God’s “Love Notes” To Us

When you were in grade school, did you ever send or receive one of those special “school kid” love notes? You know exactly what I mean. I am talking about the kind that were folded intricately, and asked, “Do you like me?” And you had to respond either in the affirmative, the negative, or nebulous land of “I have no idea” if I like you or not. How did it feel when you were the sender and you received a “YES!” from that special someone? Well, multiply that by “infinity” and you will have a little taste of how much God loves you.

God knows that we get discouraged sometimes. Bad things happen. People get hurt. God goes out of His way to encourage us and remind us that He loves us, in good times and in bad.

I think one of the many ways God reminds us that He loves us is by the wonderful people He sends into our lives. I am overwhelmed when I stop and reflect on the loving people I am blessed to call my family and friends. These are the people who “have your back” no matter what. They are the ones who are there because they want to be not because they have to be.These beautiful people are living, breathing reminders that God loves you.

Another way God reminds us that He loves us is by the beauty all around us. No matter how “smart” we think we are, we could never recreate a sunset, or the breaking dawn, or make a bird. God made the world and everything in it. He wants us to enjoy it and take care of it. He put a lot of time and care into His creation, and every time we look around us, we should reflect on these wonderful gifts God has given us.

Yet another way God shows His magnificent love for us is through His words in The Bible. The Bible is God’s ultimate set of “love notes” to us. God’s word never fails us, His word never changes. In a world that is constantly changing, it is an abiding comfort to know that God’s word is always there for us, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love;” in Jeremiah 31:3b.

God also demonstrates His love for us by giving us a hunger to serve Him. He blessed us with all kinds of special gifts and talents that we should use to glorify and magnify Him and to help grow the Kingdom of Heaven. When we use our special abilities to help others, we feel closer to God. It grows our relationship with Him and makes it deeper and stronger. The more “in sync” we are with God, the better all parts of our lives will be.

So, this week, I challenge you to enjoy God’s different “love notes” to us. Drink them in and hold them close to your heart. Be encouraged and be blessed!

Believing In God

Can you make a tree? Can you make the sun shine? Can you make it rain? Can you stop a hurricane? Can you fly? Do you know Who can do all these things and more? That’s right. God can. When you look around at all of the wonderful, beautiful blessings in this world, it is impossible not to believe in God.

God gave us so many things to remind us of His tender love and mercy. We are told in Lamentations 3:22-23a (NIV), “Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning;” I am reminded of this each day when I am greeted by a beautiful sunrise. Every day is a precious gift. Each day that we wake up and have breath in our bodies, we are being blessed by God.

Watching my children grow and learn has been a tremendous boost to my own faith. This has been a blessed and unexpected benefit of being a mom! It is amazing to me to see the wonder and amazement on their sweet little faces as they grow and discover things in the world that we, as adults, take for granted. Their sheer, untainted joy at the beautiful, simple pleasures in life that God has given us takes my breath away. I don’t want to lose that joy, because that joy helps us to believe in God.

God will never lie to us. We can rely on Him, and believe in everything He has told us through the Bible. We know that the entire universe was created by God. It is orderly and planned. It didn’t just happen by some crazy, random accident. God is the Blessed Controller of all things. Not one or two things. Not a few things. He is the Blessed Controller of all things. That is pretty amazing.

When you really stop and think about it, really think about it, believing in God just makes sense. He loves us and wants us to be part of His family forever. Jeremiah 31:3 (NIV) states, “The LORD appeared to us in the past,[a] saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.” Why wouldn’t we want to believe in God? Someone who created us and loves us and is always there for us is worthy of our faith. He gave us everything, and doesn’t require anything impossible for us to give in return.

So, when you have doubts about God, I encourage you to get alone with your Maker. Go for a walk on the beach, or stretch out in the park, or take a hike in the mountains. Be still and listen to God. Talk with Him. Look around you and know that He is the One who made the world and everything in it. Filter out the distractions and the “background noise” and you will find you have an easy time believing in God. Be encouraged and be blessed each and every day!

Earth: Rock of Ages or Young Planet?

