Biblical Creation and Evangelism

There are professing Christians who falsely claim that the church fathers believed that the earth was far older than Scripture indicates, and that biblical (young age) creationists are wrong. It would be a mighty big help if they did their homework on people like Augustine. St. Augustine in his Study , Sandro Botticelli, 1490 It is important to note that Augustine did not consider his writings to be sacred writ, his views changed in some areas, and he freely admitted that his understanding was imperfect. It did not help matters much that he was unskilled in Hebrew and Greek, and he had access to weak Bible translations. He believed that everything was created in an instant (he should have consulted Exodus 20:11, 31:17). Old-earthers must reject the global Flood as well. While Augustine was in no wise a young-earth creationist as we understand the term, claims that he believed like the pagans that Earth was far older are disingenuous. Old-earthers claim Augustine as support for figurati

There are Christians who are excited about using apologetics to defend and present the faith, and there are others who think that is a job for experts. All Christians are commanded to present the faith (2 Cor. 10:5, Col. 4:5-6, 1 Peter 3:15, Acts 17:22-31), but some are called to be more intense with it. And "tense" can apply to many of us. Mostly made at The Keep-Calm-O-Matic  using an image from NASA (Usage of images does not imply endorsement of site contents by anyone) It is indeed unfortunate that some are intent on winning arguments rather than helping the lost come to Christ. Similarly, we can expend mental energy trying to analyze (and sometimes rehash) situations so we can give the most devastating arguments. Yes, by all means, do the best you can. Sometimes we may feel that we botched it. That happens. However, convicting of sin and saving people is the work of the Holy Spirit; we do not do the saving. It is not up to our brilliance (1 Cor. 2:1-5), which can lead to

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 (O

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

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 me

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 d

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 which, for some reason, suddenly became age restricted but I see no problem whatsoever with showing it to children: So, some things that may seem like a big deal to one person are not all that impressive to another. Indeed, what is considered pover