 Alright, testing, 3.14, 159. Some people say I whispered but I seldom observe it, unless I say figure or spice or some sort of soluble substance it's to. Well Mike, thank you for sharing and I just want to say to all of you, please pray for Mike and his wife, I mean that they would give more opportunities but also I mean this is going to be a challenging time for them so please let's hold them up in prayer throughout the next any weeks. Okay, quick report. We've been really busy at reasons to believe because this past week we've had the lab which is basically high school and college students who want to pursue a career in science or engineering. They spend several days with their scientific team to get ready for a future career where they can use their science as a tool to bring people of faith in Christ. Because we just heard from Tim how a lot of people in science, they just focus on their science, they really don't integrate their faith. So that's what this was all about. And Kathy and I spent most of our time with the parents because we also had the parents come because you know it's a challenge when your son or daughter will also pursue a PhD and go on and become a researcher and you don't have any science background how do you basically work in that relationship. So we shared with them but one of the quote parents I found out was not a parent. He's from Cincinnati, a businessman in Cincinnati, an engineer there and he had two boys, this is neither one of them, my sons. I brought them to come to the lab and he says what do you mean? He says well this young man he's an atheist and his friend is a lapsed Catholic. But I felt that they could come to the lab that might turn their life around and I brought them by saying if you go to the lab I'll take you through two days surfing. And you know they're from Cincinnati. There's not a whole lot of good surfing in Cincinnati. So I said well are you a surfer? He says no can you tell me what are the good surfing beaches are? So I tried to give me some tips for the places to go to surf and where you can start and then get a little more excitement from the waves there. So the two boys were really excited about the surfing but I talked to them towards the end of the lab and they were really excited about what they were learning and so they just said you know can we have an hour and a half of your time just to ask questions? And it's interesting this one young man labeled himself an atheist but I can't remember seeing anybody more spiritually hungry than this young man. He was asking all the right questions and very receptive to what I was hearing and he actually started reading why the universe is the way it is and so how far you guys just through the first two chapters. He says my big questions are on the problem of evil. I said well you need to get to chapters 12, 13 and 14 because that's really where we talk about how God designed the physics of the universe as a way to permanently eliminate evil while enhancing human free will. He says that's what the book is all about that's the big question I got. So he's really excited about that and then talking to the elapsed Catholic and what I found is that both of these young men had been attending church have stopped going to church and I said well what was your experience? They said we go to church we sing a few dumb songs somebody gets up and speaks for 20 minutes and we all leave and the 20-minute message we learn nothing and I said it's like why go to church so we both stopped going but I said if church was like this we'd be here every Sunday and I said well that's what church is supposed to be like. It's supposed to be a place where you can ask questions or you can get into deep dialogue and discussion about the most important issues of life. I said well that's what we thought too because every church we tried is like that wasn't going on at all and so I shared with them just how in my ministry with pastors any church where they close the sermon out where the pastor or particularly where they have people come up and help have an open mic Q&A where any question is welcome and they deal with the question they can't deal with it they form a discussion group a research group. Every church I know that does that as a church is growing by a dumb converse and so when I go out and speak that's basically what I try to do and I'm speaking a church is saying you need to think about and doesn't have to be quote right after the sermon in the sanctuary but taken out to a meeting room and I've been in churches like that where I give the sermon and then immediately we go to a room where people can ask questions typically for a couple of hours while they eat their lunch and it's like again every church that does that they're growing by a dumb converse and typically churches where they sing a few dumb songs 20 minute message everybody leaves those are churches that obviously are declining but it was sad to me to learn that here are these two young men both very spiritually hungry and yet going to church talking to Christians and basically one of them said yeah in my Catholic Church we could discipline if we ask questions I mean we're basically told not to ask questions so it's like and that's not the way the New Testament reads is it so and that's one reason why in this class I let people interrupt me with questions anytime and like last week we kind of caught off topic didn't we and so well that's why I got this up here didn't have my computer's got problems and I won't mention who it is but there's an individualist class has solved my problems and says you got some hardware