“For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.” (Exodus 20:11a KJV)

According to evolutionary scientists, the earth is over 4 billion years old; but Biblical chronology dates the age of the earth at about 6,000 years. In an attempt to reconcile the two extreme positions, many creation scientists have used 2 Peter 3:8 to state that the six days mentioned in the Genesis account were not literal 24-hour days. However, if we used the “a day is as a thousand years” formula, we would have the six days of creation plus the day of rest equaling 7,000 years, at most. Hardly a good reconciliation with 4 billion years. So, how old is the earth?

From the beginning, the Jewish sages and the early church fathers interpreted the word “day” in the Genesis creation account as a literal 24-hour period, presenting a young earth. Scientists were in agreement with the young earth view until the early 19^th century. Even the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1771, stated that the creation of the earth occurred 4007 years before the birth of Jesus.¹

In 1785, James Hutton, the father of geology, introduced the old earth theory with the concept of uniformitarianism, which is the theory that geologic processes we see today are those that have always been. This was contrary to the prevalent concept of catastrophism, which states that only great disasters – such as Noah’s flood – can modify the earth’s surface. Although Hutton introduced his theory in the late 18^th century, it wasn’t until Sir Charles Lyell popularized it in 1830 with the publication of Principles of Geology. The rest is evolutionary history.

But are we to believe that centuries of Biblical scholars and scientists have been wrong about the age of the earth? The body of Scripture supports the literal six-day creation. Mark 10:6 states that God made man and woman at the beginning of creation, not millions of years later. Also, the curse of death didn’t enter the earth until after Adam sinned, so there couldn’t have been millions of years of fossilized death prior to the creation of man. Neither did God place death into the creation He called good.

Recent scientific discoveries are even placing doubts on the old-earth theory. The 4 billion year age of earth is based on radioactive dating, which uses the decay rates of radioactive materials, assumed to be constant, to assess age. However, in 2009, scientists discovered that the decay rates are not constant, but are affected by seasons and solar activity.² Additionally, in two similar experiments, scientists took lava samples from known volcanic eruptions from Mount Ngauruhoe in New Zealand³ and Mount St. Helens⁴ in Washington state and had them analyzed using radioactive dating. In both instances, the rocks were aged in the millions of years, not the actual age of 25-50 years.

So, how old is the earth? It seems Scripture is once again more reliable than some science.

¹ “Encyclopedia Britannica: Supporting a Young Earth”

² “The Sun Alters Radioactive Decay Rates”

³ “Radioactive Dating Failure”

⁴ “Is the Lava Dome at Mt. St. Helens Really a Million Years Old?”

Additional Reading: “The Earth: How Old Does it Look?”

Biblical Creation: Religious Myth or Historical Narrative?

Ebla Clay Tablet (Wikipedia)

Mention the Bible in a room of people, and there will be numerous views on it. Some will consider it a bunch of stories written by men who wished to make a moral point. Others will view it as God’s religious guidebook for life. Yet others will accept it as the literal, written word of God Himself. How the Bible is viewed becomes especially important when looking at the Genesis account of creation. Can we trust that what was recorded in Genesis is an actual historical narrative? Or is it just a religious myth? None of us were there as eye witnesses to creation, so how do we vouch for the authenticity of the Genesis account?

The field of archaeology has been vital in establishing the accuracy of Scripture. The Biblical names of places and people have been documented on clay tablets and stone monuments. Pottery fragments, jewelry, and statues, as well as ruins of cities and homes, have verified the culture of Biblical peoples. And most recently, discoveries of flour residues on “Stone Age” tools, probably used for grinding, are overturning the evolutionary pre-conception that early man was mainly a carnivore in a hunter-gatherer society, ¹ and supporting the Bible’s report of farming having existed from the beginning (Genesis 4:2). As time goes on and archaeologists unearth more artifacts, the Bible is proven correct over and over again. But has anything been found to substantiate the Biblical creation account?

