Good-bye, Sun. Good-bye, Moon.

Christians—well, many Christians—believe that the Bible is the absolute truth about everything needed for a life that prospers spiritually, morally, and physically on earth and ensures eternity for the believer.   

But is all truth in the Bible?

Ultimately, yes.

Please allow me to explain. Yes, information about how fast light travels, for example, is not in Scripture, along with the description and explanation of millions of things. It is a book of spiritual truth. In it is the ultimate expression of that truth: Jesus. He claimed that He Himself was the truth (John 14:6). However, Scripture is the ultimate truth about the physical universe, as well. Jesus, who died but is alive forever, is truth, the words God speaks are truth, so truth must be eternal. The Lord speaks from eternity and thus the truth about the future of the earth and the universe.

This is what Scripture says: “For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God, and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished. But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly” (2 Peter 3:5–7).

However, the Lord God Almighty will not simply burn the universe up and destroy it. He will create something completely new. Here are a few hints of what will happen to the universe as we now know it. Perhaps these verses will help us understand why God’s truth concerning everything is eternal.

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more” (Revelation 21:1).

And these three:

“And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (Revelation 21:5a).

“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Revelation 21:23).

“And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:5).

The sun? Gone. No more heat, light, or photosynthesis. But there will be light, and there will be at least one tree (Revelation 22:14). The moon? Gone. No more tides. Makes sense. There won’t be oceans. Quantum physics and all its strangeness? Gone, or at least altered. After all, Jesus was able to walk through walls and appear or disappear at will after His resurrection. That’s the way the bodies of believers will be, since after He brings us up to Himself, we will have bodies like His (Philippians 3:20-21).

All things will be made new. What will life be like in that eternal kingdom? Well, we are only given clues and hints. But, if you are a believer, you can trust that it will be more wonderful than the beauties we now encounter in nature and in the universe. And we will be sharing it, inheriting it, and in fellowship with the One who created it all, the One who brought us into His family, the One who saved us from sin, death, hell, and the grave.

That is something to look forward to.

That’s eternal truth.

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy Bing images.

Dear Scientist, Please Go Create A Seed.

Many years ago, when Laurie and I were pastoring in a rural suburb, I talked to a farmer one day. I remember nothing about that conversation except one thing. Apparently, we were talking about God, the world He created, scientists, and evolution. He said, bringing his thumb and forefinger together, “They can’t even make a seed.”

Great point and simply stated. Spoken by a farmer who obviously doesn’t “follow the science.” But how would a biologist respond to the farmer’s statement? The honest answer would be, “No, we haven’t. We can’t. We don’t know how.”

It astounds me continually that evolution is promoted almost everywhere you look. I just don’t understand why people so readily accept that theory without question. Let’s return to that lowly seed, the seed without which there would be no self-sustaining plant life on earth. How did that seed come into existence?

Here’s part of the answer the Scientific American offers:

“The remaining question is why this complex union took place roughly 1.6 billion years ago. One suggestion is that local conditions may have made it more beneficial for predators of cyanobacteria to stop eating and start absorbing, due to a scarcity of prey and an abundance of sunlight. ‘When the food runs out but sunlight is abundant, then photosynthesis works better to support an organism,’ Bhattacharya notes. And from that forced union a supergroup of extremely successful organisms—the plants—sprang.”¹

You will notice that “one suggestion” (Although people will receive it as fact) is that it was “more beneficial” for the predators of cyanobacteria to “stop eating and start absorbing” because photosynthesis works better when sunlight is abundant. And from a “forced” union, a supergroup of organisms “sprang.”

Presto chango, it just happened. Evolution, realizing how photosynthesis works, figured it out. Or the predators of cyanobacteria did. Wearing the eyeglasses of Mr. Darwin, everywhere one looks, evolution is present. Of course, it is. There is no other scientific answer.

Well, my question is, if things as complex as cells and thus seeds evolved by time plus chance plus genetic mutation, why can’t scientists, with all their knowledge, expertise, and high-tech equipment, make a cell or a seed? Let’s get cracking, people. It may have taken “nature,” or “evolution,” or “cyanobacteria predators” a billion years to figure it out, but surely you could engineer that relatively quickly, right?

Guess not.

While we’re at it, perhaps we should ask why scientists haven’t been able to create life even though they claim—maybe it’s only suggested—that it just spontaneously sprang up. I mean this first, springing-up thing must be the simplest of simple organisms, right? No, not really. It turns out that a cell is extraordinarily complex. How did that first life-like thing spring out of the primordial pool after a lightning strike? We don’t know. Just—bing! There it is. In the beginning, we are told, there were carbon atoms and other elements necessary for life. Mix it all up. Add a billion years and a lightning strike.

