 I'm getting a lot of positive comments about the live streaming, especially from the skeptics forum we had last week, who actually took a couple of questions from the live stream audience. And they're hoping we're going to be able to do that here, although I think it's important to give this class the priority. So one rule I'm going to suggest is that we take a maximum of just two questions from the virtual world. And so if there's a good question coming up there, let us know, but it's going to be limited to two. And if that's too much, let me know, we can limit it to one. But I think we'll try it with two and see how that goes. But yeah, we're getting some very good feedback on that. Thank you for the class that you led on navigating Genesis. I can tell you did a really good job just because they were engaged, very engaged. And I see Ross Hogan somewhere here in this class. There he is. Ross, how many groups have you taken through navigating Genesis so far? Four groups. So hey, just because you've done it once doesn't mean you can't do it again. And whenever I've taken a group through, I always try to challenge people in the group. You can launch your own group. So I can't do this. Yeah, all you need to do is turn on the DVD player. Because basically it teaches itself. So I encourage you to take advantage of that. Ross, I missed your program yesterday. Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I was on the Moody Broadcasting Network yesterday morning. And, you know, I'm sorry you weren't able to make that. I was going to give a brief report on how that went. It was an hour long debate on the age of the earth. And the fellow I was debating was the one that funded and wrote the script for his Genesis history. So, and, you know, I did get to see the DVD ahead of time. So, and I also had a two-hour conversation with that gentleman, Tom Porpois, actually before the theater release of the movie. And I mean, he is a very convinced young earth creationist. He's got a history degree. And I found out in the debate that he actually wrote the script. So I was wondering why these scientists and theologians that he was interviewing, people I know, were, you know, saying things I didn't think they would say, but Epidendale was all scripted. So, in fact, one of the young earth creations that was interviewed, Paul Nelson, actually after the movie was released, he posted an article basically saying they misrepresented me. Because what disturbed him, and I know Paul Nelson, unlike most young earth creationists, he's friendly towards those of us who have an older perspective. And he says what the movie did is it presented a false dichotomy. Basically saying, you the viewer have two choices, young earth creationism or evolution. It's like he didn't offer any other alternatives. I was pleased that Paul actually pointed that out. That was good. But I also saw several other false dichotomies that the only way you can read Genesis' history is from a young earth perspective. And all of you in the class know we definitely teach it, that it is historical. And in fact what was interesting is Tom claimed, there's no way you can do this, keep it his history from an older perspective because you've got the sun showing up after plants on the fourth day. And I said well, go back to Genesis 1 too. It gives you the frame of reference for the six creation days. And you know, your issue is that you have the frame of reference above the clouds, it is below the clouds. The sun's not created on the fourth day. It's created before the six days. And the sun's light becomes visible on day one. And notice the text says, let there be light. It doesn't say God created the light. Well, quick to add, I do believe that God created the light. But that was Genesis 1-1 in the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. And it's interesting to understand how many young earth creations actually don't recognize that the phrase, the heavens and the earth, shumme in arrests in the Hebrew with a definite article, means the whole universe of matter, energy, space and time. It's not the stars plus the earth. It's actually a phrase that's used for the whole universe based on the fact that in biblical Hebrew, there is no single word for the universe. And incidentally, biblical Hebrew, because of its small vocabulary, frequently will use phrases for things in English that we have a single word for. And so every time in the Bible, it says the heavens and the earth. It's referring to the totality of physical reality. It's used nine times in the Old Testament and is never isolating the earth. It's always focusing on everything, all matter, energy, space and time, stars, galaxies, light, electromagnetism, gravity, everything. It's all included in that term. You will see a contrasting phrase, heaven and earth. That shows up 19 times in the Old Testament without the definite articles. It says heaven and earth. And that's a reference to the whole physical universe plus the spiritual realm where the angels dwell, where God operates. So it's basically a bigger term than just the universe. Heaven and earth means all of the universe plus everything in the spirit realm that God has created. Yes? In your debate, how was his attitude? Well, it was a lot better than the two-hour private conversation I had with him. Because a two-hour private conversation I had with him, and I was basically trying to appeal and say, look, if you're going to release this movie, at least let the audience know there's more than two positions because I heard it was going to be presenting Young Earth versus Evolution. And he was quite insistent, well, those are the only two real options that you've got. I'll tell you some of the more false dichotomies I saw. One was that you can only see Genesis' history from a Young Earth perspective. And interestingly, I don't think you can see this history from a Young Earth perspective. It's got real problems trying to look at Genesis' history from a Young Earth perspective. When the very fact that you pointed out, you've got plants in their perspective before the sun exists. Well, how do you keep the plants warm? Now, in debates I've had with him, they said, well, God shines light on the Earth, and that's what keeps the plants going. And I said, well, I could see God shining His Shackinah glory upon the Earth before the sun, and that would provide light. But you know, it's got to also provide heat, and it's got to be just the right electromagnetic spectrum coming out of that Shackinah glory because after all, you've got to sustain this photosynthesis. But it's also got to be artificial gravity because you can't really sustain the Earth in its light without the gravity of the sun. And now you've got the problem. At one point, God takes away His Shackinah glory with the gravity embedded in it by some weird means, and then you've got to replace that with the sun and all the other planets, and that can't disturb light that's already existing on the Earth. So moving God, he