issues with your VGA connection and I am making it work with another projector these projectors wouldn't work that one does but that's supposed to be yellow not red and those are supposed to be stars in the background and as you can see so but yeah someone in the class step up and said hey Hugh I'm gonna buy you a new computer and this one is a little at a date the computer I'm going to get is going to make me a law court productive I mean it's guts it's I didn't realize how many advances have been made so I'm actually going to write books faster so maybe it was God's will that I have these technical issues I don't know so but hey I want to watch off yeah go ahead right when you read the Psalms what do you see it's David questioning God all the time he complains to God says why are you doing this but notice how God would answer David's questions and David was persistent with his questions so that's why he called David a man after my own heart he's not afraid to come to me with the tough questions God wants us to ask the tough questions and he wants us to deal with tough questions I appreciate what Ross said here isn't church a place where he's supposed to talk about the difficult issues the issues that bring conflict and controversy yes it is and my passion is I wish these Christian universities would stop trying to you know let's not walk the boat let's not have any waves at Christian universities where you're supposed to deal with the waves okay thank you that's causing an issue okay let me just pull that down so it doesn't interfere okay yes right yeah and that story you see in Genesis where Jacob wrestles with God and a lot of people think well okay his hip was put at a joint that he was actually involved in a physical wrestle with God but if you read that text in Genesis it was a spiritual wrestle because the day before Jacob heard news your brother is coming he's got 400 armed men with him that's like okay my brother's gonna do me in and you know how am I gonna be able to approach my brother and what you notice is after Jacob stood up all night praying with God and begging God look I need to figure out a way to deal with my brother who might cheat it and you've got to give me some insight you probably made these promises to me how is this going to be fulfilled and here's Jacob in the morning and he spent the entire night in prayer wrestling with God for these spiritual issues and now he's got God's plan and how to deal with his brother his brother's got a physical focus if you read the story what he does is he sends out different bit portions of his flock one at a time it wasn't just giving one bride to his brother it was multiple bribes over a period of time with a message that went with each gift that he gave to Jacob and then notice when Jacob and Esau meet Esau tries to give the gifts back he was testing his brother my brother stole from me now he's trying to bribe me and notice how Jacob wisely deals with the offer to return the gifts this is no my brother this is a blessing from God that I want to share with you and that's when there is reconciliation but it took all night of praying so a question I've got with you have you ever had a crisis in your life where he basically said okay I need to spend the night in prayer and you notice that in Paul's life in the book of Acts he called it a watch a watch is kind of like a fast when we fast we stop eating food but there's another kind of fast where you don't sleep and instead of sleeping you spend that entire time in prayer but typically about a crisis issue in your life some kind of spiritual crisis I think it's important that all of us you know when we face that kind of a crisis think about celebrating that with a watch yes well a lot of scholars looked at that and said you know that was kind of God giving a symbol to Jacob basically telling okay you've wrestled with God and hey so and God often does that when there's a spiritual breakthrough he gives a physical sign I mean you see that throughout the Old Testament when the floods over there's the rainbow now you know no it's seen rainbows before that God says that rainbow is a sign that my spiritual covenant with he's gonna hold so it's kind of like a sign okay now that your hip is at a joint don't worry about your brother and he was limping I don't think he maintained that limp because it looks like he got better and so I don't know how long he was limping but and who knows when he was wrestling with God you know what I've had those kinds of moments where I prayed all night I was tossing and turning he may have tossed and turned the wrong way who knows I don't know exactly all but we're not giving a lot of detail in scripture but I think it's quite clear based on the consequences what we see there it was a spiritual wrestling match not a physical wrestling match because the spiritual the result was a spiritual benefit okay before we jump into Isaiah this is I'll keep this short but it's a paper they got published in the July issue it's interesting the scientific literature they actually had they released the July journal before it's actually July so we're actually getting something from the future here right so but yeah this just got published literally a days ago in a journal animal behavior I do read outside my discipline and it's an experiment done for the first time on puppies we're talking dogs and they've noticed in previous research that adult dogs that are bonded to a human being will respond to human cues and training but they said I wonder if this is true of very young dogs so it was like 40 dogs that were just eight weeks old