Essay – Page 3 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Diotrephes and Demetrius

The short epistle of 3 John contrasts two leaders in the early church: Diotrephes and Demetrius.

Diotrephes

3 John 1:9-10 KJV – 9 I wrote unto the church: but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the preeminence among them, receiveth us not.
10 Wherefore, if I come, I will remember his deeds which he doeth, prating against us with malicious words: and not content therewith, neither doth he himself receive the brethren, and forbiddeth them that would, and casteth them out of the church.

Demetrius

3 John 1:11-12 KJV – 11 Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.
12 Demetrius hath good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record; and ye know that our record is true.

Leadership in Church History

When Paul described the qualities that a bishop must have, he indirectly warned about the kind of men who should not be followed if given leadership positions in the church.

1 Timothy 3:2-7 KJV – 2 A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3 Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4 One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5 (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)
6 Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil.
7 Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

Before the church gained political power, it was persecuted. After it gained political power, it began persecuting others itself. This was the result of people who should have never received leadership roles.

Justo L. Gonzalez¹ commented on the persecution of the Anabaptists (and I have read far enough into that book to highly suspect that it applies to any Christian group that suffered persecution at the hands of other Christians):

The martyrs were many—probably more than those who died during the three centuries of persecution before the time of Constantine.

Paul tells us what could have happened from the very beginning of church history if people chose to follow the lead of the Spirit of God rather than their own lusts.

What could have happened is almost beyond imagining:

Romans 8:14 KJV – For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.

The Point

None of the faulty leadership in the church had to happen. It could have all been avoided.

God did not will it. Don’t blame Him.

It was not caused by Augustinian total depravity nor was it caused by materialistic determinism, the atheistic rehashing of that Augustinian teaching.

Those responsible cannot hide behind any of these lame excuses for their own choices, their own defiant refusals to become the sons of God.

Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: The Reformation to the Present Day, page 56. ↩︎

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Shroud of Turin

This morning I followed an email link from the Associates for Biblical Research to one of their Digging for Truth episodes on the tomb of Jesus.

The tour we took when in Israel scheduled us to see the Garden Tomb, but neglected the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This episode, however, convinces me that we should have gone to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre instead.

In the above video they mentioned the Shroud of Turin. I realized that I knew little to nothing about this shroud except that it was claimed to have covered the body of Jesus.

The following is a 8 minute summary of the evidence that favors the view that this was, indeed, the actual shroud that covered Jesus.

Fossils

We are back in South Carolina. As I was putting mulch around some bushes I noticed the fossils in a bit of mudrock we brought back from a property we once owned on Green Bay in Wisconsin. That rock (along with the mulch) are shown in the photo above.

Ten years ago when I found the stone I tried to identify the fossils¹ in it using a field guide. The field guide said that they were between 300 to 400 million years old (assuming I remember what it said correctly and matched what was in the book with what was in my hand).

I was impressed, but I was also disappointed that they weren’t 600 million years old, or older. I kept looking for more of those stones.

Over the past ten years I smartened up. I realized that given erosion rates all of the stuff I had in my hand would have eroded away² long before it reached anywhere near 300 million years.

Today, I can tell you how old that stone is to within about 10 years, but you need to understand something about fossils first.

Fossils don’t form from dead stuff falling to the ground and being slowly buried over millennia. Dead stuff falling to the ground quickly decays. They have to die rapidly with a heavy weight pressing them down so they do not decompose. That occurs when heavy sediment carried by flooding waters provides the weight to press the plants and animals to the ground.

You would apply the same process to a leaf you wanted to preserve. You would pick it fresh and place it between paper with many books piled on top of it. When it dried out, you would have a nice, flat leaf, not a curled up piece of decaying leaf mold.

So, when in the history of humanity did such a flooding occur so that you could expect to find fossils all over the world? Think. The only time such flooding occurred on a global scale was the flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 and echoed through many legends.

That allows me to date the stone that I now have in my garden.

Given the biblical chronology that Henry B. Smith, Jr from Associates for Biblical Research provided³, the flood could be dated to 3298 BC. Now there is some wiggle-room here due to when in the year births occurred in the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies, but I suspect that wiggle-room could be reduced to plus or minus 10 years.

You might object that what we read in Genesis are just stories. They are stories, but the important question is this: Are they TRUE stories? If you do not want to believe they are true, to the extent that archeologists can align those stories with historical events to that extent you might want to seriously reconsider any disbelief. This is why Christian archeologists try to align those dates with historical evidence so that the only ignorance that remains is willful ignorance.

So, how old is that stone?

It is, given today’s year of 2025 and subtracting one year since there is no 0 year in the Gregorian calendar, 3298 + 2025 – 1 = 5322 years old plus or minus those 10 years.