says, well, God can do anything. He can, but there's nothing in the Biblical text that says that God intervened and put a sun in place where there was no sun. Or as I pointed out in my book, A Matter of Days, the Young Earth model is really a two-sun model because the light that they got up until the fourth day has to be identical to all the characteristics of the sun. So you can call it God's Shackinah glory, but physically it must manifest all the attributes of the sun. And then you have this sun number one for the first three creation days, then you'd have God taking away that A when you're placing the sun we have right now. And that seems a bit contrived. And again, there's nothing in the Bible that suggests that God ever did that. Yes? I'm curious what their answer would be to the following chronology. Adam moves to 4,000 for BC, or to use the genealogies as contiguous, meaning there's no gaps. You get down to Noah and the flood. Well, Noah got out of the flood, at the end of the flood, at the year around 2358 BC. That means 30,000 species of animals which they intend to use that number that could be on the ark. They were instantaneously involved into millions of species by the time of Abraham, which was only two or three hundred years later. And the population couldn't expand in three hundred years to Abraham's time to millions of people. How do they deal with that? Well, that's actually going to be coming out. I did this debate, at the very end of the debate I told the audience there's a four views coming out. So you won't be getting this false dichotomy if there's only two positions. You're actually going to see a four views book written by the president of biologos, representing evolutionary creationism. The president of answers and genesis, that's Young Earth Model. The president of the Discovery Institute, Steve Meyer, representing the intelligent design movements position, and then yours truly got to represent the older view. And that was the subject of what was there. And what I liked about this book is coming out from Zondervin, and they did everything they could to try to maintain a gracious tone throughout the book. But that subject did come up. And I knew ahead of time how Young Earth creations respond to it. But you ought to see this. I said, we're not advocating evolution, we're advocating diversification. However, their definition of diversification is indistinguishable from the definition of a Darwinian type evolutionary process. And yeah, you're making a good point. And this has been brought up by several atheists, some of which I cite in a matter of days, where they basically said, the degree of biological evolution that is needed to sustain the Young Earth position is tens of thousands, if not millions of times more aggressive than anything we atheists have ever proposed. Because of the fact of how rapidly you've got to get all these... But the Young Earth responses to saying, we believe Noah took on board the ark two of every kind. But each kind would be a family or an order. And so, for example, there would be a single cat pair on board the ark. And after the flood, the single cat pair rapidly evolves into all the feline species we see in the face of the Earth. And likewise, there'd be a single horse type that would be on board the ark. And after the flood, that single horse type would rapidly evolve into zebras and donkeys, horses, and all the other equian type creatures. So, but yeah, it's still very aggressive. And then of course, they claim that there's no carnivores until after the flood. And so you have these animals rapidly evolving, carnivorous. And they claim, for example, well, they had teeth, like carnivores before the flood, but they were eating vegetables. And then after the flood, they just used that same teeth to eat animals. So what they're overlooking is this. It's not just the claws and the teeth. A far more challenging problem is the fact that the intestinal tract of the predators is radically different than that of the herbivores. And so you really are looking at a radically different animal. For example, a shark. A third of the body weight of a shark is its liver. Because after all, it's eating predominantly fat. And so it needs its gigantic liver to be able to process its extremely high animal fat diet. And likewise all the cats. The cats are not capable of eating a vegetarian diet. So a dog can. I mean, you can kind of feed a dog concentrated rice dog biscuits and it can make it because it has a longer digestive tract than the cat. But if you give a cat a purely vegetarian diet, it will die. It needs meat. A couple of things. As you well know, a lot of people aren't aware that they maintain that the diversification if you want to call it that, of the animals after the flood was by totally natural means. That's correct. God rested from his creation activity in the first week of Genesis. So it was by evolutionary means. Well to push their argument, they actually argue that God designed these kinds to rapidly diversify into thousands of different species. Now, Buzrana has commented on that in a couple of articles that he read is that they're overlooking the genetic impossibility of having this kind of super genome that could rapidly diversify without causing widespread extinction. So. And the Egyptian impact was in the 2300s. Well, okay. Tom Porfroy was not aware that I personally debated a lot of the young North's creationist scientists that he had interviewed. And there's one reason I quickly picked up this must have been scripted. Because the ones I knew all admit that the science is overwhelmingly against their position. And yet when they were interviewed for this theater movie, they were basically implying all the sciences on our side. So, and my comment was, you know, you can do it, and the movie came across as a documentary. And it's like, you can do that in a documentary, it know it is disputing your conclusions. It was quite appropriate for some expert to be interviewed in a documentary and say, this is the way it is. However, it's considered unethical, if not dishonest, if you're promoting a view that doesn't have any disputed. They'll always represent that there is another position. And that was never done in the movie. It wasn't even done in the theology. I was quite surprised they interviewed this theologian. And I think he was taken to the context as well, because he was basically saying the only way to read the creation days in Genesis 1 isn't their 24 hours. And I've never heard a younger theologian say that. They all admit there's different ways. They just say theirs is the best way. There's only one possibility. And so, yeah, the movie is fraught with false dichotomies. At the very end, I've heard they're going to do a sequel. This guy has lots of money, so he's going to be bringing out a sequel where they're basically going to kind of push the point that, hey, all the science is on the side of the younger position. And because it was a very short one-hour debate, and there was