puppies yeah mean really young puppies not even weaned yet from their mothers and what they noticed with very young puppies they will respond to training from the mother and these are all cases where the mother was present so these were not puppies that were taken from the mother the mother was still there but what they noticed was these young puppies would take cues from the mother on how to avoid danger so these are basically puppies coming to something strange in the scene before and kind of looking over to their mother dog is it this okay or should I back up and the mother kind of gives a cue to the young puppy no this is safe go ahead and explore it or no you better back away this is something that could harm you and this is true of all mammals that's how the mothers basically train their young but what they notice in this case is that they could substitute a human being for the mother even at eight weeks old as long as the human has had some social contact with the puppy doesn't have to be as much as a mother but just some social contact with the puppy the puppy will also take cues from the human the dog will only look to the human is this okay for me to explore or not and so this experiment basically says these eight week old puppies will respond to a human they have had social contact with in the same way they will a mother and they also did a test with other dogs so in other words a strange adult dog and they noticed was with a strange adult dog nothing happens it only works with a mother or a human being that has had social contact with a dog you say why are you talking about this in class well if you see my book over there hidden treasures in the book of Job it makes the point in the book of Job that God designed these birds and mammals to bond to members of their own species and to serve and please members of their own species but simultaneously to do the same thing with human beings and they do with humans but they don't do with other animals they'll do it with members of their own species where they have an emotional bond but not with those that don't but they'll do it with humans where there's an emotional bond as well and the book of Job is replete with the point God created these animals birds and mammals to serve and please us to emotionally bond to us to take cues from us to be take commands from us I mean they'll literally listen to our commands well some of our pets do and making the point to notice that God designed them to serve and please and relate to a higher species and it takes a higher species to train them likewise we're designed to serve and please a higher being to relate to the higher being and the book of Job and chapter 42 where God says to Job and his friends you've been able to tame every species of bird and mammal you've even been able to tame the epiphanos you've even been able to tame the Nile crocodile there's a few of the reptiles that also are net fish creatures as difficult as they are to tame but there's one species of mammals that you can't tame you cannot tame a fellow human being it takes me a higher being to bring humility to a proud human being so take a lesson from these animals you need to come to me okay we'll off the topic but that's this paper in animal behavior okay yes one thing I forgot to say while I was up there I'm sorry there is for those of you who are members of the church there is a meeting at 12 at 12 at 12 so here's going to be here till 12 15 but if that 5 to 12 you feel the need to go over there it's fine thank you I meant to make that announcement because yeah at 12 o'clock there is a congregational meeting and they will need a quorum there so they need at least a few of you here to go over there and be part of that quorum and it won't depend me on all incident I'm going to end my teaching at 12 noon I'll stick around for Q&A afterwards but at 12 I'll end my teaching so you're not going to miss any of the teaching and yeah you're welcome to stay but if you want to exit and go to the meetings just around the corner I will make that happen for you okay well the message you see in Joan 42 is that none of us will get the humility we need to come into relationship with God unless we're prepared to be tamed by God I mean that's part of the salvation path and basically he was exhorting Job's three friends you'd need to come to me and he had Job pray for them that they would do that very thing and every indication is that they did but if you look at the whole debate that's kind of the difference between Job and his three friends but I do think Eli who was on the right track and notice God was talking about the three friends not a lie so I who have demonstrated the humility to come to God well you know that debate I had with Peter Ackens a couple of weeks ago in London I mean that was his approach we humans are just sophisticated animals there's really no distinction between us and the animals though book of Job has written to make that point there is a difference there are similarities because God obviously designed these birds and mammals to relate to us so of course they have to have emotions otherwise we're not going to be able to bond with them any emotional level so that naturally we've got some similarities these animals have mind willing emotions but they lack the spirit they lack the capacity to engage in philosophy they lack the capacity to engage in symbolic communication and this is something that our team at reasons to believe is writing on because there's a lot of new literature incident what amazes me is that the biological research community really didn't do any research