The Perfect End, The Completed Circle

Yellowstone. Yes. That's falling snow!

Our family has just returned from what we call our "Creation Trip"—a trip Mary Ann and I have talked about, prayed about, hoped for, and saved up for, for over a year (but which we just told the girls about in early August after we committed to it). We left for a little over two weeks and took the girls on a 4,044 mile homeschool road trip to different sites that demonstrated the truth of the Genesis Creation account, and the effects of a global flood and subsequent singular ice age on the topography and geology of the earth. We were blessed to talk to multiple Creation Scientists and to get different Creation literature and guidebooks to help us get the most out of our trip. I'll probably post a lot more about the trip and share pictures and insights from it in subsequent posts—but in a nutshell we:

Traveled from Central California through northern Nevada, into Idaho, and camped for five nights in Yellowstone (including two mornings where we woke up to snow on our tent, and one night where 60 mph gusts pushed the sides of our tent in to touch Abigail's nose in her sleeping bag!). While there we saw tremendous demonstrations of thermal activity, flood sculpturing, wildlife (including moose and grizzly), visited the Tetons, and a lot more.

Going daily journals by our Yellowstone campsite.

We continued from there and saw the Museum of the Rockies' amazing dinosaur exhibit (though we differ in our interpretations of the fossil evidence), visited friends, and then traveled around the southern edges of Glacier National Park examining Ice Age evidence (the government shutdown occurred between our visits to Yellowstone and Glacier, and from Yellowstone on all national parks, monuments, etc., were closed).

Leaving the Glacier area we headed south and then cut into Idaho and fossil hunted in Oregon and then spent our last road night in Northern California. And now I'll share why that was the completed circle, the perfect end . . .

Morning snow on our van and tent. Yellowstone.

In the town in Northern California we visited our last night and day of the trip is a church that walks heavily in the miraculous. I am not saying I agree with all of their theology, but I don't have theology perfect either. What is undeniable is the atmosphere they create of love and worship for the Lord, and great faith in Him to demonstrate through us the things He promises in His Word He will do through us. You can't be there for more than a few hours and not feel the faith building increase of being immersed in a place where worship and faith and trust and great expectancy are emphasized. The testimonies of healing that have come out of this church are tremendous, and I attribute to them the encouragement years back that prompted Mary Ann and I to trust God for, and go after, many of the miracles we have seen in our lives and people we have prayed for.

Snow and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

The culture that is created at this church is one in which hundreds of young people, late teens and twenties, head to the streets and pray for people and share the love and power of Jesus with them. As we sat at the coffee shop at the church just soaking up the love for Jesus that fills the place, we were surrounded by dozens of these youth coming out of classes and just talking around us. It was amazing to just listen like a fly on a wall as they shared amazing moments they'd had with Jesus, about times of worship with Jesus, and prayed for one another.You didn't hear inappropriate words, see anyone hitting on anyone, or any of the things you see in a normal, secular coffee shop.

A real log cabin, with no water or bathroom inside, in the
national forest in Montana a friend owns where we stayed.
You bring in water from a spring outside, cook over a wood-
burning stove, and heat by fireplace and propane. No
electricity. The girls were calling each other Laura and Mary—
and we were Ma and Pa—within 5 minutes of our arrival!

It was in this town that we saw the circle that began the first day of the trip completed. I'll explain in a moment, but let me first say that we can all surround ourselves in Christian circles. In those circles it is “safe” to talk about Him, pray for one another, worship, etc.—and Jesus, too, spent time alone with the Father or with just His disciples—but, Jesus ultimately took it to the streets and went to where the lost were who needed to know the Good News of the Kingdom of God. That is the completed circle. He came to serve, to love, to minister, to demonstrate, to destroy the works of the devil, and to reach the lost—from prestigious religious leaders like Nicodemus, to despised prostitutes and hard working common fishermen.

That last night of our trip, after securing a room for the night, as darkness settled in, we drove to dinner and while on the way we saw a young lady, maybe in her twenties, standing in a median at a major intersection with her bike held up by one hand and her other hand on the shoulder of a young man who was standing there hitchhiking. Her head was bowed and she was praying over him. As we sat at a red light and watched she must have prayed at least 30 second or more, and that was after we noticed her. There is no telling how long she'd been talking to him and praying for him before we saw her.

Finding leaf fossils in the national forest in Oregon.

After she then finished they exchanged a few more words, and she got on her bike and continued riding on her way down the street into the darkness. It was a very powerful moment to witness these two heads bowed and the tender touch of caring of this young woman as cars went past in all directions in this busy intersection. And, it was what it is all about. 

The reason we have invested so much in teaching our girls the truth of, and evidence for, the literal Creation account is not so they can become some arrogant intellectuals able to slice and dice on evolutionists, but so that they find their hearts so securely anchored in God's Word, and so deeply trusting it, that they trust the rest of the Bible and trust Jesus' words and promises. In the end what matters is love—the love of God shown through us to others—our faith, and our eternal destiny. 

Why can we surrender our lives to God and trust Him with it and let Him live His life through us? Because He is real and His Word is true, and He does what He says He will do. From the mighty demonstrations of God's spoken word seen in Creation, to the evidences which surround us of a massive flood in which He poured out His judgment on sin, to a deep love and worship of Jesus who died for our sin and the Father who so loved us He sent Him, to a young lady in a median of a busy intersection on a dark night praying for a young hitchhiker . . . the completed circle, the perfect end.