ads that had to run, a lot. I didn't have the opportunity to make the point. In debates I personally have had with younger creationist scientists, there was two of those debates where the moderator asked this question, do you know that any scientist who's ever been persuaded that there's credibility to the younger position independent of a Bible interpretation? And though the debates, that's with Dwayne Gish and John Morris, and both of them said no. And the moderator came back with Dwayne Gish and said, hey, you've been doing this for 40 years, meaning a 40-year period. You can't name or think of a single one. He said, no, I can't. And the moderator said, look, I don't know anything about the science, but I know right away this position does not have scientific credibility because there'd be at least one who independent of a Bible interpretation had drawn that position. Yes. So, John, scripturally, does Adam, before the fall, give names to the creatures that are really kind of based on their carnivorous nature? And did they ever come on as barring access, if you will, to reference to Psalm 104 or Joe in terms of correspondence in the Bible? Again, it was just a one-hour debate and we probably addressed that subject for all of 20 seconds. So, no, we were not able to go that far with that. Or the fact that this is in a matter of days is that they make the claim we're not talking species, we're talking biblical kinds. What's interesting is that the Hebrew word min that's translated as kind actually is defined exactly how broadly that can go. So, for example, I think it's in Exodus and Leviticus. It talks about six different kinds of owls. Which means that the definition of visas applies to birds is really as narrow as a scientific definition for a species, if not narrower. However, you will find, again, this is in the Torah, I'm trying to remember the exact text, I think it's Leviticus, actually names four different kinds of winged insects and there it's using a broader term, a term that's as broad as a genus. So, based on the biblical examples, maybe you could push the boundary of a biblical kind as far as a genus for insects, but for birds and presumably mammals as well that be as narrow as the equivalent of the definition for a species. Which means it's not God just taking a single pair from each order or family and filling out the entire thing and having, quote, diversification. But we never got to discuss that. But I did get to dialogue with that in some televised debates we've done and it's in the book a matter of days. He does, yeah. I mean, yeah, there's good reputations to this. But you know, the real core of this discussion I had yesterday was over the issue of death. Because the moderator is saying, well, you know, this really isn't a salvation issue, but your passion referring to the Young Earth Defendant, you must think this is a very important doctrine. He says, yes, I do. Because in Hugh's perspective, you've got plants and animals dying before Adam's sins. That besmirches the character of God and he actually tries to tie the doctrine of atonement into the death of these animals. And so we talked a little bit about that and basically said, well, the biblical text simply rules out human death that doesn't rule out plant and animal death. And he did concede that point and he says, yeah, the Bible is silent on it, but just based on what we know about God and the Bible, there couldn't have been any plant and animal death before Adam. And my response was, well, God wanted to redeem billions of human beings in a short period of time. That requires a lot of bio-deposits. Tens of quadrillions of tons of bio-deposits are necessary for billions of human beings to redeem in a short period of time. And we have that thanks to the death of plants and animals and other life forms taking place over billions of years. So there's a question here, yes. Yeah, thank you. And I'll come back to you. In terms of evangelism, when I'm online debating with, not debating, but sharing with atheists, they think they're debating me. I have to spend so much time just dispelling this reputation that Christians have of believing all this younger stuff. It seems like you almost have to throw out almost all of science to believe this. I appreciate what you're doing. Let me give you an extreme example of that, Doug, but it's actually very common. I was doing a debate with an atheist quantum chemist, quantum physicist, at the University of Alberta, Calgary. This is quite a few years ago. And I got to speak first and I kind of laid out, you know, here is the scientific evidence for the God of the Bible. And then when the atheist quantum physicist got up, he basically said, everything you hear a hue is saying, seriously, I know he's a committed Christian. He believes the Bible is the air of free word of God. Therefore he can't believe what he's saying. He really is a young Earth creationist. And so he spent his 30 minutes explaining why young Earth creationism is scientific nonsense. But fortunately I had a chance to respond and say, you know, I really do believe that this and that, young Earth creations are really from my perspective, this reading the Bible, but it does show you. And he kept insisting to the audience, you must be young Earth because he takes the Bible seriously and he's a serious Christian. And so you're right, Doug, there is a widespread perception that if you take the Bible seriously you have to be reading it from a young Earth perspective. And this is where I appreciate the scholarship of Gleason Archer, who is a linguist and theologian where he basically argued it's not possible to defend an inerrant Bible from a young Earth perspective. And the problem, and I got to say this yesterday, I said, you know, it's not enough to take the Bible literally, you have to take it literally and consistently. There's 66 books in the Bible and how we're going to biblically resolve this age of the Earth issue is by looking at all the biblical texts to give me an example. I said, well, one I gave here in the class, Jeremiah 33, the laws that govern the heavens and the Earth are fixed, they don't change. We look at the whole chapter God says to the Jews, you're always changing your mind. I never change. I am immutable. As proof that I'm immutable and changeless, look at the laws that govern the heavens and the Earth as they don't change, I don't change. What I mean is what has that got to do with this age of the Earth? I said, well, talk to any young Earth creationist and you actually heard it here today. All young Earth models depend on radically altered laws of physics either at the ball or the plug or typically both. And we're not just talking a slight adjustment, we're talking adjustment in case of a factor of a billion times. And they all admit that that poses a problem for them. And, you know, Marcus Ross was interviewed in this theater release movie and I had a chance to dialogue with him and debate him publicly when it was in Missouri and he points out, yes, we got big problems with our global flood model because we have to have the radiometric decay rates about a billion times faster for a five month period and there's a lot of potassium in the bodies of human beings in all their light forms. That potassium decays a million times faster and that's going to incinerate the bodies of every animal on the face of the planet. And you never mind the uranium and thorium we got in our bodies. So, anyway, interesting time and we did take a couple of questions. Interestingly, an astrophysicist called in with his question and he said, you know, the craters on the moon and he was making a good argument that you can't really explain the craters on the moon from a young Earth perspective. