Tag: Sunday Walk

Sunday Walk 69 – Aliens

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Ephesians 6:12 Bible Gateway

Given that the universe is only a few thousand years old, which you may not accept but at least assume for the sake of argument, there is not enough time for an extraterrestrial civilization to build a space ship and brave the dangers of interstellar space to reach Earth. Before we might have been worried about nearby inhabitants of Mars or Venus, but I doubt anyone today thinks there is life of any sort on those planets.

Indeed, the only reason we thought in the past that such civilizations might exist at all was due to a belief in the myth of evolution over deep time. However, there is no mechanism for evolution. Genetic entropy put an end to the speculation that mutations filtered by natural selection over a lot of time and with a lot of luck could pop out life without God’s creative power. Mutations lead to extinction not evolution.

So, assuming the age of the universe is only a few thousand years and recognizing that evolution has no known way to occur, we do not have to worry about these material aliens from other planets nor any star wars scenarios with them.

That leaves spiritual aliens such as angels or demons. Indeed, there is evidence from the Bible (see Ephesians 6 quoted above) that we do “wrestle” with these “spiritual forces of evil”.

Ian Juby fills in some of the details in his four-part series on UFOs and aliens.

Ian Juby, UFO’s, Aliens & Genesis, Part 4 of 4

We should not forget that from a different perspective we ourselves are aliens, that is, foreigners, exiles, sojourners, strangers, or pilgrims in this world (1 Peter 2:11). From that perspective we should be storing treasures in heaven, our true home, not here (Matthew 6:20).

Weekly Bible Reading: Habakkuk and Zephaniah
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Habakkuk, Part 54, and Zephaniah, Part 55, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Habakkuk and Zephaniah
Weekly Torah Readings
23 Kislev, 5782, Vayeishev: Parashat Genesis 37:1-40:23; Haftarat Amos 2:6-3:8

Yellow and Green Contrast
Yellow and Green Contrast

Sunday Walk 67 – Jonah and the Miracles

Although I mainly remember that Jonah was in a great fish (whale as I heard it told) for three days, David Pawson noted that there were eight miracles recorded in the book. He further claimed that if you believed any one of them you might as well believe the other seven.

Although I find the story of Jonah to be rather humorous, I realize that the prophet Jonah son of Amittai was an historical figure mentioned in 2 Kings 14:25 and the events were not recorded to make fun of him. The only sign Jesus said He would give was the “sign of Jonah” (Matthew 12:38-41), that is, His Resurrection after being dead for three days.

Here are the eight miracles that Pawson listed.

  1. God sent a wind when Jonah fled in the boat. (Jonah 1:4)
  2. The sailors cast lots to find who was responsible and God made the lot fall to Jonah. (Jonah 1:7)
  3. After they threw Jonah overboard, God calmed the sea. (Jonah 1:15)
  4. God sent a fish to swallow Jonah. (Jonah 1:17)
  5. At God’s command the fish vomited Jonah alive onto dry land. (Jonah 2:10)
  6. God provided a plant to shade Jonah in one day. (Jonah 4:6)
  7. God told a worm to eat the plant the next day. (Jonah 4:7)
  8. God sent an east wind with a hot sun to torment Jonah. (Jonah 4:8)

What makes all of these events miracles is that each event explicitly involved an action by God. God sent that wind. God told a worm and a fish what to do. It was not that the wind blew by chance. It was not that the worm just happened to be nearby and hungry. Explaining the miracles with naturalistic explanations that do not involve God’s action would not be explaining them as they were told in the book.

Since the naturalist, and likely the deist as well, rejects God as a cause, the naturalist would have to reject all eight of these miracles. I would expect the naturalist to dismiss the entire book as myth.

Others who do accept, say, the east wind blowing since God sent it might as well accept the part about the fish that God sent, because ultimately they would be expected to believe the truthfulness of the “sign of Jonah” that Jesus referred to: Jonah died and three days later came back to life.

