Feeling Crabby

One thing about having to be on the road a lot lately is that it gives us a chance to stop now and then and check out some road cuts for fossils. On Monday Mary Ann and Abigail and I were blessed to do a little fossil hunting, and then Mary Ann and I did some more in a different location yesterday. I thought you might enjoy seeing the treasures we found. God is so good, and the Bible so trustworthy. He told us how He created the world. He told us how He flooded it. And He put the evidence of it all around us to just find. Enjoy a slice of our life with us. God bless you.

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. Proverbs 25:2

Crabs found after we split open an "innocent" looking rock.

Probably a sea urchin. Still in rock matrix.

Huntin' together.

Clam like shell still in rock matrix.

On a lighter note . . .

On a lighter note . . . if you've known or followed me any length of time you know that I am passionate about fossil hunting. I love to uncover evidence of Noah's flood and Genesis' trustworthiness, and to find things that no human eye has ever seen. I love doing it with my family because the only cost is getting to a place to look, and you have the thrill of the hunt and the exultation of discovering a treasure.

Well, being the hopeless romantic I am, for our anniversary last weekend Mary Ann and I did some poking around for fossils (no, that wasn't all we did, we had other great adventures, so no comments chewing me out).

Look what we found some 31-plus miles from the nearest coastline of the Pacific Ocean, and over 1,300 feet above sea level . . .

Building "Memorials"

The Bible, especially the Old Testament, is strong on the theme of building memorials so as not to forget the mighty works of God. It repeatedly talks about teaching His works to our children, and it repeatedly displays the danger (and propensity) of turning from Him when generations pass that remember His works and new generations arise that don't.

I believe the flood of Noah is one of the greatest acts recorded in the Bible for us to never forget. I believe this for many reasons, a few of which are:
1. It is a reminder that God is holy and will not tolerate sin.
2. It is a foreshadowing of Christ, our ark of refuge.
3. It is the dominate geological vehicle by which we can explain topography around us and show there is no need to run from believing Genesis means what it clearly says in its young earth, six-day Creation account. (This is the primary area the Bible is being undermined in our culture, and from there natural doubt in the trustworthiness of the rest of the Bible often follows.)
4. Peter makes it clear in 2 Peter 3 that those who doubt the initial flood will be those who scoff at coming judgment (hence at a need for a Savior).
5. Jesus and other Bible authors refer to Genesis and the flood as literal and true and if they are wrong in that area we have basis to doubt them in other areas.

Along these lines our family is experiencing a growing passion for finding evidence for the flood, and we are stunned by how much is out there. Once we start looking and asking around we are seeing overwhelming evidence for catastrophic water movement, coverage, and force around the world. This is seen in planation surfaces that are not forming today but which display tremendous evidence of massive water presence and flow, folded sedimentary layers revealed in road cuts, and the billions of marine fossils found all over the world—from sea level to the tops of our highest mountains.

So . . . the other day, lest we forget the mighty works of God, we took advantage of our blessed privilege of homeschooling and taught the girls the basic of woodshop, tool uses and safety, etc., and then we built a shelf to display a few of the fossils and similar things we have that we have either found or purchased. I hope you enjoy the photographic display and share the day with us!

Blessings to all of you, and thanks for sharing in our life.   —Erick

Already in Place . . .

I have been fascinated in the road of study God has taken me down lately, which it seems He keeps centering on the church's early 1800s collapse from believing a literal six-day Genesis Creation to believing alternatives like a gap theory or that the "days" of Genesis mean much more than a literal day (despite God saying there was evening and there was morning for them). I thought you might be interested in a brief summary of what I've learned so far . . .

Shoshone Falls area of Idaho. One of many places we saw
on our trip that now attribute the terrain to a short duration
catastrophic flood event instead of a gradual carving out
over long periods of time.

If you'd ask most Christians when the collapse of Genesis belief occurred my guess is that many would say it began with Darwin. The reality is that well before Darwin uniformitarian geology was gaining strength. This basically says that the present is the key to the past (change is uniform) so therefore, since we see earth changing so slowly now, to arrive at where we are now at this rate of change would take vast periods of time. In opposition to them were catastrophists who believe that the earth's surface was explained by a major (or multiple major) catastrophe(s) . . . i.e. a global flood.

Over the early decades of the 1800s it appears the catastrophists were shut out as the dominate voice, with a few "Scriptural Geologists" trying to hold the gates closed, but Christian leader after Christian leader collapsing under the pressure and assumption that the latest geological "evidence" was true. So, scrambling to find a way to "preserve" the inspiration and truth of Scripture these other theories surfaced that tried to reconcile the two, giving room for vast periods of time and Scripture to still be true.

