Month: January 2015

Categories
Bible prophecy The Papacy Trials and temptations

Matthew 24 prophecy

In recent years I have read and studied the eschatological beliefs of the Reformers and of Sir Isaac Newton (1643 – 1727) as well as Henry Grattan Guinness (1835 – 1910). As a result I have changed my view of Bible prophecy from the futurist view to that of a historical view, where I now see that a lot of prophecy has already been fulfilled.1

A lot of Matthew chapter 24 has been fulfilled but one very important aspect–the Return of Christ in final judgment–still remains unfulfilled. (All bold are my emphases added. Square brackets [ ] indicate meanings of words. King James Version Easy-Reading Bible (KJVER)2 used.)

Matthew 24:1,2 And Jesus went out, and departed from the temple: and His disciples came to Him for to show him the buildings of the temple.  2 And Jesus said to them, See you not all these things? verily I say to you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. (All bold are emphases added)

Here Christ predicts the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, around which all Jewish life revolved. This was fulfilled exactly in 70 A.D., which is 40 years after His death on the Cross and is within what we could call the generation of those He was speaking to—His disciples.

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Categories
Belief in God Creation New Age religions worldview

A Letter to a New Age mother

Dear Mum

The [New Age related] news clipping you sent me claiming that we, humans, are all gods I believe is utterly deceptive and of Satan. Though, what the author states is not really anything new. It is very ancient. The idea started in the Garden of Eden when the Devil tempted Adam and Eve, telling them that they could become as gods, knowing good and evil. Read Genesis chapters 2 & 3.

It is a lie of the Devil that says “you are god” (Genesis 3:5) or “god is in you”. That is not so. God is extant to His creation. We are part of His creation. Can the created say to the Creator ‘we are gods’? No, but that is the lie of the Devil.

Jesus called the Devil a liar from the beginning of time.

You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44, KJVER)

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astronomy Cosmology Creation/evolution Physics

Supernova remnants and the age of the Universe

My recent post “A biblical creationist cosmogony” describes a cosmogony involving Lisle’s ASC (Anisotropic Synchrony Convention) model in a static universe with some added features. However the question has been asked whether it allows for sufficient time in terms of process in the cosmos to account for things like the formation of supernova remnants (SNR)?

The reason for this question is that because the ASC model and associated cosmogony essentially is saying the Universe is only about 6000 years old, it follows that no structures (stars, galaxies, quasars, SNRs etc) can have an age greater than this 6000 years. But aren’t galaxies billions of years old? Is there any evidence of expanding clouds from supernovae that are much older than 6000 years? There really are two categories to study here. One is apparent age and the other actual age. Our sun for example was created on Day 4 about 6000 years ago, therefore it cannot be the 4.7-billion-year-old star as we have been told.

Since God clearly told us in Scripture that he created the sun on that particular day, we know how old it is. The assumed uniformitarian age is based on man’s belief, which excludes a supernatural creation. Therefore the billions of years are not by some direct measurement but by imposition of a belief system. The same goes for all stars and galaxies as well.

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Categories
Age of the Earth Creation/evolution History Science

Hell on Earth?

NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day on August 5th 2014 was a picture titled Hadeon Earth. It is a picture of what the planet Earth allegedly looked like four billion years ago. But how does any one know what it looked like back then? Were they there to take this picture? No of course not. It is based on a just-so story. That story is claimed tobe  backed by scientific evidence but it is more backed by the faith that the scientists have in science–which really is scientism. Scientism is the belief that science alone can eventually answer all questions, reveal all truth even reveal the unobserved history of our planet back 4 billion years.

HadeanEarth_swri_960
Figure 1: Hadeon Earth, 4 billion years ago. Illustration Credit: Simone Marchi (SwRI), SSERVI, NASA

The explanation with the picture on the NASA website reads (my emphases added):

Explanation: No place on Earth was safe. Four billion years ago, during the Hadean eon [named because of the high surface temperatures like Hell, a biblical reference], our Solar System was a dangerous shooting gallery of large and dangerous rocks and ice chunks. Recent examination of lunar and Earth bombardment data indicate that the entire surface of the Earth underwent piecemeal upheavals, hiding our globe’s ancient geologic history, and creating a battered world with no remaining familiar land masses. The rain of devastation made it difficult for any life to survive, although bacteria that could endure high temperatures had the best chance. Oceans thought to have formed during this epoch would boil away after particularly heavy impacts, only to reform again. The above artist’s illustration depicts how Earth might have looked during this epoch, with circular impact features dotting the daylight side, and hot lava flows visible in the night. One billion years later, in a calmer Solar System, Earth’s first supercontinent formed.

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Biblical morality Decay of society Islam

Cancer in our society V: What would Muhammad do?

The question is often asked of Christians: What would Jesus do? This is often in hypothetical situations. It is often used frivolously, even in advertising. For example, this image (right) was used in a discussion on health insurance in the USA.

What would Jesus do for the uninsured?
What would Jesus do for the uninsured?

But often times this question is posed to trip up the believer with some difficult, or apparently difficult situation. Jesus himself was presented with many difficult problems by those who tried to trap him during His earthly ministry.