David Pawson, Jonah

Weekly Bible Reading:  Amos and Jonah
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Amos, Part 50, Jonah, Part 51, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Amos and Jonah
Weekly Torah Readings
9 Kislev, 5782, Vayeitzei: Parashat Genesis 28:10-32:3; Haftarat Hosea 12:13-14:10

Cross and Plant

Sunday Walk 66 – The Mythology of Deep Time

A few years ago I would likely be labeled a theistic evolutionist without realizing what that meant. I was reading Alvin Plantinga’s Where the Conflict Really Lies and studying his evolutionary argument against naturalism. I was also studying how William Lang Craig accepted the deep time of the Big Bang to try to make the kalam cosmological argument work for him.

To caricature my position I tolerated ideas of evolutionary and cosmological deep time as long as I could sugar-coat them with some kind of spirit “guiding” evolution or somehow squeeze in the kalam argument to assert the existence of that spirit. By accepting deep time I was, unwittingly, throwing original sin under the bus along with the rest of the Bible. And all for what? My goal was to assert the existence of some spirit without checking first just what that spirit was.

I now realize that whatever that spirit might be it could not be Yahweh as revealed in the Bible because I had replaced the historical chronology of Genesis with the pseudo-scientific mythology of deep time. Rejection of Genesis is a rejection of the entire Bible. Atheists understand this which is why they ridicule Creation, Noah and Babel. Compromising Christians do not. What I needed was an apologetics directed back at myself that would lead me to take the Bible seriously.

All of that changed when a fellow member of our Men’s Group briefly mentioned the rapid geological change that happened as a result of the eruption of Mount St Helens. Looking into this, I was shocked to realize that places like the Grand Canyon did not need millions of years of deep time to form. The catastrophic global flood and its aftermath could explain the present state of continents, oceans, mountains, coal deposits, canyons, fossil-filled sedimentation layers and glaciers.

Furthermore, if I started with God creating the universe in a functionally mature state, that is, if I took Genesis as seriously as I should have, I could get to the present state of the universe with only a few thousand years of change using processes identified and measured by modern operational science.

By contrast, if I started with the Big Bang and over 13 billion years of deep time, I could not get to the universe I see today. Too much entropy would have occurred over that span of time. Indeed, the evidence is so overwhelming against deep time that Don Batten could provide 101 separate lines of evidence suggesting that the earth and the universe could not be anywhere near as old as deep time mythologies claim it to be. I began to see that the hypothesis of deep time had been falsified over and over again.

The reason I mention all this is because experimental, operational science (not naturalistic speculations presented as “science”) has matured to a point that no one needs to shy away from the historical creation and fall accounts in Genesis.

Cal Smith, The Trojan Horse of Long Ages, Answers in Genesis Canada

Weekly Bible Reading:  Obadiah (Audio), Joel (Audio)
2 Kislev, 5782, Toldot: Parashat Genesis 25:19-28:9; Haftarat Malachi 1:1-2:7
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Obadiah and Joel, Part 48, Part 49, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Obadiah and Joel

Sunday Walk 65 – Learning Biblical Hebrew

I have been studying Biblical Hebrew primarily using the YouTube videos from the Aleph With Beth channel by Andrew and Bethany Case. The Bible Society in Israel offers the Hebrew Bible with a dramatized audio reading and dictionary. They have also translated the Greek New Testament into Modern Hebrew and made this available with an audio reading. One can add a column to compare two versions of the text. As an alternative, I have also used the Step Hebrew Interlinear Bible.

I recommend all of these resources if you are interested in learning Biblical Hebrew. If you have other resources you are using that you find helpful, let me know. I still have a long way to go.

My goal is to be able to read the Masoretic text found in the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia without needing a dictionary. I am not there yet. Here is a song by Miqedem on Psalm 23 that I am trying to understand by hearing it sung without following along with the Hebrew-English text.

MIQEDEM, Psalm 23

The Old Testament was written in Biblical Hebrew. Douglas Petrovich provided evidence that the Israelites possessed an alphabet centuries before Moses. If that’s true there is no longer a compelling reason to follow theories like the JEDP/Documentary Hypothesis which claimed that Moses could not himself have written the first five books in the Bible because he did not have the means to do so. Moses had what he needed to write those books and the Israelites were able to read them.

