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Messianic Convergence in the Gospels: A New Way to Frame the Argument from Old Testament Fulfilment

Jesus Christ, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Anyone who has spent considerable time studying the gospels can tell that they are literally saturated with Old Testament fulfilment and allusions. Indeed, the early church used two primary lines of argument to establish the Messianic credentials of Jesus of Nazareth — the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and Messianic prophecy. How useful is fulfilment of the Messianic prophecy in the person of Jesus to the purposes of contemporary, twenty-first-century apologists? In this article, I explore a way to frame the argument in a robust and objective way. First, I will summarise my argument, and then I will dig into the details.

A Summary of the Basic Argument

When it comes to the origins of the gospel narratives, there are three contending hypotheses for explaining their origin. These are:

(1) The gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events that they narrate.

(2) The gospel authors were honestly mistaken in their reporting of the events that they narrate.

(3) The gospel authors faithfully recorded actual events.

Of course, those options could in principle, be correct either individually or in combination with one another. When we discover striking correlations between the gospel narratives and the Old Testament texts (on a level that is unlikely by mere coincidence), then we have evidence against the hypothesis that the gospel authors were honestly mistaken — that is to say, we have positive evidence for design, either on the part of the human authors manipulating the story to impose conformity to the Hebrew Scriptures or on the part of God supernaturally orchestrating the history. The question then becomes, what is the locus of the design?

The first of the above hypotheses — that is, that the gospel authors deliberately fabricated the events that they narrate is significantly undermined when we discover points of historical confirmation of the gospels (a subject that I have written, lectured and debated extensively about elsewhere). I have contended publicly elsewhere that numerous historical points in the gospels can be historically verified and confirmed (e.g., here). This gives rise to an inductive argument for treating the gospel documents as a whole as trustworthy. The numerous points of historical confirmation in the book of Acts, moreover, build us a picture of the pedigree of its author Luke (who also happens to be the author of the third gospel), and thus offers us additional reason to trust what he writes in his gospel. I (and others) have developed that case extensively in various venues, and to argue this is not the primary purpose of the present article.

Having shown the first two of the three options to be improbable, therefore, it is possible to provide evidential support for the third contending hypothesis, namely, that the gospel authors faithfully recorded actual events, and the locus of the design is supernatural divine orchestration of the events to result in convergence between events in Jesus the Messiah’s life and foreshadows written of in the Hebrew Bible. In syllogistic form, this argument can be presented as follows:

Premise 1: The correlation between events recorded in the gospels and Hebrew Scripture is either the product of human design or divine design.

Premise 2: It is not the product of human design.

Conclusion: Therefore, it is the product of divine design.

One can, of course, make the inductive argument I just described for taking the gospels as a whole to be highly reliable. The case, however, is lent even greater force when we can point to specific instances of details in the gospels that are subject to historical confirmation, which also correlates with the Hebrew Bible in some way. We can model this argument probabilistically using Bayesian analysis.

Probabilistic Modelling

The equation given below represents the odds form of Bayes theorem, which is used in developing cumulative cases. Translated, it states that the posterior probability of your hypothesis (H) given the available evidence (E) is equal to the prior probability (given the background information) of the hypothesis being true (expressed as a ratio) multiplied by the ratio of the evidence given the hypothesis against the probability of the evidence given the antithesis.

Dividing the probability of the evidence given the hypothesis by the probability of the evidence given the antithesis gives you what is referred to in probability theory as the Bayes Factor. The Bayes Factor is a measure of the strength of the evidence and indicates how many times more likely it is that you will observe this evidence given that your hypothesis is true than if it were false. For instance, a Bayes Factor of one hundred indicates that your evidence is one hundred times more likely if your hypothesis is true than if it were false.

This form of reasoning is used routinely in the discipline of forensic science. For instance, the presence of a defendant’s fingerprints on the murder weapon may be taken as evidence for the hypothesis of guilt over the hypothesis of non-guilt because the probability of the defendant’s fingerprints being on the murder weapon is much higher on the hypothesis that the defendant is guilty than on the hypothesis that he is not guilty. This is the very same mode of reasoning that I use when evaluating the evidence for the existence of God and for the truth of the Christian gospel. As we examine the data, I will be using to construct this argument; we will assign each a plausible Bayes factor as a way of modeling our cumulative case. We will then be able to more readily see the strength of the argument as a whole. Please note that there is a degree of subjectivity in these assignments, but I have tried as best as I can to err on the side of caution, and I do not think my estimates are unreasonable. In any case, the reader is invited to plug in his or her own numbers and conduct their own analysis. My goal here is to show how an argument of this sort can be mounted.

The Data

I will now consider several instances where we have specific historical confirmations of details in the gospel that, given the Old Testament backdrop, seems to be a bit too striking to be coincidental.

Example #1: Jesus’ Death at Passover

One historical detail that can scarcely be denied is that Jesus died at the time of Passover. This is a detail attested by all four gospels and implied by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7. This is not a detail that the gospel authors (or their sources) plausibly misremembered. So many details in the gospels are connected to Jesus’ death being at the time of Passover (e.g., see John 18:28). It is also supported by the next example we will discuss shortly. I will not here get into the discussion of whether John and the synoptic gospels contradict each other on the precise day on which Jesus is crucified (I have already addressed that here). It is clear that the New Testament authors unanimously considered Jesus to be the ultimate fulfilment of the Passover lamb (see John 1:29; John 1:36; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Peter 1:18-19; Revelation 7:14; and Revelation 12:11). The correspondence, therefore, seems too neat to be the result of coincidence. Christ’s execution by the Romans at the time of Passover is a remarkable ‘coincidence’ that would have been difficult for an impostor to engineer.

One caveat to consider is that there are also other days throughout the year, such as the day of atonement, to which we might attach some special significance if Jesus’ death had landed on those days. I will, therefore, assign a conservative Bayes factor of 50 for this correspondence. Remember, this means that the correlation is 50 times more probable on the hypothesis of design than on the hypothesis of coincidence.

Example #2: Selection of the Passover Lamb

There is an additional interesting connection, not wholly independent of the one just discussed but nonetheless certainly worthy of attention. This has to do with Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem five days before the Passover on which He died. Consider John 12:1-2,12-13:

Six days before the Passover, Jesus, therefore, came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at the table…12 The next day the large crowd that had come to the feast heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. 13 So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, crying out, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel!”

John here has given us a very specific extraneous detail (which none of the other gospels gives us): Jesus arrived at Bethany six days before the Passover, and the following day rode into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey (which would have been five days before the Passover).

Can we confirm John’s accuracy on this? Yes, we can.

Turn over to Mark 11:1-11, which parallels the arrival at Bethany (although Mark does not give us the time-stamp that John provides):

Now when they drew near to Jerusalem, to Bethphage and Bethany, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples 2 and said to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately as you enter it you will find a colt tied, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it…7 And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it. 8 And many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. 9 And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! 10 Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father, David! Hosanna in the highest!” 11 And he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. And when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Mark does not tell us that Jesus approached Bethany six days before the Passover, nor that it was the following day that Jesus rode into Jerusalem. However, it appears implicit that they fetched the colt early in the morning — since the disciples fetch the colt, there is the triumphal entry and Jesus and the disciples entered the temple and “looked around at everything” (which was presumably a whole day’s activities). If then, we assume that Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover, then we can begin counting off the days narrated in Mark’s gospel, to see if the narrative synchronizes with that of John.

Verses 12-14 narrate the cursing of the fig tree, which according to verse 12, happened “the following day” (i.e., four days before the Passover, assuming John’s chronology to be correct). Jesus then cleansed the temple, and according to verse 19, “when evening came, they went out of the city.” In verse 20, we read, “As they passed by in the morning, they saw the fig tree withered away to its roots.” We are now, therefore at three days before the Passover. In Mark 13, we read of the Olivet discourse on the Mount of Olives. This we can assume took place in the evening, since the Mount of Olives was mid-way between the temple in Jerusalem and Bethany where Jesus and the disciples were staying. This, then, marks the end of three days before the Passover. When we turn over to Mark 14, we read in verse 1, “It was now two days before the Passover.” Mark and John thus calibrate perfectly, thereby corroborating the time-stamp given to us by John.

Having confirmed that Jesus really did enter Jerusalem five days before the Passover, let us now look to the Old Testament to see if we have any point of striking correlation. Passover itself falls on the fifteenth day of the month of Nisan. That means that five days before the Passover falls on the 10th day of Nisan. Now let us turn over to Exodus 12, where God gives instructions to the people of Israel concerning the first Passover. In verse 3, God says to Moses and Aaron,

Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month [i.e., Nisan] every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household.

Thus, the Passover lamb was to be selected and taken into the household of the men of Israel on the tenth day of the month of Nisan. Given the oft-repeated New Testament imagery of Jesus being the Passover lamb (e.g., 1 Corinthians 5:7), it is thus quite striking that Jesus’ triumphal entrance into Jerusalem and reception by the people happens to fall on the 10th of Nisan, five days before Passover.

How probable is this correlation on the hypothesis that the connection is coincidental? It must be borne in mind that this coincidence is not wholly independent of the previous one since Jesus coming into Jerusalem on Nisan 10 would not matter at all if it weren’t for the fact that he then died subsequently at least around that time. If we take his entry into Jerusalem on Nisan 10 to be significant, we must be assuming that he died right around that time, which means that that one entails the other. The question we can ask, however, is how much additional evidence it provides that Jesus also entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10. Another factor for us to consider is that Passover is a particularly likely time for a Jew to enter Jerusalem and also a time when he could count on ministering to a large crowd of people who had made their pilgrimage to Judea for the feast.

One may object here that a possible explanation of this coincidence is that Jesus Himself, seeing Himself as the fulfilment of the Passover lamb, deliberately entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10th. However, to this, I offer two responses. First, if Jesus saw falsely Himself as Messianic it is far more likely that he would have perceived Himself to be a military leader like Simon Bar Giora, who would lead a revolt against the Roman occupiers, not suffer a humiliating death by crucifixion. Second, the appropriate issue to concern ourselves with is the striking coincidence that it was precisely on the year on which Jesus entered Jerusalem five days before Passover that His death by crucifixion coincidentally took place on the day of Passover.

To be conservative, therefore, I will only assign a Bayes factor of 2 to this fact. Thus far, our cumulative Bayes factor from the two examples we have considered is 50 x 2 = 100.

