Bible Archives

February 13, 2024February 12, 2024

Incredible Accuracy of the Biblical Creation Account

As a person with a background in paleontology and a Bible student, any new discovery is of great interest to me. One of the things that led me to become a Christian was the incredible accuracy of the biblical creation account. The establishment of “signs, seasons, days, and years,” as we know them, did not occur until verses 14-19, yet Genesis describes plant life in verses 11 and 12.

In Genesis 1:11-12, we see a sequence:
1- “deshe” -This Hebrew refers to an elementary plant and is translated as “grass” in older translations.
2- “eseb” -This means a naked seed or gymnosperm and is translated as “herb” in many older translations.
3- “zera” -This refers to fruit trees – angiosperms in modern taxonomy.

This sequence is precisely what the fossil record shows. According to fossil records, the first life forms on Earth were algae, known as stromatolites. In more recent rocks, we find the fossil remains of ferns and conifers (spore-bearing plants). In a New Brunswick, Canada quarry, researchers recently discovered fossils of ancient trees so well preserved that the branches had attached leaves. Dr. Robert Gastaldo led the study and described the finding as “literally little windows into deep-time landscapes and ecosystems.”

These ancient trees stood about 15 feet tall with narrow trunks and crowns 18 feet in diameter with more than 250 leaves. The evidence indicates that an earthquake-induced landslide in an ancient rift valley preserved the trees by quickly burying them at the bottom of a lake.

The more we know of the creation, the more we can appreciate the incredible accuracy of the biblical creation account – and its brevity. Problems occur only when religious people force a dispensational timeline theory on the fossil record. For more on that subject, go to the doesgodexist.org website and read the booklet titled “God’s Revelation in His Rocks and His Word.” You can order printed copies of the booklet from the PowerVine.store.

Reference: “Enigmatic fossil plants with three-dimensional, arborescent-growth architecture from the earliest Carboniferous of New Brunswick, Canada” by Robert A. Gastaldo in the journal Current Biology, February 2, 2024

February 9, 2024February 5, 2024

Going to Church as a Depressing Burden

I recently received a comment from a woman saying, “I don’t need another burden in my life, and going to church is just another depressing burden.” How sad it is that Christians sometimes view going to church as a depressing burden. It should be a blessing.

Part of this problem may be that many preachers burden their listeners with guilt and unfulfilled expectations. Gathering with fellow believers should give us support and encouragement. A church service should, first of all, be a time of praising God and expressing gratitude for what He has done for us as individuals and as a group. It should then be a time to share what God has done in our lives and to encourage one another.

One of the most essential parts of “going to Church” is to experience love. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, “Now I am giving you a new commandment that you are to love one another. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples by your love for one another.” Having kind words to say to each other, asking questions, expressing concerns when there is a crisis in someone’s life, and giving a hug are all part of loving one another.

Isn’t it interesting that the difference between the English words “live” and “love” is the single letter “I.” The more we take “I” out of the way, the more we can give and experience love. The Greek word translated as “love” here is “agape,” indicating caring about the worth of every person. There is joy in doing what God calls us to do, but obsessing about “I” and losing love can make us think of going to church as a depressing burden.

If you don’t understand this, I suggest you look more carefully at why you “go to church” or what you are missing if you don’t go. If your religious experience is reading an essay or watching a service on TV, you are missing the essential personal contact. If you think of going to church as a depressing burden, there is something wrong.

An atheist whose life is guided by “survival of the fittest” cannot comprehend the kind of love that Jesus taught. By my count, Jesus used the word “agapao” 108 times in the gospels. The next most common word He used for “love” was “phileo,” meaning “friendship,” which He used 18 times. Church involvement gives us a chance to consider the worth of all humans, eliminating racism, sexism, envy, jealousy, and all phobias that afflict humans.

Going to church should be a blessing. If the Church is functioning as God intended, we will leave every visit to our local congregation encouraged, uplifted, and ready to face the world and spread God’s love.

February 6, 2024February 5, 2024

Different From Any Other Life Form on Earth

One of the conflicts between naturalists and Christians is whether humans have unique characteristics or are just animals conforming to the survival rules of nature. The biblical view of humans is that we are created in the image of God. That means we have a spiritual makeup that is different from any other life form on Earth.

Someone sent us an article about a student who asked the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead what she considered the first evidence of civilization in an ancient culture. Mead reportedly said the earliest evidence is a broken and healed femur. She pointed out that if animals break a leg, they die. They become easy prey for predators as they can’t get to a water source to drink or hunt for food. If you are a naturalist believing that chance environmental factors drive all life, that is the only option.