Science, or Opinion?

I recently received the daily email from The Berean Call and it had some excerpts from an Institute of Creation Research (ICR) article about scientists who are criticizing a Montana museum for its portrayal of dinosaurs having been wiped out in the global flood of Noah. The entire article is well worth reading (it is found at: http://www.icr.org/article/5004/), but I will post the first three paragraphs here, and then share about a part of personal history I share with the story, which is probably why it attracted my attention.

Paleontologists Target Montana Dinosaur Museum
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

The Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, which opened its doors earlier this year, boasts Montana’s second-largest set of displayed dinosaur remains. The record is still held by the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman. Both are located in Montana near a rich cache of world-famous fossils. The Glendive Museum stands apart, however, in that it presents dinosaurs as having been drowned and their remains preserved in the massive worldwide flood described in the Bible. This view has prompted reactionary comments from mainstream scientists.

Widely known dinosaur expert Jack Horner told the Billings Gazette, “It's not a science museum at all. It's not a pseudo-science museum. It's just not science…There's nothing scientific about it.” He also stated, “You can't have a debate about science and opinion.” Horner did not specify which artifacts in the museum were not scientific, nor what was unscientific about them.

The museum’s founder and director Otis E. Kline, Jr., presented two rationally testable models to the Gazette for how certain marine fossils were transported inland: “There's two ways these fossils could get to Kansas….The evolutionary way says there was an inland sea that came from the Gulf of Mexico. But the biblical creation way says it was the flood of Noah's day.”

This article attracted my attention more than most other Creation/evolution articles because, in the early 1990s, Mary Ann and I spent about five weeks living in a tepee on the Montana badlands outside of Choteau, leading tours for the Museum of the Rockies (mentioned in the article) at a dinosaur dig site led by Jack Horner (quoted in the article). This famous site is the home of Egg Mountain as well a fossil-laden “badlands” and a massive band of dinosaur bones found in incredible density over a large swath of land. If you watch any modern dinosaur specials you will probably find them quoting, or at least mentioning, Jack Horner, Egg Mountain, and this region. (Interestingly—and I can’t swear on its truth—we were told while there that Michael Creighton’s idea for Jurassic Park supposedly began one night around a fire pit at the sight during a casual discussion of how DNA from a dinosaur might be preserved.) The four pictures posted with this blog entry are two different ones of a bearded "me" leading tours there; some carnivore dinosaur teeth still in matrix (rock) which we found; and Art, a friend of ours who came to visit us, with Mary Ann and I in front of the tepees we lived in at the camp.

While living and working at the site Mary Ann and I were privileged to meet Jack Horner as well as many other wonderful men and women working there who sincerely loved what they were doing and believed the current teaching of Paleontology’s leaders wholeheartedly. They were a special group of people and our hearts will always hold a tender spot for them and for our time spent there.

At the time we worked at the site I was not a Christian, but I was well into my journey through the apologetics and trying to come to my conclusions about evolution, Creation, the Bible, Jesus, etc. Interestingly, it was Jack Horner who unwittingly played a part in my eventually coming down on the side of Creation and a young earth, leading to a belief in the Bible.

One day Mary Ann and I were privileged to take a walk through the badlands on a tour led by Jack for the staff. We got to hear him talk about a paper he was publishing and to ask him questions. One of the things he talked about was his theory of how species X (my name) transitioned into species Z (also my name). If my memory serves me correctly, they had many articulated skeletons (the bones were found together, in the animal’s shape) of both species X and Z. Struggling to understand the whole evolution versus creation thing, I asked him if we had any articulated fossil skeletons of species “Y,” which would have been the transitional species between the two.

As I remember it (understand, I am going back almost 20 years in my memory here and could well have some things wrong), he said that we really didn’t. “Why not?,” I asked. He surmised that an interior seaway which paleontologists believe covered much of the central United States back then expanded and contracted over millions of years. He theorized that species X lived on the plains when the sea was small, and was pushed into the pockets of the Rockies when the sea expanded. In those compressed pockets, he theorized, evolution was accelerated, and when the sea later receded it was species Z that emerged onto the plains. In my recollection, he thought that the reason we don’t have articulated fossils of species Y was because of both the upheaval of the mountains which would have disrupted them, and the washes down from the mountains that would have disrupted and scattered any skeletons found there.

I remember hearing that and really struggling to accept it as I began to see just how many leaps of faith (and “theories”) were required to believe the concept of evolution. I know that Jack was sincere in his ideas and fully committed to them. He hungered for truth like I did. I truly like Jack Horner (though he wouldn’t remember me from anyone else), and I truly was honored to be a part of the camp and the work. I’d welcome him to my screen porch for a cup of coffee in a heartbeat! But, it strikes me that what he shared with me in those hills was, simply, opinion—an opinion he had given a lot of thought to, and believed in, but still an opinion. Which is why, I guess, I was so struck the other day with the quote above which is attributed to him about the museum, “You can't have a debate about science and opinion.” I have now, years later, come to believe that there is more evidence for a global flood of Noah’s day, and for a young earth, then there is against it—and I can see that even then God’s Spirit was at work in me as I struggled to embrace what I would later come to believe was not true.

I Couldn't Not Share This . . .

I received this picture from a lady in our church. It was taken, I understand, in Montana. It was too fun to not pass on. In case you have trouble reading it, it says, "PRAYER is the best way to meet the Lord. 'Trespassing is faster'. "

God bless you all.