Distinguishing Between "Make" and "Create" in Genesis 1

There are some professing Christians who insist on finding ways of adding long ages into the Bible, but they ignore the context. While the context is frequently the surrounding verses, it can also mean culture, languages, and more. We look now at make and create.

Credit: Freeimages / Fernanda Ferrari

Those owlhoots have attempted to bushwhack the plain meaning of Scripture by saying that they are different aspects of creation, and that make means using material that was already created. Their eisegesis becomes heinous when their alleged distinction is used to give them license to add millions of years. Some even try to shove evolution into the picture. It won't work, especially when the greater context includes the New Testament.

Many people who have written on Genesis 1 have attempted to make a very significant distinction between two Hebrew words found there: bara (בָּרָא, to create) and asah (עָשָׂה, to make or do). Theistic evolutionists (TEs) and old-earth creationists (OECs) both accept the millions of years advocated by the scientific establishment (although the OECs do not accept neo-Darwinian evolution while TEs do). They sometimes try to defend the acceptance of millions of years by saying that bara refers to supernatural creation ex nihilo (Latin for “out of nothing”) but that asah means to make out of pre-existing material and therefore allows for creation over a long period of time.

This article should prove helpful when encountering people who use these words for long ages. To read the rest (you may want to bookmark it), head on over to "Understanding Genesis 1 Hebrew: Create (bara) & Make (asah)".

Secularists Using Dinosaurs to Indoctrinate Children

Now there is a provocative title! Believers in an old Earth, evolution, and similar things are probably clutching their pearls while expressing their outrage. Secularists (and many professing Christians, unfortunately) insist that deep time is a scientific fact. We must teach children real science, right?

Credit: Flickr / Marco Verch (CC BY 2.0)

What is actually happening is that children (as well as the rest of us) are being given stories based on naturalistic interpretations about the past; there is no actual empirical evidence that obliges us to believe that the earth is billions of years old.

Children have been enamored with dinosaurs for many years, and this has been increasing in recent years. It is not surprising to find a youngster who can rattle off the names, secular dates, locations, and more of those terrible lizards.

Movies and merchandising helped fuel the interest of many people. (I wonder how many were annoyed when the Jurassic Park movies made the Velociraptors much larger than real: the size of turkeys?) Those dinosaurs bring along evolutionary tall tales, opinions taught as facts.

With such concentration and repetition of evolutionary propaganda, plus being confined for many hours a day over several years in secular indoctrination centers operated by the Ministry of Truth, no wonder children are rejecting the truth of the Bible. Especially the creation account, since they are brainwashed into accepting the latest secular religions myths of origins.

Atheists and evolutionists hypocritically say that Christian parents are the ones doing the brainwashing because we teach biblical truth. Or should be doing so! In fact, dinosaurs can be a starting point to teach the truth of creation, essentially making dinosaurs into missionary lizards.

I know that children love dinosaurs because of the great demand for dinosaur books, posters, toys, costumes, DVDs, movies, character memorabilia etc. If you were to search the internet under the category “books” for the topic “dinosaurs” you would find that over 53,000 titles (at last count) are available. A statistical sampling of the contents of those 53,000 titles result in the conclusion that nearly all of these titles were written with atheistic presuppositions and within the secular worldview that is founded on the ideas of naturalism (evolution and millions of years).

Let me remind you of the atheistic presuppositions in play here:

Let me remind you that you can see the full article at "Children & Dinosaurs".

The Category of Evolved Religion

While categorizing and labeling can be helpful points of reference, it can also be very misleading. Misotheists often say that they hate "religion", but commit the hasty generalization fallacy to justify their own rebellion against God. Categorizing in this manner is disingenuous and harmful.

Background image: Pixabay / Ro Ma, modified with Clker Clipart

If you slip on your wading boots and trudge through the slough of an atheist social media location, you are likely to find fringe religious people (usually professing to be Christians) singled out to confirm their biases that everything in the "religion" category is bad; the exception is not the rule. Ironically, they have apoplectic fits when it is pointed out that atheism itself is a religion, and evolutionism is like it.