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to unpack his whole point and he was assuming that everybody knew enough of the physics of crater formation that they were following his argument and kind of typical of a lot of my astrophysicist friends, they assumed that late people know too much. So, it is a powerful argument because of the fact that we can actually see that the craters on the moon are eroded. We can actually see the erosion and by measuring the erosion we can tell when those craters are formed and the forces of erosion on the moon are orders and orders of magnitude less than they are on the Earth and so when you see a heavily eroded crater, in fact, 95% of the craters we see in the moon were formed 3.9 billion years ago. That's where we get our evidence for what's called the late heavy bombardment. The fact that we can see in the moon that almost all the craters were formed at a particular epoch and consequently planted Earth took 30 times the damage that the moon took because of a bigger gravitational signature which is a huge part of our origin of life model and reasons to believe. Thanks to the craters on the moon we can figure that out and also the moon's got an argon atmosphere. You know, in potassium decays it makes argon and all the argon only comes from potassium decay and so for the moon to have an argon atmosphere it had to be there a long, long time. Otherwise there'd be no argon there if it was only 10,000 years old because of how slowly potassium decays. Yes. Young could come to you, I didn't forget you. What is the name of the movie? Is Genesis History. Is Genesis History. They're coming up with a sequel and I've heard there's another young Earth movie that's going to be released tomorrow in theaters tomorrow and Thursday. I'm probably not going to get to see it because I've got to get on an airplane and head to Rhode Island to speak at a conference. You had a question? What's the name of the movie? You can watch it on Netflix. I just had a pair of that mentioned all day. Sorry. It had a two day theater release a couple of months ago maybe longer than that but recently and now I hear they're doing a sequel to it. Well, the theaters were packed but they're basically packed with younger creations and basically hearing what they wanted to hear. But I think what's unfortunate is they're basically hearing all the theology is on our side all the science is on our side all the scientists out there don't know what they're talking about and I shouldn't say this I'm going to cut it off right there because I was going to say something personal but I won't. But yeah, I'll just close with this the real heart of our debate yesterday is that God would not let plants and animals die unless it could be blamed on human sin. Theologically, that's got a problem for him he's like you mean to tell me that God is handcuffed because of our human actions if this is the all-powerful God and if this is such a horrible thing from his perspective why would he be taken back or put on surprise because of a human response? After all, we're just a creature and he would know what we're going to do anyway but the point I've already made is it's thanks to the death of plants and animals that billions of us can be redeemed in a short period of time and given the laws of physics there really is no other way but I do find it frustrating when I dialogue with these younger creations they think physical death is bad in all contexts and it's like if that's the case God would have given this access to the tree of life but notice what happened when Adam and Eve sinned God sent two powerful angels with flaming swords to block access to the tree of life why? lest they live forever physically see theologically what's going on there if we humans had gotten access to that tree of life we would have lived forever physically and have been spiritually dead because God took away access to the tree of life God now was able to use our physical death as a tool to redeem us from something far worse spiritual death and thanks to physical death a pathway has been opened up not for the redemption of human beings and if we think that death is bad in all contexts how do you explain the fact that God before he created anything shows that his own son would die on the cross on behalf of all of us so before God created anything the physical death of the creator of the universe was already put on the calendar this is what we're going to do but God had agreed to this plan before they created anything at all moreover as you read the New Testament especially in the epistles you see the repeated point to the human species if you want to truly live the only way you can truly live is to die and so coming to Christ is basically agreeing to die to self so that you can live eternally and so death is a pathway to life and in that sense I think we're mistaken to say that death is evil in all contexts I think there was someone here that had a question if not I'll go to you go ahead how do they respond to one because God provides the line is meat the ravens are meat if death was a sin then God's engaged in simple activity plus before the fall what if he removed all the aphids from all the vegetation before the brontosaurus I mean how ridiculous do you get what point do you get when I've heard from my young earth friends they'll say things well we're not talking plants because plants really aren't alive yeah so basically just the animals we're talking about and then they'll say well just the higher animals the animals that can feel pain because after all God would never caught any creature to experience pain and therefore they would claim things like cockroaches don't experience pain frogs don't experience pain the abundant scientific evidence that they do cockroaches I could believe well their papers I cite to the matter of days making a point that they've done experiments on frogs and they experience fish and frogs so you know when you take that hook out of a frog it feels pain so likewise the frog and they basically feel it to the same degree with what exception they don't anticipate it and this is something I think we need to be careful about you can't interpret the pain of an animal from a human perspective because we know pain is coming I mean it's called