Example #3: Jesus the First Fruits

In 1 Corinthians 15:20, Paul says of Christ that he is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”

What is being alluded to here? For the answer, we turn to Leviticus 23:9-14, in which we read of the feast of first fruits.

9 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, 11 And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it. 12 And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord. 13 And the grain offering with it shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the Lord with a pleasing aroma, and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin. 14 And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

The feast of firstfruits is the next Jewish feast following the feasts of Passover and unleavened bread and had to do with the barley harvest, which preceded the slightly later wheat harvest (the former arrived in March / April; the latter around May, according to our calendars). The latter of those was associated with the feast of Weeks (Pentecost). God, therefore, instructed the people of Israel that prior to reaping the barley harvest they were to wave before the Lord a sheaf of the first grain. This would symbolize that the sheaf was representative of the whole crop. It represented their trust that the God who had given them the firstfruits would also bless the rest of the harvest.

How, then, does Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, link Jesus to the feast of first fruits? Christ was the first fruits of the resurrection, having been raised prior to the general resurrection at the end of time. Although previous people (e.g., Lazarus, Jairus’ daughter) had been raised from death, those individuals were not raised to glory and immortality. Eventually, they would die again. Jesus, by contrast, was the first person in all of history to be raised to glory and immortality, with a body transformed such that it was no longer subject to decay or death. Thus, he is the ‘sheaf’ that is waved before the Lord, the first fruits of the harvest.

Now, what is particularly striking is the day on which the feast of first fruits was to take place. According to Leviticus 23:11b, it was to happen “the day after the Sabbath” following Passover. That would be Sunday! It can thus hardly be a coincidence that Christ was raised on the Sunday following the Passover. When we consider the day that Jesus was claimed to be raised as first fruit from among the dead (the Sunday following Passover), we have yet another striking coincidence.

It is largely taken for granted among scholars that the disciples had experiences following Jesus’ death, which they interpreted to be the raised Christ — scholars are largely in agreement that the disciples did not deliberately lie about having seen Jesus raised from the dead. We also have strong evidence that the claim was that Jesus rose from the dead on the Sunday following His crucifixion — not only is it reported in all four gospels (Matthew 28:1, Mark 16:2, Luke 24:1, John 20:1), but there is also the widespread switch from observing the Sabbath to observance of the Lord’s day (Sunday) in the first century. One might object that the gospels only report the discovery of the empty tomb and the appearances taking place on the Sunday but do not tell us when exactly Jesus was raised. However, Jesus repeatedly states that His resurrection will take place “on the third day,” which would have to be the Sunday since His death was on a Friday. Further evidence that the earliest apostolic proclamation was that Jesus had been raised on the Sunday following His death is the allusion in 1 Corinthians 15:4 to Jesus being “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” Indeed, Paul’s allusion in verse 20 of the same chapter to Christ being the firstfruits from among the dead may indicate what Paul means by Christ’s resurrection on the third day being “in accordance with the Scriptures.”

It must be stated at this point that the exact interpretation of Leviticus 23:11b was disputed by first-century Jewish interpreters. Most Pharisees took this day to be the day after the annual Sabbath, rather than the weekly Sabbath — that is, the day after the 15th of Nisan, on which fell the feast of unleavened bread (the Jews were not permitted to work on this day according to Leviticus 23:7). They would thus observe the firstfruits offering on the 16th of Nisan, irrespective of the day of the week. Here is what the first-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus tells us [Antiquities 3:10:5-6]:

But on the second day of unleavened bread, which is the sixteenth day of the month, they first partake of the fruits of the earth, for before that day, they do not touch them.

A minority of Pharisees, and the Sadducees, however, maintained that the offering of first-fruits was to take place the day after the weekly Sabbath which falls during the feast of unleavened bread. According to this view, the firstfruits offering always took place on a Sunday. This view makes more sense to me Biblically because Leviticus 23:15-16 gives the following instruction about when the feast of firstfruits is to be observed:

15 “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. 16 You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.

For the day after the seventh Sabbath to equal exactly 50 days, one has to begin counting from the day after the weekly Sabbath.

Furthermore, according to the gospels, the day following Jesus’ death was itself a weekly Sabbath. For example, in John 19:31, we are told,

Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

Likewise, Mark 15:42-43 tells us,

42 And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, 43 Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

The festival of first fruits, therefore, would have to have been celebrated the day following the Sabbath (given the Jewish regulations about what could or could not be performed on the Sabbath). This entails that the Sunday on which Jesus was raised is indeed the feast of first fruits.

Moreover, as long as the second temple stood (i.e., prior to A.D. 70) and the Sadducees were in charge, their interpretation prevailed, and the feast of firstfruits was recognized the day following the first weekly Sabbath after Passover.

Further evidence that the gospel authors understood Jesus to be fulfilling the first fruits comes from Acts 2, where we read that the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at the time of Pentecost, which fulfils further symbolism relating to the feast of Pentecost that is outlined in Leviticus 23 (which I will not dwell upon here).

What Bayes factor might we assign to this piece of evidence? Of course, this piece of evidence is not wholly independent of the fact that Jesus’ death takes place at the time of Passover. There are also only seven days in the week. For these reasons, I assign a conservative Bayes factor of 5. So far, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 = 500.

Example #4: The Crucifixion

Psalm 22 contains a remarkable text which, centuries before crucifixion was even invented, contains a description of the Messiah’s sufferings that strikingly resemble a crucifixion scene. Consider this excerpt from verses 12-18:

12 Many bulls encompass me; strong bulls of Bashan surround me; 13, they open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. 14 I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; 15 my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death. 16 For dogs encompass me; a company of evildoers encircles me; they have pierced my hands and feet— 17 I can count all my bones— they stare and gloat over me; 18 they divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Dislocation of bones, heart failure, lack of strength, dehydration, and the piercing of the hands and feet are all apt descriptions of a crucifixion scene, not to mention the dividing of his garments and the casting of lots — crucifixion victims would be stripped naked as part of their humiliation. This execution also appears to be public since people stare and gloat over him. For a much more detailed description of the evidence for the Messianic nature of this text, I refer interested readers to Mike Winger’s video on the subject of Psalm 22, or this discussion between Dr. James White and Dr. Michael Brown on the topic. The Messianic interpretation of Psalm 22 is also not a Christian invention but can be found in early Jewish sources (for documentation, see this article).

For this fact, I think it is fair to assign a conservative Bayes factor of 1000 (for justification of this Bayes factor, see McGrew, L. (2013) Probabilistic Issues Concerning Jesus of Nazareth and Messianic Death Prophecies. Philosophia Christi 15:311-328.

Thus far, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 = 500,000

Example #5: The Name Jesus

The name Jesus is itself very significant. The reason for calling him Jesus is given in Matthew 1:21:

…you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Fittingly, Jesus’ name (the same name as Joshua) means “Yahweh is salvation.” Already, this is a striking coincidence.

A second reason why the name Jesus is significant is that a certain Joshua in the Old Testament replaces Moses in leading God’s people into the promised land. Moses represents the embodiment of the law. The law (embodied by Moses) was unable to lead God’s people into the promised land and so was replaced by Joshua.

A third correspondence is to another Joshua in the book of Zechariah and chapter 6. In Zechariah 6:9-13, we read,

9 And the word of the Lord came to me: 10 “Take from the exiles Heldai, Tobijah, and Jedaiah, who have arrived from Babylon, and go the same day to the house of Josiah, the son of Zephaniah. 11 Take from them silver and gold, and make a crown, and set it on the head of Joshua, the son of Jehozadak, the high priest. 12 And say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, “Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the Lord. 13 It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both.”’

This individual is described as “the man whose name is the Branch,” which is a Messianic title used elsewhere (e.g., Zechariah 3:8; Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 33:15). He is also given the office of both priest and king, a dual office which the Messiah is also said to fulfil (e.g., Psalm 110:4) whereas others were not permitted to occupy both offices.

In a study of 2625 male Jewish names from first-century Palestine (from documentary sources and ossuaries), 99 are reported to bear the name Jesus/Joshua (it being the sixth most popular name). That is approximately 3.77% of the Jewish male population. I will conservatively assign a Bayes factor to this piece of evidence of 2, taking our cumulative Bayes factor to 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 x 2 = 1000,000.

Example 6

Yet another striking coincidence is the fact that Christianity became the dominant international world religion that it became. Until 313 A.D., the Christian church was the persecuted minority, and powerful rulers and officials attempted to stamp out the Christian religion, destroy its Scriptures and its people. There was a high price to pay for being a follower of Jesus, and your fate could include being nailed to a cross, burned alive, or fed to wild animals. The probability that Christianity would become a dominant global religion was, therefore, vanishingly small. However, this is exactly what was predicted in various passages throughout the Old Testament, namely, that the Messiah would bring representatives of all nations to a recognition and worship of the God of Israel.

As an example, consider Isaiah 49:6:

He says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

Therefore, on the hypothesis that a given individual is the promised Messiah, the probability that they would bring representatives of all nations of the world to worship the God of Israel is approximately equal to one, whereas on the hypothesis that Jesus is not the Messiah, the probability is vanishingly small. In all history, only Jesus has accomplished this fete. I will assign a conservative Bayes factor of 1000.

At this point, our cumulative Bayes factor is 50 x 2 x 5 x 1000 x 2 x 1000 = 1000,000,000

Conclusion

Various other examples could be given, but I will stop the present analysis at this point. The point of this article was simply to show how a cumulative case can be constructed for the truth of Christianity based upon these striking instances of convergence between the life of Jesus and Old Testament texts in a manner that seems to point towards the conclusion of design rather than coincidence. Since the examples given above enjoy strong historical corroboration, we can safely rule out the human design as being responsible for these correspondences. We, therefore, have good evidence for divine design, and therefore the truth of Christianity.

Of course, it is necessary when doing a Bayesian analysis to give an estimate of the prior probability. Prior probability relates to the intrinsic plausibility of a proposition before the evidence is considered. Normally the prior probability will be somewhere between zero and one. A prior probability of one means that the conclusion is certain. For instance, the fact that two added to two is equal to four has a prior probability of one. It is true by definition. A prior probability of zero, conversely, means that the hypothesis entails some sort of logical contradiction (such as the concept of a married bachelor) and thus cannot be overcome by any amount of evidence. Priors can be established on the basis of past information. For example, suppose we want to know the odds that a particular individual won last week’s Mega Millions jackpot in the United States. The prior probability would be set at 1 in 302.6 million since those are the odds that any individual lottery participant, chosen at random, would win the Mega Millions jackpot. That is a low prior probability, but it could be overcome if the supposed winner were to subsequently quit his job and start routinely investing in private jets, sports cars, and expensive vacations. Perhaps he could even show us his bank statement or the documentary evidence of his winnings. Those different pieces of evidence, taken together, would stack up to provide powerful confirmatory evidence sufficient to overcome a very small prior probability to yield a high posterior probability that the individual did indeed win the Mega Millions jackpot. In other situations, setting an objective prior is more tricky, and in those cases, priors may be determined by a more subjective assessment.