I used to think that Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke. However, Jeff A. Benner provided evidence that most of the New Testament was originally written in Hebrew which was also the language spoken by Jesus and his early followers. If that’s true then what we have today are translations of the Hebrew originals into Greek from which English translations were later made.

Some early form of Biblical Hebrew may have been the original “one language” (Genesis 11:1 KJV) spoken until the time of the Tower of Babel. For arguments for and against this, including Isaac Mozeson’s Edenics, see Bodie Hodge’s discussion of language before the time of Moses. Mozeson notes that many Jewish commentators see this one language as Biblical Hebrew. For further information on his view see A Garden of Edenics 2021.

Weekly Bible Reading:  Daniel (Audio), Hosea (Audio)
24 Cheshvan, 5782, Chayei Sarah: Parashat Genesis 23:1-25:18; Haftarat 1 Kings 1:1-1:31
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Daniel, Part 46, Hosea, Part 47, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Daniel and Hosea

Atlantic Ocean, Clouds and Boat
Atlantic Ocean, Clouds and Boat

Sunday Walk 64 – The Universe Has A Center

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

Genesis 1:14, King James Bible 1769

John Sanford and Christopher Rupe provide evidence that our galaxy is near the center of the universe in a paper at LogosRA. They write, “Astronomical data shows that the universe displays a striking pattern in its arrangement. Not only that, the universe may have a central position and it appears that our galaxy is at or very near it—far from what we would expect from a random, cosmic accident.“

Here is a summary of the evidence offered for that view.

  • Redshift Data
    Regardless of whether we are in an expanding universe or not the galaxies furthest away from us have a stronger red shift. This is evidence that we are near the center of the universe. Edwin Hubble who discovered this redshift phenomena realized this. However, he found it philosophically intolerable, but not disprovable. Sanford and Rupe remark, “the cosmic redshift phenomenon clearly revolves around our own location, and this when taken at face value indicates we are near the center.“
  • Galactic Shells
    In 1977 William Tifft discovered that the galaxies were patterned on their redshifts forming concentric spherical shells around our galaxy at the center.
  • Uniformity of the Cosmic Microwave Background
    From all directions we see a uniformity in the cosmic background radiation. Were we not at the center we would not expect to see this uniformity.
  • Symmetry of the Cosmic Microwave Background
    In 2001 the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe found evidence for a cosmic north-south pole and equator centered around our galaxy.
  • Spatial Distribution of Galaxies
    As Sanford and Rupe put it, “galaxies appear to be organized into gigantic web-like structures, and these structures form concentric rings around our own special position“.

On the fourth day of creation God created lights in the firmament for signs. Sanford and Rupe suggest: The universe’s countless galaxies may be designed for no other purpose than to be seen by us in these last days – so that it might be clear to all humanity that “The heavens declare the Glory of God…” (Psalms 19:1)

Weekly Bible Reading:  Ezekiel (Audio), Daniel (Audio)
17 Cheshvan, 5782, Vayeira: Parashat Genesis 18:1-22:24; Haftarat 2 Kings 4:1-4:37
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Ezekiel, Part 44, Daniel, Part 45, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Ezekiel (34-48) and Daniel

Sunday Walk 61 – Adam and Eve

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.

Carter, R.W., S.S. Lee, and J.C. Sanford. An overview of the independent histories of the human Y-chromosome and the human mitochondrial chromosome. 2018. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 133–151. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship.

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

John Sanford, Genetic Entropy, Evolution & the Bible

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: Parashat Genesis 1:1-6:8; Haftarat Isaiah 42:5-43:11
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Isaiah, Part 38, Jeremiah, Part 39, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Isaiah (40-66) and Jeremiah

Sunday Walk 60 – Doing What Is Right In One’s Own Eyes

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:25, King James Bible 1769

The bottom line up front would be if I’m not listening to and obeying God’s word in my heart, validated through the Bible, but instead come up with my own ideas of what is good, I will need to repent of many if not all of those supposedly good deeds.

The road to hell is paved with the good intentions I follow where good is defined as what I find right in my own eyes. Eve, deceived by the serpent and with no objection from Adam, saw the forbidden fruit as “good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3). When they ate the fruit, they were doing what was right in their own eyes.