By the time Darwin published his On the Origin of Species book in 1859 the church had already, for the most part, caved to old earth theories—"reinterpreting" Scripture to fit "nature" instead of interpreting nature in light of Scripture. At this point in the early to mid-1800s it seems to me that it is mainly geology and the earth that seem to be discussed, but then, along comes Darwin—strongly influenced in old earth gradual change theory—who publishes a theory of life that has man evolving from primitive life forms over ages and ages of time.

"Oh no! What do we do? Man made in God's image from apes! Death before sin! Heaven forbid!" I can assume many cries like that went up from Christians based on many of the responses to Darwin's book I've read about . . . but, it is the church who'd already put in place from their pulpits the two primary tenets needed to believe in evolution across species (the earth is vast periods of time old, and Scripture doesn't mean what it clearly says it means and confirms in other places in Scripture), and who'd already set the precedent of reinterpreting Scripture to "science."

Well, now the church has to explain how and why the rest of Scripture and God's promises and the revelations of God's character and nature are true when they've already put themselves as the judge and jury in arbitrarily declaring parts of it true and parts not. And, they have to explain in a way that doesn't keep "reinterpreting" Scripture, how death entered through sin if there was death before sin, how a brutal and self-centered killing idea of survival of the fittest could possibly be declared "as good" by God, why Jesus' genealogy goes to Adam, how sin entered through "one man," and so on and so on and so on.

I actually find it stunning in the inconsistency of a church submitting God's Word to purported "science" in the origins and age of the earth issue, but then standing adamantly against that same "science" that equally declares impossible or "false" things like resurrection from the dead, virgin birth, multiplying of loaves and fishes, miraculous healings, parting of oceans, walking on water, demonic and angelic activity, Heaven, Hell, etc. Is it any wonder the world gives us so little credit when we are so inconsistent and arbitrary?

Anyway, I found that insight into the early/mid-1800s compromise fascinating and eye-opening as it sheds light on why, when Darwin pops up, we fell so fast. Maybe it interests you as well. I believe that this issue is tremendously critical as the foundation of our faith in the Bible, how we interpret the Bible, and the foundation of what we submit as the highest source of truth are at stake. And, despite what the media and everyone else tells us, a little research will reveal multitudes of Ph.D. and other scientists who believe the evidence supports a literal young-earth Creation as recorded in Genesis.

Note: Today it is fascinating how many geological sites (some of which we visited on our Fall "Creation Trip" up into Yellowstone) now attribute significant terrain features to massive interior seas that breached in the past and carved out stunning canyons and topography on their way to the major oceans. Of course none of these sites attribute any of that to the receding flood waters of Noah's flood, or mention that these interior seas likely formed during the flood and subsequent Ice Age, but it is interesting to see the word "catastrophe" returning in different forms in secular geologic theories since it was so "taboo" to even hint at it for so many decades and possibly give Creationists and "Flood people" any chance of credibility.

A Cliff and a Cross

Chapel of  the Transfiguration

In the Grand Tetons National Park there is a little church in a place called Moose. It is a log building with a mighty glass window behind the altar. If you look out the window you see, past the cross in front of it, the rugged Tetons upthrust as a jagged knife against the sky. Psalm 104 tells us how near the end of the flood the mountains rose up and the valleys sank down when it says:

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. (Psalm 104:5–9)

As I stood at the altar and saw the cross silhouetted against the mountains I was struck by the beauty and power of it. There, in the distance, were mountains which rose up through the waters of judgment. Jagged reminders of a time when God judged the world and His wrath against sin was poured out against it and man. God's Word tells us that there is another judgment coming, and 2 Peter 3 tells us that the same ones who doubt the Flood are the ones who will doubt the coming judgment as well. 

Judgment and the Cross—as seen from the window
behind the altar.

But there, in front of those mountains, stood the cross—the work of God on my behalf that saves me from the coming judgment. It was a powerful reminder that while I was immersed in scenery that left me in awe, my awe was to be toward the one who created Creation, and who died for me. 

It was a timely reminded because I had become so excited by the stunning things we had seen that I realized I was at times more excited about them then the One who made them. The cross and the cliff—mountains of judgment in the back fronted by the cross that my Savior carried up His own hill to die, so that I would not have to . . . Thank You, Lord. May I or my generations until You return never doubt You or Your Word, and may we never be more in awe of Creation than we are of the Creator.

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.

Is the Present the Key to the Past?

