26 Day-Age Inconsistencies Part 2

A day is as a thousand years...

Some refer to 2 Peter 3:8 which tells us: “But, 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 verse is used by many who teach, by inference at least, that the days in Genesis must each be a thousand years long. This reasoning, however, is quite wrong.

Turning to Psalm 90:4 we read a similar verse: “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” In both 2 Peter 3 and Psalm 90 the whole context is that God is neither limited by natural processes nor by time. To the contrary, God is “outside” time, for He also “created” time. Neither verse refers to the days of creation in Genesis, for they are dealing with God not being bound by time. In 2 Peter 3, the context is in relation to Christ’s second coming, pointing out the fact that with God a day is just like a thousand years or a thousand years is just like one day. He is outside of time. This has nothing to do with the days of creation in Genesis.

Further, in 2 Peter 3:8 the word “day” is contrasted with “a thousand years.” The word “day” thus has a literal meaning which enables it to be contrasted with “a thousand years.” It could not be contrasted with “a thousand years” if it didn’t have a literal meaning. Thus, the thrust of the Apostle’s message is that God can do in a very short time what men or “nature” would require a very long time to accomplish, if they could accomplish it at all.

It is interesting to note that evolutionists try to make out that the chance, random processes of “nature” required millions of years to produce man. Many Christians have accepted these millions of years, added them to the Bible and then said that God took millions of years to make everything. However, the point of 2 Peter 3:8 is that God is not limited by time, whereas evolution requires time (a very great deal of it!).

25 Day-Age Inconsistencies Part 1

There are many inconsistencies in accepting the days in Genesis as long periods of time.

For instance, we are told in Genesis 1:26–28 that God made the first man (Adam) on the sixth day. Adam lived through the rest of the sixth day and through the seventh day.

We are told in Genesis 5:5 that he died when he was 930 years old. (We are not still in the seventh day as some people misconstrue, for Genesis 2:2 tells us God “rested” from His work of creation, not that He is resting from His work of creation.)

If each day was, for example, a million years, then there are real problems. In fact, if each day were only a thousand years long, this still makes no sense of Adam’s age at death either.

24 Does Distant Starlight Prove the Universe is Old?

Critics of biblical creation sometimes use distant starlight as an argument against a young universe.

The argument goes something like this: (1) there are galaxies that are so far away, it would take light from their stars billions of years to get from there to here; (2) we can see these galaxies, so their starlight has already arrived here; and (3) the universe must be at least billions of years old—much older than the 6,000 or so years indicated in the Bible.

Many big bang supporters and old earth creationists consider this to be an excellent argument against the biblical timescale.

Do you know how to answer these questions?

Read this for help answering this common objection.

23 Genesis 1 versus the Big Bang

Many Christians attempting to compromise with modern science propose that God used the Big Bang to create the universe. There are several things wrong with this idea. Most importantly, it is absolutely contrary to the plain reading of Scripture in Genesis 1.

The big bang story from the beginning to now:

1. The entire universe is contained in a point.
2. This point rapidly expands like a balloon.
3. Energy becomes matter - hydrogen and helium.
4. The matter condenses into stars and galaxies.
5. Stars make heavier elements which become dust.
6. Dust condenses to form planets.
7. On one such planet, chemicals happen to form life.
8. Life evolves into you.

How does this compare to the Bible?

	Big Bang	The Bible
Cause of the universe	Quantum fluctuation, nothing, can’t know	God
Timescale	Billions of Years	Thousands of Years
Order	Stars before the Earth	Earth before stars
Order	Fish before trees	Trees before fish
Order	Dinosaurs before birds	Birds before dinosaurs
The future	Heat death	Judgment / restoration
ETs	Life likely evolved elsewhere, too	Earth created specifically for life
Original Earth	Molten rock	Created as a paradise

Do we trust in God's account of origins or man's story?

God's Word	Man's Guess
God was actually there	Man wasn't there
Never makes mistakes	Man makes mistakes
Knows everything	Limited knowledge
Always correctly interprets evidence	Can often misinterpret the evidence
Never lies	Sometimes dishonest
Actually responsibile for creation	Had nothing to do with creation

Which are you going to believe?

22 Class Materials

Below I have linked to the materials to past few class sessions. Feel free to modify or use them however you like.

Don't forget to share this site with your friends and relatives who may have questions.

February 14th - notes and powerpoint

February 21st - notes and powerpoint

February 28th - notes and powerpoint (Coming soon)

21 If it has sharp teeth, it must eat meat right?

When viewing fossils such as this one, all sharp teeth tell us is that the animal had sharp teeth.

There are several examples of animals with razor sharp teeth that need them to eat...are you ready for this?...plants! Pandas, fruit bats (like the one in the picture), and even bears have sharp teeth that are used to eat plants.

You can also read here about a lion that during its entire lifetime of nine years never ate meat!

20 Isn't Evolution Wonderful? - 4

In the past, we have often marveled at little beasties who, with (literally) incredibly foresight and ingenuity, designed chemical and physical changes to themselves that defy belief.

Today, it's a plant.

The tropical acacia plant exudes a drug that controls the minds of the ants that live on it. The drug both motivates the ants aggressively to attack anything — from spider to giraffe — hapless enough to try to feed on it. Then, when it serves the plant's purposes (?), it also drives the ants away from its flowers.

If we believe that all is nothing but matter in motion, purposeless and blind... what a lucky plant.

Otherwise, just imagine the countless generations of veggi-scientists, luring species after species of ant, running chemical and behavioral diagnoses, then hitting the lab for innumerable chemical combinations and experiments, looking for that perfect mixture of elements. And of course, the vast generatiosn of acacia plants dying without the ants' protection.

Clever herb, eh?