In 1974, archaeologists discovered a library of clay tablets in Syria that date to the final years of the Ebla Kingdom, around 2300-2250 BCE. The 17,000 tablets and fragments found thus far are written in Paleo-Canaanite, which is amazingly akin to Hebrew. Many of them contain stunning similarities to names, places, and historical events found in Genesis.²

One of the Ebla tablets contains a creation story that has some similarities to Genesis. Previous to this find, scholars thought the creation account was strictly oral until it was added to Genesis during the time of Ezra. Yet this and other evidence suggest that the information in the early chapters of Genesis was likely compiled by Moses from clay tablets brought from the Fertile Crescent by Abraham.³

Archaeological discoveries are giving us many good reasons to accept the veracity of Biblical history. But can we be sure that the creation account should be read as a historical narrative? A statistical analysis of genre in the Bible, performed by Dr. Steven W. Boyd, suggests it should be. By comparing the grammatical structure of the Hebrew in passages of poetry and prose, Dr. Boyd found that the type of verbs used for poetry and prose differed. When he applied his findings to Genesis 1:1-2:3, he found the verb structure consistent with that of a narrative; thus, the passage was meant to be read as a “concise report of actual events.”⁴

Archaeology continues to confirm the historical accuracy of Scripture, but we also have this assurance for believing the creation account: “For the word of the LORD is right; and all his works are done in truth.” (Psalms 33:4 KJV)

¹ “Stone-Age Flour Demolishes Another Evolutionary Preconception”

² “Ebla – Its Impact on Bible Records”

³ “Archaeologist Confirms Creation and the Bible”

⁴ “The Biblical Hebrew Creation Account: New Numbers Tell The Story”

The Origin of Man: Made in Whose Image?

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his [own] image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” (Genesis 1:26a, 17 KJV)

According to the Theory of Evolution, man evolved from primates about 5 million years ago. In high school biology class we were taught about fossils and science’s search for the “missing link,” the point where apes became human. However, it’s been 120 years since Darwin penned his theory, and the fossil record – which is now fairly complete – has yet to produce one example of a transition from one species to another.¹

In 1974, a partial skeleton was found in Ethiopia which scientists determined was the oldest hominid. Classified as Australopithecus afarensis and nick-named “Lucy,” this specimen was considered the ancestor of all humans and the ideal “transitional fossil” between apes and man. However, in 2007, after further analysis of “Lucy’s” jawbone, Israeli scientists have concluded that “Lucy” is not a human ancestor, but rather is an ancestor of other primates, most likely the gorilla.²

While the search for the elusive “missing link” continues, molecular biologists are delving into the secrets of the human cell. The most powerful testament to the existence of an Intelligent Designer is the very thing that makes us who we are – our DNA. If the DNA in one human cell were connected and stretched out, it would be about seven feet long. If all the DNA in the human body were stretched end to end, it would reach to the moon over a half million times! Yet, if one copy of the DNA of every person who has ever lived were put together, it would weigh less than an aspirin.³

DNA is not only a spectacular feat of divine engineering; it also holds clues to the age of mankind. In 2008, a new genome project was undertaken in order to determine which genetic mutations cause disease. By knowing the number of mutations that occur in each generation, scientists can track diseases they may cause. Their pilot study results showed approximately 60 mutations per generation. A genetic computer program has used those results to simulate the accumulation of generations of these mutations, and the conclusion was that mankind would be extinct in 350 generations. In 6,000 years of Biblical history, there have been only 300 generations.⁴ In addition, by studying mitochondrial DNA (that which is passed from mother to child), scientists have the data to try to determine when “Eve” lived. The best data available has Mitochondrial Eve about the same age as the historical Eve of the Bible.⁵

Romans 1:20 says that the created things around us reveal the Creator. His ultimate creation is man. The complexity and individuality of every human being, from our personality and appearance to the hidden helixes of our DNA, did not evolve from apes. Rather, we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalms 139:14 KJV) in the image of God Himself.

¹ David M. Raup “Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology,” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin, Vol. 50, No. 1, January 1979, p. 25.

² “Israeli Researchers: Lucy is Not Direct Ancestor of Humans”

³ Walt Brown, In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (Phoenix, AZ: Center for Scientific Creation, 2008), p. 75.

⁴ “New Genome Project Data Indicate a Young Human Race”

⁵ “Mother of All Humans Lived 6,000 Years Ago”

An article of interest:  “The Biologist”

In the Beginning: Shedding Light on Creation

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.” (Genesis 1:1-3 KJV)

Primordial Quasar (courtesy of NASA)

In the first three verses of Genesis, we have the order of initial creation. God first establishes that He created everything, and then He proceeds to reveal the secret of how He did it, a secret scientists are just now unraveling.