Well, we can’t create them here at all. So, perhaps they spontaneously generated on Mars. That sounds more probable. We can’t manufacture them here with all of our resources, so it makes more sense that they combobulated on a planet with an atmosphere that is 95% carbon dioxide, 2.8% molecular nitrogen, and 2% argon, with trace levels of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen and other noble gases.²

Maybe there is a special lightning on Mars.

Cyanobacteria predators.

Finally, brilliant scientists have come up with this answer: Life on earth came from somewhere else in the solar system or universe, where it apparently began spontaneously, and survived a fiery entrance into the earth’s atmosphere. 

We are one intelligent evolved species, aren’t we?

Well, not so evolved that we aren’t fools.

 “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt. They do abominable deeds. There is none who does good. Yahweh looks down from heaven upon the children of humankind to see whether there is one who has insight, one who cares about God” (Psalm 14:1–2).³

Looks like the only truth in this whole mess is in the words that God has spoken.

No surprise there.

However, we were all fools once. So, there is hope for the lost scientist. Paul, after a list of sins, wrote, “And some of you were these things, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11).

Come to Jesus, scientist, and please continue to unravel mysteries. But if you’re searching for a way that life spontaneously generates, you will the truth in only one place.

¹https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-first-plant-evolved/

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Mars

³All Scripture references are from The Lexham English Bible Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press. (2012).

Gif courtesy Bing images.

I Just Had To Laugh. I Saw The Photograph.

This post has nothing to do with the lyrics to the Beatles’ song, A Day in the Life.

Click bait. I apologize.

However, it is, though, a bit, because it’s about a video, which is a series of moving photographs; moving pictures, from which the word “movies” came. I laughed at those moving photographs during a documentary entitled Einstein’s Quantum Riddle because, in it, a physicist said, “Nothing makes any sense.” She was referring to what is called quantum entanglement. Do you know what that is? Well, I am abysmally far from being a physicist, but with what I understand, I’ll provide an illustration similar to the one they used.

Imagine a football field. In one end zone standing upright is a single domino, which represents a particle. In the other end zone, another solitary domino, also representing a particle, also standing upright. One of them topples over. At exactly the same time, the other domino topples.

Quantum entanglement.

Einstein said this was not possible. He called it “spooky actions at a distance.” From his understanding, if something is traveling through space, it takes time. Even light, which is the champion speedster of the universe. takes time to travel. He thought there must be another explanation. Through experimentation, however, physicists have proven that quantum entanglement is true. As a result, one of the physicists on the documentary actually said, “Space doesn’t exist.”

So, as strange as it is, at this point in our knowledge about quantum entanglement, that makes sense.

I guess.

Physicists have discovered other startling things. One is that the old models we used to see of atoms with electrons orbiting protons and neutrons are inaccurate. What an atom really “looks like” is, well, mush. A haze. Not only that, it turns out that atoms don’t exist until we measure or observe their behavior.

Think about that for a moment.

Okay. That didn’t help.

So, as the physicist said, nothing makes sense. I just had to laugh because I thought, “After all their years of mind-burning hard work, they have come to the same conclusion I have!” Don’t get me wrong. I sincerely appreciate what physicists do and the work they have done. In spite of my interest in this science, my brain has never been able to wrap itself around it and its mathematics, even without these mind-blowing realities.

Then I glorified God. And I laughed again. “You have baffled us again, Lord, even the brightest among us.” We Christians do not comprehend and will not, in our lives on the earth, the magnificent heights of God’s mind, power, and creativity. And physics isn’t the only thing scientists don’t understand. As I wrote in a recent article, they don’t know what ninety-five percent of the universe is. They don’t know how the universe came into being. They don’t know how life began on the earth. These are exceptionally large questions. But this one about quantum entanglement—well, it reveals to us how unknowing we humans really are. As it turns out, we don’t even know what reality is. These serious scientists have now speculated that all we observe and study is an illusion. This is what your brain looks like when one studies physics and discovers that nothing makes sense. That speculation about a world of illusion works until you spill some hot water on your hand.

The Lord God Almighty doesn’t speak at length about His creation. The Bible simply says in the first verses of Genesis that He created everything. The psalmists often lauded Him for it, which was right, good, and proper. The author of Hebrews wrote about Jesus, “He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” (Hebrews 1:3a).¹

This is not a scientific explanation of our universe, of course. Scientists will not be satisfied by it. Neither should they be. I’m happy about their efforts to ferret out the mysteries of creation. Because of their discoveries, this verse has taken on a deeper meaning:

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).