If we suppose for argument’s sake that the prior probability of God sovereignly orchestrating the history is as low as 1 in 10,000,000, this leads us to a posterior probability of 0.99 of the hypothesis being true. Of course, this figure will be highly dependent on the Bayes Factors we have assigned to each piece of evidence. This is, of course, only a mathematical tool for modelling how a cumulative case can provide powerful evidence for our hypothesis, and we haven’t even considered all of the relevant data. I invite readers to plug in their own numbers and see what conclusion they arrive at.

20 Myths About Old Earth Creationism

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Podcast: Play in new window

By Luke Nix

Introduction

Last month I was alerted to a debate on Justin Brierley’s podcast “Unbelievable.” This debate was a discussion between a young-earth creationist (Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis) and an old-earth creationist (Jeff Zweerink of Reasons to Believe). This, of course, caught my attention because of my focus on science/faith issues. I decided to take a listen but found myself quite frustrated within just minutes of Justin giving his introductions. Here is a link to the episode for those who would like to hear it for themselves: Do we live on a young or old earth? Ken Ham vs. Jeff Zweerink

Throughout the discussion, Ken Ham presented many strawmen and misrepresentations of Zweerink’s old-earth creationist view in order to argue against the view. I recognized many of these myths as ones I’ve heard over the years that remain popular today despite their falsehood and countless attempts at correction.

In today’s post, I have compiled twenty of the myths that Ken Ham presented in the “Unbelievable” discussion, and I have provided a short, one-to-three paragraph explanation of how they are false and what the correctly understood old-earth creationist (OEC) position is. Since I have written on many of these topics in the past, I have included links to previous posts where they can offer a more detailed response. My intention for this post is three-fold for both believer and unbeliever.

First, for the unbeliever, I want them to understand that the young-earth view is not the only view held by Christians. They do not have to affirm young-earth creationism (YEC) in order to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and remain logically consistent.

Second, for the believer, I want them to understand that claiming that a logically consistent Christian must hold to the YEC view is simultaneously a detriment to our evangelism and to worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

Finally, for those who are honestly investigating the biblical, philosophical, and natural data to resolve this issue (both believer and unbeliever), I pray that this post also serves as a quick stop for addressing many of the myths, strawmen, and other mischaracterizations of the OEC view in a single location.

But, before I get to the perpetuated myths of old earth creationism, it is important to recognize where Ken Ham (YEC) and Jeff Zweerink (OEC) hold much common ground in their two views. Even though there are significant differences, there are even more significant commonalities that they can shake hands with each other and give them a hardy “Amen, brother!” I compiled a list a while back that is certainly not comprehensive, but is a large list to see where the differences between YEC and OEC may be fewer than is commonly understood:

What Do Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists Agree Upon Regarding Origins?

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Fact:
Ken Ham began with this myth. It implies that anyone who disagrees with him on the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 does not believe God’s Word. This could not be further from the truth. It is the very belief that God’s Word is true and authoritative in the Christian’s life that Christians try to understand what it means. In order for a proposition (or collection of propositions, such as the Bible) to be believed and applied to our lives, we need to correctly understand the meaning of the proposition(s). If we did not believe that the collection of propositions that constitute God’s Word is true and authoritative over our lives, then we wouldn’t bother with trying to understand what the author (and Author) meant to communicate in it. Saying that a Christian, who interprets differently, does not believe God’s Word is simply false. The debate is not about belief but rather about correct meaning.
For more, see “Man’s Fallible Ideas vs. God’s Infallible Word.”

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Fact:
Naturalism holds that there is nothing that exists outside this physical universe. Big bang cosmology has two requirements that necessarily exist outside this physical universe. Firstly, because big bang cosmology posits an absolute beginning to the universe and nothing that begins to exist can cause its own beginning to exist, the big bang necessarily requires a cause that is outside itself (this physical universe). Secondly, because of the fact that the universe’s physical laws are finely-tuned to support advanced life, the cause of the universe not only has to be super-natural, but it also has to be intelligent and purpose-driving in His creative act. These are attributes of a purposeful agent, not just another mechanism (naturalism), or deism (we’ve now left naturalism behind), or even basic theism. These attributes of the Cause mirror those of the Christian God. Not only is it false that big bang cosmology is based on naturalism big bang cosmology necessarily implies that the Christian God exists by the attributes of the Cause required to produce what is observed in the universe.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Fact:
One of the foundational beliefs of science (that allow it to discover events of even the recent past) is constant laws of physics. For the Christian, this foundational belief for science is even affirmed in Jeremiah 33:26 (see my post “How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline“). What is very nice about constant laws of physics is that if we have a correct understanding of processes from one moment to the next, we can work backward in time (via deductive reasoning) to come to sound (necessarily true) conclusions about the past, including the age of things. This is done for trees and corals using the number of rings and layers, respectively, and the well-understood rate of the formation of those layers. The idea that age cannot be determined by observing nature alone is correct, but when combined with the constant laws of physics and deductive reasoning, the ability to accurately determine age by observing God’s creation cannot be escaped by the Bible-believing Christian.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Fact:
This is quite a sweeping statement. In this myth, Ken Ham places all who affirm big bang cosmology into the same naturalistic category of those who deny miracles and God’s interaction with creation (including the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity and the Resurrection of Jesus). It is obvious, though, that Christians do not belong in the same category as naturalists when it comes to miracles. Some YECs who insist on this categorization, though, insist that Christians can believe both but only inconsistently.

The problem here is that affirmation of big bang cosmology in no way implies that supernatural miracles are not possible. In fact, as shown above, in Myth #2, the big bang assumes a supernatural miracle for the universe’s existence! If anyone is being inconsistent in their beliefs regarding the big bang and miracles, it is the naturalist who affirms the big bang yet denies supernatural miracles are possible. So, Christians who affirm big bang cosmology do not deny supernatural miracles such as the virgin birth of Jesus and are under no compulsion by logic to even entertain such a ridiculous claim. We do not deny the virgin birth of Jesus, and our view does not imply even the possibility of such a denial. While naturalists do deny the virgin birth of Jesus, inconsistently, the Christian affirms it consistently.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Fact:
Implied in this myth is the idea that “yom” was never debated until it was discovered that the universe was billions of years old and/or when Darwin came along and proposed evolution, which presumably would require billions of years of slow changes over time. However, this is demonstrably false. The meaning of “yom” has been debated for centuries before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe. St. Augustine, for instance, defended the contention that “yom” was different from a 24-hour day. Numerous other Church Fathers also debated “yom”‘s meaning. Since it was debated before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe and earth, such a discovery cannot serve as the motivation for the debate continuing to this day. For more on the Church Fathers and their debates over the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1, I recommend checking out “Coming to Grips With The Early Church Fathers’ Perspective On Genesis” by Dr. John Millam.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Fact:
This is an interesting argument. The falsehood is not found in the first part; young-earth creationism (along with other views) we debated and held by many Church Fathers; the falsehood is found in the logic. A well-established doctrine is not necessarily a correct doctrine (this goes for all sides of the age debate). Ken Ham, as a member of the Protestant tradition of the Church, would hold that many well-established doctrines of the Church (Catholic Church, at the time) were false. So, being well-established does not mean true, even for Ken Ham. Anyone who argues this way is simply incorrect.

Now, many people try to claim that young-earth creationism originated with the Seventh Day Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White, but since some of the Church Fathers already held to this view, it can hardly be said to have originated recently. But, again, that early origin does not mean true. Young-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from the early articulation of their view, and old-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from a later (more developed) articulation of the young-earth view.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Fact:
Many young-earth Christians (but not all) are not even open to alternative views because they have heard this myth so many times, presented in so many different ways, that they believe it. As mentioned in my response to Myth #1, this is not true, as demonstrated by the very attempt to reconcile God’s Word with God’s actions (creation). That recognition is enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the myth in general. But what about the more specific forms of the myth (additional myths, in themselves)? In a past post, I took on five common ways that this myth is articulated. Take a look at these additional myths in the post “Does Old Earth Creationism Compromise Scripture” to see if you have fallen victim to believing them.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Fact:
This myth attempts to strike at the foundation of scientific claims about origins: the ability to know origins. In this myth the young-earth creationist takes a hyper-empiricist view of knowledge that states that only the five senses can reveal truth about the physical world: in order to know anything that happened in the past, you had to be there to witness whether it happened or not, and since we were not there to witness the creation, we cannot know how it happened. They then say that we can only rely upon the eyewitness record in Genesis 1, which they assume is only compatible with their view (see Myths #1 and #7 above).

Even if we were to grant that the Genesis 1 account was only compatible with the young-earth view, they have a serious problem. If we cannot know something happened in the past unless we witnessed it, then how do we know that Genesis 1 was reliably handed down through the generations? We were not there to witness each transcription. In order to defend the reliable transmission of the text to today, we rely upon another source of knowledge that uses inductive and abductive reasoning (neither of which are sense-based). If those are valid sources of truth to discover past events, then the young-earth creationist must allow such sources of truth in the debate over origins. So, by their own epistemology (how we know what we know), this myth falls and falling further, their attempt to use the process of elimination to get to their view also fails. This myth is so prevalent in the origins debate that I have written quite a bit about this it in the past.

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Fact:
As demonstrated in my answer to Myth #8, this myth falls flat immediately. However, it gets worse for the YEC, not only can they not know that they have the eyewitness account about origins as it was originally recorded, they cannot know that they have a reliable eyewitness account about the Resurrection of Jesus as it was originally recorded! The staunch YEC may be able to live with not having a reliable account of the events of creation, but I do not believe for one second that they are willing to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and accept that we then also do not have reliable accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. For such a necessary implication would give us no confidence whatsoever in the truth of Christianity, which would then give them no foundation for holding onto their YEC view. The ground crumbles beneath them.