Not really.

Psalm 104:24
O Lord, how manifold are your works!
In wisdom have you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.

19 The Bible Was Written By Men...

Nonbelievers, specifically atheists, are very predictable in their arguments.

Somehow, atheists have garnered a reputation of intelligence and reason.

This article will help you prepare for a discussion where the tiresome argument of the Bible being written by men is brought up.

Be prepared!

18 Where Did Cain Get His Wife?

Spend enough time interacting with those who believe evolution and the issue of Cain’s wife is bound to come up. As you defend the idea that all people came from the union of Adam and Eve and this question will arise.

If you have ever seen the movies Inherit the Wind or Contact, you will remember that this question and the believers’ lack of an answer is a turning point. Could you answer this question?

Why is this important? Many skeptics have claimed that for Cain to find a wife, there must have been other “races” of people on the earth who were not descendants of Adam and Eve. To many people, this question is a stumbling block to accepting the creation account of Genesis and its record of only one man and woman at the beginning of history. Defenders of the gospel must be able to show that all human beings are descendants of one man and one woman (Adam and Eve) because only descendants of Adam and Eve can be saved. Thus, believers need to be able to account for Cain’s wife and show clearly she was a descendant of Adam and Eve.

Since the Bible describes all human beings as sinners, and we are all related (“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth,” Acts 17:26), the gospel makes sense only on the basis that all humans alive and all that have ever lived (except for the first woman) are descendants of the first man Adam. If this were not so, then the gospel could not be explained or defended.

Thus, there was only one man at the beginning—made from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7).
This also means that Cain’s wife was a descendant of Adam. She couldn’t have come from another race of people and must be accounted for from Adam’s descendants.

In Genesis 5:4 we read a statement that sums up the life of Adam and Eve: “After he begot Seth, the days of Adam were eight hundred years; and he had sons and daughters.”

During their lives, Adam and Eve had a number of male and female children. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus wrote, “The number of Adam’s children, as says the old tradition, was thirty-three sons and twenty-three daughters.”

Scripture doesn’t tell us how many children were born to Adam and Eve, but considering their long life spans (Adam lived for 930 years—Genesis 5:5), it would seem logical to suggest there were many. Remember, they were commanded to “be fruitful, and multiply” (Genesis 1:28).
If we now work totally from Scripture, without any personal prejudices or other extrabiblical ideas, then back at the beginning, when there was only the first generation, brothers would have had to marry sisters or there wouldn’t have been any more generations!

We’re not told when Cain married or many of the details of other marriages and children, but we can say for certain that Cain’s wife was either his sister or a close relative.

Many people immediately reject the conclusion that Adam and Eve’s sons and daughters married each other by appealing to the law against brother-sister marriage. Some say that you can’t marry your relation. Actually, if you don’t marry your relation, you don’t marry a human! A wife is related to her husband before they are married because all people are descendants of Adam and Eve—all are of one blood. This law forbidding close relatives marrying was not given until the time of Moses (Leviticus 18–20). Provided marriage was one man for one woman for life (based on Genesis 1–2), there was no disobedience to God’s law originally (before the time of Moses) when close relatives (even brothers and sisters) married each other.

Remember that Abraham was married to his half-sister (Genesis 20:12). God’s law forbade such marriages, but that was some four hundred years later at the time of Moses.
Today, brothers and sisters (and half-brothers and half-sisters, etc.) are not currently permitted by law to marry and have children.

Now it is true that children produced in a union between brother and sister have a greater chance to be deformed. As a matter of fact, the closer the couple are in relationship, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed. It is very easy to understand this without going into all the technical details.

Each person inherits a set of genes from his or her mother and father. Unfortunately, genes today contain many mistakes (because of sin and the Curse), and these mistakes show up in a variety of ways.

The more closely related two people are, the more likely it is that they will have similar mistakes in their genes, inherited from the same parents. Therefore, brother and sister are likely to have similar mistakes in their genetic material. If there were to be a union between these two that produces offspring, children would inherit one set of genes from each of their parents. Because the genes probably have similar mistakes, the mistakes pair together and result in deformities in the children.

Conversely, the further away the parents are in relationship to each other, the more likely it is that they will have different mistakes in their genes. Children, inheriting one set of genes from each parent, are likely to end up with some of the pairs of genes containing only one bad gene in each pair. The good gene tends to override the bad so that a deformity (a serious one, anyway) does not occur. Instead of having totally deformed ears, for instance, a person may have only crooked ones. (Overall, though, the human race is slowly degenerating as mistakes accumulate generation after generation.)

However, this fact of present-day life did not apply to Adam and Eve. When the first two people were created, they were perfect. Everything God made was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). That means their genes were perfect—no mistakes. But when sin entered the world because of Adam (Genesis 3:6), God cursed the world so that the perfect creation then began to degenerate, that is, suffer death and decay (Romans 8:22). Over a long period of time, this degeneration would have resulted in all sorts of mistakes occurring in the genetic material of living things.

But Cain was in the first generation of children ever born. He, as well as his brothers and sisters, would have received virtually no imperfect genes from Adam or Eve, since the effects of sin and the Curse would have been minimal to start with. In that situation, brother and sister could have married (provided it was one man for one woman, which is what marriage is all about, Matthew 19:4–6) without any potential to produce deformed offspring.

By the time of Moses (about 2,500 years later), degenerative mistakes would have accumulated to such an extent in the human race that it would have been necessary for God to bring in the laws forbidding brother-sister (and close relative) marriage (Leviticus 18–20).

17 Evidence For A Young World

D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D. has written a great article with "a dozen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old."

Have you ever been stumped by evolutionists when asked to show evidence that evolution could not have happened? Here is your answer.