the dentist effect right when you go to the dentist you anticipate that you're going to experience pain and it makes the pain much worse it's the anticipation of pain that makes the pain worse animals typically don't anticipate pain in fact my son had to take his dog to the vet this morning and you know the dog had quite a terrible urinary tract infection and I was going through pain but it's like my son's comment is my dog just isn't responding and I said well dog is not like you if you had the same problem you'd be in agony moreover you'd be in agony thinking I got to go to the hospital I'm in for your dog doesn't know what he's in for and so is able to respond to the situation with a lot more calmness than you would as a human being so yes this is kind of something I saw in the windowsill in my studio the spider and the fly spider head is web already made and the fly was on the opposite side of the windowsill so the the spider went over and he would sting the fly and then he would go back and he continued to do this until the fly stopped wiggling and moving and then he wrapped him up and took him back so the spider must have been smarter than the fly is that correct? yeah I would say that at least that particular fly that particular anyway it was fun to watch that yeah and while this is something too is if you go back 150 years you don't see this younger older debate over death like we do today in fact our scholars that reasons believe us it's basically an urban phenomenon the younger creations that take this perspective born raised and educated in big metropolitan cities whereas people who live in the farms and out there in the rural areas they recognize how essential it is that there be the process of physical death I mean if you don't thin out the deer for example their death rate is going to go up and that's what the carnivores do and the carnivores are very efficient they only hunt the sick, the wounded and the dying or the crippled and this actually increases the health of the herd and actually increases the population so I've gotten to say this in a couple of debates you take away carnivorous activity the death rate will skyrocket and there's lots of documented evidence of what happened especially in Australia you mentioned the tree of the life and that's how that fits into this whole concept yeah I do I comment on that in a manner of days making the point that Romans 8 makes it clear and that actually came up in the debate yesterday because he was basically misinterpreting Romans 8 he left out a phrase and frequently I see that with my younger friends they'll quote a bible text but they leave out a key phrase and the phrase he was leaving out is that creation is subject to the law of decay and he was implying it's subject now but it wasn't before and it won't be later well if you actually read the passage 18 to 22 it says the entire creation was subject to the law of decay and again in the context of Jeremiah 33 the law of decay has been continuously in effect from the very beginning of cosmic creation there's always been decay at the same rate it is now otherwise we wouldn't be able to live I mean the idea that you could digest food without a pervasive law of decay I mean you've got an engineering degree what you learn in engineering is light vitally depends on the law of entropy being continuously in operation and so Adam and Eve were under the law of decay before they sinned and likewise they're experiencing pain and the Bible actually has some passages where it talks about what it's like when you don't experience pain lepers the problem with leprosy is you lose your sensation to pain when you look at lepers who have lost limbs it's not because of disease cause those limbs to drop it's because they lost their pain sensation in those limbs and wound up doing injury to those limbs to such a degree that the limb basically was decayed and gone and so I've actually seen people with that disease say well give me a jar I'll get that in a bit off they don't use a wrench cause they experience no pain but then you see this huge bloody scar on their hand they basically don't experience any pain my position on the tree of life is that here's Adam and Eve in the garden and they're enjoying life but after about 20 years they begin to notice our bodies are a little bit decayed and it's actually causing us some discomfort let's go to that tree of life and it's basically kind of like taking a pill that reverses all the effects of thermodynamics so in other words this tree of life basically would kind of renew things it actually says that in Revelation 21 there will be a tree of life for the new nations that God will create and the new creation that will be a healing thing will reverse the impact of the law of decay and so without access to the tree of life there's no reversing the law of decay or think of it this way you take your car into the shop and they basically fix your car so it's just like it was when it was brand new that's kind of like the tree of life from my theological perspective is this something physically you know, realizable or is this a miraculous thing and do you have any comments on what this actually could have been well I think there's something supernatural about the tree of life because it basically reversed the effects of thermodynamics on the human body there's nothing in there to indicate that it would work for any non-human animal evidently and you could claim it does but there's nothing that would say it would go beyond so if your dog went there your dog to his pristine condition but evidently it works on humans and that theological perspective tells us that Adam and Eve must have sinned relatively quickly because if it had been 50 years they would have gone to the tree of life but evidently the time between them being created and their rebelling against God's authority was short enough that they didn't notice any decay in their human body and that's something you see in 2 Corinthians 4 2 Corinthians 4 says every one of us as human beings is living under the decay of our physical bodies but it says if you've got the Holy Spirit permanently in dwelling in that Holy Spirit is kind of like the tree of life it's transforming in it and what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 16 if you're walking in the power of the Holy Spirit people will notice that Spirit transforming your life day by day in a single day they will notice a change now not all of us are walking that way continually but I'm sure those of you who are believers have recognized when you've met someone where you've actually seen a dramatic change in their spirit literally in one day I've seen it with brand new believers but I've also seen it with people in decades where literally in a day you can see this transformation and it's encouraging because our bodies don't decay in a single day it takes years before we notice gee I'm not walking as fast as I used to I can't do the stuff I used to do and I don't look the same as I used to