This is not a problem of belief (I know Ken Ham believes that the Bible we have today was reliably transmitted through the generations), but rather it is a problem of a lack of a foundational explanation for the belief in the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. If Ken Ham is to maintain the “you weren’t there” mantra, then he has no explanation for the reliable transmission of the Bible, and worse he has unwittingly provided an explanation for precisely why the Bible he holds in hands cannot be trusted as what was originally inspired by God! This is the myth, among all other ones because it strikes at the very foundation of the Christian worldview, that must die in the Church:

Historical Science, Deception, and Blind Faith
Is It Biblical to Have An Evidential Faith?
The Historical Jesus
Cold Cast Christianity
Forensic Faith
Did The Historical Jesus Rise From The Dead?

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Fact:
I find it very interesting that young-earth creationists often raise the logical problem of evil against God in these discussions. Simply put, the logical problem of evil has been a go-to challenge to God’s existence for atheists for centuries (and still is today in popular/internet atheist circles), but such a challenge is no challenge at all. The challenge relies upon the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God could not possibly have justifiable reasons for allowing evil, pain, and suffering in the world. However, since we cannot possibly know all of God’s purposes comprehensively, this challenge fails on epistemic grounds- no one has enough knowledge to make such a grandiose claim. And not only that, the Bible teaches that any suffering that God does allow does has an ultimate, eternal purpose.

So we do have enough knowledge to claim the very opposite: that God does have a purpose for allowing all pain and suffering, even if we cannot specifically identify that purpose with our current amount of knowledge. This would include any and all animal suffering. So for the young-earth creationist to be in the company of atheists with raising this challenge is to simply place the God of the Bible in the same box that the atheist attempts to place Him: “since I cannot see what purpose God may have for suffering, He must not have one.” This is only one way to demonstrate the falsehood of this myth, but others exist as well.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Fact:
Related to Myth #10 above, Ken Ham tries to show how God is responsible for moral evil if animal death existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve. Since the Christian God is not responsible for moral evil, then if there is a view that necessarily implies that God is responsible for moral evil, then it is false, and its god is not the Christian God. Ken Ham argues that animal death is a moral evil, and since old-earth creation requires that God is responsible for it, then old-earth creationism must be false. He attempts to release God from the responsibility of animal death by saying that the Fall introduced death to the animal kingdom. Many YECs have proposed different models for the Fall introducing death into the natural order (changed laws of physics, attributing creative power to sin, and punctuated equilibrium are just a few) in order to escape the implications of their own accusation.
But all this effort is actually unnecessary because animal death is not morally evil. For an event, action, or behavior to be morally evil, the perpetrator must be a moral agent with the free will to choose to do otherwise, and the offended party must be of intrinsic value. Both of those features are necessary, but neither are present in the physical creation prior to God’s creation of Adam and Eve. Animals are not moral agents, and they are not created in the Image of God, which would be the source of intrinsic value. These are precisely why we do not classify animals killing other animals as murder. “Murder” is “killing” with moral status. Without the moral status, animal killing is just killing, not murder. Since animals killing animals is not performed by moral, free agents and animals are not intrinsically valuable, there is no foundation for calling such death “morally” evil. It does not matter how much death happened before the Fall of Adam and Eve; it was not morally evil. So even though God is the Creator of the natural order (which includes animal death), He is NOT responsible for any moral evil here. Thus this myth is demonstrably false. I go into more detail in these posts:

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Fact:
This myth implies that because the basics of the Gospel can be understood and acted upon by the youngest and least educated among us, that the deeper and more refined details of the Gospel can also be discovered without the need for a scholarship. Ken Ham holds that the same applies to ideas of origins: if the basics of creation can be understood without scholarship, then so can the details be known without scholarship. In the podcast, Ken Ham appeals to biblical scholarship to make his case; then, he comes back later to deny the value of such biblical scholarship. He seems to hold that the “plain reading” (as would be understood the first time a person reads a passage) is the correct and comprehensive understanding- there is no need for further scholarship to determine details. Because Ham both uses and denies the value of biblical scholarship in the same conversation, it is hard to determine which of the mutually exclusive views he takes. But since he pounds the drum of “the plain reading” so much, it is reasonable to think that he (at least by his words and his actions) denies the value of biblical scholarship and affirms that there is no need to pursue further study beyond one’s initial reading of the text.

Interestingly enough, the Apostle Paul denies such a view explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:2. Paul tells the Corinthian church that he gave them the theological basics and called it “milk,” but affirmed that the theological details, which he called “solid food,” still remained to be grasped by them. A deeper study (scholarship) is required if we are to get to the truth of a view. If we eschew biblical scholarship, then we run the same risk of the Corinthian church and being satisfied only with “milk” and never graduating to “solid food.” When we look deeper into the first chapters of Genesis, we discover that the YEC view is not the only view compatible with the inerrant text. In fact, a range of views are fully compatible. If a person is to pursue the correct understanding, they must begin with the correct list of available options, then use further scholarship and sources of truth to determine which of those available options is the correct interpretation. This myth denies such a pursuit, which is in direct contradiction to Paul, so it must be false.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Fact:
What is very dangerous about this myth is that it makes a simple statement but never explicitly states the conclusion or the logic to the conclusion. It is true that OEC takes something from outside the Bible and uses it to interpret God’s Word. What does OEC take from outside the Bible? God’s actions: His creation. Time after time, the Bible affirms that God’s actions (His creation) are a valid source of truth. Psalm 19 states that the heavens declare the glory of God; Romans 1 affirms that the knowledge (truth) available to all in creation is so reliable and visible that it is enough to condemn a person; and Jeremiah 33:25-26 states that the laws that govern the universe are as constant as God Himself! (see Myths #16 and #20 below for more on this).

Not only is it biblical to use God’s actions, it is perfectly logical to use a person’s actions to help interpret what their words mean. We do this every day. We even do this when trying to interpret what America’s Founding Fathers meant when they penned the Constitution (see my post “Deconstructionism, The Constitution, and Biblical Interpretation“)
This myth is simply an attempt at a scare-tactic. It is presented as if OEC is concluded because people have approached Scripture with an atheistic presupposition (see Myth #2 above and Myth #14 below) and are trying to make Scripture subject to atheism. If God tells us that His actions are reliable sources of truth, then it is perfectly legitimate to use His actions to help us interpret His words. And to refuse to allow God’s actions to guide our interpretation is another way that we refuse to accept “solid food” and remain satisfied with “milk” (see Myth #12 above).

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Fact:
Similar to Myth #2, Ken Ham attempts to discredit using God’s actions (His creation) to interpret His words by appealing to atheism. Myth #2 already demonstrated that big bang cosmology not only does not indicate atheism, but it requires theism. This myth is necessarily dependent upon the idea that the currently measured age of the universe (~13.7 billion years) is enough time for unguided evolution to produce what we see today. This could not be further from the truth.

Big bang cosmology and a 13.7 billion-year-old universe was not a relief for the naturalist when it was discovered; it was a brick wall that evolution slammed against then and continues to slam against today. This was one of the key reasons that big bang cosmology was rejected by naturalists for so long! 13.7 billion years is orders of magnitude too young for unguided evolution to produce what we see today! In fact, many naturalists are positing that an infinite multiverse exists that would provide them with enough time across all of reality just for evolution to produce what we see today even one time! Big bang cosmology is no friend to the secularist. Not only does big bang cosmology require a Cause and a Designer, it chronologically constricts the naturalist’s evolutionary story to suffocation! Big bang cosmology is rather a powerful enemy to the naturalist, which adds yet another reason for its truth (see my post “Evidence for the Empty Tomb of Jesus and Big Bang Cosmology“).

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Fact:
Since Ken Ham is under the mistaken impression that allowing God’s creation to help us interpret Scripture sneaks in an amoral view (naturalism), I can understand why he would be scared of this myth (and propagate the same fear to his followers). However, it is not the act of allowing nature to interpret Scripture that is the source of moral conclusions; rather, it is the presupposition that one approaches the Scripture. If one already has the view that atheism is true, then all behaviors are permissible in their view. However, as seen in Myth #13, the usage of God’s actions (His creation) to help interpret His words is grounded in Scripture, which already holds that the Scripture (which includes the ethical claims) is inerrant and authoritative. A Christian allowing God’s creation to help them interpret God’s words does nothing to damage the ethical claims of God’s words and actually affirms their truth by affirming the truth of the biblical claims of the physical world.
Ham is also fond of saying that a Christian can follow biblical ethics and believe in the big bang, but they are doing so inconsistently. As discussed in Myths #2 and #14 above, though, big bang cosmology is not an atheistic but rather theistic view of the origin of the cosmos, so there is no logical inconsistency between the Christian who agrees with both biblical ethics and big bang cosmology. This myth is simply false.

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Fact:
If it is not clear from the previous fifteen myths that this myth, too, is false, then allow me to offer these additional points. First, if Christians who affirm OEC did not believe that God’s Word was both true and authoritative, they would not bother with trying to find the correct interpretation. Nobody looks at a work of fiction (on a page or on-screen) and attempts to reconcile its claims with the real world. We simply do not do that for stories that we believe are false and have no moral authority over our lives. The very fact that Christians take so much time to dig into biblical and scientific scholarship (the “solid food” of 1 Corinthians 3:2) to find the correct understanding (what the author and Author intended to communicate to their respective audiences) demonstrates their respect, belief, and submission to the content of Scripture.

