In the beginning God created two people who were perfect in all ways. They were Adam and Eve, made in the image of God. Then they rebelled against the living God by disobeying the one commandment he had given them—eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I don’t think the fruit was poisonous, since there was nothing in the creation that was, but this was a test of their obedience to the Creator. For without a choice Adam and Eve would have been just ‘robots’.
As a result of their action they were cursed, as was the whole creation (Romans 8). One result of the Curse (the Fall) was degeneration in humans. This would have included errors in the genetic code, not corrected for when copies were made every time cells are replaced in our bodies. (Before the Curse God sustaining power would have corrected any thermodynamically induced copying errors.) As a result the offspring of Adam and Eve, of which there were many, would have in many ways been less than perfect, physically and mentally. They then passed these inferior traits down to all their offspring, which includes all the human race, to us.
A few years ago I was interviewed for this documentary “The Principle” that was to challenge the idea that the Cosmological Principle was wrong. That much I agreed with and still do. The planet Earth is in a special place in the Universe, which is not the same thing as being absolutely geocentric.
The documentary includes interviews largely with professional PhD physicists and one theologian.
I agreed to be interviewed because I believed that this subject needed to be debated and I wanted to present a biblical creationist non-geocentric point of view, which still permits our planet Earth to be in a special place in the Universe. That does not mean that it is stationary and that it is in the unique centre of the cosmos. See The Cosmological Principle and geocentrism for my opinion on geocentrism. At the time I agreed to be interviewed, I did know that the producers were geocentrists but they assured me they would present a balanced debate, where all sides were aired. Actually, I wanted to help because, maybe naïvely, I believed it could get a good strike against the cosmological principle dominating paradigm.
Who do you know who is a member of the Freemasons? Some claim Billy Graham is a 33rd Degree Mason. Certainly, there is a lot of mystery about who’s a Mason and what their beliefs are. Their society is based on utter secrecy so that comes as no surprise.
According to this list the following are but a few who were 33rd Degree: Buzz Aldrin (second man on the moon with Neil Armstrong), PLO leader Yasser Arafat (Muslim), UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Rev. William Booth (Salvation Army), Werner von Braun (a Christian), President Jimmy Carter (a Christian), Sir Winston Churchill, Kenneth Copeland (a Christian), Walt. Disney, last leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, US Vice President Al Gore, Rev.Billy Graham (a Christian evangelist), Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Rev. Jesse Jackson (a Christian), Vladimir Lenin, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Karl Marx, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Ronald Reagan, Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schroeder, Rev. Robert Schuller (a Christian), Rev. Al Sharpton (a Christian), the first President of Israel Chaim Weizmann, H.G. Wells (science fiction author and atheist), William Wynn Westcott (occultist, founding member of the occult Order of the Golden Dawn). Some say that only 2 US presidents were not Masons, or associated with affiliate bodies. They are Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. But according to one blogger none after Gerald Ford were.1 He disputes that George Bush was. Another claims that there is no direct evidence that Barack Obama is a Freemason.2 Then according to this list there are those of British Royalty, Prince Phillip; of the Roman Catholic Church, Father Francisco Calvo, Jesuit Catholic priest who started Freemasonry in Costa Rica; Joseph Smith, founder of the cultic Mormon church, Brigham Young, their 2nd leader; Louis Farrakhan (Muslim), leader of the Nation Of Islam; and Geoffrey Fisher (Anglican), the Archbishop of Canterbury 1945-1961. But the US 6th president famously said
“Freemasonry is deceptive and fraudulent…Its promise is light—its performance is darkness” John Quincy Adams (a devout Christian)
The following is a brief summary of a lecture I presented (picture above) at the University of Adelaide on April 4th 2014. This event was co-sponsored by an Adelaide church which put up posters around the university the week before. About 50 students and staff attended the lecture which took place within the less-than-Christian-friendly philosophical and ideological environment of this typical Western university. From this picture (below right) of posters you can see this is a climate where, for example, Marxism is promoted despite the fact that the ideology caused the deaths of 100 million humans in the 20th century alone. Alsopublished on creation.com.
Belief in God means belief in the Creator who created man in His own image.
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
28 And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. Genesis 1:27,28
He created a world for us to have dominion over as wise gardeners but not to worship the creation in place of the Creator.
20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse:
21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23 And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Romans 1:20-23
The Tetragrammaton in Paleo-Hebrew (10th century BCE to 135 CE), old Aramaic (10th century BCE to 4th century CE) and square Hebrew (3rd century BCE to present) scripts, from wikipedia
The Creator of the Universe has a personal name. His name written in Hebrew goes back to ancient times. Here (on the top left) is it written in Paleo-Hebrew but in modern Hebrew it is written like this on the bottom left.
You can see the changes the script has had over time, but this is what happens with language.
God’s personal name is often Romanised as YHWH, YHVH, Yahweh or Jehovah. The 4 letters in Hebrew are called the Tetragrammaton.
God’s name was not allowed to be pronounced by the Jews – instead they pronounced the word as Adonai, meaning Lord. But the literal meaning of God’s name is “the existing One” or the self-existent one. This is what God said himself— “I AM”— means to just be.