Invisible things. As it turns out, the invisible things are so wondrous that we cannot comprehend them.

That sounds like something the Lord God Almighty would do, doesn’t it?

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy Bing images.

In Less Than a Second

Physicists have discovered that everything in the universe was created in less than one second. Blink your eyes once. There. It is done. It is impossible for any of us to comprehend the kind of mind-boggling energy necessary to bring about such a massive event. Our most powerful thermonuclear explosions are but sparks off a flint. Christians believe that everything that exists was created out of nothing by the Almighty God, not by natural forces, but by His spiritual power. Thus, it is apparent that spiritual power is the most potent force in the universe—none other was extant. Few physicists will give heed to this truth. I understand, and I appreciate their study. They want to explain how it happened. To just simply say, “God created it,” is insufficient. Truly, it is a worthy task. But, as Johannes Kepler wrote, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics” Astronomis Nova de Motibus (1609). But the genius, Kepler, is ignored in contemporary physics. Attempting to follow this dictum is an unpopular endeavor. Well, we shall pray for them, that they will stop denying and suppressing the truth.

What we experience every day—the kind of power we experience every day—is natural power. We cannot ignore it and shouldn’t. This power is infinitely miniscule compared to God’s; nevertheless, we are so frail that even this paltry force dominates our lives. Let’s start with gravity, shall we? Or perhaps electromagnetic force, which holds atoms together. We could go on, of course. Jesus, who possesses all available spiritual power, and thus the most potent, performed only small displays of it when He was on earth. Nevertheless, these acts plainly revealed His dominion over gravity, light, and material substance. He walked on water. He stilled the storm. He was transfigured on the Mount. He changed a few barley loaves and fish into enough food to feed thousands of people. He healed the sick which required changes in physical human bodies. He changed water into wine. He raised three dead people. That would require a re-creation of dead brain and body cells. Jesus did not perform immense acts of power, just to exhibit power for power’s sake. He performed acts of grace and glorified His Father.

Now, consider this natural conclusion to our discussion so far: The Lord God Almighty is perfect in power. Nothing whatsoever in the universe or on the earth is impossible for Him: “Then the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah, saying, ‘Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh; is anything too difficult for Me?’”(Jeremiah 32:26–27).¹

If anything was too difficult for Him, He would not be God.

I trust this truth will encourage those who pray for the sick. The Lord is able to change the material substance of the human body. In truth, He created it.

However, you have probably noticed the quest for human power in cultures. People lust for it. Minorities want it. White people want it. Both men and women want it. LGBTQ folks want it. We exalt people who are trying to achieve or have achieved earthly power. This is the way the world thinks.

It is all they have.

I encourage the Christian reader not to seek earthly power unless he or she is certain that power is solely to glorify the Lord and bring others to the knowledge of God. Natural power is dangerous, and very few wielded it well in the Bible. We are instructed to lower ourselves and follow Jesus sacrificially, not raise ourselves. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24–26).

Our great, glorious goal—the goal that brings God delight—is to understand and know Him. “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD’” (Jeremiah 9:23–24).

 

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy giphy.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New American Standard Bible: 1995 update. (1995). (Je 32:25–27). La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation.

 

The Grand, Magical Thinking of Evolutionary Theory

I just don’t get it. If I watch a nature show on the BBC or Nature or some such network and see amazing videos of amazing creatures (For this, I thank the videographers and the networks, sincerely.), I sicken of hearing, over and over, ad nauseum, how Nature or Evolution provided this and that creature with the tools to survive or mate or do whatever the creature is doing. Now, if one were to ask a person how this is done, he or she would say, “It happens over time, millions and millions of years.” That’s it. That’s the answer. We dreamily imagine foggy time and grand, magical nature, and, there it is.

Case closed.

Now go away, you science-denying Neanderthal.

Recently, I had a discussion about evolution with an agnostic evolutionist. Nice guy. He had the same answer to my questions about how creatures evolved that I wrote above. So, I asked, “Do you realize how much that sounds like magical thinking to me?” He quickly answered, “Do you realize how much of what you believe sounds like magical thinking to me?”

I responded, “Looks like we’re both magical thinkers.”

