view of the frequent repetition in Scripture of the main matters with which it deals and also of the Holy Spirit’s constant witness to and through the Word, no serious translation of Holy Scripture will so destroy its meaning as to render it unable to make its reader “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).

Inerrancy and Authority

In our affirmation of the authority of Scripture as involving its total truth, we are consciously standing with Christ and His apostles, indeed with the whole Bible and with the main stream of Church history from the first days until very recently. We are concerned at the casual, inadvertent, and seemingly thoughtless way in which a belief of such far-reaching importance has been given up by so many in our day.

We are conscious too that great and grave confusion results from ceasing to maintain the total truth of the Bible whose authority one professes to acknowledge. The result of taking this step is that the Bible which God gave loses its authority, and what has authority instead is a Bible reduced in content according to the demands of one’s critical reasonings and in principle reducible still further once one has started. This means that at bottom independent reason now has authority, as opposed to Scriptural teaching. If this is not seen and if for the time being basic evangelical doctrines are still held, persons denying the full truth of Scripture may claim an evangelical identity while methodologically they have moved away from the evangelical principle of knowledge to an unstable subjectivism, and will find it hard not to move further.

We affirm that what Scripture says, God says. May He be glorified. Amen and Amen.

Webpage — http://www.bible-researcher.com/chicago1.html

“I believe that God created man,

and whether it came by

an evolutionary process and at a certain point ...”

No, my God didn't need to drag it out.

He designed human beings perfectly the first time with Adam and Eve. No where in the Bible does it suggest or even hint otherwise. There is also NO EVIDENCE to support evolution unless you want a juvenile chimp skull to be equal to a human skull. Animals are not human beings and are not equal. God was clear on the distinction between animals and human beings.

Mr. Graham you’ve preached some wonderful sermons but don’t define down your first love. Heed:

Rom.12:2

[2] And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Then..., we can see what is said from a source that does take the Bible seriously and as the Word of God, and what the Bible says about these things...

It’s the Creation Museum in Kentucky, built by Answers in Genesis...
http://www.answersingenesis.org/

For those who do take God at His Word — it’s good to have that kind of place to see things like that in a museum. I hear it’s a very good museum. I have yet to go there myself. I’m hoping to, sometime in the future.

Here’s an article from the outfit that built the museum...

Why Recent Creation?
by Wayne Spencer

June 16, 2009

Recent creation refers to the biblical view of creation and earth history known as young-age creationism. The recent creation point of view accepts the historicity, authority, and inerrancy of the Bible. Recent creation also accepts the historical narratives of the Bible as describing real historical events and real people.

Many Christians have little interest in the controversy about the age of the earth. Some believers will say, “What matters to me is the Rock of Ages, not the ages of rocks.” This innocent sounding statement inadvertently opens the door to undermining the authority of Scripture. This statement about the “Rock of Ages” sounds reasonable in a sense because Christians would agree that the person and work of Jesus Christ is central in the Christian life. But accepting the scriptural time scale is an important part of the foundation of the Christian worldview—and the gospel.

Age and a Biblical Worldview

Recent creation is the view that God not only created the world, but He did so recently—approximately 6,000 years for the age of the Earth and the universe, which is based on the chronology given in the Bible. This runs counter to the billions of years claimed by secular scientists and those who accept their teachings. Genesis 1 describes how God created everything in the universe in six ordinary days. Thus, the Earth and universe did not require long processes to come to be.

Genesis 5 and 11 list genealogical data documenting the father-son line from Adam to Abraham. This chronological information, combined with other historical information in the Bible, can be used to estimate the age of the Earth. James Ussher, well known for his scholarly work dating creation and the Flood, arrived at a date for creation in 4004 BC. Other Bible scholars over the years have made determinations similar to Ussher’s as well. Taking Scripture at face value clearly points to a young age, even if there is no specific verse in the Bible that explicitly tells the age of the Earth.

There are many difficulties with interpreting the Bible in a way that allows for an old Earth and universe. Scripture emphasizes in Exodus 20:11 and other passages that God created all things in the Earth and the universe in a week by His word. It is simply impossible to fit “deep time” into the Bible without raising something else up to have more authority than the God’s Word.

Indeed many scholars today do not believe that the Bible is historically accurate prior to the time of King David in ancient Israel, despite archeological evidence that confirms biblical information from the times of Abraham, Joseph, and the conquest of Canaan.1

Some Bible teachers do not believe that the entire Old Testament is historically accurate. The dates of various events in the Old Testament are often questioned by non-Christian scholars, and this way of thinking often creeps into the thinking of seminary professors and Christian pastors. Aside from the historical and chronological information in the Bible implying a young age, there is a philosophical conflict between Christianity and old-age beliefs. In the old-age view, the Creator is pushed far back in space and time—if he has any place at all. Contrast this with the view that the Bible puts the origin of the earth and the universe at the beginning of recorded history.

