THE EVOLUTION DELUSION (Part I)

A Sermon On the Fallacy of Evolution



THE UNAVOIDABLE STATISTIC

A Russian scientist visiting an American university once said, “Either there is a God or there isn’t. Both possibilities are frightening!” If there truly is a God we better find out who He is and what He wants of us, otherwise it would be frightening to face an all-powerful God that we’ve ignored or despised. If there is no God, we are in big trouble too because the earth is hurtling through space at the speed of 66,000 mph and rotating in its axis at a speed of about a thousand miles per hour. It’s a frightening thought to travel in space at these enormous speeds and no one’s in charge. Can you imagine flying on a big passenger jumbo jet with pilots who have gone unconscious? And not only that: without a God who can answer the problem of death, our existence becomes like a dot in a never-ending line of eternal nothingness before us and eternal nothingness after us. “Man,” becomes, as existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre described, “a useless passion” because no matter how wealthy you are, no matter how happy and contented and well stroked is your ego and belly, no matter how well you’ve planned and organized your life; no matter how you’ve succeeded in your career and your businesses; no matter how secure you feel about the stocks and retirement funds that you have accumulated, no matter how successful is your family, nature still aims to kill you and everyone whom you love, either quickly or slowly, either now or later, but coldly and without failure. So much lurks outside and inside of us that can suddenly snatch it all away, damage, twist and obliterate everything we’ve cherished. Mark Twain once said that the only sure things in this life are death and taxes. That is not true. There are people who evade taxes, nobody evades death, unless you have a God who decides to take you out of this world alive. We can’t avoid the ultimate statistic: six billion people out of six billion people in this world will eventually die.


DARWIN’S FAULTY THEOLOGY

Mankind had always believed in some kind of deity who had power and control over this earth. It was not until the 1800s, during the era of the so called “Enlightenment” when belief in the metaphysical or spiritual was dislodged by man’s power of reason. In the mid-1800s, interestingly when a religious movement was born pointing to the sanctity of the Sabbath day which points to the Creator, Charles Darwin came out with his theory of Evolution in his book, The Origin of the Species. Charles Darwin was a good man, but his theology was confused. He was bothered by the existence of parasites. So he reasoned that God could not possibly exist because if there was a God, He would not allow parasites to exist. So he started with his alternative theory about man’s origins. Out of respect for his religious wife, he waited for a long time before he published his book. Today almost all our science classrooms are bombarded with evolutionary theory just because of Darwin’s bad theology. This shows us how bad theology can mislead us into great extents, although Darwin himself in 1860 declared, “I did not intend to write atheistically.” But that exactly what his theory produced – atheists. If he only knew the nature of sin, he wouldn’t have wondered why a parasite existed. Because man chose to sin, ugliness and death came into our world, God didn’t cause parasites nor death, we did.


This reminds me of a man who was working in a watermelon farm. When he got exhausted working under the sun, he took refuge and laid down underneath the shade of a big black berry tree. After analyzing the big tree with small black berry fruits, he declared, “O there can’t be a God because if there is, how can He make a very big tree with a very small fruit while a watermelon which is so small by comparison has a very big fruit?” After pondering about his new discovery, the man dozed off to sleep while lying with his face up under the big black berry tree. He was deep in his sleep when a small fruit of the berry tree fell right on his forehead which startled him. When he found out that a small berry fruit fell on his forehead, the man exclaimed, “My God, it’s a good thing that the berry fruit is not as big as the watermelon, otherwise it would have smashed my head.”


MANKIND’S DIVORCE FROM THE TRANSCENDENT

Darwin wouldn’t have imagined the impact of his theory on the lives of millions upon millions of people around the world for several generations. Because of evolution, slowly man’s ties to the transcendent personal loving God became unmoored. The domains of religion became gradually regarded as personal, subjective, speculative and fundamentally distinct from objective knowledge and the physical world. Truth was pulled out of heaven, out of the realm of theology and transcendent metaphysics and lodged instead, on earth, to be found only in natural science, in man and in his power of reason. Materialistic science replaced religion as the preeminent intellectual authority in comprehending truth and understanding the universe. Truth has been demoted from the cosmic transcendent eternal omniscient God and lodged in man alone, in his own notions, rules, perceptions and standards, both individually and corporately. Truth becomes relative, whatever man makes it, whatever works, whatever the majority thinks, whatever is popular, whatever his nature dictates. The very concept of absolute truth is denied. There is no objective standard for right and wrong, up or down, whatever fluctuating notions each individual or group deems for itself, will do.


Because the post-modern man has severed his ties with the transcendent God and rooted truth only in himself, if there is to be hope, it must be found only in himself through human resources, human reason and empirical observation – a prospect that becomes increasingly depressing. We’re in a world that by its very condition and nature needs to be saved and yet mankind, with all his technology, science, reason and all the great “isms” that once held so much promise, is helpless to stop his instability, insecurity and certain doom. That’s why there’s so much lunacy, crime, depression and immorality in our world today. Our post-modern world has thrown away the only One who could save mankind from his sinking planet. Modern secularism has brought us to an abyss that’s as empty, unstable, sinking and faulty as the human ego, thus it drives many people into lunacy and depression. Mankind has replaced God with Prozac to save him from his utter depression.


IS EVOLUTION SCIENCE?

Evolutionists teach that on the issue of origins, the science of Creation or Intelligent Design belongs to religion and not to science, and that only evolution can be the legitimate scientific explanation to the origin of man and the universe. Evolutionists argue that since Creation as an explanation cannot be scientifically proven, that is through empirical observation or experimentation through the human senses, then it belongs not in science but in religion. But does evolution qualify as a science because it can be proven empirically, that is because you can see it with your eyes, smell it, feel it or hear it? The answer is no. The theory that life began spontaneously from a random combination of inanimate chemicals after eons of time is not supported by any empirical evidence, cannot be demonstrated in laboratories, and it’s just pure talk.

In 1953, Stanley Miller of the University of Chicago demonstrated that amino acids which are the basic building blocks of life, were produced through random combination of some chemicals, but it stopped right there. He couldn’t make it come to life, neither would the latter experiments. Even with the assistance of intelligent brains of humans, inanimate chemicals cannot produce life. All attempts to this effect failed miserably. In the mid-1970s Elso Barghoorn of Harvard University discovered the presence of fully developed bacteria embedded in the oldest fossilized rocks ever found, purportedly dating back to 3.8 billion years when water was supposed to have just started to form and life was not supposed to have started yet. This discovery disproved the theory that life began spontaneously three billion years ago. Of course this carbon dating method which allows billions of years is also erroneous because a shell from a live snail which was only a few weeks old was shown to be 27,000 years of age after being subjected to the same carbon dating method that scientists use. This demonstrated the serious inaccuracy of carbon dating which can be way off when it comes to the age of the earth.


THE (ZERO) EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION

The theory that man developed gradually from the simplest to the most complex organism is not supported by any evidence. There is truth in the saying that goes: “When I was in the elementary my teacher taught me that the frog that turned into a princess is a fairy tale, when I was in college, my teacher taught me that it was a fact.” Evolutionists, with the help of the press and the U.S. government, have indeed succeeded in giving the impression that evolution is a scientific fact when in fact it is not. There were purported discoveries of fossils that were alleged to be links from an ape to man such as the Nebraska Man which was rebuilt from a single tooth. Later it was found out that it was a tooth from a pig. The so-called Java Man was nothing but a piece of skull, a fragment of a thigh bone, three molar teeth and an evolutionists imagination expressed through plaster of Paris. The Heidelberg Man was constructed from a jawbone and was later rejected because it was the same as the modern man’s jaw bone. The Neanderthal Man was later determined to be the skull not of a hominid but of a normal human being, his stooped posture was because of disease of the spine and he was later determined to be artistic and religious. The Piltdown Man which was thought to be a 500,000 year-old bone of a hominid, was later determined to be the 600-year-old skull of a woman and the jaw actually belonged to a modern ape. The Peking Man was later reclassified as that of a normal human. Despite all these blatant and glaring mistakes, today’s science textbooks still use these hoaxes as evidences for the theory of evolution.


Dr. T.N. Tahmisian of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission rightly says, “Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con-men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact.” The famous British journalist and philosopher, Malcolm Muggeridge writes, “I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it’s been applied, will be one of the greatest jokes in history books of the future.” Professor Louis Bounoure, Director of Research, National Center of Scientific Research rightly concludes: “Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless.” G.K. Chesterton was so right when he said, “Evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.” No discovery or experimentation from any scientific laboratory has ever demonstrated that we gradually developed from a simple organism or that life spontaneously evolve by accident due to random combination of inanimate chemicals. Teaching or thinking that evolution is science is therefore a delusion. After all these years, and after all these advances in science, nobody has come up with a shred of evidence that supports the theory of evolution.


As Sir Arthur Keith wrote in his foreword to Darwin’s 100th edition of the Origin of the Species: “Evolution is unproved and unprovable.” But explaining why he continues to believe in evolution he continues, “We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.” Napoleon was right when he said, “Man will believe in anything as long as it is not in the Bible.” In other words, an atheist believes in evolution not because it’s supported by evidence, not because he found out that it is the truth, but simply because he does not like the other alternative. His belief then is not based on reason or evidence but on passion or emotional preference. This sounds like religious bigotry more than scientific objectivity. Did I say religious bigotry? If evolution is not science because it’s not supported by empirical scientific evidence, even if it claims to be scientific, then what is it? One cannot just be a scientist just because he is dressed like a scientist.

When you believe and hope for something but you cannot see any evidence to support it, what is that? Faith! Yes faith! Evolution belongs in the realm of religion, and bigoted as that because it does not want to entertain any other alternative beliefs. It’s not that there is no evidence for the alternative belief, it’s just that they don’t like to believe the other alternative. As the self-professed anti-Christ atheist Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “If one were to prove this God of the Christians to us, we should be even less able to believe in him.” This is classic religious bigotry. It is blind loyalty to something regardless of the evidence. And bigotry my friends, like persecution, is always wrong.


In his more mature years Charles Darwin himself lamented: “I was a young man with unformed ideas. I threw out queries, suggestions, wondering all the time over everything; and to my astonishment the ideas took like wildfire. People made a religion out of them!” That’s Darwin speaking, and how true! It’s the only religion that is taught in our public schools under the garb and vocabulary of science. Thanks to our Christian government.


WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO

True Christians should not be blind and bigoted like the evolutionists and atheists, but rather be intelligent about their faith. They should have a faith that is based on reason and not on passion. As Peter admonished us that “we should always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have….with gentleness and respect” (1Pet. 3:15). And Paul also tells us that we should “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God” (2Cor. 10:5,NIV).


THE OUTDATED THEORY OF EVOLUTION

When God inspired Moses and David to write about creation, He showed them that all His creation, animate and inanimate, were created with wisdom (Gen. 1:1, the Hebrew word Be’reasheet translated “In the beginning” also means, “with first wisdom”; Ps. 19:1-2). Did God intend this truth to be relevant in our modern times when we have the ability to see beneath the surface and beyond what we can see with our naked eyes? I believe God intended the same message for our modern times, and modern science is just even starting to “scratch” the surface of what’s beneath and beyond the surface. When Darwin published his theory of evolution in the mid-1800s, molecular biology was unknown and astronomy was still primitive. To give us some idea on what science was like in Darwin’s time consider the following: People believed that bats navigated at night by touch, now we know that they use their sonar-like sensation; the moon was populated by furry, winged humans; decaying meat spontaneously turned into maggots, now we know that they’re flies at an early stage; grain changed into rodents; mud became frogs, menopause was almost unheard of; fever was treated with blood-letting, broken legs were treated with amputation, and people got blood transfusions from cows and dogs. Lung problems were treated with smoking. Cells in our body were thought of as tiny building blocks that store special juices for the body.


