BIBLICAL CREATIONISM

I have invited the ministers of the Central Texas Conference of UMC to get their own copy of Biblical Creationism by Dr. Henry Morris. I asked Cokesbury to stock them but when I went by Saturday they have not yet gotten any in stock. They can be ordered on the Internet.

The book goes through every book of the Bible and finds references that support creation and the flood of Noah. He then looks at other historical literature like The Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, Josephus and the Ancient Books for the same references.

In the appendix he sums with these words:
"The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ therefore encompasses the three-fold work of Christ---creation, conservation consummation---past, present. and future. One preaches a gospel with no foundation if he neglects or distorts the creation, a gospel with no power if he omits the cross and the empty tomb, and a gospel with no hope if he ignores or denies the coming kingdom. He preaches the gospel 'according to the scriptures' only if all three are preached in fullness.
In light of these facts, how sadly mistaken are the great numbers of "evangelicals" (a word meaning "those who preach the gospel")who oppose or neglect the doctrine of creation. They tell us not to "waste time on peripheral controversaries such as evoluion-creation question--just to preach the gospel," not realizing that the gospel includes creation and precludes evolution! They say we should simply "emphasize saving faith, not faith in creation," forgetting that the greatest chapter on faith in the Bible (Heb. 11) begins by stressing faith in the ex-nihilo creation of all things by God's Word (v.3) as preliminary to meaningful faith in any of his promises (verse 13). They advise us merely to "preach Christ" but ignore the fact that Christ was the Creator before he became Savior, and that his finished work of salvation is meaningful only in light of his finished work of creation (Heb. 4:3-10). They may wish, in order to avoid the offense of the true gospel, to regard creation as an unimportant matter, but God considered it so important that it was the subject of his  first revelation. the first chapter of Genesis is the foundation of the Bible; if the foundation is undermined, the superstructure will soon collapse."

I truly hope that each minister will take the time to read this book if they don't read anything else.

While I was at Cokesbury I used the gift card my granddaughter gave me to help purchase Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith by Douglas Groothius. I have read a lot of apologetics in the past but not recently and this was published in 2011. Chapter 13 is Origins, Design and Darwinism and gives an excellent argument for believing in creationism as opposed to the false doctrine of evolution.

I am also working on my thesis about God creating the universe from light by reading The New Physics. I have been intrigued by the background information on light, especially the concept that once light is projected that it will slow down with distance. I need to follow up on that because it has a lot of consequence for the images from the Hubble spacecraft and how fast the images from distant stars arrive here. The speed of light in the past has been suggested to be a lot faster than today by some Australian physicists. I have their paper published by the Stanford Research Institute and a follow-up paper they wrote to show how their thesis could harmonize with Biblical ages. Supposedly their theory was discounted by current astronomers, but I don't trust any scientist that believes in evolution.