You can explain the earth's geology in one of two ways. Uniformitarian belief (which includes Christian compromise attempts to "make" Genesis match "science") says the present is the key to the past. Therefore, since the earth's surface changes very slowly today they conclude it must have been changing at the same rate all along (a "uniform" rate), therefore vast periods of time had to have passed to explain what we see today. People who reject God have no problem with this. Christians who believe this are forced to manipulate Genesis to say what it doesn't say, or to add to it things it doesn't support.

The other lens to view and interpret the earth around us through is that of a catastrophe that dramatically shaped the earth's surface in a very short period of time. This fits exactly with the young earth, eye-witness account of Creation and a global flood given in Genesis. (Eye-witness because God was there and He recorded what happened!) In this model the earth's surface was dramatically ruptured and uplifted and scarred during the global flood of Noah and the period following it.

I believe the earth was probably a lot gentler in contour prior to the flood. This makes sense to me since God gave us the earth for our use and to take dominion over, and we can't do either to parts of it we can't access or live in. Then, when God had had enough, He judged the world with a global flood. I have read that if the earth's land was flat the oceans would cover it by over 8,000 feet, so there is clearly enough water on the earth to cover the land even with some contour.

Genesis tells us the earth was flooded for an extended time, and at 8 lbs/gallon that weight alone would have tremendously impacted the earth's surface and plates. Add that the fountains of the deep opened up and you have splitting and rupturing below. Then add the effect of the runoff of water as it first sheeted, then, as mountains rose out of it, started to narrow (which would accelerate its flow), and you have tremendous gouging and cutting and sediment moving.

Then we have Psalm 104. Some people say this describes Creation but I don't think that is possible because it talks about the waters never again covering the earth. The Bible makes it clear the water covered the earth in Noah's flood, so it has to be talking about that flood. It gives us a tremendous window into what the earth endured in the flood and shortly after. The specific section of verses I am referencing say:

He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. (Psalm 104:5–9) ESV

Mountains rising, valleys sinking, flood waters receding. Could this explain what we see? Absolutely! And it is what God said happened and, when the presuppositional bias of science that there is no God is removed, it is what true science supports! No, the present is not the key to the past, and we don't need to buy the old earth view. It is completely incompatible with the Gospel, it destroys the words of Jesus and other New Testament books, and it erodes faith in the Bible as a whole. God formed the earth, then He judged the earth, and He provided an ark in which safety was found until He said "enough" and closed its door. Inside the ark it was safe, and outside it was death, as the ark rose and left the earth behind. Nothing has changed. Our ark is Jesus. And the door is open until God shuts it, but then it will be too late. The same Bible that tells us how the earth was formed is the same Bible that tells us that as well. May we believe it, live it, and trust it until that day comes!

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.

It’s Not a Bathtub With Cute Giraffes Popping Out!

I love being surrounded by things that remind us of God. Bethany and Abigail play with a cute Noah’s Ark toy that I had as a kid, we hang Christmas ornaments with Bible pictures, we send and receive cards with pictures of Bible things on them, and we decorated our girl’s crib area with cute little Noah’s Arks that are delightful to a baby with their elephants and giraffes sticking their HUGE heads out of the TINY ark. These are delightful and wonderful and I’d probably decorate our nursery again with them, so don’t take what I am about to say as being a “kill joy” or “conspiracy theorist.”

These things are, I believe, fun and a great way to introduce our children to the testimony of the Lord’s work through history, but they may, unbeknownst to us, aid in undermining our faith in the account when we get a little older if we aren’t careful and diligent to replace those cute images with real facts about things like the ark.

What I mean by that is this—the ark would have had to have thousands and thousands of animals in it to do what God said it did, and if we try and fit the Biblical account of Noah in to an image of the ark that goes back to our childhood nursery or toy, we will, by necessity, find doubt about the account (hence God’s Word) creeping in. There is simply no way the account of Noah’s Ark could be true if it is anything like the way we usually see it pictured and, if that is our picture of it, we will begin to doubt or try and water down this account of God’s judgment and the faith that preserved a righteous people through it. I don’t care where doubt in God’s Word creeps in—it will always, from there, try and slink and slither its way toward the core of God’s Word, the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, yesterday for the history time of homeschool, we took my 50' tape measure and started in our yard and took it nine times down our driveway and across our road in to our neighbors field to make the Bible’s recorded 450' length of the ark come to life for us. I can tell you, if you have never done that, that was one big ship! Wow—it truly was an awesome, mighty vessel worthy to sustain the violent upheaval of the earth and heaven’s waters! Looking at its size you can see how Noah was a giant of faith to persevere in building it!