looking at the symbolic capabilities of animals versus humans until eight years ago first time that was done the paper that was published had the title Darwin's mistake because it was Darwin who made the point we humans are only differing from the animals by degree not fundamentally in kind and Darwin actually proposed experiments to test his hypothesis wasn't done until eight years ago now there's a whole bunch of papers out basically making a point we are unique in our symbolic capabilities you know people claim well there's a horse that can do basic arithmetic and what they know because there's actually a horse out there where the owners say okay what's three plus four and the horse will take his hoof and do it seven times and you know could do all kinds of simple arithmetic that way wasn't Mr. Ed I think you're dating yourself with that one but yeah what they found there's a research paper done where they basically discovered what was going on was a horse was looking for emotional cues from the owner and so basically what happened is a horse would be doing this and the owner would be doing this and the owner stopped the horse stopped or when the owner changed his facial expression the horse would stop so what they did is it put a stranger in there that deadpan the thing and the horse couldn't do any arithmetic at all couldn't even do one plus one so they're impure reviewed secular literature and what they're basically pointing out only humans can develop a number system only humans can develop an alphabet and be able to communicate and sentences and paragraphs yes there are animals that can develop a song called vocabulary you know like parrots they will you know repeat sentences but you don't see parrots using words to come up with original thought expressions that's unique to human beings they simply repeat what we're saying sometimes to a bearish man so Coco the gorilla I think Coco had a vocabulary size a little more than 200 words 2000 words okay but here's the the caveat Coco had a human trainer that spent hours per day and took 20 years to get the vocabulary size up to 200 then it got a little higher so but Coco is not able to form an original sentence or paragraph can't do it that's unique to human beings and humans are the ones that can develop a vocabulary of tens of thousands of words and it's because of our ability to develop complex language in symbolic communication that we're able to advance technology that's one thing that are discovering with the Neanderthals with all the rectus with all the homeless species except for ours and incidentally it's a mistake to refer to humans as homo sapiens that's a broad term that includes the Neanderthals the whole lot of other bipedal private species we are homo sapiens sapiens which means we think twice but yeah that's what separates humans from all the bipedal primates that preceded us we alone have this symbolic capability we alone are able to advance our technology because yeah you've got Neanderthals around for a hundred thousand years the technology at the end is the same as the technology at the beginning although there is one paper published where they said we see this looks like this tool beside this Neanderthal that looks more complex than what I had before but it overlaps the human earring and we already know from primates that share the natural rule with us now they steal our tools that's one of the things we notice about the more advanced primates they are thieves you ever had a pet monkey you know what I'm talking about they will steal anything from you they don't necessarily use it but they will steal it so matter of fact when I was in Japan I ran across this group is about 200 of these Japanese monkeys up in the mountains and was interesting about these monkeys each one had an empty coke can in their head and they wouldn't let go of that coke can I mean here they're trying to run across this highway to the forest above us and none of them would ever let go of that coke can they weren't using it but they were hanging on to it and it was really funny seeing 200 monkeys all with an empty coke can in their hand yeah yeah I think this was happening to monkeys they see humans drinking coke and well it's got to be good they grab it so okay over here and then we're going to get into the book of Isaiah go ahead yeah what that text is saying is that the spirit within us at the point of salvation bonds with the spirit of God and the spirit of God permanently envelopes we're spirit beings from the time we were conceived you'll see that in Psalm 51 and in Psalm 139 which is why based on the Old Testament we recognize that taking the life of the fetus is murder because we're spirit beings from the point of conception that's when the spirit comes within us they were created as spiritual beings whereas the Neanderthals they had mind will and emotions that they lacked the spirit and you know one of the people was here for the lab was our was a paleoanthropologist Sue Dykes she got her PhD at Vitzwatersand University in South Africa which is the world's leading institution when it comes to paleoanthropology she was the only Christian there but she was giving these brilliant talks about how when you look at the quote the evolution in these bipedal primates it doesn't follow a linear path some of the latest species of bipedal primates have the smallest brains and the least capability of bipedal motion so it's all chaotic the one thing that ties it together is that it's clear but I find ironic this was first published by the atheist anthropologist Ian Tattersall he says one thing we note about these