Second, the only thing that is undermined by deeper scholarship is falsehood. Unlike God, man is not infallible, so his interpretations can be incorrect. It is through deeper scholarship that these incorrect interpretations are discovered and can be rejected. While it is important to study God’s Word to discover the range of possible interpretations that are compatible with an inerrant (and reliably transmitted) text, it would be irresponsible of us to neglect God’s actions (His creation) to rule out possible interpretations or even positively identify the correct interpretation. To refuse to conduct such a study and submit ourselves to God’s actions (as well as God’s Word), and even encourage others not to as well, is to affirm one’s own infallibility- something that no humble Christian should do, even implicitly. This is not to say that deeper scholarship will always lead to what is true (many scholars hold many different views about origins, many of them are mutually exclusive), but the more knowledge we have from the sources of truth that God has given us, the more information we have to reason with and come nearer to the correct view in the details.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Fact:
By this time, one should see how this myth is completely unfounded. OEC has compromised, nothing true nor important. OEC does not compromise the truth of God’s Word nor its authority in the Christian’s life. OEC only compromises the YEC interpretation, which is a human interpretation that is not infallible anyway. What has been compromised is falsehood, which is precisely what the Christian wants to compromise! This myth may have rhetorical power on the surface, but when we dig deeper into the scholarship (again, the “solid food” of 1 Cor 3:2), we find that the myth loses its rhetorical power with us because it is a lie. Now, I know that many young-earth creationists are concerned about more than just the age of creation (as well they should), so I have two posts that directly addresses (40) areas of full agreement with YECs and other common areas where “compromise” is claimed against OEC:

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Fact:
This myth originates from a claim made by Dr. Hugh Ross back in the 90s (if I recall the timing correctly) that was misunderstood. He stated that nature, as a trustworthy and infallible source of truth (since it is from the infallible God), was akin to a 67th book in the inerrant Bible. But many Christians misunderstood and misrepresented his analogy as his attempt to “add to Scripture” and was trying to say that nature can provide enough information to save a person. Of course, Dr. Ross never intended for either of these to be communicated by his analogy because he does not believe them, nor does his view logically imply or even indicate them. His attempts to correct the misunderstandings over several years were not accepted by his critics, so because of these misunderstandings and to attempt to avoid further misunderstandings of his view, Dr. Ross abandoned this analogy in the mid-2000s. Ken Ham was one of these critics and, to this day, still claims that OECs use this analogy. Today, OECs do not talk about nature as a 67th book of the Bible and have not for well over a decade precisely because we do not wish to be further misunderstood and misrepresented. Because the myth is dependent upon a misunderstanding of an analogy, and that analogy is no longer even used, the myth is false on two counts.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Fact:
If we refer back to myth #3, we see that this myth is false already on that count alone. However, when we further study the Bible, specifically Psalm 19 and Romans 1, we see that the authors affirm (through divine inspiration) that the creation can be trusted to reveal the truth. This is not a debate about over whether God’s creation reveals the truth or whether or not the creation is cursed (as also affirmed by the Bible). The debate is over the nature and extent of the curse. Since Jeremiah 33:25-26 affirms constant laws of physics, we must exclude limitations on the creation’s ability to reveal the truth (again, see Myth #3 above). If we are to include limitations of the creation’s ability to reveal the truth as part of the curse, then we essentially must deny biblical inerrancy since Psalm 19’s and Romans 1’s (along with the numerous other passages that affirm creation’s revelation of truth) would be false. The creation was not cursed in a way that prevents it from revealing the truth. Creation was indeed cursed, but its ability to reveal truth being removed was not part of that curse. The creation’s ability to reveal truth remains intact despite the curse.
While this myth is incorrect on biblical grounds, let’s also not forget that Ken Ham attempts to use the creation to demonstrate the truth that it was created by a Designer. Old-earth creationists agree with this; however, if the creation cannot reveal the truth, then Ken Ham’s appeal to it to tell us something true about its origins is a pointless appeal- why would Ken Ham use an untrustworthy source to reveal truth? The reality is that Ken Ham’s own defense of his view using God’s creation is logically incompatible with his view of the curse in Genesis- every “scientific” critique that he offers against big bang cosmology is without a foundation. If God’s creation cannot reveal truth, then it also cannot reveal a defeater or even a mere challenge to any view of reality because it would be challenging a truth-claim. Challenges to truth claims, based upon God’s creation, is philosophically off-limits on Ken Ham’s view of the curse. But, lucky for Ken Ham, this myth has been biblically demonstrated to be false, so he can continue to bring his critiques, see them undermined, and be faced with what God’s creation actually reveals about its supernatural and awesome history.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Fact:
This myth capitalizes on Christian parents’ greatest fear: that their children will reject Christ. As we’ve seen, though, there is no actual conflict between the universe being billions of years old and the Bible. The reason children see conflict is because Ken Ham still perpetuates the idea that there is a conflict by consistently presenting these myths as fact. By perpetuating these myths, Ham is essentially presenting children the false dichotomy of “accept YEC or deny Christ.” God’s creation denies YEC (both deductively and abductively), yet God’s Word (and history) affirms Christ, so our children are caught between a rock and a hard place. Their sinful nature tends to make this decision easy, though: deny Christ. By presenting the false dichotomy of “YEC or atheism,” Ken Ham is unwittingly setting up our children for spiritual failure; it is this false dichotomy combined with their sin nature that is the reason our children are leaving the Church. Ken Ham perpetuates this problem then complains about it saying that his view is the cure, but if he is perpetuating the problem using a false dichotomy, false accusations against competing views, and a scientifically (the testimony of God’s creation, itself) demonstrably false alternative, how in the world can he hold the cure? Are our children leaving the Church because they see this conflict? Yep! But the conflict they see is a false conflict, perpetuated by Ken Ham. This is the only myth in this list that is true, but the myth testifies not against old-earth creationism but against the false dichotomy of “believe YEC or reject Christ” that Ken Ham claims that logically consistent people must choose between.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

None of these myths are new. I remember hearing many of them in my teens when I first became aware of the origins debate within the Church. What is really disheartening, though, is that while Ken Ham has been corrected numerous times over the decades, he still insists on using these strawmen to argue against a view he disagrees with.

I recently finished reading the book “Time for Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin” by Os Guinness. As I was reading through the part of this book where Guinness talks about the importance to the post-modernist of controlling the narrative (whether with truth or falsehood) in order to preserve and promote a relative or subjective “greater good,” I couldn’t help but think of how so many Christians misrepresent and communicate myths about views they disagree with, in an effort to defeat that view in the market place of ideas. As Christians, when we refuse to correct our own misrepresentations of a view we’re critical about, we treat truth with no more respect than does the post-modernist. Let’s ensure that we are not guilty of this ourselves.

The Cure For Spiritual Disorientation

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Bob Perry

I have made the case that the church is suffering from spiritual disorientation. There are many Christians who are flying through this life in much the same way as a pilot who is spatially disoriented. Like that pilot, they’ve lost all reference to the ground. And that’s a dangerous position to be in. The first thing a pilot must do to correct his situation is to find the true horizon. Grounding our faith is no different. And the horizon line of faith is truth itself. Truth, in all its forms, is the reference for a grounded spirituality. It aligns us with reality. The Greeks believed in an impersonal force that was the source of truth, goodness, and beauty. They called it the logos. But the Bible tells us that the Logos is Jesus himself. Aligning ourselves with the Logos is the only way to correct our spiritual disorientation.

Getting Aligned With The World

If you want to fly safely through the sky, you need to have a constant reference to the ground. That seems simple enough. If it’s a nice day, you can see the horizon line just fine. But if you’re in the clouds, you need another method. For that reason, a tremendous amount of effort has gone into designing cockpit instruments that display an artificial horizon to the pilot. But that line has to be trustworthy. It has to replicate the real one. We always need a way to be able to see the “true horizon.”

If the church wants to address its spiritual disorientation problem, it needs to make it a priority to invest in doing the same kind of thing. The church needs a way to stabilize its vision of reality. And the place to begin doing that is with the basics of reality itself.

The Ground You Cannot See

Apologists like me love to talk about the origins, design, archaeology, and the scientific evidence that points to the existence of God. We are known to make a case for God as the Creator, Designer, and Sustainer of the world. That’s great. We need to do all those things. In fact, Christianity is unique among the world religions in its ability to offer tangible evidence for its trustworthiness.

But if the church is going to be properly grounded, we need to go beyond that kind of evidence. We need to re-emphasize things that are vital to rational thought, but that our culture has corrupted. I’m talking about the features of our world that you can’t see, but that are just as real as the ground you walk on. The kinds of things you have to know and understand to think clearly about anything at all. I’m talking about the philosophical triumvirate of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

For thousands of years, thinking people have recognized each of these as objective features of the world. If you want to understand how we’ve gotten disoriented, you have to start with them.

Hijacking Objective Reality

Think about it. For thousands of years, human beings saw Truth, Goodness, and Beauty as objective features of the world. But they weren’t just things that existed outside of us. We understood that they were important and reliable because they were grounded in the nature of God himself.

But contemporary culture has hijacked each of them. It has relativized them. Told us they were things we could decide for ourselves. The results have been disastrous. But there is a way to fix it. And the first step in confirming the church’s true horizon is to put truth, goodness, and beauty back where they belong — as the unmoving reference points for all we do and think.

Truth Is The Essence Of God

Truth has always been central to the human relationship with God. The Prophets of the Old Testament lamented it’s passing.

Isaiah 59:14-15— “truth stumbled in the streets. Truth is nowhere to be found”
Jeremiah 7:28— “truth has perished; it has vanished from their lips.”

Jesus refers to truth more than 75 times. In the Book of John alone, he uses the double emphatic phrase, “Truly, truly I say to you …” twenty-five times. Truth was the reason he came to Earth at all:

John 18:37— “For this reason I was born, and for this reason, I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Ultimately, he transformed our understanding of the nature of truth itself. He personalized it.

John 14:6— “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me …”

If we want our churches to be properly oriented, we have to defend the truth. We have to know that truth before it can set us free.

Goodness Is The Character Of God

Every one of us recognizes what C. S. Lewis put so succinctly:

“Across cultures universally, there are common principles that everybody knows and lives as if they are true.”

You can’t torture toddlers for fun. It is wrong to murder an innocent person. You shouldn’t steal your neighbor’s iPhone. Rape is wrong. We all have human rights.

Where do these ideas come from? As I have discussed elsewhere, the existence of these kinds of things points to the fact that there is a standard we all use to determine morality. Individuals cannot create that standard for themselves. It would lead to chaos. Neither can we agree on them by accepting the consensus of our communities. If that were the case, there would be no way to argue against the actions of the Nazis or southern slave owners. After all, they governed by the consensus of their respective communities.

There is only one other possible explanation for these kinds of things. There is an external standard that defines them. And the only other source of such a standard of goodness is the character of God himself.

Beauty Is The Reflection Of God

As my article, “A Mind For The Beautiful,” points out in great detail, the classic understanding of beauty was that it was a property of objects. Beautiful things displayed symmetry, order, balance, unity, and proportion. They gave the inference of design and purpose.

As an example, the Wright Brothers were not the first ones to build an airplane. They were the first to be able to control an airplane. That’s why you know about them today. And they were able to do that because they spent countless hours studying and cataloging the movement and structure of birds. They watched their feathers warp and twist. They observed how the birds set their wings before takeoff and after landing. In other words, they owed their unique success to their ability to replicate nature.

We don’t create beauty. We recreate it. Beauty is something we find in the world around us. The best we can do is mimic it.

The Divine Mind

As it turns out, Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are each objective features of the world. They always have been. We do not create them. We discover them. They are foundational to reality itself. And they are what we need to know to properly orient ourselves to the world. They help form a true horizon.