If you find a skeleton with a healed femur, you know that someone at that time cared for the person. Healing of a broken femur takes time. Someone carried the person to a safe place and protected them for a significant time, feeding them, providing water, and supplying medical help until the bone healed. Mead’s point is well taken and shows how humans are different from any other life form on Earth.

In Luke 10:30-37, Jesus tells a parable about a man usually referred to as the good Samaritan. A man has been robbed and is lying beside the road naked and half dead. What jumps out to us in the story is that two men who saw the injured person and refused to help were a priest and a Levite, religious leaders. The Jews hated Samaritans, but it was a Samaritan who took care of the injured man. The point is clear that followers of Christ should care for others who are less fortunate. Failure to do that shows an unwillingness to do what Jesus taught.

Humans are different from any other life form on Earth. We recognize the needs of other humans and are called to act on those needs. Doing that is evidence of God’s image in us. A predator might eat the injured man, obeying the natural animal instincts. Because of human uniqueness, we are called to love and serve others.

February 1, 2024January 30, 2024

What Makes an Atheist?

Yesterday, we pondered statistics about atheism from the Pew Research Center. We considered what an atheist is. We saw that atheists are more highly educated, with 43% having college degrees compared to 27% of the American general public. They also are politically more affiliated with the Democrat party and lean more toward political liberalism. They do have spiritual thoughts and find meaning in family. However, atheists also find much more meaning in money, hobbies, and travel than do Christians or the general population. What makes an atheist? Why do people turn to atheism?

We often blame the fact that young people turn to atheism in college on the influence of American higher education. Educational institutions have become more liberal and atheistic, but perhaps the churches are partially to blame. We learn about God from two sources. In addition to the Bible, the world around us is filled with the life and wonder of God’s creation. “For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature. So, they have no excuse for not knowing God. (Romans 1:20 NLT).

Many young people who grow up in the church are taught Bible stories along with a distorted scientific perspective of creation. When they get to college, they face new freedoms and challenges to the scientific “facts” they learned in church. The earth and sky seem to be showing something that can’t fit into the human-made interpretations of Bible chronology they have learned. They face a conflict that they must resolve. Too often, they resolve it by throwing out the truth of the Bible along with the scientific errors that have been falsely attached to it.

The bottom line is that the Bible does not tell us the age of the universe or planet Earth. Everything the Bible does tell us agrees with scientific facts. As we have said many times before, science and faith are friends. If there are apparent conflicts, it is because we have bad science or bad theology. The fact that there has been too much of both often turns our college students into atheists.

One more fact from the Pew Research Center is that in a religious knowledge survey, atheists ranked ahead of U.S. adults overall in answering fact-based questions about religion. That indicates that what makes an atheist involves more than a lack of religious knowledge. We will continue with that thought tomorrow.

Reference: Pew Research Center

January 29, 2024January 28, 2024

Elephantnose Fish Designed for Survival

We can see evidence of a creator in the design features of living things that allow life to flourish in hostile environments. One of those environments is the very muddy rivers in Western and Central Africa. They are so muddy that underwater visibility is less than an inch. How do fish find food and avoid obstacles in muddy rivers like that? Peters’s elephantnose fish have the answer.

Peters’s elephantnose fish (Gnathonemus petersii) have an electrolocation system. An organ on their tails sends out weak electric field pulses. Receptors on the fish’s skin detect distortions to the field caused by any object or creature nearby. The fish also has a trunklike nose, which is full of electroreceptors. Peters’s elephantnose fish can make unusual movements to catch prey or avoid objects. It can even paddle backward in what researchers call a “moonwalk.”

Researchers have found that by swiveling the trunklike nose (called a schnauzenorgan) and shaking the electrically-charged tail, a Peters’s elephantnose fish can create a mental 3-D map of its environment without seeing it. Experiments have shown that this system is very accurate and efficient. In one test, the fish could identify a shape and correctly respond to that shape 94% of the time.

We suggest that such a unique design seen in Peters’s elephantnose fish gives strong evidence that life is not an accident. The evidence indicates it was designed by an intelligent Creator to allow every part of our planet to be inhabited by unique forms of life, even places that would be lethal to most life forms. This doesn’t happen by accident but rather by the God who created life. We can study and learn about the Creator because He created us in His image and shows Himself to us in the things He has made (Romans 1:20).

References: “Weakly electric fish use self-generated motion to discriminate object shape” in the journal Animal Behaviour, Volume 205, November 2023, pages 47-63, reported in Science Direct and in Scientific American, February 2024, page 18.

