Biblical Creation and Evangelism

There is a question that is common to believers, skeptics, children, and others about how the church got the books of the New Testament. (Someone said that the Bible was written by "old wise men," which shows an assertion based on massive ignorance.) It is also fair to ask what the early church accepted. In the early days, Christians were persecuted and had to meet in secret. There were also false gospels and letters supposedly signed by the apostles that would crop up that had to be evaluated. First page of Genesis, RGBStock /  Billy Frank Alexander With an exception regarding the book of Revelation , almost all of the books in the New Testament were accepted by the early church. When someone came along and dropped a Gospel of Thomas  or a history of the childhood of Jesus (the latter apparently had some pretty wild stuff), for example, those texts were examined for some key details. God inspired the Bible but worked through human authors and copyists who wrote the original ...

A topic that causes a great deal of discussion is the global Genesis Flood, and especially why it happened in the first place. There are many details that can be covered (and have been by others) which would make this post excessively long. I was in a discussion the other day, and the method  of the Judgment caused some speculation. God could have sent a plague, stopped atoms in their paths and everything would instantly disintegrate, or something else. Yet he chose t0 send a global deluge. Noah's Ark, Pixabay /  Jeff Jacobs There were several reasons for the Judgment that can be summed up by saying that humanity had become violently evil all the time. It may be hard for some folks to accept, but God is sovereign and has the right to judge people. He is holy, mankind is sinful. In his mercy, he saved eight people and many critters to start repopulating the world after the Flood. When reading the Old Testament, there are several instances where people set up stones as monuments...

Certain sky watchers are looking for trouble from asteroids, and they sound the alarm if some look like they will track too close to the earth. A big 'stroid giving us a near miss will still cause a passel of problems. A direct impact would spoil your day Remember Apophis? No, not the false Egyptian god that shares the name, but the 'stroid that got people agitated. Some Christians thought it fit Bible prophecy about the last days. They were wrong . Now 2024YR4 is coming around, and we know how some religious folks will act. Asteroid and Earth, FreeDigitalPhotos / Idea go Let's face it, there are many professing Christians who are not grounded in the Word. In addition, prophecy gets attention — and money. There are people who actually reject how God required  a perfect record from prophets in the Old Testament: If their prophecies did not come true, they deserved the death penalty! Today, "Thus saith the Lord" claims are swallowed, even though the "prophet...

There are professing Christians who claim to believe the Bible, then try to find ways to get out of believing the first eleven chapters of Genesis are written as history. When they claim that it is something else such as allegory or pseudo-history, they are rejecting and undermining the authority of Scripture. Pseudo-history is something written as history but is actually fictitious. Some people may say that the Bible contains stories intended to teach us something. So what? We can do that with many books, so the Bible is not so special in that view. Bible and note-taking, Unsplash /  Fa Barboza There are those who relegate Genesis 1-11 to story or allegory status, but they have some problems. First, why aren't the later chapters of Genesis also pseudo-history? Further, these blackguards are calling Jesus, Paul, Peter, and others liars because they refer to Genesis as real history and authoritative. By the way, drop Exodus 31:17 and Exodus 20:11 on them — those verses will show the...

We hear about races and racism all the time, and some folks seem to be extremely race conscious — thinking of their race as a priority. They even intertwine their personal identities with their race. It may come as a shock, but races do not exist ! From a biblical standpoint, there is only one race. (Nations, ethnic groups, and other distinguishing characteristics, sure.) Another startling fact is that racism accelerated under Darwinism. The Bearded Buddha hinged his evolution story on his own racism. Different ethnic hands, Pixabay / Rhythm_In_Life People who have paid attention to American political news have probably noticed the accusations that Donald Trump is a racist and so are those who voted for him. (How they deal with Blacks for Trump and similar groups is unclear.) Leftist women seek to punish their men who voted for him, and sore losers rail against Trump supporters, sometimes with violence. And yet, none of their accusations have merit. Angry leftists "think" wit...