Even the Greek philosophers knew this. They talked about truth, goodness, and beauty as elements of a concept they saw behind the orderly nature of the universe.

This concept was rich in meaning. It included reason, choice, reflection, and calculation. It explained the relational harmony between belief and actuality. The Greeks considered this to be some kind of impersonal force — a “divine mind.” And they had a name for it.

They called it the Logos.

The Impersonal Comes To Life

When the Apostle John begins his gospel, it is no coincidence that he does so with this Greek idea in mind. He makes it clear that the “force” is far from impersonal. In fact, he knows exactly who it is.

“In the beginning was the Word (“Logos” ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life and the life was the Light of men.”

It turns out that Jesus is the Logos. He is the Divine Mind behind the universe. The foundation of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. Jesus obliterated any notion that the spiritual and physical worlds are disconnected. He is the place where they merge.

If the church is spiritually disoriented, we know where to look to get ourselves right-side up.

As the God who became a man, Jesus showed us that he is our true horizon — the reference for where we should be living our lives. When we focus on truth, goodness, and beauty, we are really focusing on him.

He gives life meaning. He makes life safe.

Jesus — and the Truth, Goodness, and Beauty he defines — is the cure for our spiritual disorientation.

Evidence for the Exodus

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How many times have you heard that there is no evidence for the exodus, particularly no evidence from Egypt? That claim is demonstrably false! Archaeologist Dr. Titus Kennedy joins Frank along with Dr. Stephen Meyer of the Discovery Institute to review a list of eight findings, most from Egypt, that corroborate the Bible’s account of the exodus. In fact, Dr. Kennedy recently traveled to northern Sudan (Egypt in biblical times) to confirm the oldest inscription ever discovered of Yahweh. It’s from 1400 B.C. and sheds amazing light on the exodus.

You’ll be able to read and see all of this when Dr. Kennedy’s new book, Unearthing the Bible, is published later this Spring. But right now, you can hear some of the highlights. Don’t miss this one. Fascinating!

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March 7, 2020/by Frank Turek

Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part II)

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mike Taylor

How to Deal with Emotional Doubt

Most of the time in our lives, it’s not the facts of the situations around us that are important; it’s how we process those facts. Similarly, the worst kind of a pain in our lives is not from what happens to us but how we download it or process it.

For people dealing with emotional doubt, when something bad happens, they give themselves permission to let those events determine why they have problems. However, beliefs (i.e., the way we download information) are the things that stand between those events that happen to us and the consequences that come from them.

Events alone rarely cause all the consequences we experience. Events plus negative or detrimental beliefs about those events often cause excessive consequences. So, when we say negative things to ourselves about things that matter to us – things like “What if God doesn’t really love me?” – it’s important to refute those thoughts with “That’s not true because…” It’s all about how you talk to yourself about the events in your life because most of us lie to ourselves without even realizing it.

Here are a couple of simple steps to dealing with this type of emotionally-driven thought pattern:

1. Locate the misbelief

Usually, there’s a primary and secondary misbelief. You might tell yourself something that’s untrue, but there’s usually a deeper lie about life beneath that. As yourself, “Why do I have a hard time believing this?” or, “Why does this seem so unlikely to me?” Don’t just shut down the idea of trusting God because it’s difficult to believe. Be willing to explore your reasons for not believing.

For example, for many people, distrust is bred over time as a result of painful situations such as abandonment, neglect, abuse, or some other type of emotional damage we experience. When those negative memories and thought patterns are left unchecked, they can create in us a mindset that people are not to be trusted. As subtle as it may be in us when we approach evidence for God with this distrusting mindset as our basis, no amount of factual evidence is going to break through our barrier. It’s only by moving to step two that we can take a truly unbiased look at evidence for God.

2. Remove and replace

Once you’ve identified the root of the emotional doubt, it’s important to confront those doubts with empirical truth – truth that can be verified through observation and experiences (i.e., the resurrection of Jesus, the goodness of God as evident in creation, etc.).

The best way to do this is to simply remind yourself, “That’s not true because…” Replace the misbelief with an evidence-based truth. Change your perspective and choose to see things from a neutral perspective instead of from the negative, misleading perspective. After all, most emotional doubters are anxious doubters. They’re being anxious or obsessive-compulsive by doubting. It’s not a rational issue they’re dealing with.

It’s important to address emotional doubts because if you allow yourself to be dominated by your emotions rather than what’s true, eventually, you’re at risk of simply giving up and completely turning off to God. That’s what Dr. Habermas calls volitional doubt.

Volitional doubt describes people who know Christianity is true, but they’re typically mad at God, and they’ve turned away from God completely. This can happen for a variety of reasons, but it’s a matter of the will. It’s an unwillingness to believe despite known truth. God loves you enough to give you freedom, and using that freedom to walk away from Him is the one thing He can’t save you from – not because He isn’t able, but because He loves you too much to force you to be with Him if you don’t want to.

The good news is, you’re in control of your doubts. You get to decide what to do with them and how to manage them. Remember that the most damage that occurs in our lives is not from what happens to us but how we process it. So, understanding the necessary facts is key, but then reminding yourself of those facts in negative situations is also vital. After all, the facts about God don’t change just because your circumstances change.

This is where faith comes in.

In Scripture, the word for “hope” refers to a grounded hope, not a hope in something you don’t know about. That hope comes from faith that is grounded in facts.

Faith does what reason can’t do. Faith says, “This can be trusted.”

Faith says, “Quit asking ‘what if’ about stupid questions when you already have good answers. Reason says, “Here are good responses.” Faith says, “Those are good enough. You can trust those. Walk-in it.” Faith comes along and says that belief is warranted.

Faith is trusting the evidence. It’s okay to keep studying to build on good answers, but not because you have to keep answering the same question every day.

You have to train the habit of faith. Learn the art of learning enough and then letting go. And faith is not going to stay there if you ignore it. That’s why people who follow Jesus read the Bible, worship, fellowship with other Christians, etc. because it reinforces our faith when we hang around people who don’t think they have to answer the same questions every day.

Remember: The gospel is the most important message in the Bible, and it’s the one doctrine that is the most supported by evidence. In other words, God put the most evidence for the most important thing we need to know.

So, minimize the importance you place on periphery issues. It will save you a lot of stress and wasted time. Look to answer the most important central doctrines:

Jesus is the Son of God.
Jesus died on the cross for our sins.
Jesus was resurrected from the dead.

Then, if that’s not working and something is still nagging at you, and you’re in pain, then you’re probably experiencing emotional doubt.

You can read the first part here.

[This article was an adaptation from my book Grounded Faith for Practical People. You can download it for free at MikePTaylor.net]

Killing in the name of God?

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If God told you to kill someone, what would you do? Wouldn’t you seek a psychiatrist? Why did Abraham almost go through with killing his son Isaac? How did Abraham know God told him and not a demon? How does the violence in the Old Testament differ from that in the Qur’an? And does God really give us free choice if it’s either “worship me or go to Hell!”

Atheists often challenge Christians with questions like this. In fact, Frank tells of an atheist asking some of these questions this week at the University of Nebraska. How does one respond to this and other questions? Listen to find out!

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February 29, 2020/by Frank Turek

Could The Universe Be Eternal?

2. Does God Exist?, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Ryan Leasure

One of my favorite arguments for God’s existence is the Kalam Cosmological Argument. While this argument has historical roots, contemporary Christian philosopher William Lane Craig has popularized it more recently. The argument goes like this:

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
The universe began to exist.
Therefore, the universe has a cause.

This is a logically airtight argument. That is, if we can demonstrate that both premise (1) and (2) are true, the conclusion (3) necessarily follows as true. Let’s consider the premises in turn.

(1) Everything That Begins To Exist Has A Cause.

This first premise seems intuitively obvious. To reject it, one would have to posit that something can come from nothing. But that view has to be the height of absurdity. Nothing can’t produce anything. After all, our own experiences and scientific observations tell us that things just don’t pop into existence uncaused. None of us, for example, have ever experienced a new Corvette popping into existence in our driveways, as nice as that would be. Additionally, if things can pop into existence uncaused, then it remains inexplicable as to why this doesn’t happen all the time.

As one might imagine, most embrace this premise, although a few have sought to refute it over the years. Quentin Smith, for example, suggests that “the most reasonable belief is that we came from nothing, by nothing, and for nothing.”¹ But I must confess, I’m not sure I understand how this is possible. How did we come from nothing? How did nothing have the capability of causing anything at all?

If prior to the existence of the universe, nothing existed – including space, time, matter, or God – how did the universe come to be? People, like Quentin Smith, must violate everything we know about the cause and effect relationship in our universe to adopt this position. Even the great skeptic David Hume once remarked, “I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause.”²

To get around this metaphysical impossibility, skeptic Lawrence Krauss suggests that the universe came into being from nothing. But then he goes on to explain that “nothing” is really a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy. And as many have already pointed out, Krauss equivocates on the word nothing. After all, a quantum vacuum of fluctuating energy isn’t no-thing. It’s something. One still needs to explain how this vacuum came to be.

Additionally, others have adopted the position that premise (1) is true for all things inside the universe, but it’s not necessarily true of the universe itself. The problem with this view is that it commits the taxicab fallacy. That is to say, it adopts the standard cause and effect principle when it’s convenient but then hops off — like one would a taxi — once it gets to its desired destination. Not only is this view logically inconsistent, it assumes that the causal principle is only true of the material world. But the cause and effect principle is a metaphysical principle, in that it’s true for all reality. Being cannot come from nonbeing.

Finally, the last objection to premise (1) usually comes in the form of a question: “Who caused God?” But this misunderstands the premise. The premise doesn’t state that “whatever exists has a cause.” Rather it states that “whatever begins to exist has a cause.” And theists have maintained that God has never had a beginning. He exists eternally by necessity. If he doesn’t, then he’s not God. This is what we mean when we say “God.” If he owes his existence to an external cause, that external cause would be God. So asking the question, “who caused God?” doesn’t help the skeptic get around premise (1). Theists have maintained for millennia now, that God is necessarily eternal. And to ask, “what caused him?” misunderstands our position.

(2) The Universe Began To Exist.

Since it’s difficult to disprove premise (1), many skeptics set their sights on premise (2) which asserts that the universe began to exist. In a previous post, I laid out scientific evidence which suggests the universe is not eternal. In this post, however, I want to focus on the philosophical reasons for rejecting a past-eternal universe.