Each religion is different. I'll allow that many have some things in common, but categorizing based on superficialities and exceptions is foolish. Also, there are people who claim to be members of a religion but do not actually follow its tenets. That said, biblical Christianity — with creation as the foundation — has teachings that are unique and beneficial to humanity. Also, ours is supported by evidence. That's what happens when God gives us his written Word.

Atheists commit a common fallacy. They claim to oppose “religion,” then proceed to lump Christianity in with Molech worship, Egyptian sun worship, and Greco-Roman idolatries that worshipped Zeus, Aphrodite, Bacchus, and Dionysus. Anything that can be labeled “religion” gets stirred into a pot of poison stew that spoils the whole lot. . . . The same lumpers also conveniently define religion to exclude atheism, when the word religion is best used to describe systems of belief that individuals “rely” on to answer the big questions. . .

You can read the entire article at "Why Religion Is a Meaningless Category". Be sure to come back because we have another interesting article for your edification.

Materialists presuppose evolution, so they typically denigrate the category of religion as something that evolved as well. We know that Christianity is very different from others. An important starting point is — well, the starting point. God is our Creator and Redeemer, and believers in universal common descent evolution cannot evosplain away the uniqueness of the Bible, and especially Jesus, our resurrected Creator and Kinsman-Redeemer.

When secular experts talk about the evolution of religion, they make gods of themselves.

It’s one thing to study the history of religions and to compare their similarities and differences; that’s a matter of scholarly research using historical materials. It’s a totally different thing to speak of religions emerging and evolving over time, as if religion emerged in our hominid past and has been evolving on a line of progress. Scholars who do that are donning the Yoda Complex costume and pretending to be gods themselves, knowing good and evil.

The rest of this article can be found at "Creation: The Missing Ingredient in Religious Studies".

Darwinism and the United Methodist Church

My father was a pastor in the Untied Methodist Church (misspelling intentional) for fifty years, but for some reason, he never accepted evolutionism to my knowledge. He had liberal theology and some old-earth views, but some owlhoots in the denomination were far too liberal for his standards.

Original image before modification: Wikimedia Commons / San906 (CC0 1.0)

The UMC states that it has 12 million members, so it is not surprising that members have a variety of views. (One adult Sunday School class I attended was conducted by someone who was not even a member of that church, and was thought to be an agnostic. Good church decision making there, huh?) One of the first observed problems with compromise on creation is rejection of the authority of Scripture.

Years ago, I was giving creation science presentations to churches, and one of them was a UMC. That pastor believed in biblical creation, but one old boy refused to shake my hand or even look at me after the service. While the denomination is infested with Darwinism and liberalism, it is so large that many member believe in creation. Most of those in power, however, do not.

The United Methodist Church’s opposition to both creationism and intelligent design was reviewed. It was concluded that the membership is generally in support of the creation worldview, but the high-level leadership, especially the bishops, in general, support the Darwinian worldview and oppose the creation worldview. According to its website, the church’s official policy is that all life, including humans, evolved from a common ancestor by the accumulation of mutations selected by the survival-of-the-fittest mechanism called natural selection.

 To read the rest of this paper, see "A history of the United Methodist Church’s opposition to creationism and intelligent design".

Christmas — Relatively Speaking

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen 

For a short time, there was a series of captioned pictures often called "Unimpressed Astronaut" where the image was condescending about, for example, sky diving. There are many comparisons that people make, and getting some perspective can be a good thing at times. 

Adoration of the Shepherds, Giorgione, ca. 1505

We had the winter's first serious cold spell, reaching low temperatures of two degrees Fahrenheit (almost minus 17 Celsius). It was cold for us, especially since winter did not hit our area all that hard until the week of December 17, 2020. People in Montana and other states would be saying, "That's cute". So would many in Canada, eh? Or Siberia, such as in this two-minute video:

So, some things that may seem like a big deal to one person are not all that impressive to another. Indeed, what is considered poverty level in these here formerly United States is almost luxurious to poverty in places like India — relatively speaking.