bipedal primates they're absent from Australia and from South America and probably also absent from North America they were there in complete abundance in Africa especially sub-Saharan Africa and to a lesser degree Asia and a slightly lesser degree Europe this is notice there's a direct correlation between the presence of these bipedal primates the diversity the species is bipedal primates and how many bird and mammal species of large size were wiped out by subsequent human beings so for example when humans came into Australia they quickly drove to extinction 94% of all the large-bodied bird and mammal species consequently the aborigines remain in a stone age technology with a very small population they killed off the animals that we see mentioned in the book of Job that God says we need civilization the animals he specially created for us to do that very thing whereas in sub-Saharan Africa the extinction rate when humans came into that region was only 4.5% and in sub-Saharan Africa we now documented at least 10 distinct species of bipedal primates that preceded human beings basically what Ian Tattersall suggesting is that we have these beings tall bipedal beings that have capability of using weapons and basically train the birds and mammals when you see a tall bipedal with a weapon in his hand don't go towards that person run away so and that's kind of what happened when humans came in the north and South America the animals are designed to come to us to relate to us and when they did they got killed off so but God and that's how we incorporated in Tattersall's hypothesis into our book who was Adam basically saying it's God that created these bipedal primate species and used them as a way to step-by-step train the large body bird mammal species you need to avoid bipedals with weapons in their hands because God knew we humans with sin in the garden of Eden yes I believe you said that the Pseudites were showing that in the more recent bipedal primate monarchy that the progression of brain size and ability was not necessarily linear right simple complex that also apply to primates early like astrophysicism etc. or is it just limited to the more recent bipedal primates up to how far back well I would love it if Sue could actually give a talk here in the class but I did get to hear one of her lectures and she talked about the two most recent finds of bipedal primates where they're able to recover she about two-thirds of the skeleton which means he actually knew because she says for a lot of these bipedal primate species have identified it's based just on the skull structure they don't have the rest of the skeleton so they just assume that if they have a relatively advanced skull that means they were fully bipedal so well I've actually found one that had an advanced skull that didn't have the bipedal capability and basically these really long fingers that curled which are designed for living in trees and so they said it's not in line with the evolutionary story and the most recent one is a fossil find again where they got about two-thirds of the skeleton dating to 200 to 250 thousand years ago the brain size is one quarter that of a human being about the same as that for a chimpanzee and so instead of the brain getting bigger and bigger you see the brain size going up then down up then down again counter to what the evolutionary models that would predict the first one how far back I hate to say because I can't quite remember all the details so I'm encouraging Sue to write some blogs for us because we have a visiting scholar blog now and I'm asking her to write a blog on that to very point tell us about the historical sequence of these bipedal primates but I'm also asking her to write a blog on the dating because it's something we've been wanting to do it reasons to believe just noting in the literature that people put a lot of confidence on the dates for when these different bipedal primates existed and the tools that they found and she was making a reference on this is in the published literature how they found this new site in South Africa with these relatively advanced stone tools and they were publishing a date of 80 to 80 thousand years but as a thorium uranium dating method where they basically look at the ratio of uranium to thorium it's filled with systematic assumptions that are not acknowledged in the research papers and she said one of my colleagues at bits not a believer said I think a better date is 45,000 years and so just talking to Sue said okay if you take all the systematics in effect what is the range of possible dates she said well something between 5,000 a hundred thousand years and I said well what I've written in my book is that the best scientific date we got for the origin of humanity is 150,000 years ago plus or minus 150,000 years and she said well I would agree with that that's about where it is and the interesting thing is we actually get a more accurate date from the Bible than we do from the science and it's all based on the fact that the only radiometric tool we have for dating humanity that isn't brought with huge systematic errors is radiocarbon dating and there are subtle errors there but it's such that it's not big which means that we can reliably document human finds back to about 35 to 40,000 years once you get earlier than that you're dealing with things like thermal luminescence optical luminescence uranium thorium ratios where it could literally be off by factor 10 or 20 times but what she was talking about us on the literature they always try to push the air barb to the most distant back point and that gives people