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” Exodus 3:14
Many scholars believe that the most proper meaning of YHWH may be “He Brings Into Existence Whatever Exists” (Yahweh-Asher-Yahweh). In I Samuel, God is known by the name Yahweh Teva-‘ot, or “He Brings the Hosts Into Existence” – the hosts possibly referring to the heavenly court or to Israel (see 1 Samuel 17:45). This personal name of God was probably known long before the time of Moses.
God is Himself without cause. He created all things.
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth [a merism meaning the whole Universe]. Genesis 1:1. (My comment inside the square brackets.)
In this first verse of the Bible the word “God” is translated from the Hebrew word Elohim (pronounced ‘el-o-heem’).
“I am the LORD: that is my name:” Isaiah 42:8
The King James translators substituted the word “LORD” to signify it was God’s personal name Yahweh in the original language. In modern Hebrew this part of Isaiah 42:8 reads,
YHWH is circled; read from right to left.
One God
Yahweh, the Tetragrammaton YHWH appears 6,823 times in Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament). The word “God” is mentioned about 9000 times and always as one god. Christian’s do not believe in a plural god or polytheism like the Muslim’s claim.
“The LORD our Godis one LORD:” Deuteronomy 6:4
Here God’s Name (LORD = Yahweh) is pronounced ‘yeh-ho-vaw’ hence the modern form “Jehovah”. And the word “God” in this verse is translated from the Hebrew word Elohim. In other verses the word “God” is also translated from the Hebrew word El (pronounced ‘ale’), which is the root of the word Elohim. The word El is found in Psalm 22:1, for example. Deuteronomy 6:4 is quoted by the Lord Jesus Christ,
“And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:” Mark 12:29
Hence there can be no doubt, both Jews and Christians believe in one god, the same God, the Creator of the Universe. God is not only omnipotent (all powerful) but also omnipresent (everywhere at the same time). In Genesis 19 we read,
“Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven;” Genesis 19:24
The context of this is Yahweh here on Earth (first mentioned LORD in the verse) raining down fire and brimstone on the Sodom and Gomorrah from Yahweh in heaven (second mentioned LORD). God is not in time nor in space and can be everywhere at one moment and by extrapolation be anywhere in every moment of time. He knows everything, He sees the future from the beginning of time.1
“Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” Isaiah 46:10
He is our Saviour, who promised to come.
“Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.” Isaiah 35:4
“I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour. I have declared, and have saved, and I have shewed, when there was no strange god among you: therefore ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, that I am God.” Isaiah 43:11,12
“Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God.” Isaiah 44:6
Yahweh is the first and the last; He is/was always there because He is I AM. Compare this verse with Revelations 1:8, where God is referred to as the alpha and the omega — the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.
“I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else.” Isaiah 45:5,6
“Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is none beside me. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: forI am God, and there is none else.” Isaiah 45: 21,22
Footnote
1 Though God may not be limited by time and space, man is. The history in Genesis is written from man’s perspective, a created being who lives in time.
In 1929 Edwin Hubble published his observations of the redshift and distances of nearby galaxies. Hubble observed in the light from most of those galaxies that the spectral lines were shifted towards the red end of the spectrum as compared to a local laboratory source of the same atomic gas species. From this he interpreted that it was a Doppler effect (ie. due to the motion of the source), where the galaxies were receding from us, the observer. Thus the idea of the expanding universe was founded.
Expanding universe with us at the centre. The galaxies are moving away from us at the same rate in every direction.
But one other important idea came from those same observations. He observed roughly the same redshift in light from the galaxies as a function of distance in every direction he looked. This became known as the Hubble law, which is the basis for the standard cosmology today–the big bang model. But the fact that this was in every direction and that the proportionality between the redshift and distance was the same in every direction meant that it looked to him like we, that is, our galaxy, was at the centre of the Universe. This is because the galaxies were moving away in a spherically symmetric way, putting us at the centre. This view of the Universe then would look something like the image in the figure on the right.
In an article1 discussing the irony of Sir David Attenborough’s crediting contemplation of nature for solace he has felt after his wife’s death, the author rightly criticizes Attenborough’s double standard. Attenborough has for many decades, in his atheism, used his television programs to present a godless view of nature as a mere product of evolution and blind chance. The process, which he believes that evolution takes, is the very antithesis of something that induces peace, calm and reassurance.
The author, correctly, speaks of the great damage that Attenborough has done to our civilization both individually and collectively through the promotion of the atheistic godless Darwinian evolutionary philosophy. He cites one young man who fell away from the faith after reading Darwin’s book The Origin of Species.
It translates to ‘boat’ in English. Chinese characters, ideograms, can be formed from radicals which themselves are pictograms, which have their own individual meanings. The characters forming the word ‘boat’ are as follows:1,2
In the beginning God created two people who were perfect in all ways. They were Adam and Eve, made in the image of God. Then they rebelled against the living God by disobeying the one commandment he had given them—eating fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I don’t think the fruit was poisonous, since there was nothing in the creation that was, but this was a test of their obedience to the Creator. For without a choice Adam and Eve would have been just ‘robots’.