The 20th century Catholic philosopher, G.E.M. Anscombe seems to have been saying something like that in her classic paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, where she criticized moral philosophy from Kant onward. Her message, as I understand it, is there’s no moral law that a philosopher can come up with outside of that coming from a divine lawgiver.

When a philosopher tries to ground moral obligation on something other than God’s command the philosopher’s own good intentions become what is right in his eyes. Since he is the author of his particular moral system this makes him one of many self-righteous lawgivers. Walk down the path of that self-righteous moral philosophy and one walks down the road to hell either on this earth or hereafter. Injustice, addiction, and conflict are some of the results one can expect.

Over the past few centuries that Anscombe was critical of people had powerful means to implement what was right in their own eyes leading to autonomy from God. Such humanistic autonomy is best seen as rebelliousness. We live in a dark age regarding morality because we rationalize what we should do based on criteria like maximizing happiness or effective altruism rather than hearing God’s voice confirmed through the Bible. We don’t listen to God’s voice because we don’t believe there is a God to listen to, or if we do like Adam and Eve surely did, we think we know better.

So, how do we hear God’s soft voice and how do we distinguish it from the deceiver’s misdirection? That is the topic of the video series below.

Derek Prince, Four Requirements

Weekly Bible Reading:  Song of Solomon (Audio), Isaiah (Audio)
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Song of Songs, Part 36, Isaiah, Part 37, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Song of Solomon and Isaiah (1-39)

Foggy Reflection
Foggy Reflection

Sunday Walk 59 – End Times

And notice the promises are given to only one kind of person. Do you know who that is? To him to overcomes. There are no promises in the New Testament to those who do not overcome.

Derek Prince, How To Face the Last Days Without Fear! (about 25:00)

A few years ago if someone told me the world was coming to an end, I would likely have been disappointed if I didn’t outright dismiss it. When I prayed the words, “Thy Kingdom come”, in the Lord’s Prayer I did not expect it to come right now.

Call it an awakening or a revival, but something happened over those last few years which changed all that. That change didn’t have to happen, but I am grateful that it did.

Based on my own experience, those who look forward to the end times do not feel at home in “Satan’s territory”. Willing to stay, if that is God’s will, we are nevertheless ready to go with oil for our lamps. As Derek Prince remarked, “The only recommendation that Jesus has is ‘Be ready.’“

I have been reading Derek Prince’s Spiritual Warfare for the End Times. YouTube has many of his lectures on the last days. One I particularly like is How to Face the Last Days Without Fear which I quoted from above.

The one I’ve linked to below is a fifteen part radio broadcast. It seems close to the book I am reading. He identified the situation we face and mentioned the defensive resources we have as well as the offensive resources to do this battle.

The six defensive weapons are listed in Ephesians 6:13-17. They are being girt with the truth, wearing the breastplate of righteousness, having feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, taking the shield of faith, wearing the helmet of salvation and carrying the sword of the Spirit. The four offensive weapons are prayer, praise, preaching and personal testimony.

He gives us an example of a personal testimony in Part 15 at 9:45 right at the end of this series. He says, “Through the blood of Jesus I am redeemed out of the hand of Satan. Through the blood of Jesus all my sins are forgiven. The blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin. Through the blood of Jesus I am justified, made righteous, just-as-if-I’d never sinned. And through the blood of Jesus I am sanctified, made holy, set apart to God. I am no longer in Satan’s territory.”

It’s all through the blood of Jesus. And so I testify as well.

Derek Prince, Spiritual Warfare

Weekly Bible Reading:  Proverbs (Audio), Ecclesiastes (Audio)
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Proverbs, Part 34, Ecclesiastes, Part 35, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes

Cone Flowers in a Prairie

Sunday Walk 58 – Creation Order

The Fall, contra to what you may have seen…in Sunday School, is not simply the eating of the forbidden fruit…. What happens in Genesis 3…is actually an attack on creation order.

Owen Strachan, Issues in Biblical Anthropology, Lecture 3 (about 57:45)

Creation order is the order of Genesis 1 and 2. As Strachan put it: “There’s God and under God there is the man who’s called to this position of headship as the New Testament will call it. There’s the woman underneath him. There are the animals underneath them.” (about 59:00)

Biblical anthropology does not take the creation order from the world but from the Bible. The world blurs distinctions the Bible makes and creates distinctions the Bible doesn’t.

