Biblical Creation and Evangelism

This is one of those times when we may wonder if the apostasy of the end times is upon us, especially with the extremely rapid moral decline in society. It is one thing for people to have no concern or even contempt for God, but to pray and confess our sins to plants? Credit: freestocks.org Some Native Americans would pray to the spirits of the animals they had killed, and they had other elements of pantheism and animism in their eclectic religions. Now some global warming activists and owlhoots at an allegedly Christian seminary are having people confess their sins to plants. Union Theological Seminary was, for a short time, orthodox in its theology until it became extremely liberal. They are the ones involved in these shenanigans. Let's ride up on the hill and look at the bigger view for a spell. We have to look all the way back to Genesis, where God gave us dominion and stewardship over creation. Plants were created on the third day of creation week, with land animals an...

Cowboys riding the long trail usually clam up, but once in a while, someone commences philosophizing. When the subject is met with little more than grunts from the others, silence ensues again. If you study on it, it seems that everybody has a philosophy of some sort. There are many philosophers throughout history, and many are relegated to history books. Le Philosophe by Henri Martin When people talk about philosophers, images of smug intellectuals taking solitary walks and pondering, or discussing their versions of the meaning of life while smoking pipes. I have stated that I find philosophy useless because I have no use for the ideas of Kierkegaard, Rousseau, Kant, and so on. However, I learned a few things about philosophy since then, especially the practice and purpose. Some folks shy away from philosophy as ungodly, referring to Colossians 2:8. Context, people! Chasing after worldly  philosophies can be very harmful, but the Bible is actually loaded with philoso...

Our choice of words is vital when we want to communicate about important subjects. An important reason of this is the connotations of words. For example, my mother took exception to my description of a fragrance: it reeks. It did reek, but that word implies that the fragrance was unpleasant. Credit: Clker clipart Words change their meanings over the years. One example is in Genesis 1:28 KJV, where God commanded mankind and animals to replenish the earth. Back in 1611, that was understood to mean fill, but newer translations avoid replenish. In A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story, "The Adventure of Black Peter", we read: "The outhouse was the simplest of dwellings, wooden-walled, shingle-roofed, one window beside the door and one on the farther side. Stanley Hopkins drew the key from his pocket and had stooped to the lock, when he paused with a look of attention and surprise upon his face." As Americans can probably see, an outhouse  is more aptly n...

It is interesting and sometimes fun to identify ways in which scientists have discovered things that were in the Bible long before. Yes, we know, the Bible is not a science textbook. When scientific items are mentioned, however, it is always correct. It seems that scientists are learning about human depravity. Credit: Freeimages / Cyan Li God's Word tells us in Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart of man is (depending on the translation) desperately sick, wicked corrupt, incurable. Our righteousness is repulsive to God (Isaiah 64:6, Psalm 10:4, Ephesians 2:1-5). We may have the notion that we are good people and God looks on us fondly, bragging to the angels about how wonderful we are, but that is the opposite of the truth. Our hearts are deceitful and corrupt, and we think we are doing good things for the right reasons, but that's not necessarily the case. Sure, sometimes people will do great things, but that is because God has placed knowledge of himself in our hearts (Romans...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen Over the years, this child has had to endure new expressions while riding the Christian Life Trail. Members of the body of Christ  have been lacking in their commitment to the Word of God almost from the get-go, as the early epistles will attest. It seems that things are getting worse nowadays. Some of the new expressions include woke and wokeness , critical race theory , and other anti-Christian humanistic philosophies that are found mostly on the political left and with liberal professing Christians. A large part of that is virtue signaling , which involves prideful "dig me!" trumpet sounding from those who seek the approval of men instead of proclaiming the truth and authority of Scripture. When these signals and philosophies come from professing Christians, they are even more disgusting than when leftists scream in the streets. Notice how there has been a great deal of news lately about professing Christians who have apostatized such as Mic...

When engaging your typical internet village atheist, the Christian apologist seldom encounters rational discussion. To use a common expression, I have found that these professing atheists are control freaks. Not only do they insist that their worldview is superior to ours because atheism,  they are hostile to our presentations of reason. Credit: Pixabay /  Arek Socha Atheists and other anti-creationists attempt to justify their worldviews and morality by attacking God and simultaneously saying they "lack belief" in his existence and creation. Evidence for his existence is rejected based on their materialistic presuppositions, not because of flaws in our logic or the evidence. The use of presuppositional apologetics is something that really puts burrs under their saddles because we give critiques of their worldviews, expose flaws in their epistemology , point out logical fallacies, and especially because we stand on the authority of God's Word.  Some get downright...

Biblical creationists and other professing Christians freely admit that the Bible is not a science book. That is a good thing, because it would have to be constantly rewritten — especially regarding origins . There are people who wonder how we should handle the first eleven chapters of Genesis and hot it relates to science. Credit: RGBStock /  Billy Frank Alexander Some folks wonder if the first part of Genesis is poetry, a polemic, or something else. The Bible is history, and this fact has been verified many times. It also records miraculous events, which puts burrs under the saddles of materialists. God does not tell us how he did many things, but we trust God not only for the miracles of history, but Christians trust God for our salvation, the return of Jesus, and the restoration at the end of all things. Science does not warrant a superior position over God's Word even though it is a useful tool.  A letter to CMI asks, As someone who takes by faith that God crea...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen There are people who say that God was too severe with the Genesis Flood. Atheists use this as a way to set themselves up to condemn through their own self-righteous "morality" to judge God (that they claim doesn't exist anyway!) with a fallacious argument from outrage (see Job 40:8). Many professing Christians are not a whole heap better. The Deluge / John Martin, 1834 Let's be direct. God's Judgment is not a pleasant subject, whether it is Hell, the Flood, or other forms. People get a mite uppity, forgetting that God is our Creator and is holy and just. His actions and character are not evil simply because we do not like what he says and does. When Adam sinned, he began blamestorming even though he was told that in the day he ate of the fruit, he would die. Literally, " dying you shall die ", as the process began and his sin affected all of creation (Rom. 5:12, Rom. 8:22). I wonder how many times Adam saw what was hap...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen There are a couple of messages from Phil Johnson that I am recommending, but before that, a bit of a lament. Many Christians are not serious about their spiritual lives. We may go to church on Sunday and listen to the sermon, maybe read the Bible once in a while, pray a bit, then forget about God most of the time. Others may get what can be called "tunnel vision" by focusing on favorite subjects. Those of us who are involved in apologetics need to learn theology as well as materials to defend the Bible, and biblical creationists have an even more specialized calling. We also must learn theology, but we can have our own tunnel vision. I try to avoid that by listening to sermons and such while doing data entry work. This gives some variety and is edifying in other areas. There have been some pleasant surprises where I might think, "Well, I'm low on material, may as well listen to this", and been impacted by the message. We must not f...

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen One of the most difficult things about being a Christian is: other Christians. Believers can have their faith adversely affected or even set it aside and unbelievers use our treatment of each other as an excuse to ridicule the faith and justify their rebellion against God. Those verses on how believers are supposed to treat each other seem to have been excised from Bibles nowadays. It gets discouraging. It gets mighty frustrating when we are working on helping the church with apologetics and biblical creation, then some tinhorn from a different camp comes along with his or her own ideas and flings horse apples at us in the guise of "reason" while pretending to do Jesus a big favor. We expect viperine tactics from atheists and other unbelievers, but it gets mighty smelly coming from professing Christians. Southern Evangelical Seminary and Bible College has a doctrinal statement that seems reasonable to me, but some things are missing that people...