Postmodern philosophy uses relative morality, which is self-refuting. Indeed, the apostle Paul slapped down the idea of people comparing themselves with each other (2 Cor. 10:12). It is not uncommon to have misotheists say, "I'm a good person. I don't do this or that, and I've done all these wonderful things...and I'm better than a lot of Christians!" Assuming that the professing atheist (who was lying earlier in a comments section) was being honest, so what?

Original image: Unsplash / Jared Rice

When a misotheist accuses a creationist of "lying about evolution", ask why, if that is true, would it be wrong according to an atheistic worldview. After all, we're just bundles of chemicals, meat machines, doing what biology dictates. We're doing what we think improves our survival and comfort. The atheist is actually appealing to an ultimate standard and is not being consistent with a postmodernist or materialist "truth is relative" philosophy!

On a superficial level, people say that gods have powers above mere mortals, then equate Yahweh with those other ones. Not hardly! Look at mythology and see that those gods were capricious, spiteful, lusted after humans, deceivers, and more. For the most part, they didn't care about humans who were simply trifles for their amusements.

There is nothing relative about the importance of Christmas, and nothing like it in mythology, either. God the Son humbled himself and left his glory behind, humbling himself and taking on the form of a man. Mary the virgin conceived and gave birth to Jesus. His humiliation went further, to death on the cross. He was bodily raised in glory three days later, and he sent the Holy Spirit to indwell believers. We are waiting for his return and the blessed hope, not an eternal dirt nap. No mythological gods had anything like that to offer. Neither does the hopelessness of atheism.

Nothing relative about it, nothing remotely similar with any of those false gods. They don't love us, nor do they want our repentance. It's simple, because they don't exist. We have excellent reasons to celebrate Christmas!

Genesis Flood was Global

Pardon the awkward title, but Blogger, a property of the leftists at Google, was not allowing the previous one to publish. Since they keep destroying my work now, I keep backing it up so I can eventually post something. Even if I have to change titles and publishing times.

There are professing Christians who believe that the Genesis Flood was a local event. Worse, some say it was allegorical. Mayhaps they were not taught well, have not seriously read the Bible — or fully believe it. Denying the global Flood has serious repercussions.

Credit: Pixabay / Jeff Jacobs

To be blunt, by denying the global Flood, they not only have a problem with biblical authority, they are also calling God a liar. It is referenced several times in Scripture. Bible authors under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit affirmed the global Flood, as did Jesus who is God the Son. If they were mistaken or dishonest, professing Christians have serious problems with who to trust for their salvation.

It is clear that the Flood was global, even without in-depth studies of Hebrew and Greek words. In addition, we see that the Noachian Flood was catastrophic. An explanation of the original languages is helpful in this area, but again, much can be learned by reading the Bible. Creation science emphasizes what is observed in geology. When old-earth assumptions are stripped away and the evidence is seriously considered from a Flood geology standpoint, things make a great deal more sense than an allegorical, mythical, or local Flood.

I have had the privilege of speaking on creation and evolution in 35 countries, and I have found that most Christians have never considered the biblical and scientific evidence that Genesis 1–11 is literal history and teaches that the creation is only about 6000 years old. I have also found that most Christians accept the claim made by the scientific majority that the earth is billions of years old. I have further found that whether Christians accept the millions of years or not, the vast majority have never considered Noah’s flood and its relevance to the question of the age of the earth.

To read the rest of this informative article, see "Noah’s Flood: a Historical, Global Catastrophe".

Blogger, a Google Property, Refuses to Let Me Publish My Post

There are professing Christians who believe that the Genesis Flood was a local event. Worse, some say it was allegorical. Mayhaps they were not taught well, have not seriously read the Bible — or fully believe it. Denying the global Flood has serious repercussions.