MOLECULAR BIOLOGY DEBUNKS EVOLUTION

Today, through modern microscopy we know that a single cell in our body is an extremely complex system in itself with its own small internal organs called organelles and inside chemistry, each, with specific functions for the cell’s maintenance, survival and active interaction with its environment. Right at the center of the cell is the nucleus which contains the genes, the DNA which stores and preserves all the information of your being. Every single cell in your body carries the DNA that contains the blueprint of your entire individuality. In other words in every cell in your body, God stores the information of your entire you. If one is able to isolate any single cell from your body and he puts it inside an egg cell, it will be able to reproduce you. You call this cloning. That’s the power of the DNA to keep humans after their kind and animals after their kind, which makes macro-evolution impossible.


This information in the nucleus of a single cell is equivalent to 1000 encyclopedias with 1000 pages each. Multiply these 1000 encyclopedias by 75 trillion cells that are found in our body. Can you imagine the amount of wisdom that God created us with? The human body is busier than any place in the world you can think of. Just think of your brain alone. While you’re sitting down there on the pews listening to me or sleeping, your brain carries out millions upon millions of tasks every moment of everyday without even you thinking about it. Can you imagine anyone dying because while he’s listening to the sermon he forgot to breathe, or his brain forgot to regulate the heart or to control the body’s sugar level? Our brain is a continent of intricate and convoluted yet precisely organized network that performs millions of functions every millisecond at the same time receiving, processing and sending microscopic electrochemical hurricanes and chemical tidal waves that travel at speeds of up to 200 mph within our body.


In a sense, the brain is omniscient within its sphere of influence, which is our body because it knows what’s going on everywhere and anywhere within our body and responds to all our body needs accordingly at the same time from millisecond to millisecond. Darwin never had a clue about this kind of wisdom in our body. He never knew what DNA was all about which preserves the integrity of each species. If he did he would never have written his book. He wouldn’t have thought that bears would eventually shed their legs and become whales after swimming and adapting itself in the water for some time. In order for evolutionists to support Darwin’s theory they have to ignore modern molecular biology and appeal to the science of the 1800’s. And believe it or not, such atavistic methods are still being used by evolutionists in science textbooks today.


Richard Milton, author of Shattering the Myths of Darwinism states that the chances of forming protein and self-replicating DNA randomly are as likely as “winning the state lottery by finding the winning ticket in the street, and then continuing to win the lottery every week for a thousand years by finding the winning ticket in the street each time.” In simple terms, because of the intricately precise wisdom stored in the DNA in every living thing, the chances that life evolved by chance and from common ancestry or common descent are zero.


THE IRREDUCIBLE COMPLEXITY PHENOMENON

Michael Behe’s challenge to evolution, the so called “Irreducible Complexity” or “Whole Package Phenomenon,” or “all or none phenomenon” in all living things shatters the possibility of evolution. The phenomenon of “Irreducible Complexity” or “Whole Package Phenomenon” is the nail to the coffin of evolution, because it shows that life is so complex and interdependent in functions that it is impossible for gradual evolution from a simpler to a complex system to happen. Darwin himself said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would ultimately break down.” Well, “Irreducible Complexity” demonstrates that. To illustrate: Suppose you walk in the forest and you saw a dead branch leaning against the trunk of a tree, you may say it’s just there by random, by accident. But suppose, you saw three branches with the same length leaning against each other forming a perfect tripod, what are the chances that it’s an accident? What are the chances that there was one branch that fell first and then assumed that perfectly leaning position without falling down to the ground, then after a thousand or perhaps a million years another branch fell down of the same length, on the same exact spot and leaned against that other branch, this time both branches leaned against each other without falling to either side until in another million years another branch fell down that has the same length at the exact location where they can now assume a perfect tripod position. You’ll say, don’t be absurd, there’s no way it’s an accident, somebody has put that tripod together! It’s either three of them at the same time or a tripod cannot exist without any of the three components.


My friends, all living things have myriads of systems in themselves that are more complex than a tripod that have to exist at the same time otherwise if one component is separated or non-existent, life cannot exist. From a cell, to an organ, to a system, the phenomenon of irreducible complexity governs all life forms. One example is our energy source called ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate), it’s the thing that keeps all living things going from a dandelion to a roaring lion. Like the Energizer alkaline battery ATP powers all living things to keep them going and going in order to survive. ATP is manufactured by the organelles called mitochondria (mitochondrion – singular) which are found in each of the cell in our body. The mitochondria are the power house of our cells because they manufacture ATP, and do you know what the mitochondria need in order to manufacture ATP? They need ATP! So which came first, the ATP or the mitochondria? Both came first, one cannot exist or continue to operate while waiting for the other component to gradually develop into existence, both have to be there at the same time in order for the system to exist that sustains all life forms. And that’s the most basic source of energy that makes all living things live. From the minutest unit of living things, such as the mitochondria in a cell, randomness and gradual development don’t work. Indeed only with the precise unfathomable wisdom of God can all things and mankind come to exist and continue to exist. Under inspiration, David says it right when he declares: “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well” (Ps. 139:14).

THE MARK OF CAIN: An In-Depth Biblical Study on Genesis 4:1-15

The "Elohim" (God) Tattoo

THE MARK OF CAIN

An Exegetical Expository Sermon On the Life Of Cain

By Dr. Diego Sausa

INTRODUCTION
My family and I have traveled a little bit around the world, and one of the most beautiful places that I’ve ever seen which made an indelible impact on my mind was the Norwegian fjords. As we sailed through the fjords, we could see hundreds of waterfalls cascading down from the mountain top into the very still and very clear waters of the fjords. The majestic beauty was out of this world. When I looked at the surreal scenery, I couldn’t help but think of the perfect world back then when it first came fresh from the hands of the Creator. And it made me realize that the Norwegian fjords were indeed beautiful but they would pale by comparison to our world back then in the beginning before the Fall.

Yes, we lost paradise because our first parents chose to disobey God, and since then, happiness became an elusive commodity. Satan has opened for mankind many highways and avenues that promise happiness, but in reality they all lead to despair and destruction. Death, corruption, sorrow, ugliness, pain,evil, and injustice became the normal givens since the Fall.


PROTOEVANGELIUM: THE FIRST GOSPEL
After the Fall, God preached to our first parents the good news that at some point in time, God Himself would assume mankind’s guilt and die their eternal death punishment that He might give them eternal life and happiness again like it was in the beginning. Theologians call it the protoevangeliumor the “first gospel.” It is God’s promise of another chance at eternal life and paradise by defeating evil through the Seed of the woman. The promise is found in Genesis 3:15,God says, “And I will put enmity between you [the serpent/Satan] and the woman [Eve], and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (NKJV). This Seed is clearly a singular Person here because of the pronouns “He” and “His” that are used to refer to the Seed.

FALSE ASSURANCES
This is the first promise and the first gospel in the Bible. In fact this was the only eternal life insurance and the only hope of Adam and Eve and of the entire human race. Often we see on TV, commercials that offer us security for our future: buy gold, buy silver, invest in the stock market, or invest in real estate. I am not against investments, in fact the implied message of the Parable of the Talent is we need to invest and expand on our spiritual, physical and material talents. But let us not forget that these things are false assurances of hope and security in life. At any given moment, your life could be snuffed away from you no matter who you think you are, and your gold, your achievements, your dreams, your investments, your nice property cannot do anything about it. You’ll leave them all behind as you go down alone in the grave. Even Steve Jobs’ iPads and iPhones that grossed him billions of dollars could do nothing about the fact that he is now a cold heap of inanimate dust in the grave. Death zeroes out anything and everything that we have achieved and accumulated in life, and unless we have the hope of the promised Seed who conquers death, we have nothing. So every time we hear these false assurances that have bedazzled and mesmerized the lifetimes of billions of people including countless of Christians, let us cut the chase, and see the true reality: the only real hope and security for our lives and for our future is Jesus, everything else the world can offer points south to the grave.


ADAM AND EVE’S UNDERSTANDING OF THE PROMISED SEED
Adam and Eve understood very well that the Promised Seed or Offspring who would save mankind from eternal death and who would restore mankind back to eternal life would be human but would also be divine. This was very evident when the first child of Adam and Eve was born. When Cain was born, Eve exclaimed,“I have acquired a man from the Lord”(Gen. 4:1, NKJV). Eve thought that that Seed promised by God that would bring about the salvation of the human race would come immediately through her first child. When Cain was born, Eve named him Cain [Qain] from the Hebrew verb qanah meaning “to get” or “to acquire.” Eve named her first son Cain because she thought Cain was the promised Seed that she had just gotten from the Lord, thus Eve exclaims, “I have gotten [qanah] a man even the Lord (eth-YHVH)” (My literal translation). Most translations render it, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord” but the words “with the help” are added by the translators. The original Hebrew text simply says, qanithi ‘ish ‘eth-YHVH which means that Eve simply declared, “I have gotten a man EVEN THE LORD [‘eth-YHVH]” (Gen. 4:1b).

Eve’s expectation of the divine-human Savior-Seed was correct, the Seed was indeed a God-Man, but her timing was way off too early. It would take a few thousand years more before the promised Seed of the woman would actually come to vanquish the enemy(Satan) and his seed (followers) through the woman’s descendant named Mary. And when this Seed finally came, Paul declared in Galatians (3:16), “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his Seed. The Scripture does not say ‘and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your Seed,’meaning one Person, who is Christ.” The patriarchs then knew that the Seed was human and divine. And they were all looking forward to His coming. But in our time, the promised Seed who brings true happiness and hope, who has conquered death and who brings the human race back to eternal life and paradise has already come! When you have Jesus, you already have everything that you need! Do not trade Jesus for anything else in this world.

THE FIRST RECORDED SABBATH WORSHIP
The realization that Cain was not the promised Seed would soon dawn on Adam and Eve. Another son would soon be born to our first parents and they would call him Abel. Cain and Abel had very different interests. Cain liked to grow crops while Abel liked to raise cattle. Adam and Eve certainly taught both their boys to have faith in the promised divine-human Seed who would save mankind and restore paradise and eternal life back to the human family. Moses records in Genesis 4:3-5, “And in the process of time it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell” (NKJV). Moses' introductory phrase in Genesis 4:3 in Hebrew interpreted by most translators as“In the process of time,” or “In the course of time,” is interesting because the translators do not know exactly how to make sense of Moses’ original Hebrew words if taken literally. Moses narrates, “Vayehiy miqqets yamim,” that is, literally, “And at the end [qets] of days” or “And at the climax [qets] of days,” Cain and Abel brought their offerings to the Lord.

At this point in time, the only cycle of time determined by days and not by the movement of any heavenly body was the weekly cycle which was climaxed by the Sabbath day. In other words, what Moses was saying was, “At the climax of the cycle of days, or “At the end of the week,” that is, “On the Sabbath day,” Cain and Abel brought their offerings to the Lord. Not a few scholars have recognized this fact that Moses’ words “and at the end of days,” referred to the Sabbath day (e.g., Jo Ann Davidson, “The Decalogue Before Mt. Sinai,” Perspective Digest,vol. 15:1, p.10). In other words, Genesis 4:3 is the first account of Sabbath worship outside of Eden. Moses tells us that in the beginning, the first brothers of the human race worshiped God on the Sabbath day through their offerings, but one’s worship was accepted by God while the other one’s worship was rejected.

REASON FOR REJECTION OF CAIN’S WORSHIP
Genesis 4:3-6 says, “And on the climactic day of the week, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord. Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat. And the Lord looked favorably [sha’ah] on Abel and his offering, but He did not look favorably [sha’ah] on Cain and his offering. And Cain excessively [me’od] burned with anger [charah], and his face dropped down [napal]. So the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you burning with anger [charah]? And why has your face dropped down [napal]? If you gladly do right [yatab], will you not be accepted? And if you do not gladly do right [yatab], sin is crouching [rabas] at the door and it wants to consume you, but you should rule over it” (My translation).

