PART 1-2008 Creation Conference-Binghamtown Baptist Church with Dr. Jim Gardner

PART 1:

I come to you today with excitement! It is once again time for the Creation Conference at my church. This morning I listened to Dr. Gardener talk and I was so excited to blog my notes. I am going to "try" to cover everything that he mentioned and "try" to link to some of the articles and videos. Bear with me. He will talk again tonight and I'll post that at a later date.

We need Biblical Scholars now more than ever!
2 Timothy 2:15-Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.


WHY COMPROMISE BIBLICAL AUTHORITY?

2 Questions:

1. Did God mean exactly what He said?
2. Did He say exactly what He meant?

John 3:12: If I have told you Earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of Heavenly things?

II Timothy 3:16 - All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:

Genesis 1:1- In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

***Most churches today have compromised Biblical Authority.
***satan is really good at what he does. He got Eve to do three things:
1. he got her to question God's word
2. he got her to doubt God's word
3. he got her to disbelieve God's word

***satan has had 6,000 years of practice to get better here on earth. We can even see how he is in some of our "Christian" churches today. he is visible in Sunday School classes and in the pulpit because some of our churches today let things go on and mislead people.

Reinterpretaion
***Attempts to add millions of years to the Bible do not come from those who do not believe in the Bible, rather Christians who are looking for a way to fit Evolution in with their faith. Atheists couldn't care less about trying to fit it with the Bible because they don't even believe the Bible.
*** They question the Bible instead of questioning science. The world and secular folks have taught us to do this exact thing.

We've been taught:



(From AIG's website)

Internal evidence of the book of Genesis

1. There is the internal evidence of the book of Genesis itself. As already mentioned, chapters 12–50 have always been regarded by the Jewish people as being the record of their own true history, and the style of writing contained in chapters 1–11 is not strikingly different from that in chapters 12–50.

2. Hebrew scholars of standing have always regarded this to be the case. Thus, Professor James Barr, Regius Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, has written:

‘Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1–11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that: (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience (b) the figures contained in the Genesis genealogies provided by simple addition a chronology from the beginning of the world up to later stages in the biblical story (c) Noah’s flood was understood to be world-wide and extinguish all human and animal life except for those in the ark. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the “days” of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.’⁹.

3. One of the main themes of Genesis is the Sovereignty of God. This is seen in God’s actions in respect of four outstanding events in Genesis 1–11 (Creation, the Fall, the Flood, and the Babel dispersion), and His relationship to four outstanding people in Genesis 12–50 (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph). There is thus a unifying theme to the whole of the book of Genesis, which falls to the ground if any part is mythical and not true history; on the other hand, each portion reinforces the historical authenticity of the other.¹⁰

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***When people try to make What the Bible says and What Evolutionist agree, guess which one always gets changed? The Bible!

*** Where do you even fit a million years in the Bible?

- The genealogy in the Bible shows that we are all connected to Adam and Eve and thus have sinned against God even through our lineage.

- Alot of folks try to "fit" this million years between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1:

1In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

2And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

- This is called the Gap Theory.

- The word for "Day" in the Bible is "Yom" and it is used 2,301 times in the Old Testament.

- The issue is that it is only questioned in the book of Genesis. Why is it only questioned there when it is used throughout the entirety of the Bible?

- An example being Jonah and the Whale. Did Jonah stay in the belly of the whale for 3,000 years? This would be true IF one day is equal to 1,000 years as it states in 2 Peter 3:8:

8But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

- This is talking about Heaven, not here on earth. Our days are in 24 hour spans. God doesn't need to measure time but He knows that we do and therefore He gave us that knowledge in 2 Peter in order to help us understand how time would work IN HEAVEN.

***The Gap Theory does not work when looking at the scripture because:
1. If lucifer fell before Creation week, how could God say that everything was good?

Genesis 1: 31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

2. He made everything in the beginning.... so the beginning really meant the beginning.

3. The sun must have shined upon the earth long before in order to support the earth. How could it have just appeared thousands of years after the plants and animals? They would have died before it began to shine.

4. Thorns and thistles are supposedly billions of years old when in actually they really aren't. Genesis 3:18 : Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;


(From AIG's website)

If the idea of millions of years of earth and cosmic history is really true, as many teach, then

1. it destroys the Bible’s teaching on death.
2. it assaults the character of God.
3. it contradicts what Jesus believed and taught about the age of the earth, thereby undermining faith in Him for salvation (see this short article and this longer one). If Jesus was wrong about the age of the earth, what other errors did He make in His teaching?
4. it undermines faith in the gospel by undermining faith in the Bible that contains the gospel.
5. it nullifies the authority of Scripture.
6. it therefore weakens the Church and its gospel witness in the world.