but it takes years before you notice that accumulate effect but the spirit can be a single day and basically Paul exhorts us live your lives in such a way that every single day people can see that you're being transformed that's what's exciting about being a Christian facing physical death we can be thrilled about the prospect of a future physical death because whatever is happening to us physically is being far outweighed by what is happening spiritually and so we can rejoice that's what it says in 2nd Corinthians 4 if you're walking with a Lord you can rejoice in your old age the age is exciting because of what's happening to you spiritually totally overwhelmed what's going on physically yeah you're happy aren't you all those of you who are over the age of 50 aren't you excited I should put it this way all of you have been walking with a Lord for more than 10 years you've married couples where they've both been walking with a Lord for more than 10 years you can actually be more excited about your spouse who's got married to me that's a sign of a really good Christian marriage where every anniversary is better than the last anniversary I'm going to get to do a wedding this coming Saturday and one of the messages I give when I officiated a wedding is my prayer for you is that your first anniversary will be a sign your first year as a married couple will be your worst year as a married couple and every year afterwards is going to get better and better and better and so whatever happens in your first year if you're committed to walk with a Lord that's going to be your worst year of marriage oh, newly married couple right here I hope I'm not discouraged in you what good, what good life was a one-time thing or was it something you would have had to have gone back to? well, the text doesn't say so yeah I mean a lot of bible interpreters have figured it out that way that the tree of life was something you only had to go to once and that means you'd be living forever in a perfectly physical state or it was something you had to go back to repeatedly in other words you'd eat of the tree of life it would reverse all the damage of the laws of physics in your body up to that point you'd live another 10 years and you'd say well I think I'd better go back to that tree of life and get another shot but that's an open debate within the Christian community how would that have mitigated accidental death I mean if somebody fell 100 feet how would the tree of life protect him back? that's also another debate if you think of the tree of life with that guarantee you wouldn't die from an accident or get shot in a battle or does it just simply reverse the effects of thermodynamics in your body up to that point in which case you would have the potential and you kind of see that if you ever looked at that what's that series book called the Lord of the Rings where they have the elves that can live forever if they don't go to battle and do that debate even within the Christian novels back on the tree of life God being omniscient why did he bother making the tree of life that we really would never use it well I think it was for humanity's benefit but I was wishing I had a chance to share that yesterday is that we human deans in fact it says that in 1 Corinthians 15 how physical death is viewed as with fear and as an enemy and so I think one reason why God may have put the tree of life in the garden was basically to communicate to humanity I got things under control you're going to live forever no matter what and you know because we tend to look at death as something very painful so I mean who really looks forward to death is not going to be a pleasant experience but that's why I use the race analogy if you're running a marathon you're not going to feel good at the end of the marathon but when you cross that finish line you're the winner and likewise physical death is a graduation ceremony but you know we shouldn't be surprised that experience of physical death is not going to be pleasant I have a moon question I had heard that the astronauts at the time of the first man on the moon didn't know how deep the dust was on the moon and they didn't know if they were going to sink 25 feet in or just a few inches and that's why I took over manual control well that is a young earth story that's been propagated for 50 years most young earth creations have now stopped telling that story because they realize it's not credible but the birth of the story was a geophysicist Hans Pedersen and what he did is he went to Mauna Kea one of the high mountains of Hawaii and he put a filter four feet above the top of Mauna Kea that was before there were telescopes there it was back in 1960 and he measured the amount of dust going through the filter and he concluded if 100% of that dust is cosmic dust then given the age of the moon there would be a couple of hundred feet of dust on the moon and therefore he said this is something we need to check before we send people to the moon because back in 1960 they were talking about sending people to the moon and he says it was all that dust on the moon surface we need to rethink the space program but what he recommended at the end of the paper was I did this four feet off the top of the mountain before we give this any credence we need to do high altitude balloon measurements and better yet satellite measurements because after all that dust may be predominantly earth dust rather than cosmic dust and that's how we ended the paper now young earth creationists conveniently drop out that conclusion from the paper because what happened long before we sent people to the moon is they actually did those high altitude balloon measurements and satellite measurements and figured out that Hans Pedersen was off by over a factor of a thousand times and actually they were able to work out a detailed model because they found out how much how little of that dust going through his filter was actually cosmic dust but they also noted he did not take into account ultra by the breakdown of the lunar surface and so that would give you more dust but because those measurements were off by so much that would drop the dust down and so long before they landed craft on the moon they determined that the average thickness of dust on the moon if it's 4.4 billion years old would be 60 millimeters they said if it's 60 millimeters then there shouldn't be any problem putting craft on the moon and putting astronauts on the moon and you know Apollo 9 mission made it to the moon you saw the astronauts come down the ladder walking on the lunar surface and you saw that their tracks were in fact they were right on the nose it was about 60 millimeters of dust but if the moon was only thousands of years old you wouldn't have any dust so the fact that it was 60 millimeters of dust shows it indeed that must be billions of years old but to this day you got some North Korean nation saying there was a dust problem with the moon so the fact that there is hundreds of feet of dust proves that it's