the wrong impression. Yeah, well I could and Sue's the real expert on this so that'd be I'm hoping she can I got lots of articles on one suit or right so but when you read the scientific literature it's like there's they write about it we got undeniable evidence that early humans bred with Neanderthals and it's based on a paper published by 11 anthropologists physical anthropologists and basic what the paper says is that number one there's about a 1% difference between human DNA and Neanderthal DNA now keep in mind we can only compare about two-thirds of the genome of the Neanderthal to the human so it's a big chunk that's missing and it could be bigger than 1% but what they said is a 1% difference is huge it's so big there's no doubt that they're distinct species and hey after all 26% of our DNA is identical to daffodils so you know obviously a lot of our DNA is repeated in all species of life because a lot of our DNA is basically telling what proteins the body needs to make a hundred a function and for a lot you know it's universal across life and we use similar proteins well the whole point is God's going to repeat an optimal design in other words if there's a protein function that works for us that's optimized it's going to work for daffodils just as well and so all life forms have certain needs so we should expect significant similarity but the second point of that is that the paper was basically saying we do see a slight more similarity between Neanderthal DNA and that of Europeans Asians and South Pacific Islanders in that order and then we do with Sub-Saharan Africans so that was basically the whole point we know the Neanderthals lived in the area of Europe and Asia at least Western Asia and therefore the fact that we see greater DNA similarity with these Europeans and Asians and we do as Sub-Saharan Africans basically they interpret that as a signal that they must have interbred that the Sub-Saharan Africans didn't interbreed whereas the Europeans and the Asians did but here's the problem when you look at the list of the 11 cultural anthropologists that published the paper they're I forget exactly the breakdown but I do know that there were more Europeans than Asians and more Asians than Pacific Islanders and there were no Sub-Saharan Africans and so when that paper was published I wrote a blog basically saying you know this is in a physics journal or an astronomy journal the immediate demand is let's repeat this whole experiment using different Neanderthal DNA where the only people that do the work are Sub-Saharan African cultural or physical anthropologists but that has not been done and so it's still just that one paper making that point and so it's like before we really give this total credence let's at least repeat it but if you actually read the paper the 11 authors said we did everything we could to make sure we didn't contaminate the Neanderthal DNA but we did come into contact with it and we can't deny the possibility that the signal is contamination the other thing they've said in the paper is the signal that we got is a very weak signal we only see it in the Y chromosome we don't see it in the mitochondrial DNA and the fact that we only see it in the Y chromosome and not in the mitochondrial DNA they concluded they said if this is actually a signal of interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans then we're looking at sexual contact between Neanderthals and humans that's way below the level of sexual contact today between humans and apes you know that's not very high but they're basically saying it's even lower for so and as Fuzz Rana says you know we humans have been sinners for a long time this is not at all surprising so but then there's been some papers published about we're not even sure that humans came in significant contact with these Neanderthals but yeah Sue is right if you look at the published literature they're looking at basically this is a done deal there's no doubt that this actually happened and her point is there's lots of reasons for done now we got a clue how long they existed on the face of the earth in terms of how long individuals live well we do know that Neanderthals had a longer time between being born and being adult than previous bipedal primates and try to remember the figure I think it's on the order of like eight years but it's a whole lot shorter than what it is for us human beings for humans is 25 years that's for women pardon me men women they become mature by 24 years so yeah the subsequent papers based on the fact that they also saw the signal and what are called the Denisovans the Denisovans are bipedal primate in that they found in Western Siberia and there's a debate going on now or the Denisovans just basically Neanderthals or they have separate species but likewise they found that their DNA appeared to have a little more affinity with Europeans and Asians than Sub-Saharan Africans but again if you look at the authors you know Sub-Saharan authors and incidentally I don't mean people happen to be living in Sub-Saharan Africa today I mean by ethnic descent in other words you know black African individuals because you know after all Sue Dykes is white but she's got her degree in Sub-Saharan Africa so yeah so I would agree with Sue it's still an open question but I also want an article making the point even if this proves to be real it doesn't impact the image of God because of how incredibly weak the signal is these would be isolated incidents this wasn't a pattern as the original paper pointed out we're looking at a contact that's way below the bestiality that we see today