You see, if death, disease, suffering, natural disasters (like hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in southeast Asia in December 2004), and extinctions have been going on for millions of years, as evolutionists teach, then God’s Word is fundamentally in error from beginning to end.

God says in Genesis 1:29–30 that man and the animals and birds were all originally vegetarian. Six times in Genesis 1 God said that what He had made was “good” (not good like on our scale of good-better-best, but good like God is good—without any quality that could be described as evil or bad).

In Genesis 1:31 He called everything He had made “very good.” In Genesis 3:14–19 He cursed the whole creation because of Adam’s sin. God cursed the serpent who deceived Eve, and it resulted in a physical change to the serpent. It therefore is reasonable to assume that animals were changed physically in some way as a result of the curse on them (e.g., carnivore behavior began at this time). Eve was changed physically (more pain in childbirth) because of God’s judgment.

Adam and Eve spiritually died instantly when they sinned—their relationship with God was broken and they hid themselves from God. But they also began to die physically as God said “from the dust you came, to the dust you shall return” (and as Paul says in Romans 5:12 and I Corinthians 15:21–22 that physical death came into the human race through Adam). The ground was also cursed. So, the fall had an impact on the whole creation. It is now all fallen and cursed, ruined by man’s sin—in bondage to corruption (Romans 8:19–23).

If we accept the millions of years, then (whether we realize it or not) we are also accepting that there were thorns and thistles long before Adam sinned (they have been found fossilized in rock layers dated at 340–405 million years), even though God says in Genesis 3 that thorns and thistles came as a result of sin. They are not the result of His good creativity but His holy justice.

If the millions of years are a fact, then God lied about the thorns. If God told the truth (I believe He did), then the millions of years are a lie. If Christians accept the millions of years, then they are also accepting (whether they realize it or not) that God calls cancer “very good,” because cancer is found in dinosaur bones that are dated to be at least 65 million years old, dying long before Adam was created and sinned in a theistic evolutionist viewpoint.............

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***Evolutionists count on the fact that Christians do not understand Carbon dating.

Carbon 14 dating:

- was developed in the late 1960's
- The problem with it is that Carbon 14 has a half life of 5, 500 years. This basically means that after this many years the Carbon 14 will be cut in half and continue until there is nothing left. In 22,000 years it would be down to the point of being immeasurable. How then do you measure something older than 22,000 years old?


*** Scientists came up with Radio Metric Dating:
- It deals with the ratio of Parent elements to daughter elements.
- It's half lives are longer.
- The parent is lead.
- The problem is the assumptions that go along with it.

***4 Assumptions About Radio Metric Dating:

1. The beginning concentration of the parents and daughters
2. Decay rates of parent to daughter
3. No parent and daughter elements were gained or lost
4. It assumes that everything has always been as it is today

- Eg. Mount St. Helen is dated 900,000 years old and only 35 years ago it erupted.

***Years ago all scientists believed in the Geocentric Universe, a theory by Aristotle:

...is the superseded theory that the Earth is the center of the universe and other objects go around it. Belief in this system was common in ancient Greece. It was embraced by both Aristotle and Ptolemy, and most Ancient Greek philosophers assumed that the Sun, Moon, stars, and naked eye planets circle the Earth. Similar ideas were held in ancient China.<sup>[1]
(From Wikipedia).

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***Next came Copernicus who believed in a Heliocentric system. Galileo, after studying the sky tremendously, agreed with this theory:</sup>

Model of the solar system centred on the Sun, with Earth and other planets revolving around it, formulated by Nicolaus Copernicus in the mid 16th century. Having the Sun in this central position explained the apparent motion of planets relative to the fixed stars and was truer than the Earth-centred Ptolemaic system (see Ptolemy). Scientifically, the Copernican system led to belief in a much larger universe than before (because, if the Earth revolved around the Sun, the stars would have to be very distant not to appear to alter their position); more broadly, the Copernican principle is invoked to argue against any theory that would give the solar system a special place in the universe. Dethronement of Earth from the centre of the universe caused profound shock: the Copernican system challenged the entire system of ancient authority and required a complete change in the philosophical conception of the universe.
(From Answers.com)


PART 2 to come shortly!