Why would an omnipotent and good God use millions of years of a violent, wasteful, inefficient process like evolution to create living things? God’s Word teaches that most things were spoken into existence immediately. The God of the Bible would not use a long process of death and struggle to create. The violence and struggle in nature is not normal from God’s perspective (it was introduced after the Fall of man) and is something God will eventually do away with in the future.

The Nature of Truth

God’s Word speaks to us on historical events just as authoritatively as it speaks to us on how we should behave and think about God. Thus, a problem arises if we first allow arguments saying the world is old and then try to make the Word of God fit.

Each of us must choose which we will vest with ultimate authority: God’s Word or incomplete human knowledge. Many will argue that science and religion are different realms that do not relate to each other. But this way of dividing or compartmentalizing truth contradicts Scripture. There is one God who created all of reality, and His Word is equally authoritative in all that it reveals to us. If we treat evolutionary ideas as authoritative about the history of the world, this leads us to a distorted view of truth and a distorted view of God’s Word.

The Bible gives us objective truth about the past and about the world. The subjective experience of every Christian is based on objective facts of history that Scripture records. Science and history confirm what Scripture says. From a scientific perspective, Scripture gives only an outline of historical events. Science can help add details to the outline, but not if the basic outline is thrown out.

The significance of the Genesis Flood account to geology is a good example. Genesis 6–8 gives an outline of the major events of the Flood as Noah experienced the event, but it does not explain all the physical or geological processes that were taking place. Uniformitarian geology rejects the entire concept of a worldwide Flood. This leads to incorrect answers, as geologists try to explain how the earth came to be the way it is today without accepting the true history of the world. However, creationist geologists have made great progress in explaining the earth’s rocks and fossils because they start with the assumption that the biblical account is true history.

When scientists say that events and processes happened in a different time scale than the Bible records, some deal with this by putting scientific arguments and biblical information in different categories. We categorize because we are taught in categories while being educated. Subjects are often not integrated in traditional education. In the minds of young people in school, science, because it is considered authoritative about the real world, is what is trusted about history and about nature. Thus, science will be treated as objectively true, while biblical concepts become thought of as subjectively true. When biblical concepts are treated as subjective, they can be easily dismissed as unimportant. Good education from a Christian perspective prevents this “disconnect.”

If the Bible is not true to the facts about the real world, there is no reason for us to trust it to explain our day-to-day human experience. Atheists often realize that many Christians contradict their own beliefs by questioning teachings in the Bible such as Genesis. Some use this to attack the Christian faith. If Christians doubt what at first appears to be insignificant details of Scripture, then others, and even Christians, may begin to look at the whole Bible differently, eventually doubting the central tenets of the Christian faith, namely the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the historicity of Scripture and its accuracy regarding time and events are quite important.

The Limitations of Experimental Science

We benefit a great deal from experimental science, i.e., systematic scientific methods that are used to come to conclusions in matters like the design of automobiles or computers and in modern medicine. But what many people trained in the sciences do not realize is that the study of origins is very different from experimental science. You simply cannot do experiments in the past. Even if you set up an experiment today to simulate something that happened in the past, there is no way of knowing that what happens in the experiment accurately represents what happened in the past. This is true regardless of how careful your observations (made in the present) are.

Origins issues represent one-time unrepeatable events, and, so, normal scientific methods from experimental science just do not apply. This does not mean that scientists cannot or should not deal with origins. It means the process is different and scientists cannot speak as authoritatively about events of the past—unless they base their statements on the testimony of a reliable eyewitness. Many improvable assumptions have to be made in developing theories about the events of the past.

There is often deep disagreement between evolutionists and creationists, but the disagreement is rarely over actual facts or experimental science, but rather over the conclusions of origins science. Young-age creationists believe that there is a written source (the Bible) recording events of the past from the Creator Himself, who was obviously there. They use that to shape their conclusions from origins science research. Evolutionists use a different starting point—one that arbitrarily doesn’t allow supernatural revelation or interaction—to shape their origins science.

Age and the New Testament

Jesus affirms the historicity of Genesis when commenting on divorce. He said that “at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female’” (Mark 10:6). He quoted the teachings of Genesis 1, showing that He accepted that Adam and Eve were around “from the beginning”—not millions of years after the beginning.

Evolutionary science would say that human males and females didn’t exist until billions of years after the beginning. This would contradict Jesus because He said God made them male and female from the beginning.

This is just one example of how Scripture refers to creation as complete in the beginning; there was no long process of development of living things. This is emphasized in a number of places—such as in Psalm 33:6, 9: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made . . . . He spoke and it came to be.” These statements imply immediate action, not that things finally came about millions or billions of years later.

