Steve looked at the sunrise letting his mind wrap his preconceptions around what he saw. He was no longer a pagan rationalizing this burning ball of hydrogen as a pantheistic spiritual entity. Nor was he ever an atheist seeing naturalistic stellar evolution in play rather than the greater light created by God to rule the day.
Taking Einstein’s relativity seriously he stipulated that the one-way speed of light from the sun to him was instantaneous. This forced the one-way speed back to the sun to be half the speed some might want it to be who preferred their own preconceptions to help them get lost in the addiction of deep time.
With that taken care of Steve watched the birds originally created on the fifth day watch the sun rise over the catastrophic flood waters that drained off over five millennia ago to become the Atlantic Ocean.
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Denise offers the prompt word “wrap” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
If the story makes no sense, I’ve been reading Jason Lisle’s 2010 presentation of the anisotropic synchrony convention and a 2018 modification of it by Tenev, et al.
Stanley didn’t like to swim but living near the ocean he didn’t mind, should the Spirit lead him, to take a sunrise stroll along the water’s edge.
The huge quantity of water brought Noah to mind. “That’s where all the water went,” he told himself. Then he provided the explanation that mountains rose while deep sea basins formed to collect the runoff which carved canyons along the way.
When Stanley told others the story of the water no one believed him (except those who did). Perhaps to taunt him for telling the tale of its failure to drown the remnant in that boat, or perhaps to merely remind him what it could still do, the water lapped its waves upon the sandy shore licking off any trace of Stanley’s footprints.
Bob Sorensen used the phrase “dust-to-Darwin” to describe evolution. This phrase succinctly describes the mythopoetic rationalization underlying evolutionary speculations. It brings two contrary things to mind. First, the word dust brings to mind Genesis 2:7 where we have a “dust-to-Adam” creation by God. Second, the word Darwin brings to mind those who promote a mindless, deterministic/random evolutionary explanation of how we got here.
The dust-to-Darwin problem is the realization that the speculations attempting to replace Genesis are no longer plausible, if they ever were. The problem for atheistic speculations is that science never has been on the side of atheism in spite of it being institutionally force-fed. That’s because experimental science doesn’t sit still. Scientists, some of them witlessly, keep pushing down the atheist fencing, because that fencing doesn’t fit reality.
For example, although mutations in DNA might look like the driving force of evolution, look closer and they point to genetic entropy and single, recent male and female ancestors. Although the fossil column might look like it could be dated to be hundreds of millions of years old, look closer and that dating falls apart when scientists estimate the entire geologic record would be eroded away in a mere ten million years assuming measured rates of erosion. Experimental science measured this entropy and erosion. Those measurements undermined speculative philosophy’s attempts to justify atheism.
Even more fundamentally, the dust-to-Darwin problem is that the philosophy of atheism offers no plausible way for any kind of dust to get here in the first place without God. It presents no plausible explanation for how that dust came alive without God. It has no plausible way to explain why men and women are inhabiting earth right now without God.
But the most serious part of the dust-to-Darwin problem comes when normal, ordinary people realize that they have been deceived, fooled into filtering reality through atheistic mythology.
No meat offering, which ye shall bring unto the Lord, shall be made with leaven: for ye shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of the Lord made by fire.
Yehoshua Gordon explains why leaven and honey were not acceptable as offerings in his third lecture this week (about 8:00). The leaven represents human arrogance. Unleavened bread represents humility. Honey, or any sort of sweetness to us, represents our desires. We are to give Yehovah what He wants, not what we want.
That might explain why Cain’s offering in Genesis 4 was not as acceptable as Abel’s. Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground while Abel brought the firstborn of his flock. Was Cain’s offering perceived as arrogance? Did it contain leaven or honey or anything sweet?
Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave, was the one who told us our God is the God who sees (Genesis 16). That may not seem like much, but the blind idols we construct to imitate God have no interest in us.
Those who think they can get by on their own might prefer blind gods, but it doesn’t matter what any of us prefer. All we have, given our experiences of bliss or despair in this wonderful universe, is whether we will choose to serve God or not. Those who are blessed to realize that they can’t get by on their own yearn for Him with repentance, praise and thanksgiving.
God sees you. God sees me. God sees.
I am grateful to Kathie Lee Gifford and Nicole C. Mullen whose oratorio The God Who Sees presented Hagar and to revivedwriter whose poemCall Me Hagar brought Hagar to mind.
Weekly Parashah Readings Parashah: Vayachel 25 Adar, 5782 – February 26, 2022 Torah:Exodus 35:1-38:20 Haftarah:Kings II 11:17 – 12:17 Brit Chadashah:2 Corinthians 9:6-11; 3:7-18 Resources:Chabad, Hebrew4Christians,Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar
Robert Carter, The Amazing Braided Baramin Concept Is Intrinsic To Creation, (about 4:30 in the video)
In Genesis we read that God created (bara) creatures which came forth after their own kind (min). From here we get the term baramin, a created kind. A baramin may contain a single species, such as mankind being the only species within its own baramin or a baramin may contain many different species, coming and going, but staying within their own kind as they change. That means what is fundamental is the baramin, not the species.
Peer Terborg notes that pluripotent baranomes provide the source for the diversity of life we see today. Life did not start from something simple and evolve into something complex. It started wondrously complicated, designed for change.
That means that Adam was not a primitive human being who evolved into us over time. He was more advanced biologically than we are.