January 26, 2024January 22, 2024

Celebrating Our Own Special Holidays

We recently received an article from a Christian woman working in a Christian assisted living facility telling about the value of special days to those in care facilities. She pointed out Romans 14:5, which says, “One person decides that one day is holier than another. Another person decides that all days are the same. Every person must make his own decision.” The word “holiday” in its original use meant “holy day,” and holy means “sacred, dedicated to God.” We need to find reasons for celebrating our own special holidays.

Our sister in Christ found that she could improve the lives of residents in the facility where she worked by making every day memorable by assigning notable food names to certain days. One day would be Fettuccine Alfredo Day, and another might be Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie Day. Incorporating food holidays into meal planning gave residents something to look forward to. It told everyone that small celebrations remind us that every day is special and life is worth living.

In ancient Israel, there were a host of special days to remind the people of the blessings of God in ways they might otherwise overlook. They had frequent celebrations of a good harvest, of being free from domination by others, and of the good things that had happened in the past. Jesus used parables to talk about good things even though the circumstances of the common people were bleak at that time. Think of how special days Americans celebrate can bring joy into our lives.

We need to avoid gloom and doom mentalities and rejoice in the good things God has given us. Besides positive national celebrations, add ways of celebrating our own special holidays as we remember the good things God has done. And don’t forget to bring these special celebrations to those who are isolated and fighting the battles of health and old age.

January 25, 2024April 12, 2024

Lunar Cycles, Lunar Influence, and Lunacy

The Latin name for the Moon is “luna.” Many English words are derived from that root, including lunacy, lunatic, and even loon, as in “crazy as a loon.” Having grown up in the north, I know that hearing the cries of loons could lead to thoughts of them being crazy. Lunar cycles occur naturally, but many people believe a “lunar influence” is connected to abnormal behavior.

People have given unique names to certain full-moon appearances, such as blue moon, sturgeon moon, harvest moon, cold moon, snow moon, pink moon, flower moon, strawberry moon, hunter moon, beaver moon, worm moon, and wolf moon. You can find those names in the Old Farmer’s Almanac, so it should not be surprising that most of them have connections to agriculture or to a time when people did not have electric lights clouding their view of the sky. I have found that seeing the full moon in remote areas hundreds of miles away from city lights is a moving experience. If you were fishing, harvesting, hunting, or plowing, you would have no problem with just the Moon for illumination.

The Moon is not just an accident, nor is its influence on life. Genesis 1:14 describes God clearing Earth’s cloud cover to let the lights of the heavens (Sun and Moon) become visible “for signs and seasons and for days and years.” Some birds use the Moon for migration journeys that coincide with specific lunar phases. Many animals respond to both circadian rhythms and a lunar clock.

So, how does the Moon affect human activity? Studies show that there are more animal bites from cats, rats, and horses during full moons. That is probably because more humans are doing more things outside at night during a full moon. Also, data show there are more crimes during full moons. Apparently, criminals can use the light of a full moon for their activities just as farmers can.

The Bible refers to lunar cycles for time and mentions lunar festivals (Colossians 2:16) but otherwise makes no particular connections to the Moon. All of the claims of abnormal human behavior during various lunar cycles are in the realm of what is called “folklore.”

I hope you can take some time to admire the full moon away from city lights and imagine how ancient people depended on it for nighttime light to carry on their lives. Meanwhile, don’t worry about it affecting you psychologically or causing biological changes. The animals and insects may be altered by lunar cycles, but you are not a bug or a werewolf.

January 23, 2024January 22, 2024

What We Learn from the Webb Telescope

With all the distractions going on in the world, it is easy to miss perhaps the most remarkable engineering accomplishment of human history. A telescope launched on Christmas Day 2021 is now much further from Earth than the Moon is. The Webb Space Telescope consists of 18 hexagonal mirrors with a total area of 273 square feet (69.54 x 46.46 feet) and can see things in space that can’t be viewed from Earth’s surface. The cost to make the telescope and place it in space was 10 billion dollars, so is it worth the price? Yes, it is! What we learn from the Webb telescope tells us more about God.

More than 40 years ago, J.B. Phillips wrote a book titled Your God is Too Small. The first thing we learned from the Webb telescope is that the cosmos is much bigger than we can imagine. The telescope can see things that no optical device on Earth can. We live in a galaxy containing roughly 100 billion stars, and we know there are many other galaxies in space. Webb has shown us vast numbers of distant galaxies, and as we measure how far away they are, we see what the creation looked like billions of years ago.

Let me give you a simple explanation of what that means. If you travel to a place 100 miles away at 50 miles per hour, how long will it take to get there? The answer is two hours. When we measure how far away these galaxies are, we can tell when the light we see left them. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Doing the same calculation, we know the light reaching the Webb telescope left those galaxies some 13 billion years ago. We are looking backward in time to near the beginning of creation.