According to creation scientists, the void in Genesis 1:2 was a point before space and time, the zero-point energy state. It has been described as being transparent, pressure-less, dense, and fluid. This zero-point energy state is the “waters” that existed prior to the formation of the space-time bubble of the universe, which was created by the Holy Spirit moving over “the face of the deep.” Into this bubble, an acoustic-pressure wave (God’s voice) caused a rapid expansion and contraction of the bubble, which raised temperatures so high that a plasma energy state was formed and a “background sea” of light was created. All matter came forth from this background sea of light and sound. In fact, an image of this is called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).¹

This is not merely unsubstantiated theory but can be supported by recent scientific research. Over the past several decades, the process of creating light from sound has been reproduced in a laboratory. By putting a compression wave of sound through a bubble of fluid, scientists have witnessed short flashes of light as well as the plasma that was produced.²

In 1997, physicists actually produced matter from pure light. Very simply, a beam of high-energy electrons travelling close to the speed of light was aimed at a beam of very dense photons. The collision caused photons to be knocked backwards into other photons, which created electrons and positrons (matter).³

This year, scientists have discovered that light not only can create matter, it can also bend it. They assembled flat strings of nanoparticles which they subjected to light in a darkened laboratory. The light excited the electrons in the nanoparticles, which caused a chemical reaction that increased their negative charge. The increase in negative charge caused the nanoparticles to repel each other and bend.⁴

If mere human beings can produce light from sound and can utilize light to create or manipulate matter, why is it so difficult to believe that God, who IS light (I John 1:5), spoke the universe into being according to the Genesis account? A hundred years ago, scientists would’ve scoffed at the idea of light being produced from sound. Fifty years ago, they would never have believed that matter could be created from light. Only a few months ago, scientists were surprised that light could bend matter. What scientific discoveries are yet to be made that could further substantiate the creation account? Only time will tell.

¹ “And God Said, Let There Be Light”: The Big Bang, Creation, and Acoustics
² Sonoluminescence Experiment: Sound into Light
³ Out of Pure Light, Physicists Create Particles of Matter
⁴ Light Bends Matter, Surprising Scientists

Creation vs. Evolution: Why it Matters

Creation or Evolution? The very mention of the debate can make blood pressures rise, tempers flare, and strain the closest of relationships. Why is there such passion on both sides? When it comes right down to it, does it even matter what we believe on the subject? This may seem like just a point of differing perspectives on the origin of man; but if that were so, the battle wouldn’t rage as hotly as it does. It is about more than simple perspective. It is a life issue, for what a person believes about man’s origins forms the foundation of his entire worldview.

Although there are many people who hold views that combine differing portions of both perspectives, I would like to discuss the purists on each side. Only by looking at each perspective in this simple way can we truly see the foundations of each worldview.   

The creationist accepts the Bible as truth, and to him, science and faith cannot be separated, for one supports the other. He believes that God created man (and the entire universe) exactly as described in Genesis. Because man was created by God, the creationist believes he is accountable to his Creator for his life on earth and accepts the Bible as his guide to living. He sees man the way God sees him – created with a purpose and a destiny which is found in serving Him according to Scripture.

The evolutionist, on the other hand, believes science and religion are separate disciplines. He may deny the Bible in total or accept only portions of it as literal truth, but he does not believe that God created the universe the way Genesis describes. Rather, the evolutionist believes that man came into being through macro-evolution – the process of species evolving into ever more complex species over millions of years. This differs from micro-evolution – the genetic changes WITHIN a species due to mutation, natural selection, or environmental isolation – which is accepted by both evolutionists and creationists. Because the evolutionist doesn’t believe God created man, he sees man free to live as he chooses, accountable to only himself and the society in which he lives.

This presents a problem. An evolutionist may be quite content to put science in one corner and religion in another, as his worldview is influenced by such separation; but a Christian cannot do the same without inner turmoil and deep questioning because God continually draws us to see things through His eyes.

Well, we may never change another person’s worldview, but as Christians we must be sure we have God’s worldview. Jesus said, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17b). If Genesis – the first book of the Bible and the very foundation of God’s word – is not true, then the rest of the Bible cannot be true. If it’s not true that God said, “Let there be light” and light was, then how can we believe that Jesus died on the cross, saying, “It is finished”?

Creation or Evolution? It matters!

Comments welcome!