To get around premise (2), the skeptic must maintain that the physical universe has existed for all eternity and has thus existed for an infinite number of moments. However, while we use infinity in mathematical or theoretical worlds, infinity, in reality, is impossible as it results in all sorts of logical absurdities.

Think, for example, about a meter stick that you divide in halves forever. Could you divide the meter stick in half an infinite number of times? How do you know the point at which you cross the threshold of a natural number to infinity? And if you reach infinity, isn’t it true that you could subdivide the meter stick one more time?

Perhaps the most famous example demonstrating the absurdity of infinity, in reality, is David Hilbert’s thought experiment — Hilbert’s Hotel. Hilbert told us to imagine a hotel with an infinite number of rooms. Additionally, he said to imagine that all the rooms are occupied so that not a single room is vacant. Now, suppose a guest comes to the check-in desk and asks for a room. The manager says, “yes, of course, you can have a room.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #3, and the person in room #3 to room #4, and so forth to infinity. He then takes the new guest and places them in the vacant room #1. But remember, before the guest showed up, the infinite number of rooms were already occupied.

Now, Hilbert says to suppose an infinite number of guests show up to a fully occupied hotel asking for a room. “Of course, the manager says.” He then proceeds to move the person in room #1 to room #2, and the person in room #2 to room #4, and the person in room #3 to room #6, and so forth to infinity, always putting the previous occupants in a room number twice their original one. Because all the former occupants now reside in even-numbered rooms, the infinite number of new guests all go into the odd-numbered rooms. Remember, though, before the infinite number of guests arrived, all the infinite number of rooms were occupied.

In the first example, we already had an infinite number of guests, but we were able to add one more. So, the equation would look something like this: infinity + 1 = infinity. In the second example, we had an infinite number of guests already staying in the hotel before adding another infinite number of guests. This equation would look like this: infinity + infinity = infinity. Despite adding a different amount to infinity in both equations, we still ended up with the same sum of infinity. The mathematical impossibility of such a hotel demonstrates the absurdity of an actual infinity in reality.

Consider another example. The medieval philosopher al-Ghazali asks us to imagine both Jupiter and Saturn orbiting the sun from eternity past. If for every time Saturn orbits the sun, Jupiter orbits it 2.5 times, which planet has orbited the sun more times? Well, if both planets have been orbiting from eternity past, the answer is that they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount — infinity. But doesn’t that seem absurd? In fact, we know that the higher the number of orbits, the greater the discrepancy that exists between the two. But if Saturn has orbited an infinite number of times, even though Jupiter has been orbiting 2.5 times for every Saturn orbit, they’ve both orbited the sun the same amount.

These illustrations help demonstrate that an actual infinite number, in reality, is impossible. And if an actual infinity is impossible, the universe could not exist for an infinite number of moments.

These absurdities raise another significant problem for the person who wants to reject premise (2). And that problem is that it’s impossible to traverse the infinite. Put another way; if the universe has existed for an infinite number of days, we could never arrive at today because that would mean infinity came to an end. But infinity can’t come to an end. That’s what it means to be infinity.

Or think about it another way. Before we can arrive at today, yesterday would have to occur, and the day before that, and the day before that, and so on to infinity. But how does one know when we’ve reached infinity in the past? There’s no point at which we could start counting the days backward to today. That would be like counting all the negative numbers from infinity back to zero.

Interestingly, many skeptics acknowledge our universe isn’t past eternal based on the scientific evidence. A lot of these same skeptics, however, attempt to get around this problem by suggesting an eternal multiverse. But the absurdity of infinity still applies to a multiverse. It’s impossible to traverse an infinite number of points in any physical universe, even one beyond our ability to detect. So, the skeptic still faces the same problem.

In sum, since it’s absurd to suggest that the universe has existed for an infinite number of moments, the universe must have begun to exist a finite time ago.

(3) Therefore, The Universe Has A Cause.

Since whatever begins to exist has a cause (1), and the universe began to exist (2), it follows necessarily that the universe has a cause (3). Based on this argument, what can we know about the nature of this cause?

First, whatever caused the universe must come from outside the universe itself. That is to say, it must transcend the natural world.

Meaning, this cause must be spaceless, timeless, and immaterial since space, time, and matter all came into existence at the beginning of the universe. Especially relevant to this argument is that the cause is timeless and, therefore, never had a beginning. Now, the skeptic might object that a past eternal cause faces the same dilemma of a past eternal universe. But he would be mistaken because the cause of the universe exists outside of, or independent of, time. That is to say, this cause existed in a timeless state and thus hasn’t traversed over an infinite number of points.

The cause must also be personal. We reach this conclusion based on the fact that there are only two possibilities for a spaceless, timeless, and immaterial entity — either an abstract object like a number or an unembodied mind. But abstract objects don’t possess causal power. They can’t do anything. This leaves a conscious mind who made a free will choice to create as the best explanation.

Finally, based on the size and complexity of our universe, this spaceless, timeless, immaterial, personal being must be all-powerful and extremely intelligent. And this being is what theists refer to as God.

El Apologista

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Terrell Clemmons

Jorge Gil: Next Gen Apologist to the World

Jorge Gil was born in 1982 to a single mother in Costa Rica. When he was one year old, she left him in the care of his grandparents and moved to the United States, where she died ten years later. In the wake of her death, with a grandfather who was away most of the time, a grandmother who showed love by giving him whatever he wanted, and adolescence approaching, young Jorge started exploring. With no father figure and no boundaries, he soon discovered he liked liquor and pot, and both became regular pastimes. As in much of Latin America, the culture around him was nominally Catholic, and he could easily party all night and go to Mass the next day, no qualms. He never doubted the existence of God. He just never cared about him.

Still, he was a smart student. He graduated high school at sixteen, and by age eighteen had completed three semesters of college. However, with expanded freedom had come expanded carousing. When the aunts footing the bill for his education saw how he was wasting the opportunity, they cut off the funds. At that point, his Aunt Shirley invited him to America, where she lived, and where he could work and earn his own funds to finish school. He arrived in North Carolina two weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

But a change of setting does not a change of lifestyle make. A steady income of his own simply freed him up to do whatever he pleased, and life settled into a steady cycle of hard work followed by hard-partying. Who needed school?

Being musically and technologically inclined, he also built a recording studio in his apartment. This attracted friends, including women, and before long, he’d taken up with one in particular. Neither of them had any plan or ambition for life, and they drifted along carelessly and recklessly before and after children entered the picture. Jorge’s daughter Leda was born in 2007, followed by his son Aiden in 2008. With both Jorge and his baby-mama stuck in codependency, Aunt Shirley next door picked up a lot of the slack for everyone.

Stopped

In 2012, several years of irresponsible living caught up with Jorge. It started with a routine traffic stop while he was driving home from a friend’s house. Although he’d had some drinks, his breathalyzer test registered under the legal limit, so that wasn’t a problem. But his driver’s license was expired. So he was taken to the police station, where, by some mysterious misfortune, a second breathalyzer test showed a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1% over the limit. Jorge was detained overnight in the Sampson County jail, and now he had a DUI charge to contend with.

The next morning, he woke up to an ICE officer waiting for him. The reason his driver’s license was expired was that he’d let his immigration permit lapse, and now he was being placed on immigration hold. Driving with an expired license was a minor offense, and the DUI arguably stood on shaky ground. But this immigration situation was a more complicated matter. In counsel with his lawyers, Jorge decided he would plead not guilty to the DUI charge and remain in the county jail while they prepared his immigration case.

Detention: Part One

“Do you have anything to read?” he asked his Mexican bunkmate on the first day in jail. His bunkmate had two books, a Colombian classic called One Hundred Years of Solitude and a Bible. Jorge had no interest in reading the Bible, but after finishing the novel in two days, the Bible was the only book around, and prison days were long. He read the Gospels.

To his surprise, he found himself intrigued. As if in response to some nascent prayer, the following week, a black man named Cortez was transferred into his pod. (A pod is a large communal cell.) Cortez had what he called “jail preacher syndrome,” meaning that he would drift in and out of jail and while in jail he would preach the gospel and teach Bible studies. Jorge took it all in, and when another preacher visited two weeks later and laid out the gospel with all his country-preacher fire, Jorge surrendered his life to Jesus on the spot. At that moment, all the urges and desires of his old life—a pack or two of cigarettes a day, drinks every night, and pot here and there for good measure—up and left, never to return.

Cortez went to work discipling him right away. He told Jorge to stop using profanity, both the Spanish words and the English ones. Jorge did, and the two studied the Bible together every day until Cortez was transferred out a few weeks later. With Cortez gone, Jorge took it upon himself to become the new in loco preacher. Still new to the Bible himself, he used whatever he could find. He asked Aunt Shirley to get him some resources, and though he hardly knew what to ask for, he soon had a study Bible, some Our Daily Bread devotionals, a few InTouch magazines, and a stash of commentaries, all of which he devoured and disseminated as best he could like there was no tomorrow. He reached out to contacts in the community and asked for Bibles to be donated, and soon every new inmate received from him a good welcome and his own Bible. Inmates started calling him Preacher and coming to him for counsel, and between the providence of God and the flame driving his regenerated heart, Jorge grew into the preacher-teacher role with a passion.

Detention: Part Two

Six months to the day after Jorge entered the Sampson County jail, he was transferred to a federal ICE detention facility in Georgia. The DUI charge had been dismissed, and by the time he left, in addition to becoming Preacher, he’d become friends with all the guards, served as their on-call translator, read some sixty books, and accumulated a pile of yellow pads filled with notes, ideas, and sermon outlines.

Although he’d pretty much put himself through “preacher school,” as he now puts it, the ICE facility presented a whole new set of challenges. These weren’t people who were in for crimes per se, but like him were being detained and processed for either deportation or reinstatement as a resident. In North Carolina, most of the inmates had come from some kind of Christianized background and had a reasonable context by which to relate to the gospel. Here, he encountered Buddhism, Islam, Rasta, Hinduism, Bahá’í, and other world belief systems. He would start preaching or talking as he’d done before, and men would challenge him with questions he’d never encountered: “How can you say Jesus is the only way?” and “Hasn’t the Bible been corrupted?” and the like. How was he to respond to these?

He prayed, and his answer came in the form of an AM-FM radio a Mexican man who was being deported gave him. By holding the antenna up to the window just so, Jorge found a radio teacher who flat-out blew him away. The man had a funny accent, and Jorge thought he was some kind of Messianic Jew because his name was Ravi, which he assumed was a mispronunciation of Rabbi. Jorge sat by that window every single day, wrote down everything this man said and asked Aunt Shirley to send him every book she could find related to Ravi Zacharias.