between humans and aims Scott you had a question this is off topic a little bit but it's coming back to the dating of Adam and Eve do we have physical evidence at all about the local flood the Mesopotamian plain anything that can date to that anything they can date the flood of Noah yeah no I write about that in navigating Genesis that given how far back in time the flood of Noah must have happened and how short and duration the flood was we would anticipate there would be no geological evidence remaining at this point now if you go to the area of the Persian Gulf and Mesopotamia you actually see geological evidence for six flood plains but none of them are Noah's flood and to get a significant flood plain deposit the flood has to last a long time the flood of Noah was just 13 months and a 13 month flood isn't going to leave you discoverable evidence tens of thousands of years later and what I wrote in navigating Genesis I mean one example of that the Mississippi Valley was flooded 50 feet deep for four months and this was all this was less than 30 years ago today we have no geological evidence of that flood and so to expect something 30 40,000 years later where it's only 15 months you wouldn't expect to find any evidence of that now having said that there is a geologist has published a paper where he says I think there is some evidence he's basically referring to a burn and the Gulf of Hormuz I mean again I wish I could show you a map here but if you look at the Persian Gulf the mouth of the Persian Gulf is you got this narrow straight and basically you can see evidence that there was a burn there and his whole point is everybody know what I'm talking about with a burn it's basically kind of like a ridge and basically he's hypothesizing in the paper that there was a ridge that actually blocked Indian Ocean water from coming into the Persian Gulf and he like me puts the time of the flood during the last ice age and during the last ice age you got sea levels 330 feet lower than they are today which means virtually the entire Persian Gulf was dry land and his point there was actually a burn at the Gulf of Hormuz that would prevent Indian Ocean water and his theory is that there was some kind of big tectonic event that broke the burn and there was this huge rush of Indian Ocean water into the Persian Gulf and into Mesopotamia plus lots of rain coming down lots of snow and ice being melted off the mountains because after all this is during the last ice age and he says that's basically the flood but that's the limit of the geological evidence we have and it's not definitive but it dates to about the right time I mean we know the flood had to be during the last ice age just to explain how long it took for the waters to receive it took seven half months for the waters to receive for to take that long there's got to be lots of melting snow and ice and that melting snow and ice doesn't exist today in that region because we're in a warm interglacial incidentally that big flood in the Mississippi Valley that's when we had a record snow melt and it's because of that record snow melt that water accumulated 50 feet high and the Mississippi Valley because people say well doesn't water flow out to the ocean yeah the water that flowed out was not keeping pace with the water was coming in from melting snow off the mountains of North America same scenario for the flood of Noah yes there was water rushing out into the Indian Ocean that was being replaced at a more rapid rate from the melting of snow and ice at that time five minutes to noon and I mean got into the book of Isaiah yet I'm gonna hold your question okay because I am gonna stay around and handle questions but yeah we got to make some progress here in the book of Isaiah and last week we got derailed into a subject of what the Bible says about death and I mentioned we've actually got this little sheet it's right here called God's mercy and death we categorized death into four different categories the young righteous dying the young old dying the wicked young dying and the wicked old dying and then some general verses that God shows us mercy and death I got enough copies here for all of you so incidentally as I mentioned last week you ever read a funeral or ever talking to somebody just like you did that's a close to death often what I do is say just read these scripture passages notice that they're without any commentary it's just the scriptures and so just encouraging people read what the text says about that I have lots of people that I've done that with that are close to death and they told me just how extremely comforting it is to read these scripture passages and to read them all at once so and then we are going through the book of Isaiah and we're going through it looking at all the issues that pertain to creation and the science and the nature of God and these are the study questions I've handed out 300 copies of this in the past but here's some of you have lost those so hey we got them back again so we don't have the questions let's get these passed out Gary and you have to pass them out and then last week I also promise that these passages that we've written out to deal with question number one and question number one what does the book of Isaiah say about the beginning of the universe and the book of Isaiah says more about the universe the creation of the universe than any other book of the Bible and what I've done for you is actually type up all these scripture passages now we hand this out it's two pages but it's already collated just take the top two pages and pass it on I didn't bother to staple