  • The world blurs the distinction between fathers and mothers by calling them “parents”. Strachan recommended that we avoid words like “parent” that undermine the distinction between fathers and mothers.
  • The world blurs the distinction between men and women and the rest of creation in particular the animals. Strachan told us to maintain the distinction. Both men and women, and only they, are made in the image of God. The animals are not.
  • The world creates more distinctions between the sexes than there are and then blurs those distinctions through gender fluidity. Strachan recommended the use of the word “sex” for its specificity of only two biological sexes over the word “gender”. We capitulate theologically to the world by using its preferred language.

Owen Strachan wanted the future pastors in this seminary lecture to see clearly the creation order so they could effectively lead their churches and not be themselves led by the world. He said, “Are you feeling how alien Christianity increasingly is from what our secular culture teaches? Are you feeling that? I hope you are. If you are, good. That’s what you should feel. You should feel that Christianity is distinct from the world.” (about 42:45)

Owen Strachan, Issues in Biblical Anthropology

Weekly Bible Reading:  Psalms (Audio), Proverbs (Audio)
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Psalms, Part 32, Proverbs, Part 33, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Psalms and Proverbs

Sunday Walk 57 – Greg Bahnsen on Miracles

Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him. Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit.

Proverbs 26:4-5, King James Bible 1769, and expounded in Greg Bahnsen’s Always Ready.

In one of Jim Lee’s posts he linked to Reconstructionist Radio, a site offering Grey Toombs’ narration of Always Ready, a collection of essays by Greg Bahnsen. Bahnsen was a proponent of Van Til’s presuppositional apologetics. Keeping Proverbs 26:4-5 in mind, this apologetics answers the fool without capitulating to the fool’s presuppositions.

After reading C.S. Lewis’s Miracles, Bahnsen’s essay, The Problem of Miracles, reprinted as Chapter 34, caught my attention.

At the beginning of the essay, Bahnsen explained why miracles are a problem for the modern mind: “Miracles would disrupt our simplistic and impersonalistic views of the predictability and uniformity of the world around us.”

We should be careful not to accept Naturalism’s presuppositions by becoming aware of what they are. For example, there needs to be a reason for the uniformity of nature. Can the Naturalist presupposition of the existence of impersonal laws of nature provide that reason? Given that “impersonal” implies those laws arose by chance, it is not likely. Furthermore as Bahnsen claimed at about 21:30 in the narration of the chapter, “God’s self-revelation in the scriptures offers no support for the idea that there are impersonal laws of nature which make the world operate mechanically and with an inevitability which is free ordinarily from the choices of God’s will.” So, there is no need for a Christian to capitulate to the Naturalist’s presupposition of impersonal laws of nature.

The Christian presupposition is that the Bible is the Word of God. The creation account in Genesis 1-2 provides a reason for the uniformity of nature since the creation was good and Genesis 3 provides a reason for the disorderliness of evil (rebellion) that we also see.

Is the source of the orderliness we experience personal or impersonal? If we accept that it is personal (rather than arising from impersonal chance), does the Bible reveal the true personal source or might there some other source such as panpsychism, Brahma or some Baal? The Christian presupposes that the Bible reveals the true source and, given that source, miracles are possible.

At the end of the chapter, Bahnsen warned us to be careful with miracles. They are possible, but the presence of a miracle, or perhaps better put, a sign or wonder, does not mean that God was responsible for it. Signs or wonders, given the serpent in Genesis 3, may also come from demonic sources seeking to deceive.

Greg Bahnsen, The Uniformity of Nature: Atheism’s Philosophical Problem

All knowledge is deposited in Christ. Man’s knowledge of the truth depends upon God’s prior knowledge, begins with the fear of the Lord, and it requires submission to God’s Word.

Greg Bahnsen, Always Ready, Chapter 6

Weekly Bible Reading:  Psalms (Audio)
Commentary: David Pawson, Hebrew Poetry, Part 30, and Psalms, Part 31, Unlocking the Bible

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