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In 1944, Cressy Morrison in his book, Man
Does Not Stand Alone, relates this illustration:
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"Let's say I have 10 pennies and I mark each one with a number, 1 to 10, then
place all 10 in your pocket.
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I would ask you to give your pocket a good shake so the pennies are no longer
in any order in your pocket.
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What chance would I have to reach in and pull out penny number one? One in 10.
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Let's say I put the penny back in your pocket, then I reach again into your
pocket and draw out penny number two.
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My chance of doing that would be one in 100.
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Putting the penny back, if I were to reach in and draw out penny number three,
my chances would jump to one in 1000.
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If I were to continue to do the same thing, in order, right up through number
nine, do you know what my chance would be by the time I got to the number 10
and pulled it out of your pocket? One in 10 billion.
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If I pulled that off, you would say, "The game is fixed!" My answer:
"You're right... And so is creation."
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Each time you put the penny back in your pocket, the odds against me pulling
out the next penny in order increase by a factor of 10. (Here's what it looks like)
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1. 1:10
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2. 1:100
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3. 1:1000
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4. 1:10,000
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5. 1:100,000
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6. 1:1,000,000
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7. 1:10,000,000
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8. 1:100,000,000
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9. 1:1,000,000,000
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10.1:10,000,000,000
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Probability is stacked against me, pulling all 10 pennies out of your pocket in
order, while each time putting the penny back into your pocket before drawing
out the next one.
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Here, we are just talking about pulling pennies out of pockets in the correct
order. But what about life?
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The odds of even the simplest life form such as the pelagibacter ubique bacterium,
which has over 1.3 million base pairs
of DNA, gives a ridiculously small probability.
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Imagine a penny to every one of those 1.3 million base pairs of DNA. What would
be the odds of pulling the right base pair in the right order out of your
pocket every time without fail?
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Can life arise by random chance?
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The 10 pennies illustration powerfully demonstrates the impossibility of
evolution.
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Random processes cannot produce life and random selection cannot make humus into humans.
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Life cannot come from non-life; it is mathematically impossible, therefore,
there must be a Creator.
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That Creator has to be the Triune God of the Bible. No one else fits the bill.
The resumes of every other god all miss the mark.
- Since the God of the Bible is our Creator,
then we need to take him at his word.
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10 years ago, Toni and I met with Dr. Malcolm Beckett and Rev. Lawrence Peck to
discuss and finalize plans for our trip to Labrador to give the Peck's a break
for the summer months.
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Until that time, the creation-evolution debate was never really a concern for
me.
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However, as a person who believes in the authority of Scripture and in the
personal nature of God, I was, and strive to be, open to instruction from his Word.
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So while we were in Labrador, I came across a series of tapes on Lawrence's
office bookshelf put out by Answers in Genesis featuring Ken Ham.
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While working on some creative projects for Northern Cross Community Church, I
listened to the entire series and became convinced of a literal understanding
of the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
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Ken Ham answered many of the questions I had about Genesis as well as questions
I didn't know I had.
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He was able to explain things in clear, straight forward, logical and comical
ways.
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In a world in which greater numbers of churched kids fall away from the faith,
we need to begin asking ourselves, what has changed?
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The simple answer is everything has changed. Our world is decidedly
anti-Christian and in such an environment, every Christian needs to be able to
give a ready defense for the hope they have with gentleness and respect.
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Not too long ago I had a conversation with my dentist's receptionist.
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She was very concerned about her 15-year-old son.
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When he was younger, he was very involved in the church, but now he's beginning
to reject his Christian upbringing.
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The problem? His schooling. When his mother asked him why, he gave her a
one-word answer: evolution.
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There are many stories just like that coming from parents of churched kids.
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Friends, our mission is to be the hands and feet, and voice of Jesus in and for
our community until the light of Christ shines in every home.
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If we're going to be the voice of Jesus, then we need to be equipped to be that
voice in prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures.
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Second Timothy 3:16 tells us,
"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for
reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." (ESV)
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There's that lovely little three letter word again, all.
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How much Bible does that leave out? None.
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All Scripture, including Genesis, is inspired by God and all Scripture is
useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.
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Please, allow me to jump the gun on some of your small group discussion which
you can pursue further together.
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What kind of literature is the creation account in Genesis?
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It's historical narrative. It reads like a historical account.