It’s been commonly advanced that Cain’s offering was not accepted because he did not offer the right offering, namely, the animal sacrifice, but instead he offered grain or food offering before the Lord, whereas Abel did the right thing by offering an animal sacrifice. This idea however, is not correct because in the Old Testament times, God allowed both the firstfruits of the ground and the firstborn of the cattle as offerings (see Neh. 10:35-36; Ex.23:19), and even the fruits of all kinds of trees that were not “firstfruits” were also allowed as offerings (Neh. 10:37). These grain offerings or food offerings were offered during Sabbath days and during other special festivals in Old Testament times which accomplished atonement for God’s people (see Neh. 10:33; Ezek. 45:17; also Numbers chapters 28 and 29). Cain and Abel, therefore, offered the right offerings on the right day of worship, but why is it that God looked favorably on Abel and his offering while He did not look favorably on Cain and Cain’s offering when they both offered the right offerings on the right day of worship?

The answer lies on what YHVH told Cain, “Why are you burning with anger [charah]? And why has your face dropped down [napal]? If you gladly do right [yatab], will you not be accepted?” (Gen. 4:6-7, margin). The Hebrew verb yatab for “to do right” also means “to pleasantly do what is right”or “to gladly do what is right.” In other words, Abel offered his offering with the right and genuine worshipful loving and joyful attitude while Cain offered his offering with the wrong attitude. It was the attitude in the heart as they worshiped God that made the big difference. Abel was joyfully worshiping in the spirit of faith in the grace of God,while Cain was worshiping in form but without the spirit of faith. Cain believed that he deserved to earn salvation because he was doing the right rituals of worship, while Abel believed that he was saved because of God’s grace through the Seed and not because of anything that he did. In other words, Cain’s worship was based on salvation by his own works while Abel’s worship was based on salvation by faith in God’s grace. No wonder the author of Hebrews, who most likely is Paul says, “By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts” (Heb. 11:4,ESV).

You know, many people say, “It doesn’t matter how or when we worship God, as long as we worship Him, it’s alright.” Wrong. God is very particular about the rightness of our worship. We may be worshiping God on the right day, and may be doing the the right rituals of worship, but I submit that we should ask ourselves this question: Does God look favorably upon my worship of Him like He looked favorably at the worship of Abel, or does He look at my worship unfavorably the way He looked at Cain’s worship?


THE INSIDE OF THE HEART MATTERS MORE THAN THE EXTERNAL RITUALS
Man looks at the outside appearance, but God sees both the outside and the inside of the heart. When the people of Judah were in the depths of evil, injustice,disregard and oppression of the poor and the needy, God through Isaiah declared,“The multitude of your sacrifices – what are they to me?...I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats….Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your…Sabbaths and convocations– I cannot bear your evil assemblies….When you spread your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood;wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the case of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow” (Isa. 1:11-17, ESV,margin).

My friends, we have just read the formula for acceptable worship. In other words, what God is saying through Isaiah is, our Sabbath worship and our offerings are useless unless our hearts truly love God and our fellowmen. In other words, a pleasant, loving and charitable heart, is better than the external rituals of church worship and offerings.

A poem by R. Tagore of India sums up the right attitude in worship, he says,

Go not to the temple to put flowers upon the feet of God,
First fill your own house with the fragrance of love.
Go not to the temple to light lamps before the altar of God,
First remove the darkness of sin from your heart.
Go not to the temple to bow down your head in prayer,
First learn to bow humbly before your fellowmen.
Go not to the temple to pray on bended knees,
First bend down to lift someone who is down.
Go not to the temple to ask for forgiveness for your sins,
First forgive from your heart those who have sinned against you.

This was the main difference between Cain’s and Abel’s worship. Abel worshiped God with the right loving,joyful and faithful heart, Cain worshiped God with a selfish heart.

ANGER LEADS TO MURDER
When Cain saw that his offering was not accepted while his brother Abel’s offering was accepted by God, Cain became extremely angry. Moses uses two Hebrew superlative words to emphasize the extreme intensity of Cain’s anger. Moses narrates in Genesis 4:5, “And Cain excessively [me’od] burned with anger [charah], and his face dropped down [napal].” The adverbial Hebrew word me’od for “excessively,” means “to a great degree,” “utterly,” or “excessively” and the Hebrew verb charah means “to excessively burn with anger.” The picture of Cain’s anger was so graphic that Moses describes that Cain’s face dropped down. Have you ever seen a dog that’s growling in vicious intense anger and his facial expression turns very ugly because another dog tried to take away his food? It’s very easy to tell when a person is very angry because the face turns like burning red and ugly and he growls like a dog. When that happens, stay away, don’t add heat to the already intensely burning heat, because he or she might bite you. Christ says (in Matt. 5:21) that murder does not just consist of the actual killing of another person but being angry with another person is liable of murder. When Christ said this, He was echoing what God said to Cain about his anger. God told Cain, “when you are angry sin crouches at the door and is ready to consume you therefore rule over your anger.” The sin of anger is being personified here like a crouching predator that is on the verge of devouring its prey. God says that if we don’t overrule our anger, it will devour us. Unfortunately, Cain did not listen to God, he did not rule over his anger but instead indulged in it and surely his anger consumed him that he ended up killing his own brother in cold blood.

By all means, rule over that anger. Take a shower, take a break, run into the woods and scream at the top of your voice to get rid of that anger, go fishing, by God’s grace, rule over that anger and hate because if we don’t we would end up like Cain doing heinous acts that we could not reverse. Anger or hatred for another does not only lead to the possibility of harming another person, it kills our own spiritual life. That’s why God said do not be angry with your fellowmen, because anger or hatred eats you up inside.

THE INVESTIGATION AND THE JUDGMENT OF CAIN
And so Cain ended up killing his own brother and God asked Cain where his brother was. God was asking not because He did not already know, but because it was to let Cain know that God fully investigates his case first and weighs the evidence, before God passes His judgment. God asks Cain, “‘Where is Abel your brother?’ He said, ‘I do not know. Am I my brother’s keeper?’” And then God presents the evidence of the case, “‘What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground’” (Gen. 4:9-10). After making a full trial and investigation and after establishing the evidence of Cain’s guilt, God pronounces the verdict on Cain. In Genesis 4:11 God says, “So now you are cursed from the earth, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you. A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be on earth” (NKJV). So Cain’s judgment was, he could no longer do what he loved to do in his life: grow crops, plant flowers, plant veggies and fruit trees. The earth that received the blood of his brother would no longer enable him to grow anything. He would not be able to stay put in one place because things around him would not bear any fruit. Cain becomes the first gypsy on earth. He would wander from place to place without a permanent home.

CAIN’S PUNISHMENT AND GOD’S GRACE
When God pronounced Cain’s punishment that he would not be able to grow anything and that he would become a fugitive and a vagabond, Cain did not argue. He accepted the punishment because he knew he was guilty as charged and that he deserved the punishment, but he pleaded, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Surely You have driven me out this day from the face of the ground; I shall be hidden from Your face; I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth, and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me” (Gen. 4:14). In the heart of Cain was like a child crying before his heavenly Father. He was saying, “Yes I’m guilty and deserve the punishment, but it’s too much for me to bear.” Throughout the years of Cain’s life before this crime, he always had the assurance of God’s presence in their midst and the privilege of talking to Him face to face. But after committing this heinous crime Cain felt that God would permanently separate from him which would expose him to the threat of death by murder – the very crime that he committed against his own brother.

THE MARK OF CAIN
Then God answers Cain with an answer that is profoundly immersed in divine love, forgiveness and grace. He tells Cain, “‘Therefore,whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven fold.’ And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him” (Gen. 4:15). What manner of love is this that God protects and defends the condemned sinner! This is exactly opposite to what the world does. The world judges you and condemns you even if you are not guilty of the accusation, but here was Cain, guilty as charged, but God protects him and defends him as a father protects his child no matter what! What God is telling the world is this: “My child Cain is guilty and I’m punishing him alright and letting him suffer the consequences of his sin, but don’t ever make the mistake of touching him because I will severely punish anyone who touches him because he is still My beloved son.” Have you ever punished your child for misbehaving and you as a parent suffers the punishment more than your child does? This is exactly the picture that Moses paints in this passage. In a sense, we are all like Cain, guilty as charged, but God bears our punishment more than we do, and He has put a mark on our forehead, the mark of the Cross,so that the adversary would not make the mistake of touching us because we are still the apple of God’s eye, we are still His children despite our failures.

CONCLUSION
We don’t know exactly if Cain is saved or not, I would like to think that I will see him in Eden restored. But the visible divine tattoo that God put on him most likely on his arm or forehead, protected him and made him live through his normal lifespan. The mark also assured him that God his Father would never leave him alone despite himself. Cain seems to have been profoundly grateful to God for His grace long after he received God's mark of protection. Cain named his first son Enoch and he also established the first city in the world and likewise named it Enoch (Gen. 4:17).  The Hebrew word hanok for Enoch comes from the root hen meaning grace.  In other words, Cain's acknowledgment of God's grace was profound.

God’s assurance for Cain is the same assurance that we have. Like Cain, we are all guilty as charged, but thanks be to God because despite the fact that we are all guilty as charged, His grace, His love, His protection and His presence do not leave us. He is able to save us and protect us to the uttermost because like what He did to Cain, God our heavenly Father is able to forgive us even from our most grievous sins and put the mark of the cross on our foreheads, the mark of Jesus, the One who bore all our guilt, the One who enables us to get back to that place in the beginning where death and pain were unknown; the One who can give us eternal life.  If you wish to receive God's mark - the mark of the cross that gives us the assurance of eternal life and salvation from eternal death, please pray with me.

ASAPH'S PROBLEM: WHY BAD PEOPLE PROSPER WHILE GOOD PEOPLE SUFFER

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THE THEOLOGY OF SUFFERING

(An Expository Sermon on Psalm 73)

By Dr. Diego Sausa

INTRODUCTION
I would like to bring your attention to Psalm 73.  It is a short chapter.  Actually, it is a song.  You know a psalm is a song composed by an inspired writer during the Old Testament times.  The psalms were the “church hymnal” used by the Hebrew people during their worship service around the sanctuary.  Psalm 73 is a short song but its message is profound and it has appealed to all of God’s people in all generations for 3000 years now.  Psalm 73 was composed by Asaph.  He makes his introduction to the song by saying in verse 1, “Truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.”  But then he opens up the bitterness that has been bugging his mind all his life, he says in verses 2-17, 

“But for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.  For they have no pangs until death; their bodies are fat and sleek.  They are not in trouble as others are;  they are not stricken like the rest of mankind.  Therefore pride is their necklace; violence covers them as a garment.  Their eyes swell out through fatness; their hearts overflow with follies.  They scoff and speak with malice; loftily they threaten oppression.  They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.  Therefore their people turn back to them, and find no fault in them.  And they say, ‘How can God know?  Is there knowledge in the Most High?’  Behold these are the wicked;  always at ease, they increase in riches.  All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.  If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ I would have betrayed the generation of your children.  But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end” (ESV).


Asaph’s gripe about the wicked getting rich, healthy, famous and prosperous, while the righteous suffers, is the same as today’s Christian’s problem with the secular people who get rich, famous, healthy and prideful about their wickedness while he who keeps his heart clean and keeps his faith in the Lord is stricken with poverty and all kinds of adversity.  After seeing this “unfairness” and “injustice” Asaph says, “My feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped” (v. 2).