There are Christians who insert millions of years between the first two verses of Genesis, and it is truly baffling as to why. Perhaps they want it both ways by believing in deep time like secularists but can also claim to "believe" the Bible. Or they may think evidence for a young earth is lacking. Maybe some other reason. One version is that God created everything but Satan and his minions rebelled, so God sent a global flood. Then God recreated the world. Also, some just insist on deep time without "Lucifer's Flood." Standley Chasm, Unsplash / Stephen Mabbs Biblical creationists have filled the gap (heh!) numerous times over the years, but it keeps returning. If those who believe in some kind of gap theory are attempting to impress secular folks, this backfires in a big way. It is untenable according to both secular and creation science interpretations. Worse, it requires massive eisegesis and Scripture twisting — there is no  support for this position in the...

This is being written for the fourteenth annual Question Evolution Day , which is something that any  biblical creationist can support. Involvement levels can be very basic, such as simply sharing a post online with a #questionevolutionday hashtag. More involved: writing weblog articles, having an event at a church, etc. One big reason to get involved at all is to support intellectual and academic freedoms, and especially freedom of speech. We show that atoms-to-atheist evolution is not supported by evidence, which instead supports special creation. There is a surprising similarity between that day and the walls of Jericho. Jericho, Unsplash / Valdemaras D. Don't be riding off in a cloud of dust, hear me out. The Bible records how Joshua led the Israelites as directed by God to destroy Jericho. It must have seemed like a massive undertaking, as a siege could have taken months or years . The Israelites were obedient to God's instructions, the walls fell, and the Israelites were...

When someone says, "I do not believe there is a God," they often act like the matter is unimportant to them. The most frequent excuse given is that there is no evidence that God exists. There is abundant evidence, and someone who makes the "no evidence" claim is, to be blunt, dishonest. The most egregious example of intellectual dishonesty in my experience is from a professing atheist who insisted that Christians do not provide evidence that God exists. When it is given, he refuses to look at it. Than he repeats his lie that Christians give no evidence! Walking in snow at night, Unsplash / Roan Lavery Worse than the above example is that many professing atheists  are lying to themselves . They may not be actively attempting to deceive the Christian they are conversing with. Also, when Bible believers say that everyone knows  that God exists, they get their hackles up and say, "Nobody knows what I believe better than me." It sounds plausible at first, and a...

We know it is human nature to want to learn more, or even fill in the blanks of a story with our own conjectures. People want to learn about enigmatic  Melchizedek , and Scripture almost teases us with references to him. Abram had been called and blessed by God. We read that he was a wealthy and powerful man. There was a war going on (Gen. 14), and Abram's nephew Lot was living in Sodom. He was one of the people carried off in a raid, and Abram took his own men in battle against several kings! The Meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek , Dirk Bouts, 1465 After the victory, the king of Sodom met with Abram, but Abram wanted nothing to do with him. Also, Melchizedek met with Abram. Mel wasn't some guy who ran a diner in Phoenix, but the king of Salem and a priest of God . He blessed Abram, and Abe gave him a tenth of everything (Gen 14:18-20). After this encounter, a few references in the Bible explain that Melchizedek was a type of Christ. People have run several ideas up the flagpo...

Professing atheists are found in several types, ranging from those who simply do not care about God to those who want to exterminate Christians. In my experience, they deny being religious because they do not worship a deity. Those are disingenuous because they ignore the other dictionary definitions of religion. One of the forms their religion takes is Scientism . This is all about knowledge through science and reason, but cannot be lived consistently. Beauty, love, logic and other things cannot be consistently lived through atheism. Especially morality and ethics. Many smugly claim to be "good without God." 1889 guy colorized, then run through FotoSketcher What is their standard? Some will trumpet the things they never do, such as steal, lie, cheat on their spouses, and other things. They may also follow up with their good works. They can be good without God, so we should all grow up and leave God behind. However, we do not know if such braggarts are being truthful. More im...