Yes. I am a Christian, and I will go ahead and admit that to an atheist or agnostic, when I say that the sovereign Lord God created all things, it sounds like magical thinking to them. What I wish such a person would confess in return is that their “scientific” answers sound like magical thinking as well. I wish they would acknowledge that they don’t have the answers to how the fantastic creation we see around us every day came into being instead of stating it as fact.

Let’s start with what is called the Big Bang. This is a puzzle for which they simply have no answer. “Ex nihilo nihil fit.” “Out of nothing, nothing comes.” It is true, isn’t it? But here we are, with time and gravity and mass and electromagnetism and quarks and neutrinos and dark energy and dark matter and nuclear fusion and Goldilocks Earth and all living things.

Living things. This is the next one they simply cannot answer. Oh, they answer, readily enough. The Primordial Pool. Time plus chance. We go to foggy, magical dreamworld. Some organic materials globbed together and, um, lightning struck, and, um, well, something happened. The Spark of Life.

Three major problems here. What they say “just happened” has never been duplicated in a laboratory. All these wonderfully intelligent scientists—I’m not being sarcastic—they really are wonderfully intelligent—with all the technology available, cannot create life from adding electricity to a murky, globby pool. What astounds me is that they think that even though they cannot do it with intelligent, creative minds and tech, that it just happened without an intelligent, creative mind.

The second major problem is that, in order for a creature to pass down its characteristics to the next generation, genetics must be in play. But how do genes evolve? If a glob in a murky pool struck by just the right amount of electricity from lightning (A bit of a stretch if you think about it. Perhaps you’ve noticed that creatures struck by lightning are always affected negatively.), sparked to life, how would it pass on its “life”? Genetics would have to evolve within that very first “creature.” How on earth would that happen?

The third ginormous problem is genetic mutations which evolutionists maintain lead to positive evolutionary changes. If we close our eyes and go to dreamy, magical-thinking world, we can somehow believe that, given millions and millions of years, there was one mutation that was positive which lead to another mutation which was positive and so on. But how does a wing evolve? A bump on some creature? How does that increase the creature’s ability to survive? How does an eye evolve? From some light sensitive spot? How does it connect to the brain? We could ask such questions about the evolution of bioluminescence—well, shall we add just about everything else? How about ants that cut grass, use it to cultivate algae, and then eat that algae? Large brains, those ants. How about bats and sea creatures that use echolocation? Monarch butterflies that have both a sun compass and a magnetic compass? We’ll just skip how a caterpillar dissolves in a cocoon and comes out a completely different creature with long, spindly legs, antennae, and wings.

Concrete answers, please. Please just start at the murky pool—I’ll give you a pass on ex nihilo nihil fit—and tell me what happened. I know. You have a theory. Just stop talking as if it were a fact.

Murky pool. Go.

Think I haven’t been nice? Well, the Lord is less so:

“The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, doing abominable iniquity; there is none who does good” (Psalm 53:1). ¹

 

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

Gif courtesy giphy.com

 

 

 

Amazed on Terra Firma

I like watching television shows about the universe. I appreciate the efforts of scientists to help us understand how big the earth, sun and the planets are in relation to other objects in the universe, as well as how immense the distances are.

But I gotta admit, in spite of all their best efforts, I just can’t really comprehend it. I mean, I understand the videos and model mock-ups, but…it’s just too much for my little brain to handle. They say there are hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, and each galaxy has hundreds of billions of stars. To me, a thousand of something is a lot. I wasn’t personally familiar with over a hundred thousand dollars until we bought our third house. A million? A billion? I don’t have a million or a billion of anything. I’ve never even counted to a million and don’t intend to. So, when they start throwing around numbers like hundreds of billions, my mind goes blank.

There’s Water Out There Amongst the Stars? Yep…

Okay, so maybe I’m dumb. Clueless. But it seems sure that I’m faithless. I’m not happy to confess to you that whenever I’ve read the Genesis account of creation, I’ve read the following verse with a sense of, “Well, hmm, I’m not sure.”

“And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so” (Genesis 1:7).

So, I’ve asked the Father to forgive me, because it turns out that He knew what He was talking about. I’m embarrassed to even write this, but I don’t know how else to say it.

It turns out there is water “above the expanse,” and a lot of it—140 trillion times the amount of water in our oceans. The number is so huge that I can’t grasp it. Well, maybe you can. I’m on record here as confessing that I’m both dumb and unbelieving.

Here’s the article from the NASA site. Be prepared to have your jaw drop.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/universe20110722.html

A Clumpy Universe. Our Creator Continues to Amaze Us.

The universe is clumpy. Just thought you might want to know.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/clumpy-universe/