In order for us to understand Asaph’s dilemma, it would be important for us to know him.  Who was Asaph?  Is there anyone here this morning who knows him?  I think it is fair to say that Asaph is one of the least known characters of the Bible.  But the truth is, Asaph was a major Bible writer.  He wrote more Scripture than Peter, James, Jude, Jonah, Amos, Micah, Joel, Malachi, Zephaniah, Habakkuk, Nahum, Haggai, or Obadiah.  He wrote twelve psalms, Psalm 50, and Psalms 73 to Psalm 83.  But these 12 psalms are not the only songs that Asaph composed.  There were other inspired songs that he composed that got lost.  Asaph got to live about a hundred years from 1020 BC to 920 BC during the time of David, Solomon and Solomon’s son Rehoboam.  He was picked by King David to be the chief musician in the sanctuary services in Jerusalem when he was only around 20 years old because he was so talented in music.  In other words, he was the choir director in the sanctuary during David’s reign.  But not only during David’s reign.  He lived long enough to continue his function as the music director during the reign of David’s son, King Solomon, and during the tumultuous reign of King Solomon’s son King Rehoboam when the kingdom of Israel was split into two:  the northern and the southern kingdoms.

ASAPH’S FAMILY AND EXPERIENCE
Scripture records that Asaph was the son of the Levite Berekiah (1Chr. 6:39) who was appointed by King David to be in-charge of the Ark of the Covenant.  Asaph’s descendants would hundreds of years later continue to become the inspired lead musicians of the sanctuary even after the Babylonian exile when the sanctuary would be rebuilt during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (Neh. 7:44; Ezr. 2:41).  Asaph’s brother, Zechariah was also a priest in the sanctuary and also a prophet.  Zechariah would condemn Solomon for his wickedness but he would pay dearly with his life for daring to expose King Solomon’s wickedness.  He was assassinated by King Solomon’s henchmen while doing service in the sanctuary.  This wickedness was so bad that even Christ had to condemn this murderous act one thousand years later, which was recorded twice in the Gospels:  Matthew 23:33-35 and Luke 11:50-51.  Christ says, “You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?  Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (Matt. 23:33-35).  This was Asaph’s dear brother.  Murdered by King Solomon because Asaph’s brother did the right thing.  And yet, Asaph would live to see King Solomon accumulate so much wealth, so much power, so much prestige and so many women despite his wickedness.  He was also there when God promised to David earlier that one of David’s sons would be the Messiah who would establish the kingdom of Israel forever.  When Solomon was born, Asaph was there to witness David call his newborn “Solomon” meaning the Prince of Peace (Hebrew:  Shelomoh from shalom meaning “peace”), the Messiah.   But Solomon turned out to be the false Messiah, a farce.  Asaph’s hopes were dashed.  He would live long enough to see Israel divided into two and would see Egypt invade and crush Judah, burn the temple, kill the priests who were his family and friends and defiantly defame God and mock Israel, and yet Egypt would continue to be a powerful and rich nation.  Can you see now what Asaph was going through throughout the years of his existence from the time of David, to the time of Solomon to the time of King Rehoboam?  There was so much injustice and unfairness.  The wicked seemed to have prospered and triumphed while the righteous was stricken with poverty and suffering everyday.

Does his life resonate with ours?  Here we are, we try to live right, we keep God’s holy day, we return our tithes, we do the right thing, we don’t eat unhealthy food according to Leviticus 11 and yet we end up poor, sickly and miserable while the wicked who behave, drink and eat unrestrained end up rich, healthy and famous.  What a disparity and injustice!  Does Asaph’s experience ring a bell?  I remember when my father died suddenly at a young age of 65.  He ate right, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t drink, he went to church regularly, he read the Bible everyday, yet he died suddenly at a young age.  And here were some people I knew.  They never went to church, they ate whatever they wanted, they smoked they drunk, and they lived proud about their wickedness and yet they lived up to their 80s and 90s rich and happy.  Do you understand what Asaph was talking about?

UNDERSTANDING HOW ASAPH FEELS
This also reminds me of Naomi.  She lived a righteous life in the land of Moab but she ends up losing all her loved ones, her husband and two sons and she ends up with nothing, miserably poor and widowed!  What in the world is going on with the righteous?  Naomi declares, “Don’t call me Naomi [meaning happy]; call me Mara [meaning bitter], for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me.  I went away full, and the Lord has brought me back empty” (Ruth 1:20,21).  Why does the righteous suffer while the wicked end up prosperous, healthy and proud about their wickedness?  We see all those paparazzi people, everything seems to be doing well and going right for them all the time while we who do the right thing end up suffering.  Look at the senior citizen Hugh Hefner, founder of the Playboy Magazine.  At 85 years old, he’s proud to be a playboy in his old age, flaunting all his beautiful young girls around him, and yet he gets to live a long time with all that money and young beautiful women around him, and proud of his wicked lifestyle publishing it on TV and magazines.  But here we are, trying to live right and obey the Lord, yet we are in so much problem and difficulty.  It doesn’t make sense does it?

Do we understand how Asaph feels?  In Psalm 73:12-14 Asaph says, “Behold, these are the wicked; always at ease, they increase in riches.  All in vain have I kept my heart clean and washed my hands in innocence.  For all the day long I have been stricken and rebuked every morning.”  In the heart of Asaph he was questioning God and he was saying, “Better off are the unrighteous, they live easy lives, they do what they want to do with no restraints, they are proud about their wickedness and godlessness and yet they end up rich, healthy and happy.  But here I am, I’ve always tried to live right and keep my faith, but I end up living miserably everyday!”  Can we hear his cry of anguish?  Can we equate our lives with his?  Can we hear ourselves saying the same, “What’s going on God?  I’ve tried my best to live right and yet I’m miserable everyday while those who despise you are rich and happy all their lives.”

WHY ASAPH ALMOST STUMBLED
Why does the wicked prosper while the righteous suffers?  That’s a hard question which Asaph himself admits.  He says in verse 16, “But when I thought how to understand this, it seemed to me a wearisome task.”  When our vision of life becomes focused on the horizontal plane, that is, on the things of this world it would be hard to understand why the righteous suffers while the wicked prospers.  There is danger in comparing and keeping up ourselves with the “Joneses” because there will always be greater people than we are.  When Asaph did this, when he focused his vision horizontally, that is, on worldly things, he saw injustice, unfairness and suffering that the righteous go through while the wicked thrived and prospered, and he admits, “My feet had almost stumbled, my steps had nearly slipped.  For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked” (vv. 2,3).  It is hard to understand and put things in proper perspective when our values and priorities become like that of the wicked.  It will certainly cause us to slip and stumble in our spiritual journey.  Asaph says he almost fell, he was on the brink of losing his faith because he looked at life the way the wicked looked at it.  But this world is no longer a righteous-friendly home.  Christ says to His followers, "In the world, you will have tribulation" (Jn. 16:33).  If you don't go through any conflict or adversity, there is something very wrong with your Christianity.

Human culture has been attuned to investing in and focusing all energy and motivations on what is now and what is tangible.  It cannot grasp nor live for the real yet abstract promise of the saints' transcendent inheritance made of concrete real mansions of gold and eternal blissful pain-free, death-free existence with God.  Back in our subconscious we think that God's promise of eternal life and golden mansions is just an abstract mirage.  Like Esau many demand for what is tangible right now!  We want to enjoy that bowl of sweet-smelling soup right now that’s dangled right in front of our noses to the extent that we are willing to trade our eternal inheritance for that bowl of soup.   It's like an heir who will inherit millions in the future but he is trading his inheritance for a dollar because he needs the dollar now.  When we lose our vertical anchor, our grasp of the transcendent divine realities, we become like ships without a sail, anything goes including our faith.  We exchange our limitless eternal heritage for what this life has to offer us now.   Asaph almost lost it all too.

THE ANTIDOTE TO FALLING
And what stopped Asaph from almost falling?  What saved him?  Listen to what he says because this is very significant.  He said, “I almost stumbled…my steps had nearly slipped….When I thought how to understand…it seemed to me a wearisome task.”  But what stopped him from falling?  Ah, verse 17 makes all the difference.  He says, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.”  Do we see now the importance of going into God’s house?  The importance of meeting God in His house, of meeting with Him in church?  There is power in meeting God at His house!  It totally changes our perspective in life from the ugliness and fleetingness of the horizontal scenes in this world to the vertical and eternal realities.  When we come into God’s house and meet with our Heavenly Father, we come to grips with eternal realities and it puts our vision in proper perspective.  It changes our focus from the fleeting things that dazzle to the eternal things that shine forever.  It opens our eyes to the bigger picture, to the real three-dimensional picture of reality.  It lets us realize who we really are and what we are to be and what the wicked really are to be.  Asaph says, “I discerned their end.”  That is, when he met God in His house, he began to understand the final end of the wicked and the final reward of the righteous.

When we see life from a vertical or divine perspective, we certainly see the end of the wicked and the reward of the righteous and there is no comparison between the righteous and the wicked because the wicked ends up burning in hell after living a short 65-90 years while the righteous ends up living endlessly worry-free, pain-free, death-free and blissfully in mansions and streets of gold (John 14:1-3; Rev. 21:4, 18-21).  This is what saved Asaph!  Going into God’s house to meet His Lord.  Do not underestimate the power of meeting your Lord in His house!  It changes your perspective from the transient worldly things to the eternal heavenly realities.  It saved Asaph from stumbling and losing his faith, it could save you from stumbling and losing your own faith!  When you come to God’s house, don’t look horizontally at your fellow sinners nor at the things of this world.  Instead, look to Jesus the author and the finisher of your eternal inheritance!

Ah, Asaph began to realize that the rich, sturdy and healthy wicked people are like the pigs in a pigpen, they are pampered and spoiled inside the pen, their lives are parsed with all kinds of goodies to make them grow fatter and healthier only to be butchered in the end in the fire.  Asaph began to see life in its proper perspective.  He was the child of the King of the universe, the prince of the universe, heir to God’s eternal inheritance while the wicked is good us dung condemned for eternal nothingness.  After Asaph met God in His house, Asaph declares, “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.  Nevertheless, I am continually with you; you hold my right hand [like a Father holding His child].  You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me to glory” (vv. 21-24).  O the power of meeting God in His house!  It puts our vision of life in the right perspective.  Asaph says he was bitter “like a beast” towards God, blaming Him for his sufferings.  Yet when he went into God’s house, he realized that all those times when he thought he was all alone, in reality God held him in his right hand like a father holding a little child up to keep him from falling and guiding him all his life so that in the end God will receive him into His glorious paradise.

When you meet God in His house, comparing the wicked with the righteous is like comparing a man having a dollar to a man with inscrutable billions upon billions of dollars.  There is no comparison.  The child of God, who is you - are richer than all the wicked billionaires combined!  You will tread on streets of gold and live in mansions of gold and get to live pain-free, tear-free, and happy forever while the wicked ends up burning in hell so why compare yourself with the wicked in the first place?  There is no comparison!  Do not lose the vision of who you really are by solely investing your life in the fleeting things of this world!  That would be building castles in the sand because the moment you thought you got it all, you die and end up into eternal nothingness because no matter how you planned your life, no matter how successful you are, no matter how much you have achieved and accumulated, you and the ones who are very dear to your heart will end up dead forever unless you have God that changes that cycle.  Don’t be like Esau who gave up his birthright for a bowl of soup dangled right in front of his nose.  Do not give up your eternal inheritance because the devil dangled the transient worldly things that dazzle in front of your face!  If we can only catch a glimpse of the eternal inheritance and the immensity of the heavenly heritage that await us when we come to God’s house!  Can we even imagine the mansions of gold prepared for the righteous (John 14:1-3) and the billions upon billions of galaxies that we need to explore at an instant speed when we all get to heaven by virtue of our faith in the merits of Christ?