young it's quite the opposite again what I tell people is when you hear these claims actually go to the original source that paper is still available to be read to this day that's the wonderful thing about the internet you don't have to go to a university library you can go on the internet that Hans Pedersen wrote and I'll give you a link in my book a matter of days that's something else that's new about publishing a rule we have at Reasons of Lead now every book we publish has a DOI label that takes you straight to the internet and the article so you can actually pop up the book or the article that we're citing and see it for yourself that's the amazing thing about the internet all this stuff is immediately accessible now most of the articles I cite you will not get the whole paper unless you're willing to shell a 25 bucks there's a financial firewall however you can always read the abstract of any research paper free of charge and most journals today once the paper is older than two years they make it free to everybody and yeah that paper 1960 it's way older than two years okay in the back I'll try to get to my lesson maybe well in a lot of conversations with younger creationists yes their primary issue is that they get emotional about it that is the emotional issue animal death you're right they also go to an online label that seems like they're really stuck as well on a model of eternity as being a restored eating would you say that's a fair characteristic I actually devoted a chapter to that in a matter of days that are serious than our division over the age of the earth and the age of the universe is our division on eschatology where they claim now there are at least one exception I do know one younger creationist leader who does not hold to the idea that eternity will be here on earth and what's going to happen is God's going to restore this planet to the conditions it had at the time of Adam and Eve and it will be sent I would say that's fair I know of only one younger creationist that does not hold that view but the one that does not hold that view says I agree with you this is a very important disagreement because this really does affect how we think about our redemptive reward is it going to be this earth or is it going to be a brand new realm and he's an astronomer so he realizes you've got huge difficulties if you're going to try to claim that God's going to have his dwell here on earth for the rest of eternity because the physics of our planet and our solar system means that the window of time in which we humans can exist here is rapidly coming to a close I mean Stephen Hawking is right when he says we're going to have to leave this planet because it's not going to sustain us much longer now when he says 100 years I think that's a bit pessimistic but we're not going to last a whole lot longer than a thousand or two thousand years at least at the state of technology and affluence we're experiencing right now and even without technology and affluence this planet will be uninhabitable for human beings regardless of our population or technology in about ten million years and that's not very long from an astronomical perspective they have a real problem I mean I'm millennial so I believe when it talks about the lion will lay down with a lamb that's one thousand years that's not talking about the eternal state I do agree that's here on earth the lion will lay down with a lamb and the lion will not eat meat it won't eat predatory what that tells me however is we human beings must be feeding all the predators because they're not going to survive unless we give them a concentrated diet a processed vegetable matter I mean you can do that you can feed a cat if you take vegetable matter basically concentrate it put some appropriate amino acids in it and they can make it but you just can't give them tell them to go eat grass when your dog eats grass it doesn't digest the grass that's to do something else right cats will eat grass so they can throw up so uh you have dogs too so that means we have to be processing which tells us that I do think you're going to see something like the garden of Eden where these animals were not afraid of us human beings and therefore there's going to be this capacity to bond with these creatures in such a way that we'll be able to personally feed them the food they need to be able to subsist without killing other animals and I've actually seen this at the Algonquin radio observatory up in Canada where it's in an isolated place I tell Americans this observatory is a place where we have four seasons just like you have in the United States we have two weeks of black flies two weeks of mosquitoes two weeks of horse flies then we've got ten and a half months of winter now it was such an isolated place a challenging place to live that when they hired the cook number one the cook was the best paid employee he got paid more than the director of the observatory he got paid more than all of us astronomers but he also said I'll only work here if I have an unlimited food budget and we found out he was throwing away half the food that he was preparing and so out back of our telescope there was this huge pile of waste food that the cook threw away every day well guess what happened the predators stopped hunting and you'd see the predators and the herbivores actually together eating from the pile of food and they'd be so full that they would play with one another so you'd see these wolves and the rabbits and the wolf would catch the rabbit and immediately let the rabbit go it's like they became best friends and so the conflict you saw between these different animals disappeared because they were eating such high quality food from the cook the cook was providing them with food way better than anything that they could get but yeah it was kind of interesting to watch all these animals gathered around basically enjoying fellowship with one another and feeding on that pile and I never had to worry about these 600 pound bears as long as they're eating they weren't going to bother me yeah when I was in Vietnam we had a dump nearby we put the garbage and tigers would go there and eat out of it it kept things a little safer for us it did yeah so I think they had to shut down that telescope because the engineers there basically said well the cook gets isolation pay we want isolation pay and the government says we're not going to give it to you and so they basically shut the whole observatory it still ranks as one of the world's best radio telescopes but for over 40 years it's been worthwhile which tells you be careful where you put a telescope because it supports that may not like to live there and hey I loved the period of the 10 and a half months of winter because there were no flies biting me I hated to go there in summer that was awful and you want to know how awful and running out of time but I was with this American astronomer once and we were driving a vehicle and it was just this huge cloud of black flies so thick that you