The latest pictures from Webb show that these old galaxies are flat like a sheet of paper. We learn from the Webb telescope that the creator was molding and shaping galaxies into a form that would allow planets and, ultimately, life to exist. As we understand the creation process, we see power beyond what we can imagine. Like all scientific discoveries, that raises many new and exciting questions for us to study and understand. It further tells us how unique Earth is and raises an old question the ancients asked about God, “What is man that you are mindful of him” (Psalms 8:4).

January 22, 2024January 20, 2024

What Is Gravity and How Does it Work?

Many things in the creation do not lend themselves to conventional science. Gravity is an excellent example. What is gravity, and where did it come from? Issac Newton suggested that gravity was a property of mass because the more mass something has, the more it weighs. A physics equation describes gravity, saying that if you have two masses, there will be a force of attraction between them.

In a high school physics experiment, we hung two large bags of sand near each other. Gravity would pull them toward each other, and if you increased the amount of sand, it would draw them closer. Using a group of levers, the students could measure the force between the two bags. We can measure it, but what is gravity?

Instead of bags of sand, scientists measure the gravity force between the Earth, Moon, and Sun. What keeps Earth orbiting the Sun and the Moon orbiting the Earth? Isaac Newton proposed that the distance between objects affected the amount of gravitational force between them. An equation describing the attraction between masses 1 and 2 must include the masses, the distance between them, and a number known as the gravitational constant. The equation is F = G (M-1)(M-2)/X². G is the gravitational constant, and scientists have measured it to be 6.67 x 10^-11. If the value of the constant G differed from what it is, the Earth could not exist, and neither could we.

If you don’t follow all of that, don’t worry about it. The point is that gravity is a complex quantity that holds everything together. But that leaves questions unanswered. What is gravity? Is it a wave? How can it work over huge distances? How can mass cause gravity – or does it? Why is the gravity constant precisely what it is?

As science probes deeper into the nature of matter, time, space, and energy, it becomes increasingly evident that not everything physical has a physical cause. We cannot explain the creation of time, space, energy, or gravity by conventional science. As you read modern research reports, you see that our world was shaped from dimensions beyond the four we know about. The laws that govern our world and the dimensions we live in do not fully describe the nature of gravity, time, or even space.

Ancient biblical writers guided by the Spirit of God understood that a wise Creator designed our world. The writer of Proverbs 8 personifies wisdom, giving it a feminine nature. Wisdom says, “O you simple, understand wisdom and have an understanding heart. The Lord possessed me in the beginning of His way before His works of old. I was set up from eternity, from the beginning and before the earth ever was.”

Open-minded contemplation of the creation leads to the recognition that an infinite intelligence beyond that of any human brought the physical creation into existence. We learn from the Bible that God’s purpose was to allow the war between good and evil to end once and forever and that we play an essential role in that war.

January 19, 2024January 16, 2024

Sow Seeds or Pull Weeds

We constantly get solicitations from people who want us to join them in fighting some national problem. Some of them say it is our duty as Christians to be part of their organization, party, or action. It is not my intention to tell anyone what they personally wish to do is wrong, but Christ’s message is not to involve His Church in partisan protests. In “Power For Today,” Gene Shelburne said it well: “Our primary duty is to sow seeds, not to pull weeds. We must remember that it is not our role to administer punishment. Weed pulling is God’s Job.”

That agrees with what Jesus taught in Matthew 13:24-30. His parable tells of a farmer’s attempt to sow seeds in his field where an enemy comes at night and sows destructive weeds. When the seeds germinate, it is evident that someone added weeds to the crop. The workers come to the farmer and ask if they should pull weeds. The farmer replies not to pull weeds because they will uproot the good seeds with them. He says that they should remove and burn the weeds when the harvest comes.

There is much that is wrong with our world. A military response is not the answer. Bombing an abortion clinic, setting fire to a liquor store, or shooting a person promoting prostitution is not the answer. The Church needs to sow seeds by teaching and showing that God’s plan is superior and that the help of the Holy Spirit will make a difference.

When Peter wanted to fight those seizing Christ, Jesus told him to put his sword away (Matthew 26:51-52). The Church must not get involved in politics or military-like actions. By training our young people and teaching all people by every means possible, we sow seeds that can change our country’s direction and impact the world. The forces of evil in the world will try to prevent us from sowing seeds, but the fruit of those forces will be bitter and destructive. History has repeatedly shown that God will take care of human evil in His time.

Reference: Gene Shelburne writing in the February 22, 2024, issue of “Power For Today”