CONCLUSION
William G. Johnsson, the former editor of the Review has aptly said, “Someone must remind us of the reality of our religion, of its surpassing worth – must tell us again of the glory of our Head.  And tell us in such a way that we can grasp it, that it brings us to our senses.  Once more we must hear that because our religion is so great, we must take it seriously.  Perhaps if we can grasp the magnificence of our salvation, if we can see the transcendent dimension, the divine realities of it, then we will cease to be so wishy-washy as Christians.  Then we may stand up on our feet and look the world squarely in the eye.  Then we shall know for sure who we are and what we are to be” (Issues in the Book of Hebrews, pp. 29-30).

When Asaph went into God’s house, he realized the reality of his religion, and realized who he really was and what he was going to be.  Christ, The Messiah, would receive him into glory.  The same experience should happen to us.  When we come to God’s house, we should realize that there is no comparison between us and the wicked.  Through Christ, we are the sons of God, heirs to the eternal inheritance.  When we have Christ, we have everything that we need in our lives.  So shut up and stop complaining about suffering!  Like Asaph, come to God’s sanctuary, meet God face to face and see your inheritance in Christ and realize who you really are.  How true and lovely is the song,

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of [this] earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace (Helen H. Lemmel, 1864-1961).

May we like Asaph, encounter God face to face in His house, and realize who we really are, the apple of God’s eye, children of the King of the Universe, heirs of God's eternal kingdom through Christ.  Amen.     

THE COURT CASE AGAINST JOSH

An Expository Sermon On Righteousness By Faith 

By Dr. Diego Sausa

INTRODUCTION:

Before we start, let me ask the congregation two questions, Who among you think that they are already saved, please raise your hand? The second question is, Who among you think that they are not yet saved, please raise your hand? Those who answered that they are already saved are correct, and those who answered that they are not yet saved are also correct. Why? Because in the Bible, God teaches us that there are two stages of salvation: number 1, the first stage of salvation is called spiritual salvation or justification. The penitent sinner who accepts by faith God’s gift of salvation through Christ is already saved from the default verdict on mankind which is eternal death and deemed qualified for eternal life. Paul says, “The wages of sin is [eternal] death” (Rom. 6:23). And since we all have sinned, all of mankind from Adam until the last generation are condemned to eternal death. But Paul continues in Romans 6:23, “But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In other words, by virtue of God’s gift of salvation through Christ, all men may be saved from that eternal death condemnation and receive God’s gift of eternal life. So the moment we received God’s gift of salvation through Christ by faith we are already saved from that condemnation and are deemed worthy of eternal life. Technically we call this stage of salvation as justification. We receive this salvation individually by faith in the vicarious merits of Christ. This is the first stage of our salvation because although we have been saved from the eternal death condemnation and are already deemed worthy of eternal life, we are still here on earth. We still live in a sinful and wicked world, and we still don’t have eternal life, we are still bound to grow old and die the natural death. We are already spiritually saved, but physically, we are not yet saved because we are still here in this world.

The second stage of salvation that the Bible teaches is the climactic corporate physical salvation of all believers, and this happens at the Second Coming. When Jesus comes again He will resurrect all justified believers and together with all the living justified believers, He will change all of them in a twinkling of an eye from corruptible to incorruptible, from mortal to immortal and take them all to heaven (1 Cor. 15:52-54; 1Thess. 4:16-17). This second stage of salvation which happens at the Second Coming is technically called “glorification.” Both stages of salvation, spiritual salvation and physical salvation are accomplished because of the vicarious merits of Christ in behalf of mankind.

Our Scripture today is found in Zechariah 3:1-5:

“1Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. 2And the Lord said to Satan, ‘The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?’ 3Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel. 4Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, ‘Take away the filthy garments from him.’ And to him He said, ‘See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.’ 5And I said, ‘Let them put a clean turban on his head.’ So they put a clean turban on his head, and they put the clothes on him. And the Angel of the Lord stood by” (NKJV).

THE VISION OPENS THE WINDOW INTO THE SPIRIT WORLD

We are studying this Scripture because Zechariah’s vision of the high priest Joshua portrays vividly how mankind is saved and draws the curtain open into the spiritual world, and graphically presents before us the great controversy between God and Satan as regards the salvation of man. Zechariah’s vision of Joshua the high priest gives us a view into what happens behind the scenes in the spiritual world where we see Satan as always opposing God for every single person that God saves. Remember Moses? The Angel of the Lord, Michael (Jesus) resurrected Moses, but Satan opposed the Angel of the Lord and the Angel of the Lord rebuked Satan (Jude 1:9).

ZECHARIAH’S BACKGROUND

The prophet Zechariah lived during the post-exilic times, that is, after the 70-year Babylonian exile. He was probably born in Babylon and at a very young age saw Daniel and Ezekiel who by this time were already old. Zechariah as a young man most likely went with the rest of the Jews who went back to Palestine to rebuild Jerusalem and the temple. Zechariah was a priest and also a prophet. His writings also contain apocalyptic visions like that of Daniel and Ezekiel. He was raised as a prophet at a time when God’s people had a renewed relationship with God after the 70-year exile in Babylon, about 500 years before the birth of Christ. It was at this time when Zechariah was shown this symbolic vision of the high priest Joshua. The high priest Joshua in this vision is symbolic of the Jews who had been motivated to obey God and had revitalized their covenant relationship with Him after their 70-year exile.

THE COURT SCENE

The vision in Zechariah 3 is a court scene. The high priest Joshua which symbolizes Jerusalem or the Jews is the accused, God is the judge, the Angel of the Lord is the defense lawyer, and Satan is the prosecutor with all his evidence and accusations. Zechariah tells us in chapter 3:1, “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the Angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him.” The Angel of the Lord was the identity of Christ Himself in the OT (Judges 13:18-22). Joshua the high priest represents the people of God. He stands accused by Satan in the court of God. Satan is pictured being at the “right hand” of Joshua because in the Ancient Neareast courts, the prosecutor or the accuser stayed at the right hand side of the accused. Even in our modern court system today, the prosecutors or the accusers often stand at the right hand side of the accused in the courtroom.

SATAN THE ACCUSER

So we have a picture of a courtroom with Joshua the high priest who is under accusation by Satan. The name Satan is a transliteration of the Hebrew noun Satan, which literally means “accuser.” In verse 1, the Hebrew word satan appears twice, once as a noun as the name of Satan and once as a verb in the phrase “Satan standing at his right hand to oppose [satan] him.” The Hebrew word for “oppose” is also satan in Hebrew, meaning, “to accuse” or “to oppose.” In other words, Satan lives true to his name, he is the accuser of the brethren. He is accusing or charging Joshua the high priest as guilty of the crime of disobedience to God’s laws and therefore deserves to die mankind’s penalty which is eternal death.

THE HOLIEST MAN ON EARTH, GUILTY?

What? The holiest representative of man on earth, the high priest, the highest religious leader of God’s people is accused by Satan as guilty of the crime of disobedience the wages of which is eternal death? How can that be? Joshua returned his tithes, he spent his waking hours ministering to sinners every day, he’s the elder of the church, he teaches God's Word to many people and preaches God’s message every worship hour, how can Satan’s accusations be true? Can you believe Satan’s charges against Joshua? O there must be some kind of mistake here!

THE APOSTLE JOHN AND ON HAVING NO SIN

An elder one day boldly said, “I believe I haven’t sinned anymore because I have kept all of God’s commandments for a long time now.” Wow! Really? How about being guilty of telling a lie? What does the apostle John say? “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1Jn. 1:8), in other words, when we think or say that we have no sin we are already guilty of lying because the truth is not in us. And this is John the beloved disciple speaking under inspiration, long after he was converted, he said this about himself and his fellow Christians, that is, he used the word “we” including himself, that is, the apostle John who was Spirit-empowered, Spirit-enabled, Spirit-inspired to write the Gospel of John, to write the three epistles of John and to write the book of Revelation, says that even he, cannot claim that he was without sin. Indeed no converted Christian can claim that he is already perfect and without sin by his own merits even if he is Spirit-enabled or Spirit-empowered in his converted life as long as he or she remains a mortal.

GOD’S REQUIREMENT FOR ETERNAL LIFE

God’s justice requires that in order to be worthy of eternal life, a person has to be absolutely 100% perfect 100% of the time, not only according to the letter of the law, but according to the spirit of the law as well. Yes, maybe we can be 100% perfect according to the letter of the law some moments in our Christian lifetime, but not 100% of the time. And even if for a minute we have been absolutely perfect according to the letter of the law, that minute of being perfect according to the letter of the law evaporates the moment we realize that according to Paul, “Whatever is not from faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23). Are you sure everything that you did was done in faith, that you did not doubt, that you did not fear, that you took care of your poor neighbor in the streets, the you have visited the widows and the prisoners, that you were never angry with a brother, that you never lust in your mind, that you never hated, that there was never a trace of pride in your heart?

This is exactly the reason why the apostle John told us that we cannot claim that we have no sin, because it would be a lie. Any shortcoming from the spirit and letter of God’s standards is sin and that my friends makes our righteousness as “filthy rags” because for an absolutely perfect God the only passing score is 100% absolute perfection 100% of the time, any score below that is failure and is considered filthy rag righteousness and deserves eternal death. In God’s grading system, there is no such thing as 99.9% pass. God’s grading system is only pass or fail. Our score has to be 100% perfection 100% of the time in order to be worthy of eternal life or any score below that is an abysmal failure – that is, our righteousness is as filthy rags worthy of eternal death.

JOSHUA, GUILTY AS CHARGED

Satan is the best theologian, he knows that the evidence in Scripture and the evidence in the life of Joshua the high priest pointed to only one verdict: Joshua was guilty as charged. In fact the real or direct evidence is even openly visible in court as Zechariah 3:3 tells us, “Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and was standing before the Angel [of the Lord].” This picture of Joshua standing before God’s courtroom in Zechariah 3:3 is very graphic in Hebrew. The words “filthy garments” in Hebrew is begedim tso’im, literally meaning “garments soiled with human feces.” This is similar to Isaiah’s description of our intrinsic righteousness before God, Isaiah says,“But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are like filthy garments” (Isa. 64:6). Isaiah’s words in Hebrew rendered “filthy garments” describing our righteousness are also graphic. The Hebrew words beged ‘iddim for “filthy garments” in this passage actually means “garment soiled with menstruation.” In other words, even the Spirit-assisted, Spirit-enabled righteousness of God’s chosen leader of His own people – Joshua the high priest, looked like garments soiled with feces or garments soiled with menstruation in the eyes of God.

This means that according to the empirical direct evidence, Satan’s accusation that God’s chosen holy man Joshua was guilty, was beyond any reasonable doubt. Satan’s case against Joshua was a slam dunk. Without the shadow of a doubt, the empirical direct evidence of the case against Joshua points to only one verdict, that is, that Joshua was indeed guilty as charged and therefore deserved to die the eternal death penalty for sin.

THE ANGEL OF THE LORD DEFENDS JOSHUA

The case against Joshua looked like a decided case by virtue of the clear evidence presented by Satan until Joshua’s defense attorney stands up and defends Joshua by attacking Satan’s arguments. In Zechariah 3:2, Joshua’s defense attorney was the Angel of the Lord, so He stands up and defends Joshua by saying, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is this not a brand plucked from the fire?” In this verse, it becomes obvious that Joshua is symbolic of God’s people because he is equated with “Jerusalem” or the Jews. The Hebrew word ‘ud for “brand” means a wooden stick that starts to burn in the fire as in pieces of dry sticks that burn in a camp fire. What the Angel of the Lord or Christ is trying to say to Satan is, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem (who is represented by Joshua) rebuke you! Is not My people like a piece of stick that was ready to be burned in the fire but the Lord chose to pluck it out of the fire that it may not burn?” What the Lord was trying to tell Satan was, “Look! It is true, My people are worthy to burn in hell alright, but I chose to pluck them out of the fire that they may not burn.”