these didn't have time to do that this morning but yeah this is literally all the passages and I did this because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to use a projector this morning we do have this one working but this way you can actually read it for yourself and the last several weeks we've gotten through about half of these scripture texts and we're now on Isaiah 42 verse 5 but yeah you got it right there in front of you is all well the rest of the passages and hey I'd encourage you sometime between this week and next week actually sit down and read through all these passages about what Isaiah says about the creation universe read them in one sitting and hey you can read them in one minute it's not that hard to do so take a minute out of your week and just read through all the passages at once because I want you to be able to integrate what all these texts are saying about the creation at the universe but yeah for those of you are new we're actually going through these passages one at a time where I ask you exactly what is this text saying about the universe and about God's means of creating the universe and why he creates universe and we finished with this one last week basically making a point now down to just two and a half minutes this is what God the Lord says he who created the heavens and stretched them out refer to the universe who spread out the earth and what comes from it who gives breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk upon it and what we concluded last week after about 30 minutes of discussion this text is basically saying number one God created the entire universe he's responsible for all of it he expands the universe stretches out the universe expands it at just the right rate so that we can live in it he built up earth so a team with life and not just with physical life but soulish life and spiritual life they talked about giving breath to the people on it and spirit to those who walk on it making the point that God designed the entire universe birth and all of its life for the express purpose of introducing beings namely as human beings who are physical soulish and spiritual everything that God creates is for the purpose of making possible the introduction of us human beings and that's basically what I wrote about an improbable planet that literally every component of the universe every component of the earth every historical event in the earth and universe is designed to make possible the redemption of billions of human beings that's re-ended up last week I'm now down to a minute okay this is where we're going probably a little over but let me finish with this and then I'll let you go to the meeting it'll take him a minute to get things sorted out there anyway Isaiah 43 verses 10 to 11 you are my witnesses this is the Lord's declaration and my servant whom I have chosen so that you may know and believe me understand that I am he no God was formed before me and there's none after me I am Yahweh and there is no Savior but me and I mentioned that this is actually a text the first text we're looking at that introduces the doctrine of the Trinity and of all the books of the Old Testament that of all the books of the entire body it's the book of Isaiah that's the most extensive and specific on the doctrine of the Trinity you know we had a couple of Jews attending this class a couple years ago and they made the point that in Judaism there are texts in the book of Jeremiah that are never studied they avoid these texts the deal with the doctrine of the Trinity but this is one of those texts and we included this one because basically God creates the universe through His servant and so notice this text here is talking about God's talk about Yahweh and mentions a second person the Savior the servant there is no other Savior but me and who is the Savior so this is kind of introducing the doctrine of the Trinity and that's a study question I'm going to leave for you for next week how can we take this text and basically what you need to do is kind of figure okay where else does Isaiah does a talk about the servant as being distinct in personality from God and likewise with the Savior and what's interesting as you go through these texts it identifies that the Creator and the Savior are one and the same but notice this text is introducing two separate beings here and then there is only one God one Creator one Savior how can God both be Creator and Savior and how God can be the servant unless there is at least two persons in the Godhead and we get later in the book of Isaiah it's going to talk about the Holy Spirit so with that let me close a brief word of prayer I encourage you to go to the meeting but I'll hang around and field questions afterwards for as long as you wish to do and please jump ahead and look at the other text Father in Heaven we want to thank you for your servant Isaiah Lord for giving us such a long life under four different kings and Lord the way you communicated to us through him about some of the most important doctrines of who you're about what you're going to do and why you do create the way you do so Lord I pray that you give us wisdom and grace and humility as we look at these texts and Father made it quickness to be more effective in sharing our faith with individuals that we meet individuals like Mike talked about where he just have these incredible divine encounters Lord I pray that you blesses with those encounters and we have those encounters give us a gentleness and respect the wisdom and the words that we can communicate the reasons for hope within us in Jesus name amen thank you