That is far less than the 300,000,000 years which the field guide wanted me to believe, but a far more reasonable number given erosion rates. That stone had already suffered much erosion damage when I found it.

And it is continuing to be eroded away every year I leave it unprotected in my garden, but it is not rare. Fossils like the one I have are all over the world because sedimentation layers are all over the world as one would expect given a catastrophic, global flooding less than 5,400 years ago.

The “ungodly men” are those who “willingly are ignorant”. They are not **blindly ignorant**, a class I would put myself in on many issues. They are **liars**.

I think some of those fossils are crinoids. Wikipedia says: “In 2012, three geologists reported they had isolated complex organic molecules from 340-million-year-old (Mississippian) fossils of multiple species of crinoids.” That there are complex organic molecules at all in there should raise a red flag that the millions of years are wrong. ↩︎
I’ve heard that a uniformitarian erosion rate would push all of the continents into the ocean in 50 million years. The problem with erosion is that it doesn’t all happen uniformly. If you have a house on a cliff near the water, you are likely very aware of the effects of erosion. ↩︎
One can find videos and other information about the controversy over the Genesis 5 and 11 chronologies at the Associates for Biblical Research site. There’s a controversy because the Septuagint and the Masoretic manuscripts have different, but not randomly different, dates. They are not unintentional scribal errors, but deliberate distortions of the original. I get the 3298 BC date for the flood (and 5554 BC date for creation) from Henry B. Smith, Jr’s article at the 2018 International Conference on Creationism. The 5554 BC date puts the ministry of Jesus in the 6th millennium when the Messiah was expected to come. ↩︎

Noah’s Flood Date: 3298 BC

Yesterday John Hartnett provided a model based on historic measurements collected by George F. Dodwell of the change in the earth’s tilt¹ confirming the biblical chronology that Henry B. Smith, Jr argued for in 2018².

The date Hartnett’s model estimated for the flood event was 3154 ± 191 BC. That range excludes Ussher’s flood date of 2348 BC³ but Smith, Jr’s date of 3298 BC still fits.

If we use Smith, Jr’s chronology, that would put creation at about 5500 BC, Noah’s flood at about 3300 BC, the Tower of Babel at about 2850 BC, the call of Abraham in 2091 BC, the Exodus from Egypt in 1446 BC, Solomon crowned in 971 BC and the birth of Jesus in 2 BC.⁴

The reason for the discrepancy between Ussher’s and Smith, Jr’s dates is due to conflicting dates provided in the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 coming from different manuscript traditions of the Bible. Smith, Jr argued that the Hebrew manuscript which became the Masoretic text was modified in the first or second century after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD to void prophecies that Jesus could have been the Messiah. The Septuagint, however, preserved the original text, but the Masoretic text became the preferred source for modern bible translations.

Hartnett’s model not only excluded Ussher’s date, but it also estimated a date for something which happened affecting the tilt of the earth at a time which aligned with the biblical chronology that Smith, Jr has promoted.

Stardust

Our words affirm who we think we are.

Beyond their truth values, they are powerful spells. They bless. They curse. Though others might get in the way, we ourselves are the ones who are blessed or defiled by what comes out of our own mouths.¹

A song written by Joni Mitchell called Woodstock² in 1969 influenced me through the early 1970s. In the final refrain is a declaration of what Mitchell thought we were.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon

However, as I’ve come to realize, there is no natural way that we could be stardust and as a metaphor the idea is sentimental nonsense.

There are those who fantasize how that stardust to man might have happened, but the only thing they proclaim is their rebellion against a Creator. Dust from a supernova cannot get back together again no matter how often one waves a magic wand – or a professor’s hand – insisting on billions of years of evolution.

And yet, back in the 1970s, I had no problem believing such mythology. I had no more problem with it than an ancient Greek would have had with Zeus or a Hindu with Krishna. Those were the words spoken to me and those were the words I chose to listen to. Today, I repent of that misleading idolatry.

That our bodies come from the earth is true.³ However, the dust of the earth has never been stardust no more than it has ever been pixie dust.

The words we speak and the words we listen to matter. I can testify – first hand – that God is not mocked. What we sow we shall reap.⁴

I can also testify that repentance brings more joy than delusion, rebellion and disobedience⁵.

Matthew 15:17-20 KJV – 17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. ↩︎
https://jonimitchell.com/music/lyricsprint.cfm?id=75 ↩︎
Genesis 2:7 KJV – 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ↩︎
Galatians 6:7-8 KJV – 7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. ↩︎
Luke 15:10 KJV – 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. ↩︎

Biblical Prayer

Matthew 6:10 KJV – Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Biblical prayer is a command spoken to the earth that the Lord’s will be done throughout it.