THE MEANING OF “THE LORD HAS CHOSEN”

What does it mean when the Lord says, “I have chosen Jerusalem”? Jesus’ Parable of the Wedding Feast in Matthew 22:2-14 gives us the idea what “chosen” by God really means. Jesus starts the parable by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son” (v.2). The king sends His servants to call on all the guests who were invited to the wedding. But then the invited guests took the invitation lightly and preferred to attend to their other important businesses. Worse yet, some even killed the king’s servants who gave them the invitation. So the king sends his other servants and decides to invite anyone who would be willing to come to the invitation. Many responded to the king’s invitation to come to his free grand wedding banquet for his son. And in the conclusion of the parable Jesus says, “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14).

So what is the meaning of God’s chosen? Did Christ refer to those who were chosen as guests but who didn’t come, or those who were not originally chosen as guests but who actually positively responded to the invitation by coming to the free wedding reception? The answer is clear, those who were randomly invited and who accepted the invitation by coming to the king's free wedding reception became the king’s chosen. In other words, God’s salvation is free for all, but we become “chosen” only when we choose to accept by faith God’s free gift of salvation through Christ.

JOSHUA’S FILTHY GARMENTS REPLACED WITH RICH ROBES

So in Zechariah’s vision of the trial of Joshua the high priest who represented God’s people, the Angel of the Lord “chose” to pluck His people out of the burning fire because they responded in faith to God’s free gift of salvation. In other words, the Angel of the Lord was telling Satan, “My people have accepted my free gift of salvation by faith, so I have chosen to pluck them out of the burning fire because of their faith in the merits of the Messiah-Savior.” That God’s people accepted by faith God’s free gift of salvation is obvious in the next scene portrayed in the vision. The Angel of the Lord says in Zechariah 3:4, “Then He answered and spoke to those who stood before Him, saying, ‘Take away the filthy garments from him.’ And to him He said, ‘See, I have removed your iniquity from you, and I will clothe you with rich robes.’”

In this scene, it becomes obvious that Joshua’s “garments soiled with feces,” symbolized his sins. Because of his acceptance and faith in God’s free gift of salvation, the Angel of the Lord removes his “garments soiled with feces,” that is, his “iniquity,” and replaces them with the Angel of the Lord’s own righteousness represented by the “rich robes.” We do not earn Christ's righteousness, we simply receive it by faith as a gift from God.

IMPLICATIONS OF THE COURT PROCEEDING

The implications of this court proceeding are enormous and profound. It tells us that no amount of good works or obedience, and no amount of good position in the church can be good enough to make us appear righteous and deserving of eternal life before the eyes of God. No matter our position in church, no matter our good works and obedience, we can never be 100% perfect 100% of the time, so our "righteousnesses" are always like garments soiled with feces in the eyes of God and, therefore, we deserve eternal death. But for those who by faith have accepted God’s free gift of salvation through Christ, God chooses to pluck them out of the burning fire, removes their “garments soiled with feces” and replaces them with the righteousness of Christ. In Zechariah’s vision of Joshua the high priest, God reverses the guilty verdict sought by Satan and declares Joshua not guilty because Christ’s righteousness replaces the righteousness of Joshua that looks like “garments soiled with feces” according to God's absolutely perfect justice. Christ's rebuke silences Satan. Satan is silenced and has no more argument against the Angel of the Lord's immovable defense, that is, that Joshua is not guilty because the Angel of the Lord's own righteousness symbolized by the "rich robes," vicariously covered Joshua.

OUR DEPRAVITY

As long as we remain members of the fallen human race, even our Spirit-enabled and Spirit-empowered good works like that of Joshua the high priest will continue to miss the mark of God’s standard of absolute perfection. Nevertheless, God understands our depravity and fallen propensity. That’s why He sent Christ to die the eternal death penalty that was ours and live the absolutely perfect life in our stead which we need in order to deserve eternal life. The sooner we realize our depravity and hopelessness, the sooner we run to Jesus as our only source of righteousness. Because God knew that we could not pay for our death penalty and live, and because He knew that we could not be 100% perfect 100% of the time in our converted lifetime to meet the requirement for eternal life, God did it all for us!

He sent His only begotten Son to become like us and live an absolutely perfect life as a human being in our behalf, and He died the eternal death penalty that was ours, so that whosoever keeps having faith in the merits of Christ’s vicarious death and Christ’s vicarious absolutely perfect life which He lived 2,000 years ago in mankind’s behalf, shall not die the eternal death penalty but shall be worthy of eternal life. All we need is accept by faith God’s free gift of complete and total salvation through Christ through His dual vicarious merits, namely, His vicarious death that paid for our eternal death penalty, and His vicarious absolutely perfect life which He lived in our behalf 2000 years ago that replaces our “filthy garments.”

CHRIST’S VICARIOUS MERITS: THE ONLY METHOD OF SALVATION

Christ’s vicarious dual merit which He accomplished for us 2000 years ago, is what we need for our spiritual salvation (justification) now and for our corporate physical salvation at His Second Coming. As Paul tells us “For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God [i.e., redeemed from eternal death penalty] through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved [i.e., we shall receive eternal life] by His [absolutely perfect] life” (Rom. 5:10). Again, Paul tells us, “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s [absolutely perfect] obedience many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19).

REASON FOR OBEDIENCE

We may ask, so what’s the use of obeying God, if Christ already did everything for our salvation? The answer is, Christ did not tell us, “If you want to be saved, keep my commandments,” rather, He said, “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” Obedience therefore is the result of salvation, it is not the method of salvation. We obey because we love God because He has already saved us through the vicarious merits of Christ which He accomplished for us 2000 years ago. So the motive for obedience is love and not salvation because God has already saved us! In this symbolic story of Joshua the high priest, nothing in what Joshua had done made him righteous. It was totally the Angel of the Lord who made him righteous after the Angel of the Lord removed Joshua’s “garments soiled with feces” and replaced them with the Angel of the Lord’s own “rich robes.”

It was only after Joshua had received this total salvation from the Angel of the Lord or from Christ that the Angel of the Lord tells Joshua to obey, He says, in Zechariah 3:7, “If you will walk in My ways, and if you will keep My command, then you shall judge My house.” In other words, obedience is the result and not the method of salvation. We obey God because we love Him for He has already saved us through Christ. Imagine a deathrow inmate, sentenced to death. No matter how much good he does inside the prison cell, the deathrow inmate will still die by execution. But then the President pardons him and saves him from sure death. Now how does the freed inmate react to the President’s grace? The most natural thing for him to do is to love the President back by being a good and loyal citizen. The reason for his obedience and loyalty is not because he wants to be saved from the death penalty because he was already saved by the President from that death penalty. But rather the pardoned inmate out of love and gratitude obeys and becomes loyal to the President because he has already received the President's free gift of salvation.

CONCLUSION

In a spiritual sense, we are all condemned inmates. Like Joshua, we are all guilty as charged and are ready to be burned like a stick in the fire. But because God loved us so much, He sent His only Son to become a human being like us, so that as a Man, He might live perfectly in our behalf and that He may die the eternal death penalty that was ours. All that we need to do is accept by faith Christ’s accomplishments for us 2,000 years ago for our complete salvation. Our world today is so dress-conscious. Magazines declare “the best dressed man of the year,” and the “best dressed woman of the year.” Unfortunately, magazines also publish “the worst dressed” people in the world. I feel bad for those people branded as “the worst dressed person of the year.” In God’s eyes, however, there are only two kinds of dressed people in the world: people who have the righteousness of Christ are dressed with perfectly clean rich robes while those who don’t have the righteousness of Christ are dressed with “garments soiled with feces.” The Lord is calling us today to let Him remove our filthy garments, that He might replace them with His own rich robes of righteousness. If you are willing to accept by faith Christ’s vicarious death as payment for your eternal death penalty and Christ’s vicarious perfect life as replacement for the filthy garments of righteousness that you wear, please stand with me and pray:

Thank you Lord for saving my soul

Thank you Lord for making me whole

Thank you Lord for giving to me

Thy great salvation so rich and free.

SCIENCE DECLARES THE CREATOR-GOD OF GENESIS

An In-Depth Scientific and Biblical Study on the Genesis Account of Creation

INTRODUCTION

Genesis 1 has been a perpetual battleground for controversies on origins between Bible/Tanakh believers on one side and non-believers on the other. But these controversies have even spilled over into Bible-believing Christians. For examples, we have believers in the so-called theistic evolutionism and believers in intermittent Creation days (multiple-gaps) theory. Both camps believe in God but both camps do not believe in the literal six 24-hour days Creation account in Genesis 1 because they have accommodated the naturalistic or mechanistic explanation of science regarding the origin of life which requires long periods of geological time.[1] But do science and the Bible really contradict each other? The Bible tells us that “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1, NKJV) which means that what we can see around us through scientific empirical observation testifies of the same God that the Bible declares.

Paul aptly says, “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Rom. 1:20). What is revealed in nature then should not necessarily contradict that which is revealed in the Bible because both nature and the Bible have the same Author – God. Erickson has put it well, he says, God has left evidence of himself in the world he has created. General revelation is most frequently thought of in connection with the creation’s amazing and impressive character, pointing to a very powerful and wise person, capable of designing and producing intricate variety and beauty. The person who views the beauty of a sunset and the biology student dissecting a complex organism are exposed to indications of God’s greatness.[2]

In the last few decades more scientific evidences from nature have surfaced. The question is, do these evidences point to the Creator-God of Genesis 1 or to a series of random chemical reactions over eons of time that eventually produced life and mankind? This study will delve into the scientific and biblical evidences that impinge on the Genesis Creation account on origins. The purpose of this study is to find out certain truths about origins after studying both scientific and biblical evidences. After all, as the Hebrew biologist and physicist Gerald L. Schroeder puts it, “Revelation and nature are the two aspects of one creation. Theology and science present two versions of that one reality, each version seen from its own unique perspective.”[3] It is the thesis of this investigation that many current evidences in science agree with the literal interpretation of the Genesis Creation narrative. Both nature and Scripture have the same Author, therefore, both point to that same Author. As man looks at the evidences in nature, he will find the footprints of his Maker.

IN THE BEGINNING

No human witness was there in the beginning to record how life and the universe began or whether or not the universe had a beginning, but the very first statement of Scripture asserts that “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Bruce Waltke perceptively describes Genesis 1:1 as the prologue to the entire Creation narrative from Genesis 1:1 to Genesis 2:3.[4] In other words, Genesis 1:1 does not describe God’s first act of creating something at a specific point in time, but rather, the verse gives a summary of the entire Creation narrative in the following verses from Genesis 1:2 to Genesis 2:3. John H. Walton sees Genesis 1:1 the same way, he says, “[T]he text is not suggesting that anything was actually created in 1:1; rather, the verse is a literary introduction, a summary of what follows.”[5] The very first verse of the very first book of the Bible informs the reader that indeed the world and the universe were not always there, that is, that they had a beginning, and that the Cause of that beginning was God.