The adulterous woman
The adulterous woman

One such situation is the case of the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11).   The scribes and Pharisees brought a woman to him who was caught in the very act of adultery. (I don’t know why they didn’t bring the man also.) They challenged Jesus with:

Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned: but what sayest thou?  This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. (John 8:5,6)

Jesus knowing their hearts, he could see their sin, said:

… He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. (John 8:7)

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Categories
Cosmology Creation/evolution God God's sovereignty hermeneutics Roman Catholic church Science

AntiChrist Pope denies the Word of God

Last year (2014) the pope stood before the Church of Rome’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences and declared that the Creator God  the Almighty Jehovah used evolution to create all living organisms on Earth.  Francis’ reasoning was along the lines that God is not omnipotent and could not create anything that He might like to and so He had to use evolution (a very wasteful process) to develop life on our planet.  God also used the big bang apparently to create the Universe because He was not powerful enough to do it by himself.

One online news source headlined it with “Pope Francis declares evolution and Big Bang theory are real and God is not ‘a magician with a magic wand’ .” So Francis does not believe the plain reading of the biblical text. That means he denies the truth of Scripture. He denies the plain statements of the Lord Jesus Christ who said:

“But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.” (Mark 10:6)

and

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Bible prophecy The Papacy worldview

Daniel 9 prophecy

Chapter 9 in the book of Daniel continues the record of history, and the dreams, visions and revelations that God gave through His prophet. This chapter covers a period under the rule of Darius the Mede who conquered Babylon.  (All bold are my emphases added. Square brackets [ ] indicate meanings of words. King James Version Easy-Reading Bible (KJVER) used.)

Daniel 9:1 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus [538 B.C.], of the seed of the Medes, which was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans;

God told Jeremiah that the nation of Judah (the kingdom of Israel had already been conquered due to their idolatry) would be taken into captured by the Babylonians (Chaldeans) and taken into captivity for 70 years (Jeremiah 25:11) after which God would restore them and return them to Jerusalem (Jeremiah 29:10). Daniel was living in exile and I suppose it was only natural to want to know when the exile would end. God enlightened him through divine knowledge but it was a lot more than just an answer to that simple question.

Daniel 9:2 In the first year of his reign I Daniel understood by books the number of the years, whereof the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations [ruin] of Jerusalem.

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Bible prophecy The Papacy the Reformation

Daniel 8 prophecy

The Vision of the Ram and the He-Goat

Daniel’s vision described in the book of Daniel chapter 8, received 550 B.C, begins with a description of the kingdom of Medo-Persia, a confederacy of two kingdoms, Media and Persia. (All bold are my emphases added. Square brackets [ ] indicate meanings of words. King James Version Easy-Reading Bible (KJVER) used.)

Daniel wrote…

Daniel 8:3, 20 … behold, there stood before the river a ram which had two horns: and the two horns were high; but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last. 20 The ram which you saw having two horns are the kings of Media and Persia.

The two horns in this verse describes the fact that the kingdom of the Medes initially was strongest and ruled a part of the world contemporaneously with Babylon, but later the Persian kingdom, led by Cyrus, overthrew the Medes. This illustration corresponds to the bear with 3 ribs in his mouth, one of the four beasts, in Daniel chapter 7.

304-DANIEL

Daniel 8:4 I saw the ram pushing westward, and northward, and southward; so that no beasts might stand before him, neither was there any that could deliver out of his hand; but he did according to his will, and became great.

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Categories
Cosmology Creation/evolution hermeneutics Physics

A biblical creationist cosmogony

Abstract: According to the Bible the Universe is about six thousand years old. It follows from all standard assumptions that we have a starlight-travel-time problem. With the Universe being billions of light-years in extent how does light travel across the Universe to Earth within the timescale of only about six thousand years as laid out by summing up the years represented by the genealogies in Genesis 5 and 11? This problem has been a stumbling block to many simply to believe the inerrant Word of God. Others have attempted to re-interpret the Scriptures to force them to fit in with so-called modern scientific dating of the age of the Universe.  But is this really necessary? I take another look at the problem and ask the following questions: What is absolutely non-negotiable? What can we say for sure? What defines our universe? And is that consistent from a biblical creationist perspective?  The cosmogony I propose involves Lisle’s ASC (Anisotropic Synchrony Convention) model in a static universe with added features and a mechanism for cosmological redshifts, which is consistent with all creationist understandings of the biblical texts, and no light-travel time problem. Article first published by Answers Research Journal 8 (2015):13–20. PDF available here.

Introduction

What do we know from science about the size and nature (the physics) of the Universe? In the following I list what I believe we know, but there are some necessary, and I think reasonable, assumptions included.

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Categories
Bible prophecy The Papacy the Reformation worldview

Daniel 7 prophecy

Daniel’s vision of the four beasts

In Daniel chapter 2, king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had a dream of an image made from four different metals which Daniel interpreted as four successive kingdoms of man: Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and then Rome. Now, in chapter 7, we read that in the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon (about 552 B.C.1) Daniel had a dream of four great beasts that came up out of the sea (the sea symbolizing nations of people). (All bold are my emphases added. Square brackets [ ] indicate meanings of words. King James Version Easy-Reading Bible (KJVER) used.)

Daniel 7:2, 3 Daniel spake and said, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. 3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another.

Four beasts Credit: Shadowrenderer
Four beasts Credit: Shadowrenderer
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