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It doesn't read like a letter and it doesn't read like poetry.
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It is not written like a work of fiction, fantasy, or human speculation, rather
it is written as a factual description.
- If we look at the way all of Genesis is
written, including Genesis 1, its language and form is that of an historical
account, i.e., Genesis is real history.
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As we read the biblical account of creation, what does it describe for the
reader?
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The Bible tells us that the omnipotent Creator spoke everything into being by
the power of his Word in 6 normal days.
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Our all powerful Creator made all things in 6 days by his all powerful Word.
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Is there any biblical reason to question
a straightforward reading of Genesis as actual history?
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No, nothing in Scripture gives us any reason to question a straightforward
reading of Genesis as actual history.
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In fact, Jesus, his apostles, and the rest of the authors of the New Testament
treat Genesis as straightforward history.
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What other reason could we have to question a straight forward reading of
Genesis 1?
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Only human centered thinking and the spiritual powers of this world cause us to
question the historicity of the biblical creation accounts.
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As we learned from the apostle Paul last week:
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"See to it that no one takes you
captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according
to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ."
(Colossians 2:10, ESV)
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Many Christians, since the birth of the deep time theories championed by the
scientific community, have come to accept long ages as fact and have rejected
the plain sense reading of Genesis, which is why we come up with alternative
theories that attempt to fit billions of years into Scripture.
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Before the late 1700s, hardly anyone
questioned the historicity of Genesis.
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The overwhelming majority of Bible believing Christians and Christian scholars
believed that the creation accounts and the rest of Genesis were real history.
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So why the change?
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When the idea of deep time entered the picture in the late 1700s, few
questioned it because it did not seem to question the lordship of Jesus Christ.
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It seemed reasonable and appeared to make sense.
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It did not seem unreasonable to assume that the layers seen in sedimentary rock
occurred at a similar rate that sediment build ups today, which suggests
millions or perhaps billions of years of sediment build up all over the Earth.
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But do billions of years fit the biblical accounts? Or perhaps a better
question, were they meant to fit the biblical accounts in the first place?
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Allow me to answer with the following story.
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The Greek poet Homer told the story of how the Greeks deceived the citizens of
Troy with a giant wooden horse.
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The horse appeared to be a parting gift, when in actuality it was filled with
soldiers.
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The Trojans brought the horse inside their city gates and once inside, by way
of stealth, the Greeks emerged from the horse, opened the city gates, letting
in their army and defeated the people of Troy.
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Millions/billions of years of deep time are really like a Trojan horse.
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As Christians accept deep time proposed by scientists, science ends up in
authority over the word of God.
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By trying to fit various accommodating theories of deep time into the
Scriptures, the message of Genesis is sabotaged unintentionally: Our all powerful Creator made all things in
six days by his all powerful word?
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Because of the Trojan horse of deep time, suddenly the account of Genesis 1
seems like a work of fiction.
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Our only appropriate response is not to continue to cling to accommodating
theories of deep time, rather our only appropriate response is to reclaim the
plain sense reading of Genesis as real history and stand on the authority of
God's word.
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Genesis testifies that God himself called the universe into being in the
beginning.
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Before God created there was nothing but the Almighty Godhead in the eternal
past.
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That God created tells us also that time itself began, and that God did not use
already existing matter to create.
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The Hebrew word for create, bara, is
used only of divine acts of creation in the production of things or creatures
which before had not existed, is used of everything new which God creates, and
is used of a new work of God.
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The Bible neither gives us an orderly account of genetically lower life
evolving to genetically higher life, nor do we find one created kind evolving
into another created kind.
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Remember, when the plain sense makes the
most sense, seek no other sense, lest it become nonsense.
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Some have suggested that the Bible teaches us that God created, but not how he
created.
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Is that true, however? According to Genesis 1, how did God create? We read it
several times, "and God said."
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Our all powerful Creator made all things in 6 days by his all powerful Word.
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If we allow the Trojan horse of deep time to control our thinking about
creation, then when, where, how, or why is the rest of Scripture authoritative?
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Just as the Greeks defeated Troy with the Trojan horse deception, the Trojan
horse of deep time continues to have the potential to shipwreck the faith of
many an unwary Christian, and often does.
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Stand firm on the word of God and trust the Genesis accounts of an all powerful
Creator.
- Our all-powerful Creator made
all things in six days by his all-powerful Word.
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