SCIENCE AND COSMOGONY (THE BEGINNING OF THE UNIVERSE)

In the early half of the 20th century, scientists, including Albert Einstein believed that the universe was eternal, that is, that it was always there and that it had no beginning. But as more scientific evidences surfaced that pointed to the beginning of the universe, those proponents of the idea of a self-existent eternal universe were forced to accept the biblical concept that indeed the universe had a beginning. In 1916, when Einstein was developing the now empirically verified theory of General Relativity, his calculations predicted that indeed the universe including time, all matter and space had a definite beginning.[6] He later recalled that his discovery was irritating to him because it demolished his initial assumption that the universe was self-existent, static and eternal and that it pointed to the idea that the universe was one giant effect of a cause outside of itself.[7] To avoid this conclusion of an absolute beginning for the universe, he initially introduced an algebraic formula of a cosmological constant. But after seeing the overwhelming observational evidence as a result of his looking through the Mt. Wilson observatory’s giant telescope in 1929, Einstein had to admit that his cosmological constant was an error and that indeed the universe had a beginning.[8] He honestly admitted that the cosmological constant formula that he created was the greatest blunder of his life.[9] Einstein was forced to admit God and since then he wanted “to know how God created the world,” and he expressed that he wanted to discover the mind of God: “I wanted to know His thought, the rest are details.”[10]

In a separate experiment in 1919 conducted in Britain during a solar eclipse, Einstein’s contemporary, Sir Arthur Eddington who was an atheistic cosmologist and astrophysicist concluded based on the observational evidence from his experiment that indeed the universe was expanding from a definite beginning point of non-existence and like Einstein, he was irritated by what he discovered. He confessed after the discovery: “Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me.”[11] And he adds, “The beginning seems to present insuperable difficulties unless we agree to look on it as frankly supernatural.”[12] Indeed as man looks at nature objectively, he is confronted by overwhelming evidences that point to God as nature’s Author.

Both Scripture and nature testify of the same God. The world renowned Christian scientist Ariel A. Roth has said it well, “God never performed a miracle to convince an atheist, because His ordinary works can provide sufficient evidence.”[13] The Hebrew word bere’shiyth translated “in the beginning” is a compound word. While bere’shiyth can mean “in the beginning” as has been commonly translated in almost all of English translations, it can also mean “with wisdom,” because the prefix be means “with” and the Hebrew word re’shiyth can also mean “wisdom,”[14] thus, Genesis 1:1 can be translated “With wisdom God created the heaven and the earth.” The Jewish scholar and scientist Gerald L. Schroeder points out that the 2,100-year old Jerusalem Aramaic translation renders Genesis 1:1 to mean in English “With wisdom God created the heavens and the earth.”[15] This agrees with the psalmist’s declaration about God’s act of creation, “O Lord, how manifold are Your works! In wisdom You have made them all” (Ps. 104:24).

In other words, the author of Genesis does not only want us to understand that in the beginning God created the universe, but also that God’s wisdom is embedded in His entire creation, thus, we can see the trace or footprint of God when we look into nature.

CREATIO EX NIHILO (CREATION OUT OF NOTHING) AND SCIENCE

The Bible declares both in the Old Testament and the New Testament that God created the universe out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) by command or decree of His words (fiat). The psalmist says, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made….For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast” (Ps. 33:6a,9). The author of Hebrews testifies the same way, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3). The English word “created” in Genesis 1:1 comes from the Hebrew verb bara in the Qal stem (simple active verb) in the perfect aspect (completed action).[16] In the Hebrew Bible, the word bara in the Qal stem is exclusively associated with God[17] alone because He alone could create things out of nothing by decree. Longman and Dillard explain that “the theme of Genesis 1 and 2 is not how God created, but that God created the creation, and that he made it from no preexistent stuff (creatio ex nihilo) in contrast to the beliefs of the other Near Eastern religions (contra Levenson).”[18]

Man cannot create something out of nothing, and he cannot speak something into existence. Often the words that come out of a man’s mouth do not mean anything. But there is an awesome inscrutable power in God’s word that when He speaks, things come into existence out of nothing. For example in Genesis 1, God’s act of creation on the first day is described: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good” (Gen. 1:3,4, margin). “Light” here is spoken into existence by God as a phenomenon independent of the sun which was not yet created until the fourth day of Creation (Gen. 1:14-19). After God spoke light into existence, He “saw the light,” and pronounced it “good.”

Waltke identifies five elements of God’s fiat (decreed) creative pattern throughout the entire Creation narrative, namely: the announcement (e.g., “God said….”), the command (e.g., “Let there be….”), the report (e.g., “And so God made….”), the naming of cosmic elements (e.g., God calls light “day.”), God’s evaluation of His creation (e.g., God declares, “It is good.”), and God’s establishment of the chronological framework.[19] It is obvious in the Creation narrative in Genesis 1 and 2 that God’s fiat (decreed) creation consisted of commanding into existence of something out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo, e.g. Genesis 1:14-15 it says, “‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens’…and it was so,”) and creation of something out of matter (creatio in aniis) that God had already previously created out of nothing (e.g., Genesis 2:19 says, “Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them”).

The Genesis account on God’s creatio ex nihilo (creation out of nothing) sounds stranger than fiction until recent cosmological evidences surfaced that suggested that in fact the universe came out of nothing. As early as 1913, astronomer Vesto Melvin Slipher already proposed that the universe was expanding,[20] and by 1927 astronomer Edwin Hubble actually observed through Mount Wilson Observatory’s 100-inch telescope that the universe was expanding at a rapid steady rate from a certain point.[21] What this discovery implies is that, if you go back in reverse of this expansion, it would point to the time when the universe was not, that is, literally nothing. Geisler and Turek explain this phenomenon well,

“[I]f we could watch a video recording of the history of the universe in reverse, we would see all matter in the universe collapse back to a point, not the size of a basketball, not the size of a golf ball, not even the size of a pinhead, but mathematically and logically to a point that is actually nothing (i.e., no space, no time, and no matter). In other words, once there was nothing, and then, BANG, there was something – the entire universe exploded into being.”[22]

Finding this theory ridiculous, the British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle who was a staunch proponent of the Steady State (the universe was eternal) theory, gave a derogatory name for the concept of an expanding universe, he called it the “Big Bang” as a way of making fun of it, but ironically the name stuck, and the rapid universe expansion theory became popularly known as the Big Bang theory.[23]

As early as 1948, three scientists predicted that if the Big Bang indeed happened, that is, if the sudden instantaneous explosion into existence of the universe out of nothing really happened in a flash of energy, there would still be some residual energy radiation or cosmic energy afterglow that could be observed in the cosmos as a result of that instantaneous surge of cosmic power.[24] But no one really took that suggestion seriously until in 1965 when Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson accidentally stumbled into the phenomenon when their antenna picked up a strange radiation coming from all directions while working at their Bell Labs in Holmdel, New Jersey.[25] The discovery turned out to be one of the most incredible discoveries in the century which would win Penzias and Wilson Nobel Prizes.[26] This faint microwave energy is technically known as the cosmic background radiation made up of residual light and heat from the initial explosion of the universe into existence, and the light is no longer within the visible wavelength spectrum because it’s been stretched by the expansion of the universe.[27]

When Robert Wilson who was not a believer was later asked if the evidence that they had discovered pointed to a Creator, Wilson replied, “Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.”[28] After the discovery of the cosmic background microwave radiation by Penzias and Wilson, scientists predicted that if the Big Bang really occurred, there would be slight variations or ripples in the temperature of the cosmic radiation afterglow which enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction to form the galaxies. The search for these ripples became serious and in 1989 NASA launched a $200-million satellite called COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer). After three years, astronomer George Smoot, COBE’s project director announced to the whole world that the explorer found that there were indeed ripples in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation and that these ripples showed that the explosion of the universe into existence was precisely tweaked to cause just enough matter to congregate to allow the formation of galaxies, but not enough to cause the universe to collapse back on itself.[29]

Smoot’s report brought shockwaves to the scientific world and as a man who was not religious he announced, “If you’re religious, it’s like looking at God,” and describing the precision of the ripples he says, that it is “the machining marks from the creation of the universe” and the “fingerprints of the maker.”[30] Like Robert Wilson before him he concludes, “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”[31] Another prominent agnostic astronomer/astrophysicist Michael Turner said, "The significance of this [discovery] cannot be overstated. They have found the Holy Grail of cosmology."[32]

Because of this overwhelming cosmic evidence for the instant creation of the universe that points to the God of Genesis, the respected astronomer Robert Jastrow, who is a self-confessed agnostic and head of the Mount Wilson Observatory which was once held by Edwin Hubble, and founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, comments: "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy."[33] He further concedes: "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."[34]

It sounds like Moses' Genesis account on beginnings suddenly became popular with these honest atheistic and agnostic scientists. Realizing that the cosmic evidences point to the fact that the universe was created abruptly by Someone bigger than the universe itself, Jastrow concludes, “Astronomers now find they have painted themselves into a corner because they have proven, by their own methods, that the world began abruptly in an act of creation to which you can trace the seeds of every star, every planet, every living thing in this cosmos and on the earth. And they have found that all this happened as a product of forces they cannot hope to discover...That there are what I or anyone would call supernatural forces at work is now, I think, a scientifically proven fact.”[35]

It should be emphasized here that while the Big Bang and the fiat Creation account in Genesis have similarities, the details differ just as Jastrow said in the earlier quote. One of the major differences as Francis A. Schaeffer points out is, “the primal creation [according to Genesis] goes back beyond the basic material or energy. We have a new thing created by God out of nothing by fiat, and this is the distinction.”[36] What is significant is scientific evidences point to the fact that the universe was indeed created instantly out of nothing “in a flash of light and energy,” by a Supernatural being bigger than the universe itself just as described in the Genesis account of Creation.

THE ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE IN GENESIS AND SCIENCE

On the fourth day of Creation, the author of Genesis narrates: “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth’; and it was so. Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth….So the evening and the morning were the fourth day” (Gen. 1:14-17,19). It is interesting to note that Moses, the conservatively accepted author of Genesis, gives God’s main reason why the two great lights in the outer space (sun and moon) and the stars were created, that is, “to give light on the earth,” or that is, for the sake of mankind. Moses introduces a pregnant idea here in this passage that not too many have given enough weight.

What Moses is virtually saying is that the universe was created by God with mankind’s benefit in mind. The universe itself bespeaks of God’s eternal love for mankind, He created it for the sake of man. Technically, we call this idea, the Anthropic Principle. This Anthropic Principle phenomenon has recently been a topic of intense discussion in the scientific circles without realizing that such an idea was already introduced by Moses in his Genesis Creation account some 3,500 years earlier. Geisler and Turek explain this phenomenon well:

“Scientists are now finding that the universe in which we live is like that diamond-studded Rolex, except the universe is even more precisely designed than the watch. In fact, the universe is specifically tweaked to enable life on earth – a planet with scores of improbable and interdependent life-supporting conditions that make it a tiny oasis in a vast and hostile universe. These highly precise and interdependent environmental conditions (which are called “anthropic constants”) make up what is known as the 'Anthropic Principle.' 'Anthropic' comes from a Greek word that means 'human' or 'man.'  The Anthropic Principle is just a fancy title for the mounting evidence that has made many scientists come to believe that the universe is extremely fine-tuned (designed) to support life here on earth. In this vast and hostile universe, we earthlings are much like astronauts who can survive only in the small confines of their spaceship. Like a spaceship, our earth supports life as it hurls through lifeless space. But also like a spaceship, a slight change or malfunction in any one of a number of factors – in either the universe or the earth itself – could fatally alter the narrowly defined environmental conditions we need to survive.”[37]

Science has identified more than a hundred of these precisely tuned “anthropic constants” that make life on earth possible.[38] Ariel Roth has identified seven of these many anthropic constants: the anthropic constants in matter, in carbon, in the sun, in the strong nuclear force, in the weak nuclear force, in the electromagnetic force and in gravity.[39] His explanation on these seven anthropic constants are the following: if the mass of the proton in the atom (basic unit of matter) were different by just one part in a thousand, there would be no atoms, which means, no life can exist; if the resonance level of carbon, which is necessary for life to exist, was 4 percent lower, life would not exist; if the sun were just 5 percent closer or 1 percent farther from the earth, it would rid the earth of all life; if the strong nuclear force that holds intact all the atoms in the universe were 2 percent stronger or 5 percent weaker, life would be impossible; if the force of the weak nuclear force that controls the radioactive decay of atoms in the universe was slightly weaker or slightly stronger, no life would exist; if the electromagnetic force in the universe that controls chemical changes between atoms were slightly stronger or slightly weaker, it would destroy life on earth as well as the universe; if the gravity which keeps galaxies, suns and planets together varied by only the minutest amount, the universe would collapse, no life on earth can exist.[40]

Geisler and Turek identify many other significant anthropic constants. For examples: if the universe expanded at a rate of one in a million slower or faster, the universe would collapse and life would not exist; if the speed of light varied slightly, it would destroy life on earth; if Jupiter were not in its current orbit attracting space materials such as asteroids and comets that might otherwise strike earth, life on earth will not exist; if the 23-degree axis tilt of the earth were slightly altered, surface temperatures on earth would be too extreme for life to exist on earth.[41] Realizing these finely tuned constants that exist in the universe that make life possible here on earth, Nobel Laureate physicist and astronomer Arno Penzias says, “Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life [on earth]. In the absence of an absurdity-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan.”[42]

The renowned atheistic British astronomer-physicist, Sir Fred Hoyle, who mockingly first coined the words “Big Bang” to make fun of the expanding universe theory which is now empirically demonstrated through observable data, makes the following declaration after realizing the infinite precision that exists in the universe that make life possible on earth: “Would you not say to yourself, ‘Some super-calculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom,’ otherwise the chance of my finding such an atom through the blind forces of nature would be utterly miniscule. A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question."[43] Science, thus, agrees with the Anthropic Principle described in Genesis 1:14-19.