The books and notepads continued to accumulate until November when Jorge received a full pardon and was released. He returned home 110 pounds lighter, nine months drug-free, insatiably thirsty for knowledge of this Jesus he loved, and with a heart set on sharing him with the world. He started looking for apologetics programs online as soon as he could get his hands on a smartphone.

El Director

Life since that pivotal year has brought a lot of twists and turns. His employer had held his job for him, and he was welcomed back wholeheartedly, but his relationship with the mother of his children deteriorated rapidly. Not only had she not changed, she was not happy about these changes in him. She left a few months later in a violent fury, never to return.

His Aunt Shirley, who had been like a mother to him all these years, died in 2014 in a horrible murder-suicide shooting, and following that, he discovered in a new way the richness of the body of Christ, as his small rural church stepped in to help him with his kids. He went to every weekend apologetics conference he could find within driving distance, and he sought out mentors who could help him grow as an apologist and man of God. He met Frank Turek of Cross-Examined and in 2015 was hired on as Cross-Examined’s social media director. He also met Angelia (“Lia”) in 2015, and in 2017, she became his wife and accepted the mantle of mother to his children.

Today, he serves as the Executive Director for Cross-Examined. He oversees all projects, including the translation and publication of apologetics resources into world languages, including Chinese and Russian. He oversees Cross-Examined’s social media operations and, techno-whiz Millennial that he is, keeps them ever on the leading edges of technologies, in order to reach younger generations on their grounds and terms.

He speaks and conducts seminars overseas on a wide range of topics—postmodernism, same-sex marriage, the problem of evil—contextualizing the content as much as possible for local audiences, and he creates and hosts online communities, the goal always being to advance the gospel and deliver sound apologetics to the world.

Hombre de Dios

He’s one busy hombre who loves what he does. “I certainly didn’t plan this,” he says. “God gave me this opportunity, and it’s a joy to be able to allow him to use me to connect the North American movement in apologetics and actually create one in Latin America.”

He finds his greatest joy, though, in his family.

To see that family unity that I never had—I never met my biological father, I was raised by my grandmother, my biological mom died (I barely knew her), and my grandfather who was supposed to be the role model in the house was always gone working, and when he came around he was drunk—to see the relationships I have with my children and with my wife, and that my children have with her is incredible. I think that’s the thing I enjoy the most.

Scripture speaks about God calling his people, establishing them, and then making them flourish. I think Jorge Gil is just getting started at that flourishing part.

Out of the Trenches

How Jorge Gil Grew into His Calling

“One of the things people don’t know about me,” Jorge says, “is my struggle with not having a degree.”

He was in a business meeting of the Evangelical Philosophical Society one day, when the president, Angus Menuge, asked him what his area of expertise was. “Bro,” he said, “I’m riding on a high-school diploma.”

In addition to multi degreed Christian academics like Dr. Menuge, Jorge’s circle of colleagues includes such apologetics giants as J. Warner Wallace, Greg Koukl, and the late Dr. Norman Geisler, so it’s understandable if he feels intimidated at times. But the way he’s going about his Christian life is hardly “riding.” Consider the following:

Diligence: For one thing, ever since his Christian conversion seven years ago, Jorge has invested himself in learning everything he can that’s related to the Christian faith. Although he was not deported in 2012, his temporary residential status meant he would have to enroll in school as a foreign student, which carried a much higher tuition cost.

As a single parent, formal education was simply not an option for him for some time. So Jorge studied on his own -theology, apologetics, philosophy-whatever would make him a more suitable vessel for sharing the gospel.

Humility: Second, having never had a father figure to speak of, he intentionally sought out learned, godly men for help and advice. He met Richard Howe, who was director of the Ph.D. program in philosophy at Southern Evangelical Seminary, at an apologetics conference and asked Dr. Howe if he would be his philosophy mentor. He built relationships with people he saw as role models, not because of their “star status,” but in order to learn from them. One of the many questions he would ask is, “What would you tell your thirty-year-old self that you would want him to know?” He also offered his services as a translator to them-to subtitle their videos, for example, or to re-post their biogs in Spanish. No charge; it was all about offering what he had to give in service to the cause.

Faith: And third, Jorge never let intimidation or lack of a degree hinder him from doing what he believed God was calling him to do. He’s currently pursuing his Associate, Bachelor, and Masters degrees, all in one swoop. At the same time, he insists it’s not the degrees or the seminary that prepares you for the work, but the God who calls you to it.

“If you want it and you think God has called you to something,” he tells people,

then go for it, and things will fall into place. Don’t think, “I’ll get my degree and then I’ll do apologetics.” No, get into the trenches. If you have to get your degree while you’re in the trenches, do it. But don’t be intimidated by all of these people who have big letters in front of or behind their names. Remember, God just grabbed a handful of fishermen and turned the world upside down. I think he’s still operating the same way today.

Indeed. I think the rest of us can learn from Jorge’s example. The Christian life is never about what we have or don’t have. It’s about the God we know and what we do with what we have. By those lights, Jorge “graduated” a long time ago.

Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual (Part I)

Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Mike Taylor

If we’re honest, we would all admit that we have doubts about God to some degree or another. I mean, on some level, it almost feels like human nature to resist fully trusting anything. We doubt ourselves, we doubt other people, and more than anything, we doubt God.

Doubt is normal. No matter who you are, you’re going to have doubts. Even biblical heroes such as Job, Abraham, David, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Thomas, and Paul had doubts about God. But for some reason, too many of us think that doubts should be avoided.

I think we get the idea that doubt is bad from a misapplication of Scripture. In Matthew 21:21, Jesus said we should pray without doubt, and incredible things will happen. So doubt must be bad, right? But the point Jesus is making is that faith is all or nothing. We either trust God, or we don’t; there is no in-between.

We can’t half-trust someone. I can trust a complete stranger to make my food at a restaurant, but I won’t leave my children with them. I doubt them in important things, but I can trust them with small things. That’s what Jesus was saying – that we must have faith like that of a mustard seed. He said, “it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree…” (Matthew 13:32)

It’s only by exploring and pressing into doubts that you can take the necessary small steps of faith. After all, if you only explored the things that made you feel comfortable, you would never need to trust God.

So doubts aren’t bad, and they aren’t a sin. They can actually be beneficial if we address them properly. But how do we know how to deal with doubts when they come? Because if you don’t know what to do with doubts, you’ll end up going back and forth between the latest trends and ideas.

In order to healthily and effectively deal with doubts, we must start by knowing where our doubts are coming from. Otherwise, we’ll try addressing them the wrong way without ever knowing the source.

3 Types of Doubt

In his book The Thomas Factor, Dr. Gary Habermas says there are three types of doubt: factual doubt, emotional doubt, and volitional doubt.

These categories are largely self-explanatory: Factual doubt is doubt caused by a lack of information or evidence, emotional doubt is doubt rooted in some sort of emotional pain and resulting distrust, and volitional doubt is basically an unwillingness to believe or to apply known truths. The first is a matter of the mind, the second is a matter of the heart, and the third is a matter of the will.

According to Dr. Habermas, most people doubt for emotional reasons, and only about 15% of doubts are factual. Because of this, doubts are almost never remedied by information alone. Sure, dealing with factual doubts is important, but there’s more than enough evidence to get you past those doubts. In other words, good answers are necessary, but not sufficient. They simply serve as the foundation for faith.

According to Habermas, emotional doubt is the most painful, but it’s the least serious. In fact, emotional doubt is the only doubt that comes with pain. Factual doubt and volitional doubt don’t hurt, but emotional doubt does. Emotional doubters know the facts; they just have a hard time believing them due to an emotional view of the facts. They might think it’s too good to be true, or they might obsess over all the “what if’s” that they ultimately can’t answer anyway.

When you have the facts of a situation, but you still struggle with doubt, there’s probably an emotional, anxious, or obsessive cause to those doubts.

Emotional doubters usually ask similar questions to factual doubters, but they ask for different reasons.

For example, they might both ask for evidence of the resurrection, but one is genuinely looking for facts they don’t have, and the other is asking because they’re really wondering if it could be possible to be wrong.

Habermas says that one common characteristic of emotional doubt is when a question starts with “What if…”. The person asking a question like that probably knows the evidence, but they often wonder things like, “What if we’re wrong?”

But you could turn that around and say, “Do you have any reason to think we’re wrong?” People with emotional doubt tend to have general “what if” questions without evidence behind it. Their doubt is painful.

They might say things like, “It would be horrible to be wrong.” They might have fears about Jesus saying He never knew them or that they might still go to hell even though they’re saved. They might also obsess over questions like, “How do I know if I love God?” and other questions that can’t be backed by evidence.

Dr. Habermas says emotional doubters might include people who keep getting saved because they doubt their salvation. They just “know” they’re not saved even though they believe the gospel. It’s an emotional response to the data.

Another example of emotional doubt might be someone who has no problem believing that God exists, but emotionally they can’t come to grips with why God would allow evil to come into their lives. They’ve seen the facts, and the facts make sense, but they let their emotions dictate what they’re willing to believe.

The emotional doubter might say, “But what about hell? What is it, and who goes there? And how can it exist with a loving God?” These are questions that go beyond available human knowledge and therefore require faith.

This type of person has moved past the intellectual stage of doubting and into emotional doubting. They see the world the way it is, they’ve heard the explanation of why it is that way, yet they don’t want to believe it because of their emotions and past pain.

Let’s look at a couple of ways to overcome this type of doubt on the next part of this mini-series of Why Most Doubts About God Are Emotional, Not Intellectual.

[This article was an adaptation from my book Grounded Faith for Practical People. You can download it for free at MikePTaylor.net]

Does logic apply to God? And other questions

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February 22, 2020/by Guest

Tag Archive for: apologetics

A Summary of the Basic Argument

Probabilistic Modelling

The Data

Conclusion

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Introduction

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

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Getting Aligned With The World

The Ground You Cannot See

Hijacking Objective Reality

Truth Is The Essence Of God

Goodness Is The Character Of God

Beauty Is The Reflection Of God

The Divine Mind

The Impersonal Comes To Life

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How to Deal with Emotional Doubt

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(1) Everything That Begins To Exist Has A Cause.

(2) The Universe Began To Exist.

(3) Therefore, The Universe Has A Cause.

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Jorge Gil: Next Gen Apologist to the World

Stopped

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Detention: Part Two

El Director

Hombre de Dios

Out of the Trenches

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3 Types of Doubt

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