So, if you ever want to be blown away, and to have your faith restored, come on over. You can now stand outside our kitchen window and look up at the nail in our wall marking Goliath’s height (9' 6" in our case, though some say he was 10' 6"). Or, you can look at the nail in our wall at 15' off the ground marking the diameter the sun would be if the earth were the size of a golf ball. Or, you can now stand in our driveway and stare all the way down it and across to our neighbor’s field at the circuit breaker standing there 450' feet away, and be awed by the ark and the man of faith who believed in God’s Word enough to build it. No wonder God sought to preserve faith like that!

(Note: You can see a picture of our girls under the Goliath and sun nails in our wall in my Oct. 6th post, “Fallen Giants and Big Stars — Good Reminders . . .”)

Where's the Fall?

I have been reading the book Already Gone by Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis." In it he talks about how doubt over the Genesis accounts is undermining faith in the entire Word of God, and how people (especially youth) are "checking out" of the church because, in the wake of such doubt, they are losing confidence in the relevancy of church and Scripture to their life. It becomes a "good story," and in this world of pain and uncertainty "good stories" may be fun but they don't pay the bills, heal the hurt, or give hope amidst hopelessness.

In the book Ken made a comment that started my mind down a path of thought that I wanted to share. In a nutshell, it is this: Evolution stands as the absolute opposite of Creation in more ways than just the obvious (how life and we began). If we believe in Creation as it is recorded in the Bible then man started off in God's image, we started off good, and then we fell and became separated from God, in need of a Savior, and cut off from the life and source of goodness. If we believe evolution (either accident or God initiated), man started out as a cell in some primitive pool billions of years ago and we have just been improving ever since! Truly, in evolution's natural conclusion, we just keep getting better.

Are you starting to see where this is headed? Evolution, which in its truest implications says man is just improving more and more, stands in stark contrast to Creation which says man is getting farther and farther from God, hence more and more lost and astray. The gap between the two end points of these two explanations just gets wider and wider as they both continue down their logical paths—one saying man is rising, the other saying man is falling.

Evolution promotes, inherently, the idea that in man we will eventually find man's solutions. It promotes the idea that the key is to just keep getting better, trying harder, etc. The natural implications of evolution, when we take them to their natural conclusions, draw man farther and farther from God and the realization of our need for God.

We see this ever-widening separation in the vast gap between politics and candidates and policies that exists today—one side feels man can fix man's problems, the other says that only God can and that we will only find our solutions in a deep reliance and dependence on God.

For the atheist, this all poses no seeming problem. They don't believe in God or the fall or heaven or hell so they don't see any other option than man fixing man. But, for the Christian who has embraced evolution, there becomes a very big problem—when was the fall? (I speak from experience here, having tried to reconcile evolution and Creation as a young Christian, and eventually finding out it just can't work if we allow it to take its natural course to its natural conclusion. I explain this below.)

Think about it with me for a moment if you will. If God started the whole thing and then let evolution bring us to today, when did we fall? When did we become advanced enough to understand good and bad and the law of God and to become accountable to a decision to disobey? When did that happen? Was man still hunched over in ape-like form when he first understood what God wanted and chose to disobey? When was the point of accountability and separation from God? Really, it boils down to this: When was the fall?

You see, the problem is that in evolution there is no room for a fall. We are just improving, not falling. We are going up, not down. There was never a defined point in which man fell. Evolution is the epitome of the results of rebellion in which God decreases in our eyes and man increases because in its teaching man continues to improve. Inherent in that is the assumption that technology and knowledge mark improvement, whereas inherent in God's Word is that the fear of the Lord marks the beginning of knowledge and growth, and that the fool in his heart says there is no God.

In evolution's natural conclusion we don't need a Savior because there never was a fall, and we are just getting better and better—we will become our own Savior. In Creation, and the Word that provides authority for Creation, we fell from God and until that separation is bridged we are lost and hopeless and separated from goodness and our Creator until we are saved . . . and Jesus alone is that Savior.

Of course, start to doubt the Bible's account of Creation or the Flood and you (or, if not you, then your children) may soon start to doubt the Jesus that the same Bible talks about, and Whom the Bible gives His lineage back to Adam, and Whom talked Himself about Noah and the flood and the ark as a literal person and event and boat. Be careful, it is a slippery, untenable slope to begin down the path of "Christian evolution." I know, I tried it out when I first became a Christian. Trust me, it doesn't work if we think it all the way through. The nice thing is that "Christian evolution" doesn't need to work—Creation, as described in the Bible, stands alone, scientifically supported, easily defended, and authoritative. Yes, there will always be faith required, but the faith required to embrace Creation is reasonable, not blind, and does not require at all the amount of faith it requires to believe in evolution in the face of all of the honest science that stands against it. Whatever your stand on this, I love ya. Just, please, think it through, because it is a serious, unsupported, dangerous slope we start down to embrace any evolution across kinds.