GOD’S TRANSCENDENCE AND QUANTUM PHYSICS

The book of Genesis, does not give us an account of the beginning of God, it only gives us an account of the beginning of mankind, the earth, the universe consisting of space, matter and time. The “In the beginning” statement in Genesis, therefore, “does not mean that there was not anything before that. In John 17:24, Jesus prays to God the Father, saying, ‘Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.’…There is, therefore, something that reaches back into eternity – back before the phrase ‘in the beginning.’”[44] Genesis 1:1-3 for example tells us that God created the heavens and the earth in the beginning and that the first thing that He created was light and “God called the light Day, and the darkness He called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.” Before God created matter and space, and before He created the first day, there was no first day, and there was no matter and space, in other words, only God and eternity.

Waltke explains, “God did not create in time but created with time as a convenient means of measuring progression in connection with space.”[45] God is, therefore, outside of space, matter and time, and because He is not confined by space, matter and time, He can be in and out of any space, any matter and any time that He created, anytime at no time.[46] Technically we call these divine attributes omnipresence and omniscience. These divine attributes are inscrutable for human minds to grasp, because the creature cannot simply fully fathom his Creator. Since God created nature with His wisdom, is it then possible that we can trace some of His inscrutable mysterious attributes in nature? Now let us consider quantum physics, the ultimate science of reality in the most basic level: the study of the invisible subatomic reality. After all, Scripture says of created matter, “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3).

In other words, all the material things all around us, including ourselves, are not made of things that are visible, we are all quantum after all, the physical matter is made of the metaphysical, physics becomes metaphysical or ethereal. Welcome to the quantum world, because that is exactly what we are made of – the invisible. Explaining this quantum phenomenon, Hebrew physicist and molecular biologist Gerald L. Schroeder writes, “[T]he solid world is really 99.9999999999999 [decimal point is followed by 13 nines] percent empty space made solid by hypothetical, force-carrying massless particles….even that miniscule fraction of matter that is matter may not actually be matter, but wavelets of energy that we material beings sense as matter.”[47] So the visible physical world is virtually made of things that are invisible! Schroeder further explains that the ethereal matter which everything is made of “is made solid not by matter [as solid particle], but by ethereal forces carried in photons [basic subatomic components of atom or light]….I press my hand on a table top. I can’t penetrate the wood. But a hammered nail pierces it easily, because the invisible binding forces of the molecules of iron are far stronger than those invisible forces binding molecules of wood….The world of atoms and molecules consists of wavelike particles separated from each other by voids, held in place by never seen, massless photons, traveling at the speed of light among particles that are not only particles but also [invisible, ethereal, or quantum] waves. If you can conceptualize this melee in an intelligible way, I have an urgent suggestion: publish.”[48]

That’s why Niels Bohr, one of the pioneers of quantum physics says, “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum physics, has not understood it.”[49] In double-slit experiments which have been repeated over and over again in many laboratories, scientists found out that photons, the smallest perceptible subatomic components of atom or light can be in two places at the same time. After observing this phenomenon, Timothy Ferris writes: “It is as if the quantum world had never heard of space – as if in some strange way, it thinks of itself as being in one place at a time.”[50] In other words the photons were “too fast” so that they could travel faster than the speed of light and could be in two different places at no time. The most basic reality of the universe, the minutest quantum particle or electromagnetic wave of matter declares the wisdom of its Maker embedded in itself. A photon can be in two places at the same time, its Maker can do better than a photon, He can be in all places at the same time. A photon can travel faster than the speed of light, its Maker can travel anywhere anytime in no time; a photon has dual properties, it is capable of being a visible particle or an invisible electromagnetic wave, its Maker can be visible or invisible, He can be divine and be human at the same time.

French physicist and Nobel Laureate Roland Omnes, writing about the bizarre behavior of the quantum world writes: “This theory penetrates reality to a depth our senses cannot take us. Its laws are universal, and they rule over the world of objects so familiar to us. We who inhabit the world, cannot make our own vision prevail over the arrogant laws, whose concepts seem to flow from an order higher than the one inspired by the things we can touch, see, and say with ordinary words.”[51] Indeed the material universe, the world, and all the things that can be seen around us, including us “were not made of things which are visible” and the very basic reality of our existence, the quantum world, declares the wisdom and mystery of its Maker.

CONCLUSION

Indeed, with wisdom God created the heavens and the earth, and all of His creation, from the largest galaxy to the minutest part of the atom, declare the wisdom and power of their Creator. True objective science does not nullify God, it reaffirms and magnifies nature’s Creator. Evidences presented in this study reaffirm the veracity of the literal Genesis account of Creation. And the scientists involved in the discoveries of evidences were mostly atheists and agnostics, who after being confronted by overwhelming evidences, inevitably acknowledge God in their own way. Nanoscientist James Tour aptly says, “Only a rookie who knows nothing about science would say science takes away from faith. If you really study science, it will bring you closer to God.”[52]

The thesis of this study, namely, that many current evidences in science agree with the literal interpretation of the Genesis Creation narrative, has been demonstrated to be true through the reaffirmation of, ironically, mostly non-Bible believing agnostic and atheistic scientists who could not admit otherwise than God because of the preponderance of evidence. Indeed as man looks into God’s creation, he sees the miraculous power and wisdom of its Creator and he is left with no rational option but inevitably admit God. And “If we admit God,” C. S. Lewis writes, “must we admit Miracle? Indeed, indeed, you have no security against it. That is the bargain.”[53] This study, therefore, concludes, after investigating the foregoing scientific evidences, that the literal Genesis account of Creation is backed by evidences in science. The testimony of the psalmist when he wrote under inspiration beautifully sums it all up: “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1).

 ________________________
1 Jim Gibson, “Can We Have It Both Ways?” Perspective Digest 10, no. 4 (2005): 32-33.
2 Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: 1998), 179.
3 Gerald L Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God (New York, NY: 2001), 21.
4 Bruce K. Waltke, An Old Testament Theology, 1st ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: 2007), 179.
5 John H. Walton, Genesis: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: 2001), 70.
6 Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist (Wheaton, IL: 2004), 73.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., 74.
9 Ibid.
10 Quoted in ibid.
11 Quoted in ibid.
12 Sir Arthur Eddington, The Expanding Universe (New York: NY, 1988), 178.
13 Ariel A. Roth, Origins, Linking Science and Scripture (Hagerstown, MD: 1998), 94.
14 Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon: Coded With Strong’s Concordance Numbers (Peabody, MA: 2008), 912a.
15 Schroeder, 49.
16 C.F. Keil and F. Delitzsch, The Pentateuch (Grand Rapids, MI: 1971), 47.
17 Waltke, 180.
18 Tremper Longman III and Raymond B. Dillard, An Introduction to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: 1994), 57.
19 Waltke, 183-184.
 20 Geisler and Turek, 79.
21 Ibid., 74.
22 Ibid., 79.
23 Ariel A. Roth, Science Discovers God (Hagerstown, MD: 2008), 47.
 24 Geisler and Turek, 81.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Fred Heeren, Show Me God, 5th ed. (Wheeling IL: 200), 156.
29 Geisler and Turek, 83.
30 Heeren, 168.
31 Ibid., 139.
32 Ibid., 168.
33 Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: 1992), 14 (emphasis mine).
34 Ibid., 116.
35 “A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths: Interview with Robert Jastrow," Christianity Today (Aug. 6, 1982), 15,18, quoted in Geisler and Turek, 85.
36 Francis A. Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time (Downers Grove, IL: 1972), 28-29.
37 Geisler and Turek, 96.
38 Ibid., 106.
39 Roth, Science Discovers God, 51.
40 Ibid.
41 Geisler and Turek, 105-106.
42 Walter Bradley, “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos,” Signs of Intelligence (Grand Rapids, MI: 2001): 168.
43 Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science (November, 1981): 8–12.
44 Schaeffer, 16-17.
45 Waltke, 184.
46 In Daniel 9:20-23 for example, Daniel prays to God and God commands the angel Gabriel to “fly swiftly” [travel] through space from heaven to earth to answer Daniel’s prayer in no time before Daniel could even finish his prayer.
 47 Schroeder, 40.
48 Ibid., 30-31.
49 Quoted in Karen M. Barad, Meeting the Universe Halfway (Durham, NC: 2007), 254.
50 Quoted in Clifford Goldstein, God, Godel and Grace (Hagerstown, MD, 2007), 35.
51 Roland Omnes, Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science (Princeton, NJ: 1999),163.
52 Quoted in Geisler and Turek, 95.
53 Ibid., 197.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barad, Karen M. Meeting the Universe Halfway. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Bradley, Walter. “The ‘Just-so’ Universe: The Fine-Tuning of Constants and Conditions in the Cosmos.” Signs of Intelligence (2001) 157-223.

Brown, Francis, and Driver, S. R., and Briggs, Charles A. The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English
Lexicon: Coded With Strong’s Concordance Numbers. Peabody, MA: 2008.

Eddington, Arthur. The Expanding Universe. New York, NY: Cambridge, reprinted 1988.

Erickson, Millard J. Christian Theology, 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1998.

Geisler, Norman L. and Frank Turek. I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2004.

Gibson, Jim. “Can We Have It Both Ways?” Perspective Digest 10, no. 4 (2005): 32-33.

Goldstein, Clifford. God, Godel and Grace. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2007.

Heeren, Fred. Show Me God, 5th ed. Wheeling IL: Daystar, 2000.

Hoyle, Fred. "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections." Engineering and Science (November, 1981): 8–12.

Jastrow, Robert. God and the Astronomers, 2nd ed. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co., 1992.

Omnes, Roland. Quantum Philosophy: Understanding and Interpreting Contemporary Science. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,1999.

Roth, Ariel A. Origins, Linking Science and Scripture. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1998.

___________. Science Discovers God. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2008.

Schaeffer, Francis A. Genesis in Space and Time. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1972.

Schroeder, Gerald L. The Hidden Face of God. New York, NY: Touchstone, 2001.

Waltke, Bruce K. An Old Testament Theology, 1st ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007.

Walton, John H. Genesis: The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001.