That includes not merely the problems we face, but ourselves as well.

Matthew 6:7 KJV – 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Prayer is not a powerless, showy, vain speaking.

Prayer is our thoughts and words confirmed by our actions conforming only to the Lord’s will, not to our own.

When we get our thoughts, words and actions in line with the Lord’s will we pray effortlessly and without ceasing, because we then no longer know how to do anything else but insist that the Father’s kingdom come and that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Holes in the Net

Christian apologists who accept evolution do not realize how huge the holes are in their gospel nets.

What they don’t see is that the Bible offers not only a viable explanation of the universe we live in, but it offers the only viable explanation for it. The others are impossible modern mythologies masquerading as scientific theories.

The problem for the atheist is that one would have to accept the God of the Bible for the biblical explanation to be viable especially with the age of the universe being less than 8000 years.

But isn’t the universe billions of years old?
Under Newtonian physics, perhaps, but not under relativity physics. If relativity is true, distant starlight can no longer be used as a clock.¹
But aren’t there fossils half a billion years old?
Radioactive decay is not a clock either. If it were then all of the rates of decay, including erosion rates and biological decay that we notice today, would have to line up. That dinosaur fossils have soft tissue² still in them suggests – no, it insists – that they are much, much younger than that.
But isn’t humanity hundreds of thousands of years old?
Historical records only go back about 5000 years. Let that sink in. That length of time is what one would expect given a global flood occurring about 3300 BC. Real people leave historical records. The existence and age of these historical records confirm the biblical chronology that the universe is less than 8000 years old³ and that there was a global catastrophe about 5300 years ago.

But that’s ridiculous! Once you realize that it is not, you will start taking the Bible seriously enough to mend the holes in the net.

______

In a 13 minute video Calvin Smith presented arguments every Christian apologist who still accepts evolution needs to hear. Atheists already know these arguments: any god who would use the cruel and destructive means of elimination known as evolution to bring about creation is unloving and morally suspect. Christian morals should make one reject the very god those apologists witlessly try to promote.

Smith described Christian apologists who accept evolution as casting gospel nets with holes in them.

The reason relativity doesn’t allow the speed of light to be used as a clock to measure the age of the universe is due to the conventionality of simultaneity thesis which Veritasium explained rather well. Allen Janis’s article Conventionality of Simultaneity summarizes the thesis in more detail providing additional references. Jason Lisle applied it to solve the distant starlight problem of creationism in his paper Anisotropic Synchrony Convention , Answers Research Journal, 2010. Bottom line: We cannot tell how old the universe is by knowing the two-way speed of light and the estimated distance of a celestial object unless we go back to Newtonian physics. ↩︎
Creation Ministries International provided a one-minute video summarizing the significance of the discovery of soft tissue in fossils: those fossils must have been laid down recently. That soft tissue exists in fossils at all marks the end of the evolutionary worldview unless one is addicted to that worldview much like those who promote a flat earth are addicted to theirs. ↩︎
There are various biblical chronologies because there are multiple manuscript traditions. The ultimate original source is lost, but one can piece it together using parts from each of these traditions. The chronology I currently find most convincing comes from the Associates for Biblical Research. ↩︎

He Made the Stars Also

If the universe began with an explosion, how did all of that exploded stuff come back together again to form even one star? If a star should explode, how would the mess it made clean itself up to become another star?

Not even gravity can put those explosions back together again.

There’s more truth in the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty than there is in the mythology of modern cosmology with its big bangs and stars forming from cosmic dust clouds.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

One of the blessings of our universe is that things don’t naturally compress through gravity to the point that a thermonuclear reaction starts. If they did, the waters over the earth (along with all of the land) would have collapsed to the center of what once was the earth long ago.

The reason stuff like that doesn’t happen is because of hydrostatic equilibrium. Gravity draws things together. Sure, but an opposing outward pressure keeps stuff from collapsing beyond an equilibrium point. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

Some claim that if there were a multiverse, an infinite number of universes all starting with explosions, then at least one of them would have to look like ours. Wrong. Blow things up an infinite number of times (or more) and none of those explosions, because of hydrostatic equilibrium, would turn into a universe with planets and stars.

Every one of those exploded verses in that multiverse would remain a mess forever.

______

Sowing and Reaping

We sow to the Spirit, not to the flesh.
We reap of the Spirit life everlasting.

Galatians 6:7 KJV – Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

Road to Emmaus

The following is a 25 minute video reenacting the journey on the road to Emmaus described in Luke 24.

Luke 24:13-35 KJV – 13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.