couldn't see outside the windshield and it turned the windshield wiper on it says stop don't do that because you're going to just have all these squashed black flies there we're not going to be able to see a thing outside the window at least now we can see 3 or 4 feet out the window and so just drive very slowly and don't turn on those windshield wipers you know Americans can't believe that it ever gets that bad it really does get that bad but it only lasts 2 weeks yes find cheaper what? find cheaper chefs well I'll tell you one little story about that because they had to give this chef a big vacation and I happened to be on a telescope when the main chef was on vacation so they brought this guy in for 3 weeks so and I was observing 24 hours a day and it was a 6 day run I was younger back then I could handle that but I remember talking to the cook saying look I can't come to the dining hall I'm going to be stuck at the control desk of the telescope the entire time and so I need for you to make me lunches he says well how many lunches do you need well I'm going to need 5 a day because I'm not going to be sleeping so please I'm going to need 5 lunches a day and I just had them one of the engineers bring it ok I get on the telescope I'm on the telescope for 2 hours 6 days of lunches arrive all at once and the engineer who is working with me says tell you what how about if I trade my lunch for your lunch sight unseen evidently he had been there he knew what was happening so he says sure you can take any one of my lunches I'll trade you for your lunch and he says bologna sandwiches and so I looked at all I had 30 actually yeah 30 lunches there we opened up every bag every bag was bologna sandwiches bologna sandwiches on white bread that's all I had to eat for that whole week there was almost a riot that broke out of the observatory because they said you know can't you get the cook to cut his vacation and come back pay him extra whatever you got to do we can't handle this guy he's giving us bologna sandwiches all the time so yeah for a 6 day period all I had to eat was bologna sandwiches but what was fun is every time the engineer would come I would get a different engineer for every shift and each engineer would say can I trade because they all thought there's no way they're going to give the astronomers the same group we're eating from so I always would trade with them and I'd get the same reaction oh no so yeah you get what you pay for that chef came cheap but boy we got what we paid for alright let's see him at a time alright ok I got a question for you for next week because you know we're trying to wrap this up get through Ecclesiasty 12 we're actually going to spend some time when Ecclesiasty is 11 because it's so I want you to read all of Ecclesiasty's 11 and 12 and I want you to think about applying this in the context of evangelism and apologetics I mean you've got phrases like cast your bread upon the waters and basically it's saying diversify your investments well actually what I'm going to suggest is this is a text that's telling us based on the context of the rest of the book because I've mentioned the theme of the book is a playbook on how to reach atheists that think there is no God that's what this whole book is all about so I want you to interpret Genesis 11 and 12 in that context I'm really serious I'm really serious about reaching people who think there is no God and it's not just atheists I'd say Gnostics are in that category a lot of deists actually live their lives if there is no God how are we going to reach these folks you're going to have to reach them diversify the portfolio of apologetics tools so I want you to think about that and then if we move on for those of you especially a little bit younger in the class notice the theme remember your creator when you're young the time to get serious about this is not when you're 50 years of age the time to get serious about this is when you're 10, 12, 15, 20 and so we're going to get into why it's so important that we give this serious attention and not wait until we're older but we're going to also finish up this theme about how it is God knows all your thoughts and all your motives and we need to live our lives accordingly I'm going to give you a couple of cross-reference passages to look at and ones we haven't studied yet which is basically Hebrews 4 verse 10 Isaiah 40 verse 27 but next week I got a question for all of you because this is all talking about the fact that God not only knows all your thoughts and your motives he knows your fears and your doubts and this is a big factor in evangelism apologetics identifying the fear and the doubt of people you're talking to and incidentally a lot of Christians struggle with fears and doubts and so I want you to think back in your past is there a doubt that you experience that causes some fear about God's care about your life and his role in your life and I know every one of you can answer that question with yes but I've given you a whole week to think about think of a significant period in your life when a doubt was crippling you in terms of generating fear, anxiety maybe fear is not the right word and you have a doubt that causes some anxiety but your own walk with the Lord about your witness when you got an anxiety like that it tends to blunt your willingness to engage others with your Christian faith so I want to hear some testimonies next week can you give those passages again let me give you the passages again Isaiah 40 verse 27 and then Hebrews 4 10 and of course Hebrews 11 6 and the passage we're looking at is 1 Chronicles 29 8, 9 and 10 and then the last 2 verses of Ecclesiastes chapter 12, last 2 verses and all those texts are basically making a point we humans think God gets tired and weary and therefore doesn't pay attention to everything that's going on in our life and these are texts that basically says God rests but he never gets tired he never gets weary and what's going on in your life every second of your life he knows exactly how you feel this is why we've been saying weeks past don't try to hide your feelings from God he knows how you feel be upfront, be honest be got doubts you need to tell him and he wants you to come to you with your fears and your doubts because he wants to deal with it when you're high he can't help you and so basically the exhortation is from God number 1, realize first of all you can't hide so why try hiding that'll be next week let me close in prayer Father in Heaven we thank you for this time we've had in class today thank you for all the diversions we had and Lord how that's going to equip us to be more effective in sharing our faith with others we thank you for this wonderful season we're entering into at Thanksgiving and Christmas opportunities we're going to have to be a witness for you so help us to be well prepared help us to be gracious and loving with everyone we do engage that your love, your truth and life might penetrate hearts into salvation in Jesus' name, amen thank you