Good science does not conflict with Scripture; scientists biased against the God of the Bible do—those who refuse to accept their Creator or who do not regard His Word as it is written. We cannot, as Christians, give in to the pressure to accept an old age for the world. Because it is the written revelation of One who cannot lie, the biblical history is sound and is confirmed by strong scientific evidence—just as we would expect.

That said, we should exercise patience as we deal with others around us who take an old-age viewpoint. There is a need to make people aware of the evidence that confirms a young earth and that the Bible can be trusted wholly—but it must be done with grace and prayer.

Footnotes

1. Bryant G.Wood, “Discovery of the Sin Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah,” The Bible and Spade, Summer 1999, 12:2; Bryant G. Wood, “The Sons of Jacob: New Evidence for the Presence of the Israelites in Egypt,” The Bible and Spade Spring/Summer 1997, 10:2–3, pp. 53–65; Bryant G. Wood, “Did the Israelites Conquer Jericho?” Biblical Archaeology Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (March/April 1990): pp. 44–58; Bryant G. Wood, “The Walls of Jericho,” The Bible and Spade, Spring 1999, 12:2 Back

2. Among some, there is a misconception that there is no scientific evidence supporting the biblical view of the history and age of the world, but in reality, there is much evidence that confirms that the earth is less than 10,000 years old.

from http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/06/16/why-recent-creation

Einstein showed that time is not constant, but relative according to one’s vantage point.

Fifty years may elapse for one person while another, travelling at a greater speed, may experience the passage of only one year.

How many years must pass in order for a Deity (who does not live within the confines of a time construct anyway) to do something?

He’s also started to question the Scriptures is his latter years.

That makes him anathema.

He’s also anti-semitic. See the Nixon Tapes.

I think senility and Alzheimer’s Disease has a lot more to do with his questioning of things than a wayward heart.

If I saw you on the street I would be afraid to ask you, “how you doing today”. I’d have to spend the next three hours listening to your answer. LOL (too much information wont get read)

Very agreeable. If one looks to the bible for science, one gets bad science. If one looks to science for god, one gets ...

While I admire Einstein, I certainly don’t consider him god or anything close to a god. My God is beyond my understanding and yours. If a god was so easily understood, the god wouldn’t be a god, now would it?

Hmmm?

Anyway, the Bible has more trusims than Einstein ... .

When you READ the Bible in CONTEXT, you will easily see how He does NOT support the view of millions of years etc..

In fact:

If people use Scripture to try to justify that the days of creation are long periods of time, they usually quote passages such as 2 Peter 3:8, ‘... one day is with the Lord as a thousand years ...’. Because of this, they think the days could be a thousand years, or perhaps even millions of years. However, if you look at the rest of the verse, it says, ‘... and a thousand years as one day’. This cancels out their argument! The context of this passage concerns the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This particular verse is telling people that with God, waiting a day is like waiting a thousand years, and waiting a thousand years is like waiting a day because God is outside of time—He is not limited by natural processes and time. This has absolutely nothing to do with defining the days of creation. Besides, the word ‘day’ already exists and has been defined, which is why in 2 Peter it can be compared to a thousand years. There is no reference in this passage to the days of creation.

So,

The Hebrew word for day in Genesis chapter 1 is the word yom. It is important to understand that almost any word can have two or more meanings, depending on context. We need to understand the context of the usage of this word in Genesis chapter 1.*

Respected Hebrew dictionaries, like the Brown, Driver, Briggs lexicon, give a number of meanings for the word yom depending upon context. One of the passages they give for yom’s meaning an ordinary day happens to be Genesis chapter 1. The reason is obvious. Every time the word yom is used with a number, or with the phrase ‘evening and morning’, anywhere in the Old Testament, it always means an ordinary day. In Genesis chapter 1, for each of the six days of creation, the Hebrew word yom is used with a number and the phrase, ‘evening and morning’. There is no doubt that the writer is being emphatic that these are ordinary days.

More here:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v18/i1/sixdays.asp

You said — If I saw you on the street I would be afraid to ask you, “how you doing today”. I’d have to spend the next three hours listening to your answer. LOL (too much information wont get read)

—

Well..., that’s quite a time-saver for me when I’m out and about doing my errands... :-)

He had it right...the focus should be on Jesus, and the salvation message, not on creation science.

Bingo, now convince a few of the ones on a creation Jihad of that fact.

I wish that were the case.

He decided to work side by side with theological liberals in his early years.

Post the facts.

Give it up Condor. It is as if the medieval Cathedral Schools, the forerunners of all higher scientific discovery and the university system, never existed. The older Einstein got, the more he appreciated God’s order, perhaps a tiny fraction of which is discoverable by science.

I’m busy. Look it up yourself.