This view of life and change based on DNA does not require deep time to reach the sort of world we experience today. Indeed deep time, even one hundred million years of deep time, would destroy the fossil record through erosion many times over or destroy life itself through genetic entropy. Deep time, along with evolution, are modern myths unworthy of our attention.
I used to have a science fiction view of reality. I thought our species would continue for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years. We would visit other planets inhabited with intelligent life and settle uninhabited worlds. I did not realize that mutations would stop all of that no matter how many spaceships we sent to other stars.
Today, I don’t think there is life of any sort on those distant planets. The reason is because there is no known mechanism for life to pop into existence outside of God’s deliberate creation.
That realization put a brake on my former fantasies and having given up on the schemes of Man my prayers took root in desperation. We live after the Fall revealed in Genesis and before the Kingdom prophesied in Revelation. It is humbling to realize that there is no way out of this but the coming of the Lord. There never has been. Maranatha!
The genetic evidence strongly suggests that Y Chromosome Adam/Noah and Mitochondrial Eve were not just real people, they were the progenitors of us all.
After the Fall, Adam named his wife Eve. (Genesis 3:20) Today geneticists talk about Y Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. The controversy is over estimates of how long ago they lived. If the estimates are over fifty thousand years ago, and you believed it, that would strongly show the Bible is wrong. If the estimates are under ten thousand years, and you believed it, that would confirm the biblical account.
The Bible also mentions a global flood with three couples, Noah’s sons and their wives (Genesis 6-8). This population bottleneck should appear in the genetic record as well and indeed one can find it. Nathaniel T. Jeanson and Ashley D. Holland in 2019 “confirm a 4,500-year history for human paternal ancestry”.
At about 25:00 in the video below John Sanford provided seven lines of genetic evidence supporting the idea of a literal Adam and Eve.
(1) Mitochondrial Eve (2) Y-Chromosome Adam (3) Population Bottleneck (4) Designed Variants in Genome (5) Babel Dispersion (6) Ape-to-Man Refuted (7) Genetic Entropy
Does that make you look at yourself differently? Do you still think that you are evolved stardust? None of us are.
Additional information on Adam and Eve and other science topics can be found at LogosRA.
I will include the Parashat Torah readings and Haftarah selections from the rest of the Bible in this set of readings since yesterday the reading of the Torah began again in Genesis. I will be using the Chabad.org calendar to find the name of the reading and the Jewish Virtual Library for the verses involved.
Weekly Bible Reading:Isaiah (Audio), Jeremiah (Audio) 26 Tishrei, 5782, Bereishit: ParashatGenesis 1:1-6:8; HaftaratIsaiah 42:5-43:11 Commentaries: David Pawson, Isaiah, Part 38, Jeremiah, Part 39, Unlocking the Bible Bible Project, Isaiah (40-66) and Jeremiah
Jim Lee asked his readers when during the day we read the Bible? I could say I was following a yearly Bible reading plan with a small group and read the verses of the day when the notice arrived.
However, I thought why not start my own plan in addition to this focusing on each book in succession with a commentary as a guide?
I started this two weeks ago using David Pawson’s one hundred lecture series Unlocking the Bible. This commentary covers the whole Bible at an introductory level. I divided those one hundred lectures into two videos per week to make the plan last about a year.
This week I am continuing with Genesis. On each of these Sunday Walks I will link to an audio of the book I’m reading along with links to two of Pawson’s lectures.
Weekly Bible Reading:Genesis (Audio: King James Version read by Alexander Scourby) Commentary: David Pawson, Genesis Part 5 of 7 and Part 6 of 7, Unlocking the Bible
It is not merely that I can know them by the way they express, or don’t, the fruits of the Holy Spirit, but I can know myself by the way I express those fruits as well.
These fruits do not come from consuming therapies, taking drugs or following self-help programs to not behave badly. They are not my fruits, but the fruits of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit.
There is nothing easier than expressing them in stillness. There is nothing harder than giving up the addiction to my own spoiled fruits since faithlessness suggests that’s all there is.
Weekly Bible Readings:Genesis (Audio: King James Version read by Alexander Scourby) Commentary: David Pawson, Genesis Part 3 of 7 and Part 4 of 7, Unlocking the Bible
I used to find Plotinus, a 3rd century Platonist, interesting. His idea of the One suggested a kind of naturalistic or pantheistic spirituality. To the extent I understood any of this, the One was like a force field having the attributes philosophers might assign to a deity.
Little of this is attractive to me today, but that earlier exposure has kept me wary of Platonic or even Aristotelian influences. When I hear discussions of God that do not lead to repentance, salvation or a personal relationship with Jesus grounded in the special revelation of the Bible I wonder if there aren’t hidden presuppositions underlying the arguments that might be coming from ancient Greek, rather than Jewish or Christian, sources.
I’ve noticed these hidden ideas within various Christian traditions going back to Augustine or earlier. Some of them are fine, but it’s easy to forget that even the acceptable ones are cultural additions. So, I try to distinguish what is in the Bible from what is outside trying to get in. Then I put scripture over tradition should a conflict arise between the Word of God and that other stuff.
For those who wish more information on this especially as it pertains to questionable Greek cultural influence, see David Pawson’s lecture on “de-Greecing” the church:
Weekly Bible Readings:Genesis (Audio: King James Version read by Alexander Scourby) Commentary: David Pawson, Genesis Part 1 of 7 and Part 2 of 7, Unlocking the Bible
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 